About the Mystery of the Letters

From the mystery of the letters ( altgr. Περὶ τοῦ μυστηρίου τῶν γραμμάτων Peri tou mysteriou ton grammaton ) is an anonymous Christian work on secret messages in forms and names of the Greek or Hebrew letters. It was probably in the 6th century in Palestine.

Tradition location

In December 2007, three Greek and known a Coptic Arabic handwriting of the text. The manuscripts date from the 14th to 16th century.

Origin and dating

The work was originally written in Greek, in the area of Palestine. Only one of the manuscripts is called an author: the Holy Sabas of Jerusalem ( 439-535 ). Due to the content, criteria, however, is to start from a date after the middle of the 6th century, so that Sabas comes not as an author in question.

The editor of the Greek text dated the work in the second half of the 6th century. Education and philosophy hostile tendencies in the text it refers to the Origenistic controversy of the 6th century, the main venue Mar Saba, the most important founded by Sabas monastery was formed. Due to these relationships, and the attribution of the work to Sabas she hypothesizes that the work of a monk - probably a calligrapher - was written from the monastery Mar Saba.

Content

Introduction, the author explains that he would have become aware of a study of the book of Revelation by the thrice-repeated saying, "I am the Alpha and the Omega" to the mystery of the Greek alphabet. He had been transferred to Sinai through intense prayer for enlightenment regarding the meaning of this sentence, where he had received a revelation of the secret messages of the letters, which he now wants to pass on to his readers.

First, it reduces the Greek alphabet after the model of the Hebrew alphabet to 22 letters. This he explained to the image of 22 works of creation in the biblical account of creation and this accordingly to the image of 22 " works " of Christ, that is, from 22 events in the Christian history of salvation, from the Annunciation to the Resurrection and Second Coming.

The correspondence between creation story, earthly life of Christ and the alphabet of the author works in the following chapters from further when he interprets the forms of Greek letters as a representation of some part of the creation story of Christian salvation history. For example, he interprets the letter Delta as an image of heaven and earth, the letter Chi its turn, as an image of the distribution of the four Gospels in the four cardinal directions. Then he wears his version before a story of the alphabet. He intertwines motifs from Greek Myth and Hebrew Bible and other Jewish and pagan writings with each other. According to his account of the first generation Enoch was mediated by divine inspiration of the Hebrew alphabet. However, the knowledge of which was lost in the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babylon. But the " finger of God " the Greek letters have now been enrolled in a stone tablet. This came after the Flood the crowd to Cadmus in his hands, which meant that the letters first became popular in Phoenicia and Palestine.

The Greek letter forms, the author to the Hebrew letter names, because it is his opinion, is the original name. These same Hebrew letter names he translated into Greek and interprets them as praise to Jesus Christ. This is followed by a long digression on the Episemon to (the Greek numeral for 6 ) and its counterpart Vav (sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and Hebrew numeral for 6). Also Available in These recognize the author references to Jesus Christ.

The last chapter of the treatise already deepen Addressed and address issues of a more general nature. Thus, the author examines in detail the history of mankind, the expiry of which, on the other hand, finds the one hand, in the sequence of vowels and non- vowels in the Greek alphabet in the structure of the biblical account of creation. He devotes a long chapter of Christology, in particular the two-natures doctrine, as it was defined at the Council of Chalcedon as a component of the Christian creed. The final form of the work speculations about the name Adam.

Footnotes

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