When it comes to various forms of “Bible codes” the most popular today is commonly referred to as Hebrew Word Pictures, which appears to originate from a book by the same name published by a man named Frank Seekins. In this message I am will more closely this idea that claims to find “hidden messages” in the biblical text through taking original Hebrew words and applying “pictograph” meanings to the letters, which are then used in combination to create a phrase out of the word. If you are unfamiliar with this concept it will be explained more as you read through this study.
In this writing I will examine the claims originating from the work of Frank Seekins that the Hebrew language was originally written in these “pictographs”. In actuality, the language and associated characters used in support of this idea are typically referred to as Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite among scholars. This fact will be an important part of this study. Incidentally, this is not the only language that has been proposed as “original Hebrew”. I will also be examining other claims as to what the oldest form of Hebrew language was and how they might impact the Hebrew Word Pictures belief.
In this examination of the Hebrew Word Pictures hypothesis I will need to address a variety of points, and some of these will be more personal to those who hold to it. As such, I want to state from the very beginning of this message that it is not my intent to attack the character of any person or to in any way disparage those who may be convinced this is a valid concept, including and especially Frank Seekins. I am sure those who follow such trends as Hebrew Word Pictures, including those who invent them, are generally good people. Also, beliefs in things like this are often very cultish and as such those who latch onto them are often vicious and irrational in their defense of such theories despite the evidence against them. So it should be noted before diving into this topic that this message is solely about the credibility of Hebrew Word Pictures itself and not to target those who believe in them.
What Do The Proto-Sinaitic Characters Mean?
Before discussing some of the history of the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite language and how it may, or may not, be related to early Hebrew language it is important to examine the letters themselves and how the pictographs have been interpreted by various researchers. As our focus is on the Hebrew Word Pictures concept I will be presenting how Frank Seekins interprets these characters in the next segment separate from this chart.
The Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite language is an alphabetic script that uses recognizable “pictures” as letters, the details of which I will present in greater depth later in this message. There is some debate about exactly how many actual letters were in this language, but current research indicates that there are at least 27 and no more than 33 unique characters.
The following chart shows the interpreted “meaning” of characters or letters from the Proto-Sinaitic script from four different sources. It consists of 28 symbols that are believed to be a part of this language. These will be compared and contrasted with the claims of Frank Seekins from his interpreted “meaning” of the Proto-Sinaitic letters. This will allow me to begin establishing a foundation in determining the validity of the Hebrew Word Pictures claim.
—Jeff Benner’s list is from the Ancient Hebrew website, which is used by many who consider the Proto-Canaanite script being an early form of Hebrew. —John Lamb’s list is from his book Hebrew Characters Derived From Hieroglyphics, John Lamb, D.D., Cambridge University, 1835. This theory draws on similarities between hieroglyphs and modern Hebrew script and predates the discovery of the Proto-Sinaitic script (1905). —William F. Albright’s list is from his paper The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment published by Harvard University in 1969. —Omniglot’s list is from the Omniglot Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems & Languages. *Throw Stick may mean something like a boomerang **These words were supplemented from a fifth source list
As you can clearly see, there is no real agreement among these scholars regarding what the “pictographs” of the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite script mean. If we are to accept the idea that these letters are an early Hebrew script and that the “pictures” can be used as a code to decipher messages encrypted in the pages of The Bible then it seems important that there be a single, standardized, agreed-upon and consistent list of what each pictograph represents. In this chart I have listed four completely different interpretations of these characters and filled in a few of the blanks from a fifth list, and you will see in a moment that these lists are completely different from the list created by Frank Seekins. This seems quite problematic to the concept of Hebrew Word Pictures and we have not even begun to investigate this in great depth yet.
Frank Seekins’ Interpretation Of The Symbols
Now I will discuss the way the book Hebrew Word Pictures presents the symbols said to originate from the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite script. First, you will notice in this chart from the book right away that some of the letters are given a completely different meaning from those in the previous chart. This means we now have as many as six possible meanings for letters. Additionally, I have added to this chart the name of the script and when it dates to for each symbol used by Seekins, as they are not all from the Proto-Sinaitic script. How will this affect the concept of Hebrew Word Pictures? Well, let’s take a look.
This is the “decoder chart” from Hebrew Word Pictures, with the respective script from where each symbol is taken and the time period that script is dated to. Notice that there is also a character from the Moabite Stone, which, like Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite, would also be “not Hebrew”.
The first thing I want you to notice is that the ancient Semitic characters used to represent each letter are not all Proto-Sinaitic or even a combination of Proto-Sinaitic and Paleo-Hebrew. Seekins uses an eclectic mishmash of characters from a wider variety of ancient Semitic writing systems. If this were done intentionally, which seems the least likely, then it’s weird and confusing at the very least. If this was done in ignorance, it really displays the total lack of knowledge of ancient Semitic writing that this man possesses. It’s possible it is a combination of intent and ignorance, as some of the characters that do not match any Semitic script I have looked at seem critical to his proposed “meaning” of the letters. Using a chart of 22 ancient Semitic scripts I have labeled the characters on Seekins’ chart to the approximate time period they are commonly dated to and several still remain undetermined as to what script they are from—but they are not Proto-Sinaitic, Paleo-Hebrew, or modern Hebrew letters. It is also worth noting that these “mystery characters” are not referenced by the four sources used in the previous chart.
The undetermined characters seem to have a similar style to them, but I have not been able to trace any of them to an ancient or modern Semitic alphabetic script. And I have reviewed probably anywhere between 50 to 100 ancient alphabet charts, including African and Arabic Semitic alphabets. Where did these characters come from? It seems they are not associated with any known Semitic script. They could be from a non-Semitic script, and I simply do not have the time or resources to determine where they are from if not a Semitic language. I did notice, however, a possible vague similarity between some of them and some of the ancient Semitic Arabic scripts. Most notable of these is “zayin”, as without this mystery letter there seems no basis at all in any Semitic script to believe this letter represents some form of a weapon like an axe. This ‘Z’ character does look like one of the Arabic letters, as seen in Thamudic B, Dadanitic, Safaitic, and Hasaidic, but it is the ‘Y’ character in these scripts that it appears similar to. This is one of the clearest indications that Seekins is just making stuff up.
Second, notice that he labels gimel as a camel, hey as Behold, zayin as a weapon, samech as a prop, tsade as a fishhook, qof as the back of a head, and tav as a sign. These are uniquely different “meanings” read into these characters than any from the previous chart, which were derived from better scholarly sources (yes, even Jeff Benner is a better scholarly source than Frank Seekins).
Third, some of these letters he gives unusual names to, like YOOD and NOON. This leads me to wonder if he didn’t know the common spelling of these letters and was just sounding them out like a three-year-old child. I don’t know that I have ever seen nun spelled “NOON” prior to seeing this chart, or since, but it would make sense that an English speaker in the United States ignorant of the common transliterated spelling of the Hebrew “nun” would conclude that it sounds like our English word “noon” and as a result use this spelling.
Fourth, let’s look at the “nun” and “samech” characters. Seekins labels “nun” as a fish, and “samech” as a prop. But if you look at the actual Proto-Sinaitic script from which all of these “meanings” allegedly come from, “nun” is a squiggly line that most see as a snake (some as a seed) and “samech” is clearly a picture of a fish in the actual Proto-Sinaitic script. This is what happens when your list is a blend of at least 10 different Semitic scripts and you don’t know what in the world you are talking about and clearly are just making stuff up. To further complicate matters, I have also reviewed Semitic alphabet charts that listed the Proto-Sinaitic picture of a fish as “dalet” with “samech” left blank. If “fish” gives us the code “activity, life” for decoding “Hebrew Word Pictures”, this creates a huge problem: Is it the letter nun, samech, or dalet that gives us the code “activity, life”? This would seem to be a very important thing to “get right”.
Fifth, in similar manner, we could compare Seekins’ depiction of “zayin” as a weapon and further illustrating it with a picture of an axe with Albright’s deeming “waw/vav” as a mace. So, which letter represents a weapon of this type? Wouldn’t this determine which letter is supposed to be defined as “cut, to cut off”? It seems this would impact the entire concept if this “code” belongs to waw/vav instead of zayin.
Sixth, Seekins labels “tsade” as a fishhook, but in the Proto-Sinaitic script it appears to be a sprouting plant and most scholars label it as such. Omniglot labels “waw/vav” as a hook. Again, this is a major problem to “Hebrew Word Pictures”. If one letter is assigned a “meaning” that should be assigned to a different letter it ruins the entire process. So who’s right? What letter should represent a hook, a weapon, or a fish and their corresponding “codes”? Considering that the Proto-Sinaitic symbol for “samech” is literally a picture of a fish, the evidence is clearly against Seekins being right on that one. If the man behind it is so easily proven wrong over and over again and real scholars reject it (as you will soon see), what conclusion should we really come to regarding “Hebrew Word Pictures”?
Seventh, Seekins labels “qof” as the back of a human head, but this letter has all sorts of proposed meanings—sun on the horizon, boat, knot, monkey. How can we know who is right? Seeing all the differences in Seekins’ claims from the conclusions of others—at least some of which are actual scholarly works by qualified researchers—can we really trust what he says?
Eighth, maybe it’s picking on him a little too much, maybe it was an honest mistake, but he uses a “mem” character to represent the letter “nun”. In light of all his other much more serious errors, this one is more easily dismissed, but is still another error regardless and worth at least mentioning, even if an honest typographical error in his book. Of course, his other depiction of nun is one of the characters I have been unable to identify in any list or chart of Semitic alphabets.
Ninth, what happens to the “definitions” given by Seekins to the “meanings” he made up for these letters if we apply the “meanings” of other sources? Can “shin” still be defined as “consume, destroy” if it’s actually representing a lotus pool? Can “qof” still be defined as “behind, last, least” if it’s really a picture of a monkey or a boat? Would “tsade” still be defined as “catch, desire, need” if we decide that the symbol is a plant? Since Seekins is inconsistent with the letters he displays in his chart, pulling from scripts that are centuries apart, then we can just use whatever “meanings” other scholars have proposed and find a monkey in the water playing with a ball of yarn so long as we find a Hebrew word with a “qof, mem, and ha” in it, right?
This chart alone shows that Frank Seekins has no clue what he is talking about, is a complete fabrication, and has built a whole cultish following and sold a lot of books on “research” built on a chart that he created using a wide variety of characters from multiple ancient Semitic scripts, at least two (Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite and Moabite) are not even Hebrew, and making up “meanings” for these letters sometimes not even based on the actual “pictograph” from the Proto-Sinaitic script and not matching the “meanings” proposed by real scholars. There are more holes in this than in Swiss cheese. This is not “research”. It’s garbage. He made it up and anyone who believes it is gullible and deceived. But let’s continue.
A Couple Of Popular “Hebrew Word Pictures” Examined
Now that we have examined various conflicting meanings of these letters and weighed them against the Hebrew Word Pictures concept as proposed by Frank Seekins, let’s look at a couple of the most popular and widely recognized “codes” derived from this idea. We will look at how the word bereshit and the Tetragrammaton name of God, YHWH, are “decoded” using Hebrew Word Pictures. For brevity we will use the Hebrew Word Pictures codes from Seekins’ book and then use the same process with the meanings from Albright’s and Omniglot’s list from the first chart.
Hebrew Word Pictures Proponents Meanings
Bereshit: House-Head-Ox-Teeth-Arm-Crossed Stick
YHWH: Arm-Man (raised arms)-Tent Peg-Man (raised arms)
Alternate Meanings Based On Albright’s List and Omniglot’s List
Bereshit: House-Head-Ox-Bow-Arm-Crossed Stick
YHWH: Arm-Man Calling-Mace-Man Calling
YHWH: Arm-Hurrah!-Hook-Hurrah!
These are two of the most popular “Hebrew Word Pictures” codes. Bereshit is said to make the phrase “The Son of God is destroyed by his own hand on the cross.” YHWH is said to make the phrase “Behold the hand, behold the nail.”
What happens when we reinterpret these “codes” by using the “meanings” of some of the letters from other scholarly lists? I will stick to using Albright’s and Omniglot’s as Lamb’s is likely not accurate and Benner is technically not a qualified Hebrew scholar.
Bereshit suddenly becomes something like “The Son of God shoots archery by his own hand at the cross.” Obviously that doesn’t make a lot of sense and is not in harmony with Scripture. Yet the view in research done on the Proto-Sinaitic script labeled the letter shin as a bow, as used for archery, long before others said it means teeth and supposedly represents being “pressed or destroyed”.
YHWH is affected twice. First, the meaning would change to something like “Calling the arm, calling the mace.” A mace is an ancient weapon with a handle and a spiked iron ball on the end—sometimes a chain was used to connect the ball to the shaft. Does this sound descriptive of our Messiah? Sure, Scripture tells us He will return in judgment and rule with a rod of iron, but even at that nothing in The Bible indicates He is a tyrant wielding a mace. The second alternate “meaning” would be “Hurrah! The arm. Hurrah! The hook.” Should we maybe read into this that Yeshua is a fishermen or a “fisher of men”? Maybe Yeshua is being compared with Captain Hook from Peter Pan? Hurrah is a somewhat “Pirate-ish” word, right?
Like the way the Dead Sea Scrolls, showing the same biblical Hebrew texts written with different spellings, is the death blow to ELS “Bible Codes”, in-depth research into the Proto-Sinaitic script and the fact that there is debate about the meaning of some of the characters is the death blow to the entire “Hebrew Word Pictures” concept. In some cases the “meaning” of characters in variations of this Canaanite alphabet have not even been determined. Also to be noted is that the “meanings” used by proponents of this method are those from the lists tied to the least academic origins—lists seemingly made by pseudo-scholars who do not have earned credentials and appear to be self-taught (like Benner and Seekins).
Additionally, among the small number of artifacts that have been discovered bearing the Proto-Sinaitic script, the majority are pagan religious texts—including an inscription on a sphinx idol and inscriptions found in the temple of Hathor—paying homage to Canaanite deities and describing sacrifices offered to those deities. Among the more clear and complete Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite texts are these phrases:
“The beloved of Baalath” (This is on a small sphinx accompanied by Egyptian hieroglyphs that read: The beloved of Hathor, the mistress of turquoise. This shows the relationship between the Egyptian and Canaanite languages and their shared use by pagans in worship of their gods and goddesses.)
"Swear to give a sacrifice ... in order that we may sacrifice to Baalath" "O [thou] in whose care is the meadow ... on behalf of N[u'mu], a gift for Baalath ... on behalf of Nu'mu, chief of the miner[s]" (This was in the temple of Hathor) "...the Serpent Lady, lords of the mine[s] of Wawat, swear [to bring] a sacrifice"
“Thou, O offerer, (or) chief miner, an offering prepare for Ba’lat, on behalf of Ahena, — O offerer, — an offering of a wild ewe. [On] behalf of (his) son, [Elya]tu, gi[ve O offerer], a wild ewe for [Ba’lat].”
“Oh my god, rescue [me] from the interior of this mine. [Sw]ear to bring [a sacrifice].”
“…the Serpent Lady, lords of the mines of Wawat, swear [to bring] a sacrifice.”
“O Serpent Lady, his mistress, bring a sacrifice, [be]fore the Lord of Jackals present a wild cow, [before] the Lord of the Winepress a wild ewe on behalf of Gulyan.”
“El of eternity.”
(Keep in mind, it is well known there was a Canaanite god named El and this was written by a Canaanite in a language that practically all known inscriptions are written in homage of their gods.)
“O Merciful One with the Serpent Lady, lords…”
“O Merciful One, O Serpent Lady, bring a sacrif[ice].”
“This (is what) Ahuta has given as [a gi]ft [to] El.”
(Again, this would be to the Canaanite god El.)
The Proto-Sinaitic script is the language of the Canaanites prior to The Exodus and the Israelite conquest of the land of Canaan. Isaiah 19:18 actually makes reference to the language of Canaan, likely talking about what today has been labeled the Proto-Sinaitic script. The reason artifacts bearing this script are being found in the region of Israel is not because this is an ancient Hebrew text; it’s because this is the language used by the Canaanites before the Israelites lived in the land.
Possible reasons why there are few examples of this language may be because it was an early alphabet that never developed into widespread use or because the Israelites were commanded to destroy all elements of Canaanite pagan worship and happened to miss some of the inscriptions in the most concealed places or locations like the temple of Hathor that remained part of Egypt. I would lean toward the latter as we have the testimony of Scripture on it and the fact that some inscriptions were made by Canaanite miners would indicate that the language may have been in somewhat wider use and not exclusive to the most elite and educated of their society.
When the Israelites left Egypt they had a language, Hebrew, but they had no alphabet. There are some indications of early adoption of the Canaanite alphabetic letters to write Hebrew, like the recently discovered curse tablet found at Mount Ebal. However, indications are that the more widely used Paleo-Hebrew/Phoenician alphabet is what the Israelites ultimately used—though it’s possible they also used a Ugaritic Cuneiform-based alphabet, which I will present later in this message. Hebrew has little if any relationship to the Canaanite script and certainly has no connection to “pictograph meanings” of the letters. Short of finding something that is undeniably Hebrew written in the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet that predates Canaanite use of the same characters, the known and accepted fact will remain that these letters represent the language of the pagan Canaanites, not the Israelites—even if the Hebrew people adopted the Canaanite alphabet for a brief period of time for which there is currently no undisputed evidence.
People have dreamed up “hidden codes” and Jeff Benner even re-wrote the entire Torah in this script under the misguided notion that it’s “ancient Hebrew” when in reality it’s a pagan language. It’s time to stop. People who think the Proto-Sinaitic script is an ancient form of Hebrew, like Jeff Benner and Frank Seekins, are wrong. At best there was some early attempt to use the letters of this otherwise Canaanite language to make a Hebrew alphabet. It is comforting to Benner’s other work, however, like his Mechanical Translation Of The Torah, that he does not believe in finding hidden codes through what he and others believe to be “pictograph” Hebrew letters. While Benner is not a formally trained and credentialed Hebrew scholar, some of his work—like his Mechanical Translation of The Torah—does seem to be valid and useful for those who find value in it. Anyone who believes that the Proto-Sinaitic letters can be used to replace Hebrew letters and create “Hebrew Word Picture codes” is deceived by a demonic spirit. This is simply a provable fact, which will be further clarified as we continue.
Some Important Facts About The Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite Script
FACT: The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. The Canaanite alphabet (Proto-Sinaitic, the “pictographs”) is typically estimated to have 27-29 letters and some believe it may have as many as 33 letters. The above chart shows 28 Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite symbols. These are two different languages that use the same basic set of letters, much like English and Spanish are two different languages that use the same letters but Spanish has a couple of additional letters like the “ll” and the “ñ”. Consider this statement from Orly Goldwasser, Ph.D., from her article How the Alphabet was Born from Hieroglyphs:
The alphabet was invented in this way by Canaanites at Serabit in the Middle Bronze Age, in the middle of the 19th century B.C.E., probably during the reign of Amenemhet III of the XIIth Dynasty.
FACT: The Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite symbols were directly inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs. Consider these statements, the first by Stefan Jakob Wimmer from his article A Proto-Sinaitic Inscription in Timna/Israel: New Evidence on the Emergence of the Alphabet and the second from Ben Haring’s contribution in the book Understanding The Relation Between Scripts II: Early Alphabets:
The notion that the early alphabet was invented on the basis of adopting Egyptian characters can, in my view, provide the key to a plausible interpretation and even a possible reading of this inscription. Most of the signs are indeed hieroglyphs, or based on hieroglyphs, but they are to be read in interpretatio Semitica, not Egyptian; this is the principle that underlies the Proto- Sinaitic script, and indeed the majority of the signs of the Timna graffiti can be directly identified as PS characters.
Ever since the discovery of Proto-Sinaitic at what is basically an Ancient Egyptian site, and a place very much dominated by hieroglyphic epigraphy, that inspiration has been traced by scholars to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
FACT: Both the Egyptian language using hieroglyphs and the Canaanite language using Proto-Sinaitic “pictographs” were the languages of pagan nations used heavily in worship of their pagan gods through their pagan religions. This is not to say the letters themselves are pagan, the same letters evolved into other languages, including Hebrew and English. But it is important to note the original use of these “pictographs” in this manner, especially as regarding the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite language.
FACT: The Semitic alphabet letters were used by many nations in the formation of their languages. The Canaanite, Moabite, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Hebrew languages all used some combination of these letters in the formation of their languages. Some of the Semitic Arabic languages, like Thamudic that I will look at in another segment, also incorporate similar characters. Because these languages used the same basic set of letters, some with more some with less, there are similarities but there are also differences. We see this in languages that use the same alphabet as English. There are words that are spelled the same or close enough to the same to be recognized across multiple languages, and then there are totally different words that refer to the same thing (Examples, same word English/Spanish “chocolate”, similar words English “name” Spanish “nombre”, different English “chicken” Spanish “pollo”). The same is true of the ancient Semitic languages that were built on the Canaanite alphabet. Consider these statements, the first from Rob Vanhoff from his article On Decoding The “Paleo” Script Pictures and the second from Stephen I. Ternyik from his article Ancient Semitic Linguistics:
If the letters of the ancient Paleo-Semitic alphabet enjoy a special "pictographic" significance (assumed from their earliest formations and their individual names) that carries over into the meaning of words and texts, then it would not be unique to the Bible. That general principle would transcend any given document written using this alphabet. This "pictography" would apply equally to actual inscriptions like these that use the same alphabet and share core vocabulary with biblical Hebrew. It is preposterous to think we could "decode" these inscriptions using such a methodology.
The Canaanites were factually a Semitic people with a Semitic language, which is practically almost indistinguishable from early Hebrew language documents.
In other words, what Vanhoff and Ternyyik are pointing out here is that if the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite letters truly do hold “pictograph” meanings with the associated codes proposed by Frank Seekins, then we should be able to apply the decoding system to any alphabetic language. This would mean that we should be able to take words from Greek, Latin, English, Spanish, or any other alphabetic language, marry the letters to Proto-Sinaitic letters, and from there create word picture codes. So there would be Greek Word Pictures, Spanish Word Pictures, English Word Pictures, and word pictures from any alphabetic language as all alphabets theoretically trace back to the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite alphabet.
Just Enough Hebrew To Be Dangerous
NOTE: This segment is taken from the article Just Enough Hebrew To Be Dangerous by Messianic Bible teacher Daniel Botkin.
I don't hear much about ELS anymore. Now the latest buzz word is "Hebrew Word Pictures," a phrase probably taken from a book with that title. The book was written by Frank Seekins and published in 1994. It is spiral bound and filled with corny clip art and corny conclusions, and absolutely no information about the author except that he has a wife named Sally.
I do not know who Frank Seekins is, and I do not wish to insult him. He is probably a very likeable brother. But in his book he writes the following: "I am not asking you to believe what my studies have proven to me." So I'm going to take Frank up on his offer and respectfully disagree with him about his "Hebrew Word Pictures" (HWPs).
What are HWPs? Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is associated with a word that sounds the same as or similar to the name of the letter. Thus, the letter aleph stands for ox (eleph), beit stands for house (bayit), gimel stands for camel (gamal), dalet stands for door (delet), etc.
This in itself is not fiction. I have a book I bought in Israel in 1981, Roots, by Mordecai Kamrat and Edwin Samuel, published by Kiryat-Sefer Ltd. in Jerusalem, 1981. This book lists the words associated with each Hebrew letter, as Frank Seekins does (though in the case of some letters, Kamrat and Samuel differ from Seekins as to which words should be associated with which letters).
So the concept of a letter standing for a particular word is not in itself fanciful fiction. But what some Messianics do with this information results in some very far-fetched fanciful fiction. Because each letter stands for a particular word, people imagine that the "real" or "hidden" or "deeper" definition of a word must be discovered by combining the meanings of all the words that the letters represent. For example, the word sefer simply means "book" to normal Hebrew-speaking people. But to some Messianics who know just enough Hebrew to be dangerous, the "secret mystical meaning" can only be seen by combining the three words that are represented by the three letters that spell sefer.
There are two major problems with this approach. First, it ignores or minimizes the plain, simple definition of the word as Hebrew speakers would understand it in Biblical times or in modern times.
Second, and most importantly, it does not work with most Hebrew words. To arrive at a HWP definition for sefer ("book"), you have to combine the words twist + mouth + head (according to Seekins' decoder chart) or fish + mouth + head (according to Kamrat and Samuel's book.) How does the combination of these three words result in the idea of a "book"?
Na'al, which to normal Hebrew-speaking people means "shoe," would be a combination of fish + eye + goad. So according to HWPs, we are supposed to believe that fish + eye + goad = shoe. Maybe you see a shoe in the sum of these three words, but I sure don't. And I have a fairly good imagination. If you don't believe I do, go online and look at some of my artwork.
To further demonstrate the folly of this approach, here are some other Hebrew words that I just randomly chose, along with the words from Seekins' decoder chart:
Daniel ("my judge is God") = door + fish + hand + ox + goad.
Beged ("garment") = house + camel + door.
Chalon ("window") = fence + goad + peg + fish.
Eretz ("earth") = ox + head + fish hook.
Kiseh ("chair") = palm (of hand) + twist + behold.
Rats ("run") = head + fish hook.
Ruach ("spirit") = head + peg + fence.
Shemesh ("sun") = tooth + water + tooth.
Zamar ("sing") = weapon + water + head.
I could list many more examples. Even someone with a very wild imagination and a high degree of gullibility would have to really stretch things to make a connection between the plain, simple definitions of these words and the combinations of the HWPs. Of course it can be done, but it is fanciful, far fetched fiction. Theologians call this kind of approach bad hermeneutics. Or, to be more specific, eisegesis (reading something into the text that is simply not there). It is sloppy pseudo-scholarship.
In the introduction of their book Roots, Kamrat and Samuel write: "We must warn you that etymology is a dangerous science." Then they let the reader know that many of the alleged Hebrew word associations are based not on the sound scholarship of philologists, but on "folklore and mythology." Too many Messianics are swallowing ideas that are derived from folklore and mythology. The fact that it is Hebrew folklore and mythology does not make it any more reliable than Greek or Roman folklore and mythology.
Broken Pottery At Ophel Excavation In Jerusalem
This broken shard of pottery provides some unique insights into the Proto-Sinaitic script. According to an article done by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell for Answers In Genesis titled Shard Shows Written Language at Jerusalem When David Rules, she says: “The seven letters from the incomplete inscription do not spell a word in any known Semitic language.” She then points out that Dr. Shmuel Ahituv, who examined the artifact, believes the writing to be Canaanite or Jebusite—as the Jebusites occupied the area of Jerusalem before it fell into the hands of King David. Mitchell also points out that during this time period, “several ancient languages used similar alphabets.” This further supports the Proto-Sinaitic script not being Hebrew. Additionally, being as this inscription does not form a known word, it could indicate further support toward the script being a completely different language altogether from Hebrew, albeit with the same letters—again, like English and Spanish that use the same letters but are totally different languages with totally different words but essentially the same alphabet. In fact, just as there are a couple of additional letters in Spanish not found in English, there appear to be some letters in the Proto-Sinaitic script that did not carry forward into other Semitic alphabets like the Phoenician or Hebrew ones; also indicating Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite and Hebrew are two different languages. This was the language of the inhabitants of the land of Canaan before the Exodus and Israelite conquest of Canaan. It’s not Hebrew.
Pictographic vs. Alphabetic
Pictographic languages contain characters that may represent single letter sounds, syllabic sounds, whole words, or even complete thoughts or sentences. In ancient times they had thousands of characters. This is seen in such scripts as Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese writing. Alphabetic languages contain a small set of characters that represent letter sounds. It is impossible for an alphabetic language to communicate if the symbols represent words, thoughts, or sentences due to the limited supply of characters. This is why “Hebrew Word Pictures” doesn’t really work and needs a clause that a code is “only valid when they agree with Scripture”, because alphabetic languages are not designed to communicate this way. Neither the Canaanites, the Phoenicians, the Hebrews, nor anyone else using a Semitic alphabet intended the letters to represent words in addition to sounds in order to “encode” messages in the words formed from the letters themselves.
An example of a pictograph language in use today is emojis. These are pictures that represent a word, thought, feeling, or emotion. Most common among these are “face” emojis that are typically a yellow circle with a facial expression on them. Because they are used together with alphabetic languages there is not a need for thousands of characters, but there are still way more emojis than there are letters in the alphabet. You cannot put together several emojis to form a word anymore than you can decode Hebrew letters using the Canaanite script to form a sentence because that is simply not how languages work—unless you pulled several emojis and assigned letter sounds to them.
Let’s say, for example, that the first 26 emojis on this image were assigned letters from the English alphabet, the letter ‘A’ being the first emoji wearing sunglasses and the letter ‘Z’ the other sunglasses emoji (the remaining ten can represent numbers). Now let’s take a word, we’ll use TORAH—which of course is the Hebrew word for God’s Laws. We can then write this word out with our emoji letters and “decode” it by saying: TORAH means “kissing — crying — angry — happy — shocked”. That makes absolutely no sense, right? And that’s how it typically is with “Hebrew Word Pictures”, most of the time it makes no sense and even the “codes” that look like they might work only do when fill-words are added to make sense of the alleged “code”. Yet this is what has been done to create the “Hebrew Word Pictures” concept—symbols from the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite language have been assigned to corresponding Hebrew letters, and like our emojis there are more Proto-Sinaitic letter so some have to be discarded, then “pictograph meanings” are given to the letters with corresponding “codes”, and finally a Hebrew word is taken and “decoded” using this completely bogus idea. It’s a baseless, flawed, and completely failed idea.
The characters in a language are either pictographic or alphabetic, but they cannot be both. Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite, Phoenician, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Spanish, English are all alphabetic languages. The letters represent sounds and nothing more. Egyptian hieroglyphics and Chinese are pictographic languages; the characters represent letter/syllable sounds, words, or complete thoughts. For example, in hieroglyphs you would have “sound signs” that were similar to letters and could form a word, and then you would have “determinatives” that in simplistic terms represented a whole word of what the picture depicted. There is a lot more to it, but these are two basic elements of reading and understanding hieroglyphs. So, you would put together the “sound signs” that form the name “Anubis” or “Osiris”, and then there would be a “determinative”, in this case the sign of “a god”, that would tell you these are the names of Egyptian gods. So even with pictographic languages like Egyptian and Chinese, they were not read in the manner by which Frank Seekins suggests pictographs are read to form encoded messages.
Sumerian Cuneiform
Another thing we see with Seekins begins on page 7 of his book where he shows what he apparently believes is a history of evolution for the letters of the alphabet. In this he lists Sumerian Cuneiform symbols as alleged equivalents to the alphabet that begins with the Proto-Sinaitic script. Some, like those he “marries” to bet and possibly aleph are depicted in the Cuneiform style that used a stylus to imprint the characters into clay tablets—though, it seems like the Sumerian “ox-head” character he uses is a transitional form between the older Sumerian pictograph script and actual Cuneiform. However, when we get to gimel the Sumerian is depicted as the head of a donkey. This is where Seekins’ agenda-driven tactics come out yet again. Since the wedge-shaped characters did not offer something that matches a camel or donkey head (which it actually does not look anything like these, more on that in a moment) he deferred to an older form of the language, as seems to be his trend—when nothing works with his system, just stick in something that does and hope nobody calls him on it, just like he did with zayin using a symbol that does not appear in any Semitic alphabets I reviewed (which were many) but is apparently the only symbol that looked like an axe-like weapon—something that is essential for his claim about what this letter represents and the resulting “code” to work.
The Sumerian language did start with pictures. But if you look it up they had a swan-like bird, a plow, an orchard, a star, and numerous other symbols that are not even close to the same as those of the Proto-Sinaitic script. There is no connection; there is no symbol of a house for anything with a “b” sound. Simply put, there is absolutely no way to connect Sumerian Cuneiform with Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite and later Hebrew. Yet this guy tries to create the appearance of a connection. Here, let me prove it to you.
The Sumerian Cuneiform character that Seekins uses to claim represents a house is not any of the characters that represent a “b” sound (ba, bá, bà, be, bé, bè, bi, bí, bì, bu, bú, bù). The character he applies to “bet” from the Cuneiform script is the Sumerian letter “é”. This character is associated with temples and houses, but it’s not the same at all as “bet”. Additionally, there is a pictogram symbol of a house in the older Sumerian script that appears to be associated with the syllabic sound of “ab”. This character was also used for a variety of applications depending on what symbol was placed “inside” of the house pictograph—for example, this “ab” pictograph with the fish symbol inside of it represented the city of Nineveh. This may be culturally similar to the use of “bet” (also beit and beth) to refer to both a house and a region, but beyond that the syllabic sounds “é” and “ab” are clearly not connected with the Semitic letter “bet”. It doesn’t match up, Frank Seekins is just making stuff up and creating connections that aren’t there in the hope that nobody will actually research his claims because most people in academics don’t care enough to waste their time addressing nonsense, and people in Internet-driven “Hebrew Roots Movement” circles are typically too uneducated and gullible to see these things and recognize them for the fraud they are.
Now let’s examine the gimel a little closer. For some reason Seekins thinks the gimel is a “pictograph” of a camel. This could possibly be due to the name of the Proto-Sinaitic character usually being gaml paired with a wild imagination since the English word camel sounds a bit like gaml. It’s about the only thing I can think of. No other “interpretation” of this character comes close to a camel—others lean toward a leg/foot or a throwing stick (probably something like a boomerang)—nor does the Proto-Sinaitic character give any resemblance to being a camel. But what about Seekins’ use of the Sumerian donkey-head character? Does this match up with gimel at all? Actually, no, it does not. The Sumerian symbol represents the syllabic sound “buluh anše”, buluh meaning “to worry; to be anxious, nervous, frightened; to hasten, hurry” and anše meaning “up to; to raise up, carry” (according to John Halloran’s Sumerian Lexicon). Seekins claims that gimel as a camel means “to lift up, pride, benefit”—this is clearly not the same meaning as anše and certainly not when you put it together with worry, anxiety, and fear. The donkey-head symbol in the ancient Sumerian script that predates Cuneiform has no connection with and absolutely nothing to do with the Hebrew letter gimel. Frank Seekins only uses this because a donkey head vaguely resembles a camel head and he, despite seemingly being the only person to do so, somehow came up with the idea that gimel depicts the head of a camel. I can’t say it enough; he is literally making this stuff up. There is not one shred of historical evidence supporting the claims of Frank Seekins’ Hebrew Word Pictures—in reality, all of the evidence says his claims are nothing but the product of his own wild imagination.
We see the same thing with his depiction of aleph, where he pulls in a Sumerian “picture” of an ox head. Using his thought process, since Proto-Sinaitic has an ox head symbol and ancient Sumerian has an ox head symbol they must be connected. Except they are not. The Sumerian symbol represents the syllabic sound “gu” or “gud”, this is clearly not in any way related to aleph. I know I am repeating myself, but the guy is either literally fabricating this stuff knowing that most people are not going to fact-check him or is himself so ignorant of all of this history that he just put them together because they look like the same thing, even though the facts show they are not. Sumerian pictographs were not even close to the same as other pictographic languages. As I said, they had all sorts of symbols we don’t see in Proto-Sinaitic or other languages, like a bird (duck, swan), mountains, barley, a star, a plow, and even one said to represent a woman’s vulva—I kid you not. Could you imagine the “word pictures” we could dream up if we made a Hebrew letter represent a vulva? In fact, using about as much of a wild imagination as it seems Frank Seekins has, the vulva symbol looks close enough to the Proto-Sinaitic zayin, perhaps we should connect them and read into “Hebrew Word Pictures” a bunch of stuff having to do with a vulva, I bet we could have some real fun with that and make a lot of people uncomfortable.
If you look up “Sumerian pictograph charts” or “Sumerian cuneiform charts” the characters simply do not match up with those Seekins has in his book. It becomes yet another example of either extreme ignorance or intentionally concocting “facts” that simply are not true. I’m sure if I took the time and examined the other Sumerian characters that Seekins attaches to the rest of the Hebrew alphabet they would also fail to connect, seeing as the first three did. But there seems no point in further wasting time with this—the first three failed, and that is more than enough to say the entire claim is bogus and fails. After all, we have “two or three witnesses” against it just in the first three.
A Chinese Connection?
Let’s take a little closer look at Chinese, as Frank Seekins also uses it in his book. These statements, quite relevant as they refer to the word “Torah”, are made in the Hebrew Word Pictures book:
Torah: The Hebrew word Torah comes from the root word ya-rah (S# 3384) which means to throw, to point the way or to shoot an arrow. Because the Hebrew word sin Cha-ta (S# 2398) means to miss the target – the word Torah becomes vital if we don’t want to miss the purpose and fulfillment of our life.
These concepts of teaching and helping to fulfill the purpose of your life is found in Proverbs 1:8 where Scripture tells us not to forsake the Torah (teaching, directing) of your mother. God, with the heart like a loving mother, wants us to know how to hit the target, how to be complete in life.
The Torah points out the real goals of life and shows us how to hit the mark. This agrees with the word picture for Torah, that shows us where the Torah came from.
Hit the Target: Knowing the Hebrew word Torah is about aiming true and hiting the real targets of life, it fascinates me to know that the Chinese word 中 Zhōng is the pictogram of a line through the middle, some say originally of an arrow hitting the middle of the target.
Zhong means middle, center, as well as what is right and true.
It is the character used for China: 中文 Zhongwen means “Chinese written characters”:
中國 Zhonguo means the Middle Kingdom or “China.”
忠 Zhōng means a 中心 centered heart or loyal, faithful, devoted.
So, how does Chinese fit into all of this? What relationship does Chinese have with Hebrew?
Chinese is actually a little more than a pictograph language, it’s sort of like pictograph 2.0. The characters in Chinese actually represent whole words portrayed by a picture but also syllables that can combine to create other words. What happens is you have a base word, like the Chinese word for “tree” or “garden” that has its own character. But then these characters are combined into another picture comprising of multiple individual pictures. So, you may have the base pictures of the tree, garden, and something else to form a symbol that would look like to a painting on a canvas, except drawn with Chinese characters. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s a simple overview of the gist of it.
Chinese (language) dates back pretty far. Like Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, it is considered one of the oldest languages on earth. The World History Encyclopedia says: “Ancient Chinese writing evolved from the practice of divination during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE).” Encyclopedia Britannica says: “It is not known when Chinese writing originated, but it apparently began to develop in the early 2nd millennium BC. The earliest known inscriptions, each of which contains between 10 and 60 characters incised on pieces of bone and tortoiseshell that were used for oracular divination, date from the Shang (or Yin) dynasty (18th–12th century BC), but, by then it was already a highly developed system, essentially similar to its present form.”
Chinese has absolutely no relationship with Hebrew. Chinese is a Sinitic language, a form of language throughout the Asian regions that includes Chinese, Hunanese, Wu, Cantonese, and others. Hebrew is a Semitic language related to Canaanite, Aramaic, Ugaritic, and Phoenician. Using Chinese to support a theory about Hebrew is just weird and wrong.
Also, Seekins is wrong about the Hebrew word for “sin”. While chata (Strong’s 2398) is used in the Tanakh as a word for sin, the most commonly used Hebrew word is chatta’ah (Strong’s 2403)—which is also the word for sin overwhelmingly used more than any other in The Torah. Other words for sin used in the Tanakh are ashmah (Strong’s 819), chet (Strong’s 2399), avon (Strong’s 5771), and pasha (Strong’s 6588). All of these words have different meanings (transgression, iniquity, guiltiness, etc.). This is why we must always build on God’s definition of sin revealed in the plain text of Scripture: sin is the breaking, transgressing, violating of The Torah (1 John 3:4, 1 Samuel 15:24). Like Christians do with the Greek hamartia, when sin is defined as “missing the mark” the standard for what is or is not sin is relative to whatever someone thinks is “the mark”. This, again, shows why we are commanded by God to stick to the plain and revealed text of His Word and not go searching for “secrets” (Deut. 29:28). He gave us His definition of sin revealed in the plain text of The Bible. We don’t need to apply human definitions of Hebrew or Greek words and we certainly do not need to search for secret codes to figure out what sin or anything else is when we have the answers from God Himself in the plain and revealed biblical text.
In other areas of his book Seekins seems to be trying to link together all languages. He pulls on vague similarities—which only exist because practically all alphabets evolved from the Canaanite alphabet and the Canaanite alphabet used some of the Egyptian hieroglyphs to inspire its letters—to “connect the dots”. As such, he seeks to connect symbols from languages like Arabic, Egyptian, Sumerian, English, and Greek. But wouldn’t this mean, as previously mentioned, that since all of the alphabets are “connected” and they all evolved from the original alphabet of the pagan Canaanites—the source of the actual “pictographs”—that this system is not limited to Hebrew and instead of “Hebrew Word Pictures” it should be called “Alphabet Word Pictures” and you can find hidden codes in any language that uses an alphabet evolved from the Canaanite “pictographs”?
The plain fact is that even if Frank Seekins were right about his claims, which he clearly is not, we could take any English word and “decode” it with his chart. I could take my name, convert the English letters into Canaanite letters and then use the meanings of them given by Seekins to find a message about myself—which would essentially be fortune-telling. Or should I use the meanings given by Benner? Or the meanings given by Omniglot? Or the meanings given by Albright? Or the meanings given by Kamrat and Samuel? Or the meanings given by Lamb? Or the meanings on any of the other many differing lists of what these “pictographs” mean? After all, Seekins chart is probably the most inaccurate of all except for maybe Lamb’s as he came to his conclusions before the discovery of the Proto-Sinaitic script—though his list also further illustrates that all of this originates from Egypt.
Think about it, it’s all right there in plain sight in the Hebrew Word Pictures book. The Arabic speaking world is where Islam thrives. The Sumerian text, often called Cuneiform, is the language of the Babylonians—the people who rebelled against God under Nimrod, built the Tower of Babel, and later in history enslaved the Israelites. They worshiped deities like Ishtar, Marduk, and Ba’al. The Egyptians were the people who enslaved and oppressed the Israelites for hundreds of years. They had their pagan religion too, with deities like Hathor, Isis, Horus, and Anubis. The Canaanites were a totally pagan nation and when the Israelites entered into the land of Canaan they were told to utterly destroy all elements of Canaanite worship. China and other parts of Asia have historically been a hotbed for all sorts of Eastern mystic religions like Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, etc. And Frank Seekins is trying to connect all of this to his claim that through so-called “Hebrew Word Pictures” we can find hidden messages. As far as languages, these are no more connected than English is to Spanish. As for religion, these are all connected as Scripture instructs us quite emphatically that we are to have nothing to do with the pagan ways of the nations.
This all reminds me of the biblical food laws (Lev. 11, Deut. 14). Often Torah-positive Believers and teachers point out that God made the animals and knew which ones he made fit for human consumption and which ones He did not. Those who follow these commandments do so, at least in part, through faith that God is God, He knows things we don’t know, and He knew which animals will help us and which would harm us when eaten. Should we not take the same approach with all things? When God commands us that the secret things are for Him to focus on and the things revealed in the plain text of His Word—like the Bible definition of sin—are for us, shouldn’t we stick with that instead of seeking out “other” definitions for sin? Going against the commandment of God from Deuteronomy 29:28—whether through seeking out “other” definitions for words defined in the plain text of Scripture, looking for “secret codes in Hebrew letters”, or anything else—ALWAYS ends in serious error and deception. As this study is repeatedly proving, “Hebrew Word Pictures” is nothing but serious error and demonic deception.
The Biblical Origin Of Languages
Frank Seekins seems to believe that all languages are connected through “word pictures” and that because there are some examples of “pictograms” of a house or an ox head or whatever in many early languages, this somehow proves his theory. But as you can now see these pictures are not really connected. A house in the Proto-Sinaitic script represents a completely different letter and sound than what a house in Sumerian or any other early and unrelated language represents. But if we really want to get to the bottom of this and see if Seekins’ claim is valid, we should turn to The Bible and what it says about this matter. For this we must turn to Genesis chapters 10-11 and the Tower of Babel story. Of this, Ken Ham in his book Creation to Babel: A Commentary For Families makes the following remarks after citing Genesis 10:1-32:
When you summarize the above, it would appear there were possibly 70 languages involved (each group having their own language as stated in the text). Thus, it seems when God confused their language at the Tower of Babel, this resulted in 70 language groups that became the foundation for the hundreds of languages (and dialects) we find in today’s world.
Genesis 11:1 says: “Now the entire earth had the same language with the same vocabulary.” The consensus among those who study early languages is that the Sumerian language is the oldest known language and written texts in Sumerian date back as far as roughly 3100 B.C., and the consensus view is that the Tower of Babel was built around 2242 B.C.—over a thousand years into the use of this one common language. Sumerian is often referred to as a language isolate, meaning that it is not considered to be related to any other language known in history, or that it is the only language in its “language family”. When we talk of a language family we are talking of things like Semitic languages that include a number of different languages such as: Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Tigre, Maltese, Ugaritic, and Amharic. Apart from Sumerian, pretty much all other languages seem to date later than the rough time period of the Tower of Babel event and would have been the result of a confusion of languages. Today there are 142 language families (double Ham’s proposed 70 languages following the Tower of Babel event) and over 7,000 unique languages (another multiple of 70).
According to Frank Seekins, all early languages were connected. According to The Bible all of the early languages were disconnected—the result of God intervening in a plan to build a city with a tower that would reach to the heavens. The basis and foundation for the entire concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures” is built on an ideology that is the exact opposite of what The Bible tells us about language. If all of the early languages were interconnected as Frank Seekins would have us believe, then The Bible is not telling us the truth. This is a great example of why we must follow the commandment of Deuteronomy 29:28 and allow any “secret things” to belong with God and stick to the revealed things in Scripture. The things made known in the plain text of The Bible (like the fact that early languages were not connected because they resulted from God confusing the languages) tell us very plainly that Frank Seekins is completely wrong from the very beginning of his theological theories. “Hebrew Word Pictures” wants us to believe the exact opposite of Scripture; not only is this problematic but we must consider that it’s completely demonic. If our faith is built on The Bible, then we must believe what The Bible says and not someone who makes claims that completely contradict Scripture outright.
Could The Proto-Sinaitic Script Be Hebrew?
Let’s switch gears for a little bit. Despite all that has been shared to this point, there are some who in very recent years have theorized that the Proto-Sinaitic script is Hebrew, not Canaanite or any other Semitic language, and that it was developed either by the biblical Joseph or by Hebrew slaves in Egypt. There appears to be two proponents of this view, both of which with very different theories: 1. Doug Petrovich, Ph.D., through his book The World’s Oldest Alphabet, 2. A partnership of sorts between Egyptologist David Rohl and Rabbi Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron. I will address the claims of Petrovich first and Rohl/Shelomo Bar-Ron second.
Petrovich appears on the surface to be qualified to speak on this topic, but Proto-Sinaitic is a very unique and specific niche in the overall study of ancient Semitic languages. He admits that he did not begin to study this until 2012 and published his book in 2016. That is only four years of study to make claims that go completely against the majority of scholars who have done much more extensive research into this topic and even examined the actual artifacts containing the inscriptions—Petrovich has seemingly only examined photos and sketches of the inscriptions. One of his colleagues, Robert Holmstedt, Ph.D., remarks in his article The Alphabet Was Not Invented By The Hebrews rebutting Petrovich’s claims: “I found it odd that Petrovich should be weighing in on the discussion since he studied no Hebrew grammar or Northwest Semitic epigraphy with me at the University of Toronto, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on Near Eastern archaeology.”
Among the long list of critics of Petrovich’s theories are Orly Goldwasser, Ph.D., David A. Falk, Ph.D., Christopher Rollston, Ph.D., Thomas Schneider, Ph.D., Alan Millard, Ph.D., and Aren M. Wilson-Wright, Ph.D., several of whom have written scholarly rebuttals addressing the proposed problems with Petrovich’s theories. In an interview conducted on the documentary film Patterns Of Evidence: The Moses Controversy Goldwasser says: “It’s not science” … “This is disseminating fake knowledge and fake science to people, it’s not their field” … “To call this old Canaanite dialect, which cannot be identified, really, because the inscriptions are too short, Hebrew—it’s opportunism.” Essentially what she is pointing out here is that people with access to academic research seem to be misrepresenting it because it will sell books to gullible “Christians”—which seems to be a theme in this entire study, as the whole “Hebrew Word Pictures” concept does the same; except that Seekins appears to have just blatantly made stuff up instead of misrepresenting actual academic research.
In one reply to his critics, that written by Millard, Petrovich notes that Millard said it was irresponsible to publish his book without first submitting it to rigorous scholarly examination and only after approval to publish it. Petrovich goes into a rant about how he tried to submit it to Millard and others but his offers for review were rejected. The tone comes off as childish, as someone saying: “It’s just not fair, I tried to get them to review my book and now they’re all coming out against it.” In another response, this time to Rollston, he makes the accusation that those who do not agree with his theory are closed-minded. As much as I would like and prefer the idea that the oldest known alphabetic script be identified as Hebrew, Petrovich’s arguments are met with great criticism from leading scholars who seemingly identify numerous errors in his work and he further weakens his arguments through how he handles his critics in his responses to them. It’s acceptable to go against the grain or swim against the current, as the sayings go, but when a majority of qualified scholars in a field of study have pointed out your errors and all you can do is say things like “they are close-minded” or something else to that effect, it’s probably time to say you may have been wrong and recall your work.
As for Rohl and Shelomo Bar-Ron, in their review of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions they do not deviate as drastically from the translations by Albright and others, but instead of presenting translations that would appear to be religious texts of worship to the Canaanite gods, they present alternate translations as “warnings” against worshiping these gods. Part of the way they accomplish this is by literally inserting words that do not appear in the inscriptions, like “false goddess”, in their translation. The idea is that these are Hebrew inscriptions against worshiping these gods as opposed to Canaanite inscriptions of worship toward them. In other words, they take what has been the long-accepted interpretation of the inscriptions and re-imagine them in a way that would give the appearance that they really are Hebrew texts—despite the fact that they are found in pagan temples and on idols. But, maybe the Israelites decided to go against the commandment of their God to destroy the places of worship and instead used this alphabet found primarily in these pagan locations to tell people within them not to worship these other gods. I suppose anything is possible if your imagination is big enough.
The Proto-Sinaitic alphabet was first discovered at the turquoise mines of Serabit al-Khadim, inside the temple of Hathor at this site. If you were to view this location, even through video, it would become quite apparent that any Semitic people writing against the pagan gods and inscribing warnings not to worship them would be an extremely brazen act. The site is covered with Egyptian idolatry. Such an act would be like a Jewish person walking around in Nazi Germany during the Third Reich and warning people about Adolph Hitler. However, the traditional and accepted view that they were written by the idol-worshiping Canaanites in homage of their own goddess that paralleled Hathor, as noted by Albright and others after him, makes perfect sense. A good resource to view this location and get a good idea of what it actually looks like is the archaeology series Expedition Unknown featuring Josh Gates, the episode titled Chasing The Mysteries Of Moses.
There are many problems with both theories and both interpretations of how the script should be translated—too many to address here. Ultimately, the evidence seems to be against the Proto-Sinaitic script being a form of Hebrew. One problem I will note, however, is that Hebrew has 22 letters and Proto-Sinaitic has at least 27 (possibly as many as 33) letters. They may share a common base alphabet, but they are not the same language. I won’t say that either of these theories is wrong, but when people feel the way to defend their work is to call their long list of critics “closed-minded” or they are intentionally inserting words that radically skew the interpretation of the text—exactly the way has to be done with Hebrew Word Pictures, just sliding that in—there is clearly a lot of work left to be done to make these theories credible.
Thamudic Hebrew Inscriptions?
Another and rather unusual claim that appears to be made solely by Miles Jones, Ph.D. (who among other things is a frequent guest on the broadcasts A Rood Awakening and Shabbat Night Live hosted by the controversial Hebrew Roots Movement figure Michael Rood) states that Thamudic inscriptions at Rephidim and “the real” Mount Sinai are the earliest alphabet and represent Hebrew writings. If such a claim, despite being an outlier, were credible, then it would certainly be problematic to any claims regarding the Proto-Sinaitic script being the oldest alphabet and the symbols holding special pictograph meanings that reveal secret messages. It seems he rests much of his claim on two pieces of evidence: First a set of what he says are Thamudic inscriptions that allegedly displays the symbol of the menorah and second a stone relic of a face bearing four Thamudic letters that are the equivalent to the four Hebrew letters in the Tetragrammaton name of God.
I will examine both of these. In his book Sons of Zion versus Sons of Greece: Volume One: Survival of The Hebrew Gospels and the Messianic Church Jones states:
It has been my part in the Exodus documentation to date and translate the inscriptions found at the sites of Rephidim and Mount Sinai in Midian. These findings are essential to understanding the power given to the “Sons of Zion” at Sinai. These inscriptions are brief but telling. They are written in the oldest alphabet of letters known to historical science (Thamudic). They date to the 15th century BC, the time of the Exodus – according to experts at the Saudi Ministry of Antiquities and the Smithsonian. Their translation reveals them to be ancient Hebrew. Mostly funerary, they reflect names and events of the Exodus.
These inscriptions validate the “writing of God” (Ex 32:16) engraved upon the tablets of Moses as the original alphabet of letters. As different as they all look today, there is only one original alphabet from which all others have been derived. From my earliest studies as an historical linguist I knew that this original alphabet was discovered at the time of the Exodus, and in the path of the Exodus.
The idea that Thamudic inscriptions represent Hebrew writings is not new, actually. It traces back to at least 50 years ago when early examinations of the text were reviewed. Tsafrir Nurit of the Tel Aviv University states the following in his article New Thamudic Inscriptions From The Negev as published in the journal Le Muséon: Journal Of Oriental Studies:
In 1953 a Thamudic inscription from the `Arava was published by N. Tsuri, who took it to be written in ancient Hebrew. The inscription was correctly identified and republished, together with two new inscriptions from Har Sagi´ (Jibal Samawah), by J. Naveh in 1975.
Nurit’s reference to Joseph Naveh comes from his article Thamudic Inscriptions from the Negev as published in Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies, where it is noted that the inscription originally thought to be Hebrew was actually the Arabic Thamudic D text and dates to approximately 267 A.D. The fact is that while there may be some character similarities between Thamudic letters and other ancient Semitic scripts—such as Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite, Phoenician, or Paleo-Hebrew—this is a unique Arabic language.
In the pages that follow his above listed claim, Jones refers to a number of sources that he uses to support the idea that the Thamudic inscriptions he reviewed were indeed Hebrew. One of his sources is Egyptologist David Rohl, who he quotes as follows: [Rohl] “postulated ‘the Ten Commandments – were carved in the world’s most ancient alphabet.’ Moses turned it ‘into a functional script’ becoming ‘the progenitor of the Hebrew, Canaanite, Phoenician, Greek and therefore modern western alphabetic scripts.’” But as we have already seen, Rohl works with the idea that the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite language is an ancient form of Hebrew—something made clear in his work with Rabbi Michael Shelomo Bar-Ron, statements he also contributed to the Patterns of Evidence documentaries, and as you are about to see in his own published book. As such, it seems quite out of context to use his words in support of an idea that Thamudic inscriptions are actually the original Hebrew alphabet. Notice that the way Jones cites Rohl takes snippets of what he said and bridges them with fill-in words—something that is becoming a real trend with all of the bad theology connected with this study of “Hebrew Word Pictures” as well. Perhaps we should look at what Rohl actually says in his book From Eden To Exile: The Five-Thousand-Year History of the People of the Bible, which is what Jones was citing. Rohl says [emphasis added, portions cited by Jones underlined]:
Those words – which we know as the Ten Commandments – were carved in the world’s most ancient alphabet. Scholars call the script Proto-Sinaitic because it was first discovered scratched on the rocks of the Mofkat mines at Serabit el-Khadim and around the copper mines of Wadi Maghara in central west Sinai. The signs which represent the letters of this alphabet are Egyptian hieroglyphs – but they cannot be read as Egyptian words, for they are Semitic letters. The ox head represents aleph, the eye aiyn, the house sign the letter bet, and so on. This new invention, which would eventually evolve into the Greek and (subsequently) modern alphabets, was the creation of Hebrew slaves. They had taken the Egyptian symbols and adapted them for writing their names and a few phrases in their own language. But it took the multi-lingual skills of an educated Hebrew prince of Egypt to turn these simple first scratchings into a functional script, capable of transmitting complex ideas and a flowing narrative. The Ten Commandments and Laws of Moses were written in Proto-Sinaitic. The prophet of Yahweh – master of both the Egyptian and Mesopotamian epic literature – was not only the father of Judaism, Christianity and, through the Koranic traditions, Islam, but also the progenitor of the Hebrew, Canaanite, Phoenician, Greek and therefore modern western alphabetic scripts.”
Notice that Rohl is clearly referring to the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite script in his statements. While I believe some of his own conclusions about Proto-Sinaitic being Hebrew are wrong, it’s very clear he’s not talking about some Thamudic inscriptions at one of the proposed locations of Mount Sinai—but I will say that Rohl’s theory is way more credible than Jones’ theory.
This means that Jones is purposely misquoting Rohl to make it look like his statements support the theory of these Thamudic inscriptions being the original alphabet and assert that they are definitively Hebrew writings. It is blatantly dishonest to piece together a quote, insert filler words, and then use someone’s scholarly work to support something completely different from what they were actually talking about. While it’s acceptable to piece together a quote from someone else’s work in academics, it’s unacceptable to do it in a way that contradicts their own conclusions and gives the false appearance that it supports your own theories. When you quote someone, you have to do it in context and in agreement with what they actually said. As a general rule, when you encounter a citation that is pieced together with fill-words or ellipsis, you should always go to the original source cited and read the entire portion from where the citation was taken to determine whether or not this type of misleading is taking place.
Another problem that presents itself with ancient rock inscriptions is the ability to properly date them. Due to site access restrictions the actual inscriptions themselves are typically not examined, but pictures and rubbings of them are reviewed. These processes, however, may not accurately show differences in the grading of patina on the inscribed characters where a darker shade indicates an earlier inscription. Additionally, pictures accompanying the text can often give a clue as to when an inscription was made if the depicted articles can be dated. One of the inscriptions highlighted by Jones has what looks like a menorah on it, which would not have been yet known when The Torah was given to Moses at Sinai. These factors, along with the need for evaluation of the artifacts referenced by Jones from an expert in Thamudic language and peer-reviewed studies, raise serious doubts about the claims being made to connect these inscriptions with the Hebrew language and the giving of The Torah at Sinai.
In another of his books, The Writing Of God: Secret of the Real Mount Sinai, highlighting this so-called “menorah” inscription, Jones states:
Dr. Kim has photographed many inscriptions from the mountain and the surrounding area. Many of these inscriptions are in Thamudic, both the northern and southern varieties that existed in Arabia in the centuries following the events of Sinai. Many of these inscriptions were made by pilgrims coming to the mountain from the south. One Thamudic inscription carved in rock on the passage to Mount Sinai displays a menorah (a candlestick of seven lamps), as an icon originating directly from the events at Sinai.
What if, however, the inscribed image that appears like a menorah is something completely different, not a picture but a word in a different ancient Arabic script? The Hismaic language actually has two characters that when combined would look like a menorah—the Hismaic letters for D and W. If you look close at the inscription there is a clearly identifiable space between the “branches of the menorah” and the “base”, or between the Hismaic “D” and “W” characters. To get more information about this I reached out to Professor Michael MacDonald at the University of Oxford, who specializes in the languages, scripts and inscriptions of ancient Syria, Jordan, and Arabia. He has also worked directly with this rock inscription bearing the “menorah” image. This is what he shared with me in response to my e-mail inquiry:
I know this inscription and the supposed menorah well and have corresponded with Dr Kim who found it and several members of his sect who thought it was a menorah and so “proved’ that the Children of Israel had been wandering in north-west Arabia, rather than Sinai, and that Jabal al-Lawz in that area was the “real” Mount Sinai.
Unfortunately for them, what they took to be a menorah is in fact two Hismaic letters (w and ḏ) in a very common prayer to the pagan goddess, Lt. The end of the inscription is unfortunately cut by the edge of the photograph, but what is visible reads: w ḏkrt lt ʾl ʾnmr ---- “and may Lt be mindful of [members of] the lineage group of ʾnmr ----". Hismaic inscriptions very often begin with w “And”, just as many verses in the Hebrew Bible do.
The Hismaic script does not show any vowels. The letter ḏ is pronounced like “th” in “this” (as opposed to “th” in “thin”) and the ʾ is a glottal stop (as if you pronounced “bottle” without the “tt” thus: boʾel!).
So, this “menorah” inscription is actually not Thamudic, but Hismaic, and is not a Hebrew text but a prayer to a pagan Arabic goddess. Sadly, new pictures taken in 2020 reveal that the Hismaic word resembling a menorah has been vandalized and destroyed—I would suspect by someone with strong anti-Jewish views who also mistook the image as portraying a menorah. Also to be considered is that the site where these Thamudic and Hismaic inscriptions are found is not the only place claimed to be the real Mount Sinai. There are, for example, the site of Jabal Musa where the Saint Catherine’s Cathedral sits with the claim that a plant within the monastery is the actual burning bush from the Exodus narrative and the site of Jebel Sin-Bishar further north. Without being able to confirm with certainty and agreement among all researchers as to the location of Mount Sinai, it is problematic to associate any religious writings or artifacts at a given proposed site with the events of Scripture—especially a known Arabic language specific to a particular tribe and dated much later then Exodus by all researchers who specialize in that language.
In The Writing Of God: Secret of the Real Mount Sinai Jones shows photographs of an artifact commonly known as The Yahweh Stone, which is a stone depicting a face on it and four symbols. Of this stone, he says: “The name of God, YHVH, written back to front in ancient Thamudic, also known as the writing of God (Ex 32:16), from Midian in Arabia.” This is a photograph and sketch outline of the stone, notice how you have to turn it on its side to read the letters on the backside.
There are, however, potential problems with this artifact. Gordon Franz, writing for the Associates For Biblical Research, examines the claim that this stone depicts the Tetragrammaton name in his article: ‘Yahweh Inscription’ Discovered At ‘Mount Sinai’! In this he references numerous scholars who have spoken out that this artifact is inconsistent with known authentic archaeological findings and have deemed it a forgery. In addition, Franz points out that the characters on the stone may not read YHWH, but should be read as WHHY. Additionally, if this is intended to depict the four letter name of the Israelite God YHWH, wouldn’t it make sense that they are all at least written in the same direction instead of having to turn the stone sideways to read the portion on the back? This, of course, means that these Thamudic letters would not represent the Tetragrammaton name at all—and it does seem logical that if the letters were intended to depict the name of God they would be together in sequential order instead of separated and on both sides of the artifact. Franz makes the following statement in the conclusion of his article:
To sum up: the sculpture of the bearded man or deity is thus more than likely a modern-day forgery carved thousands of years after the Exodus. It was also not written in genuine paleo-Hebrew and can not be translated 'Yahweh.' The facts surrounding the chronology and paleography of this inscription would negate this artifact as being clearly connected with the visit of the Children of Israel to Mount Sinai.
Franz wrote a follow-up piece four years later titled: Was An Archaeological Forgery Mistakenly Portrayed As Authentic? In this later piece he more directly addresses the claims made by Jones, pointing out that his book The Writing Of God is a self-published and non-peer-reviewed work, where he addresses the fact that, “no scholarly, peer-reviewed article has been published in a reputable scientific or scholarly journal about the stone and its inscription.” The fact is, we can’t really know what this relic depicts or if it’s even real. As it’s written in an Arabic script, assuming it’s even real and the letters are intended to represent the Tetragrammaton name, it could be something similar to a voodoo doll being used by people against the God of Israel in some form of witchcraft ritual.
I must conclude at this point, with a willingness to change my mind upon new evidence or the peer-reviewed scholarly works called for by Franz, that the claims made by Jones in this case are false. Thamudic and Hismaic are ancient Arabic scripts that date much later than the Exodus events. Even if the Thamudic and Hismaic inscriptions were telling of events related to the Exodus—because of the alleged presence of the menorah symbol and the potential Tetragrammaton name on a controversial relic—there would still be no reason to believe that anything rendered in the script is any different than writing Hebrew concepts in English today—it’s not Hebrew, it’s Hebrew thoughts expressed in a native tongue. However, the “menorah” is actually a word in the Hismaic language, part of a prayer to the pagan goddess Lat, and the so-called Yahweh Stone is considered by some scholars to be fake and even if authentic could be something related to witchcraft or anything else, we just don’t know. Finally, even if Jones’ dating of Thamudic to the 15th century B.C. were correct, which is much earlier than Thamudic is dated by scholars, the Proto-Sinaitic script is still dated much earlier than those generous estimates and is widely accepted as the first known alphabetic language at the time of this writing.
While Jones appears to be quite wrong in his claims, meaning that this has no effect on the study regarding the validity of Hebrew Word Pictures, it does illustrate once again how quickly misinformation is embraced by the uneducated masses of religion. Like the way Petrovich responded to his critics, Jones says in his book, “So many academics are averse to conclusions which reinforce the Bible as an accurate historical narrative because it validates the message of the Word of God, anathema to many secularists.” I’ve noticed this trend when someone presents indefensible and often debunked wild claims; they resort to this tactic, probably hopeful that their uneducated audience will buy it—and they often do. When you take a known Arabic language dated to about the 8th century B.C. and claim it’s the original Hebrew alphabet from the 15th century B.C., cite a list of sources that contextually are not talking about that Arabic script at all, and then use underhanded tactics to undermine anyone who would dare call you on it, there are serious issues. Legitimate archaeological finds that reinforce The Bible as accurate are wonderful, but making stuff up, misrepresenting the facts, misquoting other scholars and taking their words out of context, and just straight up lying are in direct conflict with the message of the very same Bible.
To be clear, I am not accusing Jones of intentionally presenting false claims for personal gain. As with Frank Seekins, it’s possible that these men simply thought they figured something out and ran with it instead of doing the proper research. After all, few people question someone who can write a compelling work and hold the title of “Doctor”—whether that title is earned or honorary (which I will address in a moment). Once that title is claimed most people trust that those using it are presenting factual information, but sadly it seems that is not always the case. Again, to repeat Dr. Goldwasser, this is opportunism, taking advantage of the fact that their target audience—uneducated “Christians”, Messianics, or followers of the more controversial Hebrew Roots Movement—who blindly trust them because of their “credentials” and will not test the information in their books and teachings. So while Jones’ claim does not directly impact Hebrew Word Pictures, it does help us see yet again the need to not simply trust someone who wrote a book but to really take the time to study and test the information presented to us. This is especially true when someone is making odd claims like saying that an Arabic language is actually Hebrew and represents the first alphabet when this contradicts the accepted conclusions that Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite is the first alphabet and Paleo-Hebrew is the earliest confirmed form of written Hebrew language.
A Case For Ugaritic Hebrew
An interesting research paper I read through titled The Cuneiform Origin Of Genesis And A Date For Genesis 1 (Version 6) by Carey F.J. Harmer proposes that the Book of Genesis was written on cuneiform tablets, first in the Sumerian script and later the Akkadian script, in its entirety. The paper is well written and makes a solid case for this; despite the author expressing views outside of the scope of this study and not, in my view, essential to the idea of Genesis being originally written in cuneiform and that I disagree with—such as local flood theory, proposing that the long ages of pre-flood patriarchs is incorrect, and that traditional views of Scripture do not harmonize with science. Also, Harmer proposes that Genesis 1:1-2:4 clearly emulates the style of 6 cuneiform tablets, which I do agree has merit, but that they do not represent days of Creation but days of God teaching Sumerians how to live “in the world He created for them”, which I disagree with. While Harmer seems to feel that these are all important to the conclusion that Genesis was written in cuneiform, I do not see traditional views—such as global flood theory or the long ages listed for pre-flood patriarchs—as being problematic in any way to her proposal that Genesis had been written on cuneiform tablets. As Harmer asks: “What simpler explanation of all these features of Genesis is there than that the patriarchs and their ancestors wrote their family histories in their own language in cuneiform on clay tablets, which were carefully preserved and eventually passed down to Moses, who transcribed them into what we know as the early chapters of Genesis?” Then after sharing a few more thoughts, answers: “The cuneiform alternative paradigm is a simpler and far better fit to the archaeological and linguistic evidence and the text of Genesis; it has never been disproved, and deserves serious consideration.”
It should be noted that while Sumerian is a language isolate, Akkadian is considered to be a Semitic script. This is an important point of consideration, as Harmer also notes, where the earliest parts of Genesis were more likely written in the older Sumerian text and translated later into Akkadian while some of the later portions of the Genesis text may have been originally written in Akkadian.
This idea that Genesis was written on cuneiform tablets is really not a new idea; I have actually felt this to have credibility for quite some time. I also addressed this briefly as it relates to The Sabbath Day in my article A Celebration Of Creation: A Look At Sabbath, Part 1. There I simply mentioned that Moses took the existing records and used them to write his full copy of Genesis. Here further attention will be given to this idea and how it might lead us to what may well be the script used by Moses for The Torah.
Sometime around the 14th and 13th centuries B.C., possibly as early as the 15th century, a Semitic script known as Ugaratic developed that was based on the Cuneiform wedge-shaped style. It was an alphabetic script and you can see some similarities in the letters with both Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew scripts. A short Encyclopedia Britannica article on this script says: “It is believed that it was invented independent of other cuneiform writing systems and of the linear North Semitic alphabet, though similarities in certain letters suggest that it may have been patterned after the North Semitic alphabet.” This would make this script sort of an overlooked bridge between Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician/Paleo-Hebrew—overlooked, perhaps, because of its stronger resemblance to Sumerian Cuneiform through use of the same type of wedge-shaped stylus to write the letters. Also note that it was developed independent of the North Semitic alphabet, which is another name for Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite. This would mean that if Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician evolved out of the Ugaritic script, then Hebrew has absolutely no relationship to Proto-Sinaitic and the alleged “pictograph meanings” of its symbols. Records of this script have been found on the Syrian coast in what is modern-day Tel Bet Shemesh in Israel, and in what is now northern Israel. Christopher Rollston, Ph.D., states in his book Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age: “Moreover, alphabetic cuneiform tablets have been found not just at Syrian Ugarit (and Ras Ibn Hani and Tell Negi Mend), but also in Lebanon (Sarepta) and Israel (Taanach, Beth-Shemesh, and Nahal Tavor); therefore, the use of alphabetic cuneiform during the mid- to late-second millennium was certainly not confined to the region of Ugarit.” This suggests that this was a known script and used in a wider area than the Proto-Sinaitic script, which appears based on the limited known artifacts to have been used primarily by Canaanite miners. The consensus among scholars is that this Ugaritic script fell out of use sometime in the 12th century B.C.
Also worth noting, this Ugaritic script appears to have been favored by an upper class of Canaanites who came into power around this same time. Scholars in this field of study propose that the Proto-Sinaitic script was considered inferior as a lower-class writing system and they wanted something more sophisticated. It is likely that Sumerian Cuneiform was the language used by Abraham, who came out of Ur of the Chaldeans—part of the region of Sumeria where this was the language used. Abraham would have passed this language down where it would have been known by Joseph, who became a ruler in Egypt. There is a tomb and statue in Egypt that is believed to belong to Joseph and the statue depicts a man with the “mushroom-style” hair or headdress that was customary of the Canaanites and other Semitic people. This would suggest that Joseph may have had influence on the Canaanites who rose into powerful positions sometime after his passing, perhaps as a result of a relationship with him.
While the common dating of Joseph (believed to have come to his position of power sometime in the middle of the 16th century B.C.) predates the earliest considered dating of the Ugaritic alphabet it is not unthinkable that it was also Joseph who developed or somehow influenced what would become known as the Ugaritic script. Others have proposed Joseph as the originator of Proto-Sinaitic, but that just does not match up with the timeline and it seems very clear that Proto-Sinaitic was a Canaanite language, possibly used as Hebrew later. There is, however, very little credible evidence to support that and what does exist only suggests that it was not the common alphabet for Hebrew and may have only been used experimentally in the earliest development of a Hebrew alphabet. Ugaritic is generally overlooked, yet it is a Semitic alphabet, fits perfectly between Proto-Sinaitic and Paleo-Hebrew/Phoenician on the timeline, and shows enough similarity between both scripts to suggest it as a transitional script or potentially an original independent alphabet from which Hebrew evolved. This could also explain its short-lived use as Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew became the first alphabet in wider use. It all makes a lot of sense: Abraham carried cuneiform out of Ur, there was an alphabet made with more complicated pictures similar to hieroglyphs, there was a need for something simpler, Joseph knew how to write cuneiform, and a new alphabet was made using cuneiform-inspired letters. At the very least this is a more realistic theory than the claims of Petrovich, Rohl, or Jones.
Scholars of varying opinions date the Exodus event from between about 1446 B.C. to 1260 B.C., a window that falls within the time period the Ugaritic script was in use. Despite the dating of Phoenician to 1000 B.C. and Paleo-Hebrew to 900 B.C., there are those who propose that Paleo-Hebrew is the older script and inspired Phoenician, which would place Paleo-Hebrew older than 1000 B.C. Joseph Naveh, in his book Early History Of The Alphabet, states: “The independent development of the Hebrew script began, as we have seen, in the ninth century B.C., and that of the Aramaic script a century later. In inscriptions of the tenth century, Phoenician, Hebrew and Aramaic scripts are indistinguishable,” and, “The Hebrew script preserved the basic forms of the letters to a greater extent than the other two.” Eupolemus (150 BC) is documented as saying: “Moses was the first wise man, the first who imparted the alphabet to the Jews; the Phoenicians received it from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians; also laws were first written by Moses for the Jews.” These statements indicate that, despite what current archaeological evidence shows, Paleo-Hebrew may actually be older than Phoenician.
We know that when Moses received The Torah at Sinai it was inscribed on “stone” tablets. However, when we look at the description in The Bible, despite saying “stone”, which may have been used in a generic sense, the tablets may have actually been some form of clay or terracotta with a Cuneiform or Ugaritic script used and then baked, which would essentially make them into stone. We know the tablets were shaped to fit into the ark, we know they were written on both sides, we know they apparently shattered easily, and we know there was a lot of fire on the mountain. This is not an original idea. As I looked to see if it were plausible I found that this theory is presented in an academic work by Giovanni Garbini titled History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, where he says:
But let us go back once more to Moses’ anger. Burning with anger, ‘he threw the tablets out of his hand and broke them at the foot of the mountain’. But what tablets were these that could break so easily? The Bible says that they were made of stone; but it also says that they were inscribed on both sides (and were therefore flat) and that Moses had been holding them in his hands, so they were not too big. There were no tablets of this kind in the Ancient Near East; there were no fairly small stone tablets, written on both sides and containing a fairly long text like that which Moses was preparing to present, namely the Decalogue. However, if Moses’ tablets had been made of terracotta instead of stone, they would have been two perfect examples of Babylonian tablets: manageable, flat, inscribed on both sides, covered with very fine writing, and therefore capable of containing a very long text, easy to break if they were thrown to the ground. It is precisely this feature which shows how the biblical author, though speaking of stone tablets, had in mind the terracotta tablets used for cuneiform writing.
It makes a lot of sense to the narrative that this long-in-use method of writing that had developed into a Semitic script would be used at least for The Tablets of The Law. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that after receiving The Torah on Ugaritic cuneiform tablets Moses developed the Paleo-Hebrew script that would be easier to use on parchment, like papyrus or leather, to write the Five Books of The Torah, which would fit with Paleo-Hebrew being earlier than Phoenician. Moses was, after all, raised in the palace of the Pharaoh; certainly he would have been familiar with writing on papyrus and was educated. It is quite reasonable that in forty years of the Israelite time in the wilderness Moses both developed and taught a new alphabet, Paleo-Hebrew, using forms of parchment he was already accustomed to working with.
One thing to note here is that, like Proto-Sinaitic, the Ugaritic alphabet contained 30 letters—obviously more than the 22 in Hebrew. This seems less problematic, however, than it is with Proto-Sinaitic. The Canaanite alphabet was made of pictures and is a very antiquated form of writing that likely did not work well as an alphabet—perhaps at least one reason why it never “took off” and why records of it are so sparse. With Ugaritic we have something more like symbols designed specifically for use on clay tablets. It would seem more reasonable for this to have been used for the tablets at Sinai than the Proto-Sinaitic script. Again, the Ugaritic script fits the timeline and makes a lot of sense for what is described as the tablets used to initially inscribe The Torah on. Was it Hebrew? Some have referred to it as “Hebrew cuneiform”, but it’s sketchy at best to go as far as calling it Hebrew. However, there is a good case to be made that the first official Hebrew text—The Tablets of The Law—were written in Ugaritic cuneiform or something very similar and transcribed onto parchment in Paleo-Hebrew shortly thereafter.
In addition to this, we know from the above clay pot fragment that Proto-Sinaitic was written on clay, which would mean both it and Paleo-Hebrew scripts are also possible for what was used on Sinai. However, it is important to note that the first Hebrew script was Paleo-Hebrew and there is no hard evidence that it had developed at the time of Moses, thought I do feel what I said about Moses inventing it is quite plausible. Additionally, while Proto-Sinaitic is known to have been pressed into clay and baked, cuneiform scripts are much better to work with in recording lengthier texts on clay tablets. Regardless, all of this continues to show the error in Frank Seekins’ “Hebrew Word Pictures” concept.
If the cuneiform theory is true, then it means that Hebrew developed from the Sumerian script by way of Akkadian and then Ugaritic, with possibly no direct connection to Proto-Sinaitic at all aside from possibly mirroring the letter sounds in sequential order—aleph, bet, etc. This would mean that Hebrew has no actual relationship at all to the “pictographs” of Proto-Sinaitic or their alleged “pictograph meanings”, and nobody can agree to what those meanings are anyway. This, in turn, would mean that the concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures”, which relies on a direct connection between Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite and the earliest form of Hebrew, completely falls apart once again.
Some Statements About “Hebrew Word Pictures” From Real Scholars
The following statements, most of which were obtained through personal correspondence, come from actual qualified Hebrew language scholars. Most of these statements are from people who have an earned Ph.D. in studies related to ancient Hebrew and Semitic language, ancient Hebrew and Semitic culture, Old Testament studies, or a related field. Additionally, many of the contributors to this list are actively employed as professors at major universities where they teach on these topics. These statements represent what the most highly qualified scholars in the world today have to say about the concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures”.
“Frankly, I don’t fancy this sort of thing; I think that what HaShem wants from us is simple faith in His word as we study, with integrity, to know Him, and to know what is required of our lives, and to become better people. This is easily manipulated to fit various agendas; I am not saying that this or that person is insincere in their pursuit; but otherwise it just spirals down into another Madonna-like pop culture new age thing, or worse, it is used by people who have an anti-Torah, anti-One G-d of Israel agenda, to ‘prove’ their way of spinning things. In short: we have already been warned against these games in Deut. 18:13.”
—Rabbi Chaim Richman
Former International Director of The Temple Institute (1989-2020), Founder of Jerusalem Lights.
“The Hebrew letters of the Hebrew Bible retain some vestiges of the pictographic shape of the early alphabet, but certainly do not express secret meanings.”
—Geoffrey Khan, Ph.D., (University of London)
Regius Professor of Hebrew, University of Cambridge
“While it is true that the ancient Hebrew script was originally pictographic in nature, I do not think that there are hidden mysteries or encoded secrets to be drawn from this idea.”
—Richard Taylor, Ph.D., (Bob Jones University)
Senior Professor of Old Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary
“I am not a scholar of biblical Hebrew nor of ancient languages and neither is Frank Seekins.”4 —Joseph Kronick, Ph.D., (University of California at Los Angeles)
Director of the Jewish Studies Program, Louisiana State University (LSU)
[I included this one because it shows how honesty in academics works. This man is the Director of the Jewish Studies Program at a major university and he is honest enough to say this is not his area of expertise, but also notes that someone like Frank Seekins is not a legitimate scholar in this area either.]
“Since the English alphabet derived from the Semitic alphabet, do we look at an English word and ask ourselves what the original letter shapes looked like — and then “read” the English word by those shapes? That produces gibberish, and you can make any word (or in this case, any Bible verse) say whatever you can imagine it to say.”
“I can only say it one way to capture what this really is: it’s divination. This is taking the sacred text and divining a hidden meaning from it. It’s a new kind of Bible code that is just as erroneous.”
“Trying to take the Hebrew words of the Hebrew Bible and retrovert them to their original pictographs and then “translate” them according to picture meanings is nonsense. Imagine teaching your kids to read the alphabetic English letters and then years later tell them they were never really reading, but have to convert words to strings of pictures to “really know” what the letters are saying! It’s akin to making a cake according to a recipe and then suddenly claiming that to really taste the cake you need to eat all the ingredients in their original form. Raw eggs, bottoms up! Now pass me that cup of sugar! Absurd … but yet common.”
—Michael Heiser, Ph.D., Hebrew Bible and Semitic Studies (University of Wisconson-Madison)
Executive Director of AWKNG School of Theology
“This is utter nonsense. It's not the way language works. It's not the way communication works. The Bible is not a code book to be cracked but a work of literature to be read according to the intentions of the authors who wrote it.”
—Carmen Imes, Ph.D., Biblical Theology and Old Testament (Wheaton College)
Associate Professor of Old Testament, Biola University
“There is, of course, no way to prove the existence of such codes. The first thought that comes to mind is that this was likely a simplified writing system used for basic communication, so why add an extra layer of complication to it? You have logograms in hieroglyphics and cuneiform, but those are much more highly developed writing systems. Alphabetic writing systems don't usually have logograms. Alphabetic cuneiform used at Ugarit doesn't. I don't know what else to say, except that this seems to me rather unlikely -- to put it mildly.” — Andrew D. Gross, Ph.D. (Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University)
Associate Professor in the department of Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
“As for Seekins' material, it seems as though he was either totally making it up or just wanting it to be true so badly that he convinced himself of some very weak or non-existent connections.”
—Tim Hillis, Ph.D., First Century Restorationist Theology (Sure Foundation Theological Institute)
Founder and Chancellor of Remnant Nation University
“Using Hebrew letters to find coded meanings shouldn't be the basis of a doctrine. If one were to use the Hebrew letters of a word to establish meaning, then how can we explain that five different people would string together their interpretations of one word at least slightly differently? If it's ‘coded,’ then apparently it's subject to the vagaries of individual filters. Since private interpretations that apply meaning are prohibited by Scripture, then all it can be is a discussion of possible significance. Therefore, no secret code.”
—Holisa Alewine, Ph.D. (Oxford Graduate School)
Author, Speaker, Founder at The Creation Gospel
“Indeed, the notoricon tradition (noting texts by acrostics and abbreviations) was well developed in Jewish culture, and esoteric interpretations of the letters flourished in Late Antiquity and Medieval Periods. The ancient inscriptions seem early for such interpretations.”
— Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, Ph.D., Cambridge University
Director of the Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies, Professor of Hebrew Manuscript Studies, Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies
[What Dr. Olszowy-Schlanger is describing here is a kabbalist practice that was also used in the development of the PaRDeS acronym. However, she points out that at the time of the earliest Hebrew writings such esoteric or mystical views were not held by the Israelite people.]
The remainder of quotes here were taken from the article The Bereshit (Jesus In Genesis) Argument Has No Merit by Garrett S. Griffin, who states that in like manner he reached out to qualified scholars for their views regarding “Hebrew Word Pictures”.
“Why would no one have seen it for thousands of years?”
“One can prove almost anything with this method.” —John Goldingay, Ph.D., (University of Nottingham) Professor of Old Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary
“I actually find this use of the Bible scary because it ends up being made into meanings that its creators want, and not what the Bible really says.” —Mark S. Smith, Ph.D., (Yale University)
Professor of Old Testament Language and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary
“Sounds more like nonsense to me, pressing to see what is not there.”
—Walter Brueggemann, Th.D., (Union Theological Seminary), Ph.D., (St. Louis University)
Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary
“The letters never really ‘meant’ those things because the whole point of an alphabet of only a limited number of letters (22 in the case of Hebrew) is to represent sounds, not ideas.”
—Molly Zahn, Ph. D., (Notre Dame University)
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, the University of Kansas
Regarding specifically the letter shin: “It’s just a letter of the alphabet. It doesn’t stand for anything except the sound ‘sh.’” —Ron Hendel, Ph.D., Biblical History and Northwest Semitic Philology (Harvard University)
Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies, UC-Berkeley
“It’s bull!”
—Tremper Longman III, Ph.D.. Ancient Near Eastern Studies (Yale University)
Professor of Biblical Studies, Westmont College
[Quite fitting considering that Seekins thinks the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet represents bull.]
“I personally do not believe that secret messages are encoded in specific words of the Bible.” —Jeff Benner, Not a professional scholar, no listed academic credentials, but runs the Ancient Hebrew website, for whatever it’s worth… In other words, even “the other guy who has theories about the pictographs” rejects this idea of “Hebrew Word Pictures”
NOTE: First, I have surveyed numerous scholars with earned doctorate degrees and not a single one of them seems to support or believe in the concept known as “Hebrew Word Pictures”. Second, while it seems some of these scholars may still consider the Proto-Sinaitic script to be an early form of Hebrew, my conclusion remains—through intense study—that this script belongs to the Canaanites, not the Israelites. The Israelites may have incorporated it for a brief period, but there is very little evidence of that and no evidence to date that it was ever their official alphabet for Hebrew prior to the Paleo-Hebrew script. Third, any theological differences of opinion on other topics should not be used to dismiss any of these quotes. These statements are being made from qualified experts on this matter specifically and any other areas of theology should not be a factor toward their credibility.
Frank Seekins’ “Honorary Doctorate Of Divinity”
Frank Seekins, the author of Hebrew Word Pictures, claims that he possesses an honorary doctorate of divinity degree for his work in developing the “Hebrew Word Pictures” hypothesis. This is not the same thing as an earned Ph.D. or D.Th. as held by many in the above list of scholars quoted and others cited throughout this study, including others who appear to be wrong in their conclusions (such as Petrovich, Rohl, and Jones). Let’s examine some important points about honorary doctorate of divinity degrees.
1. An honorary doctorate of divinity is about the most illegitimate type of degree a person can get. In many cases this type of degree requires a certain amount of time “in ministry” (typically five years, but I have seen as much as 20 years), a one or two page letter or statement describing your work and why you feel you “need” or “deserve” such a degree, reference from about 2 or 3 ordained pastors, and most importantly whatever the required fee is. In one case I saw no requirement other than paying $19.99 and the organization will send you a doctorate of divinity certificate that they claim will hold the full weight of any other doctorate of divinity degree. These organizations do not care about the legitimacy of your work or ministry, they simply care that you fill out the paperwork correctly and pay the fee. They will then allow you to say your “honorary doctorate of divinity” is a result of whatever you want to attach to it—like a wild theory you are trying to support by saying you received an “honorary doctorate degree” for it.
2. Frank Seekins does not state the name of the organization from where he received his alleged doctorate of divinity degree. As noted by Botkin, the only thing we really know about him from his book is that he has a wife named Sally. I have reached out to his ministry asking for this information and to date I have not received a response. Why the silence? People with a valid degree will always tell you up front where they earned it from. Every one of the scholars cited in the previous segment had their full credentials listed on their public biography, which is where I obtained that information about them to properly credit them. But an honorary doctorate of divinity is not an earned degree; it is a purchased degree. And even at that most people will tell you where they got an honorary degree from unless they are using it for dishonest purposes.
3. Frank Seekins claims that he received his degree for his work with “Hebrew Word Pictures”. Assuming he even has one of these purchased degrees, there may be some truth to this. Likely he included some statements about his theory in his packet that he submitted, and as such he would then be able to “honestly” say that’s what he got his degree for. But again, the organization that issued the degree most likely doesn’t really care about any of that. If I could find out where he got it from, I can do a packet with my research into the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite script that proves “Hebrew Word Pictures” to be completely false and get a doctorate “for my work”. Then what? Would the two degrees cancel each other out? So, while there could be a small amount of truth that Mr. Seekins made sure he included statements about “Hebrew Word Pictures” in his packet, it’s ultimately dishonest for him to claim that is what he got his degree for—again, if he even really has one or if it’s at least more credible than the place you can buy one for $19.99 without any other requirement. Of course, if one were to purchase the $19.99 honorary doctorate of divinity they could theoretically say they got it for whatever they want—since this is all based in dishonesty anyway. So, without ever finding out where Seekins got his, I could buy one for $19.99 and start telling everyone I have a doctorate degree for my research that proves the “Hebrew Word Pictures” theory to be totally false.
4. Coming up with a wild theory and then creating a whole book by continually making stuff up, pulling from different variations of Semitic language through the centuries like a linguistic rummage sale to find “symbols” that support your claims (some of which seemingly cannot be linked to any Semitic alphabet charts), using other languages like Sumerian and Chinese that have no relationship to Hebrew, and then convincing someone to give you an honorary degree for it is not how academics works. A 2-year earned Bible College diploma carries more weight than a fake doctorate degree awarded for a bogus theory. At least the Bible College diploma was earned through proper academic study, not handed out for concocting a good story and paying a fee.
5. If someone would have no qualms about obtaining one of these fake degrees and using it and his language theory as leverage to promote and sell books to gullible, thirsty seekers, why should we trust their actual work? Especially when it is so easy to see that their actual work is just as or even more dishonest than the so-called honorary doctorate degree. After all, we see from Seekins’ “decoder chart” alone that it has all sorts of problems, let alone the dilemmas revealed when we dig further into his claims. The whole thing is built on dishonesty, lies, and deception.
6. People do not get real doctorate degrees for dreaming up a theory and convincing some people, including an organization that issues fake doctorate degrees (for a fee), of it. REAL doctorate degrees are EARNED in REAL universities sitting under a REAL recipient of a REAL doctorate degree and writing a REAL thesis (let me repeat that, A THESIS, NOT A THEORY) that is presented before a board of REAL qualified scholars.
7. As we have just seen, people with a REAL Ph.D. in areas related to ancient Semitic language, ancient Hebrew culture, Old Testament, etc. unanimously reject ideas like “Hebrew Word Pictures”. You will have a hard time finding a real scholar with a real earned Ph.D., D.Th., or other legitimate doctorate degree that they actually worked for who will support something like “Hebrew Word Pictures”. Maybe someone with earned doctoral credentials in a completely unrelated field of study might buy into this, but those who earned their degrees in studies related to ancient Semitic languages clearly do not. So it seems doubtful that Frank Seekins could EARN a legitimate doctorate degree if he tried to present “Hebrew Word Pictures” as a thesis. Nobody in academics would take it seriously.
8. If there is even the appearance of dishonesty and/or questions about the legitimacy of someone’s claimed credentials, especially when it comes to the claim about having any type of doctorate degree, earned or honorary, can we really trust that the body of work they are using said degree toward is honest and legitimate? This is especially concerning when the stated doctorate degree is honorary, you show no proof at all that you even have one, questions about it go unanswered, and the type of degree you claim to have is typically easy to obtain—sometimes as easy as paying $19.99. I am not joking, in researching these types of degrees I found one for that price and all you had to do was fill out a form and make the payment. I simply cannot take seriously someone who claims to have an honorary doctorate of divinity who won’t even name the school it’s from, answer my inquiry about their degree, and whose work constantly shows serious flaws.
9. Ultimately, obtaining an “honorary doctorate of divinity degree” can be done without earning so much as a B.S. degree in an actual college, and that’s just “B.S.”, literally as it seems you just have to fill out some paperwork and make up a good story, so you really do essentially just have to “B.S.” your way to one of these “honorary doctorate of divinity” degrees.
The Red Flags Of Sensational Claims
Recently I shared an article from a pretty solid Messianic teacher against the flat earth theory. Someone commented about it from the opposite position, in favor of flat earth, saying, “I don't feel like I am superior with 'secret knowledge' at all. As a matter of fact this has made my faith even stronger.” It seems like these two sentiments are expressed nearly every time some controversial, sensational, and easily-proven-false claim is made. How is it that some people can look at these statements when made about something like flat earth theory or kabbalah or some other such thing and see it as a red flag but the moment you address their pet doctrine suddenly they are using these exact same arguments? It’s like a lot of my “Christian” friends who recently got upset when a popular television pastor changed his position on tithing and said “we’re not under the law”, because they believe tithing is still part of “Christian” faith. When I asked some of these people about keeping The Sabbath or following the food laws, they then turned and told me “we’re not under the law”. Of “Hebrew Word Pictures” I have also been told “You’re not going to convince me. It has helped me in my walk, my maturity, the way I study. I don’t think it’s esoteric. I’ve read stuff that is esoteric and goofy.”
So often Torah-positive people discuss the origins of things like Christmas and Easter, and their connection with paganism and witchcraft. But when it comes to something like “Hebrew Word Pictures” there must be different rules that apply. Apparently it doesn’t matter that the ancient languages used to build the case for it—Canaanite, Egyptian, Moabite, and even Chinese that has no relationship at all to Hebrew—are the languages of ancient pagans who developed their languages for purposes of worshiping their gods and practicing divination. It doesn’t matter that real scholars say that things like “Hebrew Word Pictures” are a form of divination, taking The Bible and trying to divine hidden meaning from it, and that this simply is not the way language works. It doesn’t matter that Saul consulted the witch at Endor and died the next day. Perhaps the only reason people are not dropping dead for dabbling in the divination and fortune-telling that is “Hebrew Word Pictures” or other such things is because they are covered by the parameters of “unintentional sins” found in Numbers 15:22-29—they didn’t really know just how dangerous and deceptive and plain wrong this stuff is. But once someone sits you down and goes through the facts with you, suddenly Numbers 15:30-31 and Hebrews 10:26-27 become a harsh reality. Once you know the facts laid out in a study like this, you are now intentionally defying the commandment of God from Deuteronomy 29:28 if you continue in it.
Recently I saw a short video teaching using a form of “Hebrew Word Pictures” applied to the Hebrew word for supplication (התְּחִנָּ). The word is made of the letters tav, chet, nun, and hey. The person “teaching” it only used the middle two letters, the chet and nun. His claim was that chet means “fence” and nun means “son”, so he was already deviating from what Seekins labels these characters—as well as everyone else we have looked at, indicating somewhere there must be an eighth list of “meanings” for the “pictographs”. From here he concludes that the earliest “meaning” of this word “had something to do with building a fence around a son”. These people are just creating connections that aren’t really there. Why isn’t it building a fence around a fish (Seekins) or building a fence around a seed (Benner) or building a fence around a snake (Albright) or building a fence around a cup (Lamb)? Or maybe it should be building a fence to keep out the snake [Satan], as we are talking about the word supplication. And if we are allowed to use only the middle two letters, how many other Hebrew words have “chet-nun” where these “codes” wouldn’t make any sense? All of this is fiction, people just make this stuff up as they go along and the “rules” they create for how this process works are so fluid and flexible that they allow people to make Hebrew words say whatever they want them to say to support whatever doctrinal bias they want to promote.
In addressing certain topics, especially those as controversial and nonsensical as flat earth theory and Hebrew Word Pictures, I’ve had people tell me things like: “There is nothing you can do or say to change my mind about this.” Such an attitude is a cultish position, and you should never allow yourself to be so closed-minded that you cannot accept you were wrong—especially when dealing with something that is clearly not in The Bible. After all, you cannot find one example in the whole of Scripture of someone deciphering Hebrew words using the letters and saying “Aleph is an ox head and gimel is a camel and if you put these together we come up with ‘the strong leader that lifts up’ so anywhere we see these two letters this is what The Bible is telling us”. It’s not biblical. It’s not in The Bible. The flat earth people have better support for their beliefs from Scripture than Hebrew Word Pictures does. If this is how Hebrew is designed and we are supposed to be doing this certainly we would have at least one verse in the whole Bible telling us about it. Yet there is none. Scripture is completely silent aside from saying that secret things belong to God and revealed things to us, and all for the purpose of living by The Torah.
The fact is that Hebrew Word Pictures is proven just as false as things like flat earth theory and just as much pagan and witchcraft as Christmas and Easter, and those who seek to adhere to it use the same lame arguments to defend it as those who defend flat earth and pagan holidays. But it doesn’t help you with your walk, it leads you away from sound doctrine. It doesn’t help you with your maturity, it’s built on lies and deception. It doesn’t help the way you study, it leads you to eisegetically build your own Bible with your own pet doctrines and gives you license to make up whatever you want in support of whatever you want to believe by finding a “secret code” that you can then “enhance” with fill in words. The only right thing to do if you are wrapped up in “Hebrew Word Pictures” is to repent, burn the books you have on it (don’t throw them away so they might fall into the hands of someone else, burn them, destroy them, exactly like God told the Israelites to do with the Canaanite elements of pagan worship from which this concept seems to be directly taken from, the Canannite language from that pagan worship), and return to the plain revealed text of Scripture. We have no business seeking out “secret knowledge—be it esoteric, mystical, kabbalist, or whatever. And that includes at least the “sod” portion of the Jewish “PaRDeS” concept, which is also not supported by Scripture and is literally defined as esoteric/mystical knowledge. When people want to drift away from the plain text of Scripture and into “secret knowledge” of any kind there should be red flags popping up everywhere.
Final Thoughts
“The word pictures are only valid when they agree with Scripture.”
—Frank Seekins, author of Hebrew Word Pictures, claims to have an honorary [more properly, fake] “doctorate of divinity” for his work with developing the bogus concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures“
The whole thing disagrees with Scripture. The Bible is 100% against things like this, so the guy who dreamed it up says it best. Frank Seekins is not a scholar or a researcher. He is a con artist—even if the first person he conned was himself. He made up the concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures” and then made it his life’s work to continue concocting “evidence” to “prove” in the minds of the gullible people he preys on that his claims are valid. His claims are overwhelmingly proven false. He, by his own words, condemns “Hebrew Word Pictures“ to the trash bin of pseudo-theology where it belongs. Not one bit of it agrees with Scripture, the whole thing is a violation of Scripture. Any random “Hebrew Word Picture” that might loosely align with what The Bible already says is merely the same as when Satan in Genesis 3 and while tempting Yeshua in the wilderness pulled on statements of biblical truth for the ultimate purpose of deceiving people. In other words, “Hebrew Word Pictures” that might sound biblical on the surface serve only to convince the gullible and easily misled into chasing something that has them violating the commandment of God to NOT chase mystical, esoteric, or secret knowledge. It’s also worth mentioning that the Genesis 3 incident was to convince people to partake of forbidden secret knowledge—it was literally called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and as it was prohibited to eat from it we could also call it The Tree of Forbidden Knowledge. Every day we see the result of that bad choice to eat its fruit. Why can’t people see this before they dive into pursuits beyond the literal revealed words of Scripture?
Any pursuit of biblically forbidden knowledge beyond the literal revealed text of The Bible—from the Christian pastor born out of the pagan Greek and Roman philosophers always looking for the next big revelation to the kabbalist concept of PaRDeS (which was created by Rabbi Moses de Leon, the same guy who publicized The Zohar) that ends with mystic and esoteric knowledge in “sod” to the quest for hidden codes within Hebrew words—leads to disaster. The quest for hidden or secret knowledge, that which belongs to God, is what led the first humans into the garden (their place of work) on The Sabbath to eat something God said not to eat (still the most violated of all commandments by “Christianity”, with their love of unclean things like pork and shellfish). The result of this is a curse on our planet, sin in the hearts of humanity, sickness and disease, and ultimately death.
People say it’s “playing it safe” or “staying in the shallow end of the pool” to stick with just The Bible—the plain and revealed literal text of Scripture. But I would challenge that, because it goes against everything religion throws at you in saying “The Bible alone is not enough, there has to be something more”. It’s the true difficult path beyond the narrow gate to just follow The Bible and not seek for something more. To chase after anything more is to seek more than God has given us, and that’s idolatry. The Torah is the way (Psalm 119:1), it is the difficult way that Yeshua told us to follow—difficult because the world rejects it and Bible-based religion always wants more. Satan wants you to deviate from the path, and if he can’t get you to do it through rejecting The Bible outright he will get you to do it through embracing what is extra-biblical. He will find a Tree of Forbidden Knowledge for you and begin with his hissing questions: Did God really say secret things belong to Him alone? Surely you won’t die if you seek out things beyond what is revealed. God knows that if you find some Bible codes you will be like Him, knowing secret things. We should ALWAYS go back to Genesis 3 and “selah” (pause and think really hard) on that scenario. It was literally the tree of secret and forbidden knowledge. The Torah, what is revealed in the plain text of Scripture, is literally a tree of life (Proverbs 3:18).
“A final word, when all has been heard: Fear God and keep His mitzvot! For this applies to all mankind” (Ecclesiastes 12:13, TLV). “Here is the final conclusion, now that you have heard everything: fear God, and keep his mitzvot; this is what being human is all about” (Ecclesiastes 12:13, CJB). Obeying God and keeping His Torah. That is what we are called to do. That is all we are called to do. That is what the whole of the plain revealed text of The Bible teaches. Anyone who will abandon all of this trash pseudo-theology and just follow His path will be the most fulfilled person on the planet.
The Bible says that every word should be established by at least two or three witnesses. We have one primary witness to “Hebrew Word Pictures”—Frank Seekins, the guy who made it up. Any other witnesses in favor of this idea are people who were directly influenced by his teachings on this matter. While they may use different “decoder lists” and might even claim to have never heard of Frank Seekins, it all traces back to his wild imagination. We have a whole host of qualified witnesses against it, people who have real credentials to speak on this matter. These are all independent scholars, most of whom have a university earned Ph.D., who studied Hebrew without partiality or bias to the claims of Frank Seekins. When I contacted them I did not say I contacted anyone else or reveal whom I contacted. And all of them, people who have the qualifications to speak on this matter, reject the idea of “Hebrew Word Pictures” as utter nonsense.
To insist on holding to this idea of “Hebrew Word Pictures” against all of the evidence presented in this study is to hold to a form of idolatry. It means you have an idolatrous view of Frank Seekins as “a god” and his “Hebrew Word Pictures” book as a Bible.
For those who have been caught up in this, the commandment of God from His Torah is clear: “The secret things belong to Adonai our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever—in order to do all the words of this Torah” (Deut. 29:28, TLV). REPENT! Stop breaking The Torah, which is the definition of sin (1 John 3:4).
For Frank Seekins and others like him who promote lies, unless they repent, apologize to the people they deceived, and demand that all of their work be returned to them for destruction with a full refund: “But for the cowardly and faithless and detestable and murderers and sexually immoral and sorcerers and idolaters and ALL LIARS—their lot is in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8, TLV, emphasis added). “Hebrew Word Pictures” is overwhelmingly shown to be sorcery/divination/fortune-telling, idolatry (especially ancient Canaanite), and lies. And I will just leave it right here with that.
Summary
1. There is no scholarly consensus as to what at least many of the “picture” characters from the Proto-Sinaitic script represent and in several cases it appears Frank Seekins made up his own meanings of them based on characters outside of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet to fit his agenda. This means that there is no way to determine if there really is a “code” system within words made from these letters because there is no way to know who, if anyone, has come up with the “correct pictograph meaning” of a given letter. From this study alone there may be as many as eight completely different sets of “meanings” assigned to each Hebrew letter that would in turn change whatever “code” is to be derived from them.
2. The consensus of most scholars who study the Proto-Sinaitic script is that it represents a Canaanite language, not Hebrew. This is further validated with the appearance of these letters on Jebusite pottery predating the Israelite Exodus and conquest of Canaan and inscriptions of worship to Canaanite deities using this script (of which most of them appear to do).
3. The symbols of the Proto-Sinaitic script are most likely inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphs, but were not used in a pictographic form. They were used as alphabetic letters. Semitic languages are alphabetic, not pictographic.
4. Contrary to what Frank Seekins claims, not all languages are connected, and certainly do not evolve out of Hebrew. The Sumerian script, a language isolate, is the most likely candidate for the language used at the Tower of Babel. When the languages were split and confused by God there were many original languages from which language groups evolved, and the Semitic languages are among these. There is, for example, no actual relationship between Hebrew and Chinese, even though Frank Seekins claims there is. What Frank Seekins claims and what his entire hypothesis is built on is the exact opposite of what the plain text of Scripture says about the origin of languages.
5. There is a strong case to be made that Hebrew evolved more out of a cuneiform-style alphabetic script than the Proto-Sinaitic script, and that the book of Genesis was originally written in a cuneiform script. This would disconnect Hebrew from the “pictographs” of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet and any “pictographic meaning” they may have.
6. No actual scholar qualified to speak on ancient Semitic languages has yet to come forward in saying that the claims of Franks Seekins are valid. They all unanimously reject the idea of “Hebrew Word Pictures”, some with very harsh words toward the concept and the credentials of Seekins himself.
7. Frank Seekins does not possess a legitimate “doctorate degree”, if he possesses even the fake one he claims to have—which cannot be verified because he does not disclose where he received his fake degree from and will not answer my inquiry. I suspect it wouldn’t matter anyway, if he did ever reveal it the likelihood is that it will prove to be exactly how I explained such degrees are obtained in at least most, if not all, cases.
8. There are no statistical studies to show how often the concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures” actually creates a code in comparison to how often it does not, or how often one must use “fill words” to make a code work. The appearance is that “fill words” must be used in most cases, and frequently these “fill words” will drive meaning into the “code”—if multiple people used different fill words it could drastically change the “code” deciphered from a Hebrew word (as Dr. Alewine noted in her statement about this subject). It doesn’t work all of the time. Take for example this one that Botkin mentioned: Chalon ("window") = fence + goad + peg + fish. If we fully decode it using Frank Seekins’ chart is means “separate the tongue to secure your need/desire”. So, are we to cut off our tongue in order to get whatever we need or desire? And what does that have to do with a window?
9. Several decades ago “Bible Codes” based on a method called equidistant letter sequences were popular until it was pointed out by qualified scholars like Dr. Michael Heiser that the concept falls apart when looking at other ancient manuscripts apart from the Masoretic text the system was based on, particularly The Dead Sea Scrolls and other older texts. In like manner, and as has been noted by scholars such as Botkin and Alewine, once you realize that the Proto-Sinaitic letters have been assigned wide and varying “interpretations” as to what “picture” they represent it destroys the entire concept. The letter qof, for example, we have seen interpreted as a sun on the horizon, a boat, a knot, a monkey, or the back of a man’s head. Frank Seekins claims the “code” for this letter is behind, the last, the least—but this only works if we accept his claim that the Proto-Sinaitic symbol is the back of a man’s head. Like The Dead Sea Scrolls and other manuscripts did with ELS Bible Codes, the varying interpretation of the pictographs—some from far superior scholars and research than that of Frank Seekins—is destructive to the entire claim of “Hebrew Word Pictures”.
10. It has been established that this system is used to promote doctrinal bias. As an example, Pastor Joseph Prince has used this system to read into the Hebrew word “teshuvah” a code that promotes his warped view of grace (this is explained in my previous article on this topic, Secret Mysteries Hidden In The Bible). This would mean that if a statistical analysis were done on the frequency of this system working, any “codes” that are found would be subject to further review to determine if doctrinal bias was applied to “fill words” or anything else to make the alleged code support such a specific doctrinal bias. Such a study would have to separate “codes” into categories such as those created to support Torah-positive theology, hyper-grace theology (as with Joseph Prince’s “code” for teshuvah), or any other theological position. And then who decides which theological position is correct and which “codes” are then to be rejected because they disagree with that position?
11. Concepts like “Hebrew Word Pictures” rely on special rules and loopholes that give proponents of it the ability to make The Bible say what they want it to say. They make their own “Bibles” by creating codes that work within their theological bias and reject even potentially valid codes (those that would make logical sense as a sentence or prophecy) if they do not work within the same bias because of special rules that say a code is only valid if it agrees with Scripture. Once the proponent has codes they approve of, these codes are then used as support for their interpretation, misinterpretation, and manipulation of Scripture. A prime example of this is the use of this process by Joseph Prince—those who reject his views about grace would reject his code as invalid because they do not see that code as agreeing with Scripture, while those who agree with Prince would reject any code that appears to endorse a Torah-positive view as invalid because they do not see such a code as agreeing with Scripture. So, following Frank Seekins’ “golden rule of Hebrew Word Pictures” both sides of the Joseph Prince code have free license to reject “codes” of the opposite position. God is not the author of confusion, and things like “Hebrew Word Pictures” create theological confusion.
12. Many alphabets—including Greek, Latin, English, and Spanish—trace their origins back to the earliest alphabetic scripts such as the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite alphabet as well as Paleo-Hebrew, Phoenician, and possibly Ugaritic. For example, many proponents of “Hebrew Word Pictures” point out that if you take the modern letter ‘A’ and turn it you can arrive at something reminiscent of the Paleo-Hebrew letter ‘Aleph’ and if you turn it all the way upside down you can begin to see the “original” ox-head symbol. Taking this into account, this system should work for any alphabet that originates from these “pictographs”. As Bible researcher and author David Wilber humorously asks in his article The Problem With Hebrew Word Pictures: “Are we going to start pulling random words out of Mark Twain’s novels and decoding prophecies?” As most alphabets are directly connected to the Proto-Sinaitic Canaanite letters, then the Hebrew Word Pictures method should reveal, at random, “encoded messages” in everything from ancient pagan Greek mythology to Dr. Seuss books to Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Bible and anything else written using alphabetic words.
13. From the error of Dr. Kim and Dr. Jones in misidentifying a pair of Hismaic letters as a menorah to the error of thinking there are “codes” hidden within Hebrew words, making assumptions, drawing wrong conclusions, and producing connections that don’t actually exist leads to bad theology. In both the cases of Miles Jones and Frank Seekins this has resulted in ancient rock inscriptions of prayers offered to pagan gods being touted as biblical. Methods of Bible study such as Hebrew Word Pictures, PaRDeS, or anything else that rely heavily on mysticism and eisegesis, where the “researcher” is given a lot of liberty to read into Scripture whatever supports their doctrinal bias, are to be avoided. The Bible commands us not to seek out hidden mysteries and secret codes, but to stick to the plain and revealed text and live by that (see Deut. 29:28).
14. It’s easy for people who see the errors of mainstream “Christian” beliefs to fall for things like “Hebrew Word Pictures”. In most cases people are not educated in The Bible at churches, they are given a blend of Scripture-twisting and cultural relevance in a social club setting. So when they seek something deeper, concepts like “Hebrew Word Pictures” may seem appealing to those who don’t know better. I like the way Leong Tien Fock, Ph.D., closed his own article on the topic, How to Misread the Bible in the Name of Paleo-Hebrew, by saying: “when we are impressed by the Paleo-Hebrew method because we can see many Hebrew words yield exciting ‘deeper meanings’ by using it, we need to bear in mind that to every example where this method seems to work there are multiple counter-examples that clearly show that this method does not work.” When a proposed system of finding codes fails way more often than it allegedly works, you should know that it’s not legitimate. Some codes, as Fock says, seem to work—though usually only when further manipulated with fill words selected by the decoder’s personal theological bias. Most of the time, however, the system simply does not work.
15. Quite simply, the concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures” fails the test of scholarly review. It is a false idea that when assessed is heavily flawed in every way and should be rejected as yet another unbiblical idea used to distract people away from the plain text of The Bible. To hold to a belief in this seems would require someone to be just plain gullible or determined that they are going to believe in it despite all of the evidence against it—including the overwhelming evidence that a man with a fake doctorate degree just made it all up, regardless of whether he was the first victim of his own wild imagination or because he knew a lot of gullible people would buy his book. To close this in a fun way, “Behold the hand that holds the mace” has struck the death blow to the concept of “Hebrew Word Pictures”.
Blessings and Shalom
©2022 Truth Ignited Ministry
