Many of you might know of Isaac Mozeson from his book, The Word, that began to deal in a fascinating way with his thesis that the roots of the Hebrew language lie at the heart of all human languages, based on Genesis 11 and the “Babel” story. Isaac is a warm and wonderful gentleman, Jewish, Torah observant, but quite committed to reaching out to the wider world with the Torah message. He knew David Horowitz and has appreciated the mission of UIWU for many decades now. Anyway, Isaac has now joined the Synagogue without Walls (http://rootsoffaith.net) and is taking part in a new discussion group there that Ross Nichols just began this week, The Hebrew Origin of Human Languages. Mozeson’s work has truly expanded since the days of his first publication of his book. He has shaped his latest work around the term “Edenics” and it comprises a whole range of issues and interests, with the linguistic still at the core. It is a privilege to have Isaac interact with us and I encourage all of you to jump on over there and check things out–it is all quite fascinating. You don’t even have to “join” to read and follow, see the main group site here:
http://www.rootsoffaith.net/group/theoriginofspeeches
As well as Isaac’s Blog on SWW here:
http://www.rootsoffaith.net/profile/IsaacMozeson
Just to whet your interest a bit on the wonderful style of Isaac Mozeson, here is an Op Ed piece he published in the Jerusalem Post in January, 2005. You can find this and lots more archived at his Web site: http://www.edenics.org/
Both options seem strange. Since Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) science assumes that, after millions of years of evolving mutations, some grunting apes became the gesturing Neanderthals, which led to Shakespearean sonnets. Happily, the floating, uniquely human hyoid throat bone also appeared, helping this species survive by lying, crooning, yodeling and rapping. (The world’s oldest hyoid bone was unearthed in Haifa).
Secularists have always considered it mythic that a Divine Engineer would factory-install a language program at Eden, creating the first modern humans. And that multi-national history was then to have been neurolinguistically kickstarted at the Tower of Babel, with 70 spin-offs which have since de-evolved into our 6,000 tongues.
Linguist Noam Chomsky proved that the human brain is hard-wired for language. He suggested that some super-intelligent alien engineered language. And recent linguists DO conclude that all Earth languages came from one universal language. But NOT that “recent West-Semitic language” called Hebrew.
The establishment Eurocentrists still support “origin unknown” for LAD (boy), even though Hebrew yeled and Arabic walid mean “boy,” and the root of birthing is Lamed-Daled. Genesis 11:1 has “kol aretz saphah echat” – coincidentally like WHOLE, EARTH, SPEECH… one (source of EACH). The new science of Edenics now has over 23,000 such “coincidences.” Edenics works with a Proto-Semitic, “Edenic” vocabulary where each root letter has the “genes” for the wide diversity of the world’s words.
Edenics doesn’t use kabbalistic formulae, only bread-and-butter stuff already used to link, say, French with Italian. So, Daled-Resh-Kahf, derekh (way, road) is echoed in the words for “road” in Russian (doroga), Australian Aborigine (turingas) and 40 other languages in the “DIRECTION” entry of our e-word CD dictionary. Moreover, the Gimel of garon (throat) can shift harder to a hard C or softer to an H. This is why EGRETS, CRANES and HERONS are all long-throated birds.
There are only a few hundred English-Edenic links as easy as rageel (usual) and ReGuLar. If one shifts the position of a letter instead of its sound, one knows why ReLiGion is about a spiritual path becoming a ReGuLar routine.
Instead of the divine dance of sense among sound, scholars assume that words are merely chaotic noises that we assign meaning to. But words traced back to Eden AREN’T meaningless sounds. Take mysterious animal names. In English, names like 1) GIRAFFE, 2) SKUNK, 3) GOPHER, and 4) HORSE are mere sounds. But in Biblical Hebrew, (Sephardic) Ayin-Resh-Phey, ghoref, means neck. 2) Tsokhen, stinker, gave the Indians that delightful creature’s name, 3) Khopher means digger, and 4) Horaish is plower. There’s a large chapter on animal names from Eden in The Origin of Speeches:From the Language of Eden To Our Babble After Babel (2005).When the guardians of Modern Hebrew had to coin a word for that crustacean, the CRAB, they went to the Old High German krebitz. This word is thought to mean “scratching,” even though crabs don’t scratch. The Academy then named the crab sartan, for scratching. (Samekh-Resh-Tet is the source of SERRATED). The scholars should have noted other creatures with exoskeletons, like the aqrab (scorpion). From qeren (horn) and Aramaic karpafta (skull) they should have seen a KR subroot of hardness. Koof-Resh-Bhet means battle and encroachment. So, nature’s lumbering, armored tank, the CRAB, should have been called a qarebet.
It was an animal, a little birdie, that whispered the whole Edenic concept into my ear back in 1978. I was a doctoral literature student, a published poet, stuck with a boring linguistics requirement at New York University. The professor demonstrated the genius behind reconstructing the so-called “Indo-European root” for the generic bird word. This never-spoken laboratory reconstruction was to show how Aryans emerged from a separate troop of well-groomed apes, without any (shudder) relationship to the “inferior” races, peoples and languages.
That theoretical, generic bird word was SPER. In second grade I knew a similar generic word for bird… tsipor. At the “SPARROW” entry one sees the Tsadi-Pey behind bird-related words for floating, spying, being covered (as in feathers), a talon, and chirping.
In Edenics every two consonants make a sound. Sound is energy. This is a science now, no more Humanities myths. Every sound carries sense. Therefore, if we examine the simple three-letter word for flower, Pey-Resh-Het or perakh, we can see that it is a combination of 1) P-R (botanical things, as in perot / FRUIT) and 2) the R-K element of fragrance, seen in reyakh (smell) or English REEK.
Here are two examples from the upcoming Japanese book. The SAMURAI, a storied warrior, was a royal guardsman. A guardian in Hebrew is a shomer. More often, the Japanese reverses the Hebrew. KARATE is an unarmed martial art. Therefore, kara means empty and te (pronounced tay) means hand. Reverse Hebrew raik (empty) and yad (hand) to get kara-te.
Are we naked but gabby gibbons, or have we divinely enhanced brains (Genesis 2:7) above an ape’s body? Were we engineered for speech, for literacy, perhaps even for Revealed moral instruction (G-d forbid)? Stay tuned. In our 21st Century culture wars, we will weigh in with the new science of Edenics.