Bible Consonant

[Zee Petty]

CONSONANT, noun A letter, so named because it is considered as being sounded only in connection with a vowel. But some consonants have no sound, even when united with a vowel, and others have a very imperfect sound. The consonants are better called articulations, as they are the names given to the several closings or junctions of the organs of speech, which precede and follow the openings of the organs, with which the vowels are uttered. These closings are perfect, and wholly intercept the voice, as in the syllables ek, ep, et; or imperfect, and admitting some slight sound, as in em, en. Hence some articulations are called mutes, and others, semi-vowels. The consonants begin or end syllables, and their use is to determine the manner of beginning or ending the vocal sounds. These closings or configurations of the organs being various, serve to diversify the syllables, as in uttering ba, da, pa, or ab, ad, ap; and although b and p may be considered as representing no sounds at all, yet they so modify the utterance of ab, ap, or ba, pa, that the slight difference between these articulations may be perceived as far as the human voice can be distinctly heard.

In the 1950s two models competed against one another in interpreting the evidence: the steady state theory and the evolutionary theory (later named Big Bang). Atheist Fred Hoyle sponsored the steady state theory, confessing his fear that the Big Bang model seemed to support the Jewish and Christian doctrine of creation. Here is what is important: the atheist thought that the theory he opposed would support the biblical view.

Confirmation of Big Bang marked a bad day for metaphysical materialists. Materialists want to think of the physical universe as eternal. If the physical universe were eternal, then there would be no room for an eternal deity. No need to explain material reality as the gift of a creator. Materialism could justify atheism. What a disappointment, then, that Big Bang suggests t=O.

How might we defend materialism against the religious Trojan Horse within science, Big Bang? By positing the multiverse theory. With multiverse theory we have an eternal physical reality within which our particular universe is only one temporal manifestation. Whew! Atheism is saved. Or, is it?

Some scientists recoil at the thought of any consonance between science and theology. Why? Because they are materialists in addition to being scientists. This is why Big Bang cosmology provides a challenge.

Note that Bollor and Bonnassies choose between Big Bang and multiverse theory. Yes, to Big Bang. No, to multiverse. Big Bang seems to support the biblical vision of the creation as temporal and historical.[3]

There is a methodological issue at work here. Theologians routinely do not ask scientists to do their work for them. My own approach has been to say that Bible and Big Bang are consonant. That is, these two approaches to our universe complement one another, even though one does not prove the other.

Any and every scientific cosmology falls short of answering the question of the contingency of the physical world. No scientific theory can answer metascientific questions regarding ultimate reality. Russell makes this point.

In addition, Bob is willing to grant the plausibility of a multiverse within which our Big Bang universe is one manifestation. Even with the multiverse hypothesis, Bob maintains that the contingency of all things physical remains a metascientific question. In sum, neither Big Bang nor multiverse can be coerced into providing scientific support for atheism.

Is there greater consonance between the Bible and Big Bang cosmology than with multiverse theory? Yes, it seems so at first blush. But, this does not slow Russell or Coyne. Every scientific cosmology can describe only a contingent physical universe. No scientific cosmology can answer the metascientific question of God.

Have we used Big Bang cosmology to prove the existence of a Creator God? No. What we have demonstrated is that Big Bang cosmology is consonant with the biblical understanding of God having brought time and space out of nothing. Even the idea of a multiverse, though a bit less obvious, is consonant with a Creator God who answers the question of contingency.

The lesson to the atheist should be this: the domain of scientific evidence is not the domain where evidence for the existence of God can be evaluated. The question of the existence of a divine creator is a metascientific question, requiring philosophical or maybe theological inquiry. Science cannot do our theology for us.

When you learn to speak English, you will need to make sounds that you may not have in your language. In this section, we will learn how to pronounce English consonants as they are listed in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

All consonants are either voiced or unvoiced. We can study many of the consonant sounds in pairs, because they take the same mouth position. The only difference is if the sound is voiced or unvoiced. For example, we study the consonants t and d together because they take the same mouth position. T is unvoiced, and d is voiced.

Click on the links below to learn about each English consonant sound. You will find an explanation of how to make the sound, as well as videos that show you more clearly how to pronounce the sound and many sample words.

You may do the lessons in any order you prefer. I suggest starting with the first lesson, the Stop Consonants. These letters have a unique feature to their pronunciation, and they are common letters in a lot of English words. Next, do the lesson on T and D.

Can you imagine trying to memorise every different configuration of all those little vowel dots under the letters? Can you imagine having to try and write them out during a test? I can! Believe me, having to write out a bunch of these without missing a vowel, an accent or a dagesh is not easy.

I propose a hybrid approach to parsing. What if we began by trying to parse these participle forms as best as we could from the consonants alone? How far would we get? It turns out, we would get a surprisingly long way by just learning a few simple rules. Consider this flow-chart:

As you can see, those six purely-consonantal questions (highlighted with dark blue text) give you enough information to decide which type of participle you are dealing with in the large majority of cases. The only remaining ambiguities are between Piel vs Pual and reduced-Hiphil vs Hophal. Interestingly, you can resolve both of these ambiguities by asking pretty much the same simple question about the vowels: is there an O-class vowel where the stem-name implies there should be? The forms of this question are in light blue text.

The Hebrew language is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE,[2][3] when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in the siege of Jerusalem (70 CE). It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until the fifth century.

The language of the Hebrew Bible reflects various stages of the Hebrew language in its consonantal skeleton, as well as a vocalization system which was added in the Middle Ages by the Masoretes. There is also some evidence of regional dialectal variation, including differences between Biblical Hebrew as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel and in the southern Kingdom of Judah. The consonantal text called the Masoretic text (?) was transmitted in manuscript form and underwent redaction in the Second Temple period, but its earliest portions (parts of Amos, Isaiah, Hosea and Micah) can be dated to the late 8th to early 7th centuries BCE.

Biblical Hebrew has several different writing systems. From around the 12th century BCE until the 6th century BCE, writers employed the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. This was retained by the Samaritans, who use the descendent Samaritan script to this day. However, the Imperial Aramaic alphabet gradually displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian captivity, and it became the source for the current Hebrew alphabet. These scripts lack letters to represent all of the sounds of Biblical Hebrew, although these sounds are reflected in Greek and Latin transcriptions/translations of the time. They initially indicated only consonants, but certain letters, known by the Latin term matres lectionis, became increasingly used to mark vowels. In the Middle Ages, various systems of diacritics were developed to mark the vowels in Hebrew manuscripts; of these, only the Tiberian vocalization is still widely used.

Biblical Hebrew possessed a series of emphatic consonants whose precise articulation is disputed, likely ejective or pharyngealized. Earlier Biblical Hebrew possessed three consonants that were not distinguished in writing and later merged with other consonants. The stop consonants developed fricative allophones under the influence of Aramaic, and these sounds eventually became marginally phonemic. The pharyngeal and glottal consonants underwent weakening in some regional dialects, as reflected in the modern Samaritan Hebrew reading tradition. The vowel system of Biblical Hebrew changed over time and is reflected differently in the ancient Greek and Latin transcriptions, medieval vocalization systems, and modern reading traditions.

The term Classical Hebrew may include all pre-medieval dialects of Hebrew, including Mishnaic Hebrew, or it may be limited to Hebrew contemporaneous with the Hebrew Bible. The term Biblical Hebrew refers to pre-Mishnaic dialects (sometimes excluding Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew). The term Biblical Hebrew may or may not include extra-biblical texts, such as inscriptions (e.g. the Siloam inscription), and generally also includes later vocalization traditions for the Hebrew Bible's consonantal text, most commonly the early medieval Tiberian vocalization.[citation needed]

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