I have always wondered about this topic. Periodically, I would google something like, “Hebrew Final Letters,” but I never found anything helpful.

I have a six-year-old grandchild. She takes after my daughter with her artistic ability. (My daughter is a graphic designer.) My granddaughter is learning the alphabet and became fascinated with those final letters in Hebrew. For example, she thought about a possible final “aleph,” and drew what she imagined such a letter might look like. This motivated me further to get to the bottom of this issue.

From friends, I learned that one should look on Hebrew Wikipedia. So, I looked up, “otiot sofiot,” on Hebrew Wikipedia and in that Hebrew article, I found a reference to a short article on the website of the “Academy of the Hebrew Language,” which gave a very simple explanation of the origin of the final letters. The explanation is the opposite of what we all would expect.

First, I have to write a bit about the shapes of the Hebrew letters in different eras. The original form of our Hebrew letters is often referred to by scholars as “Old Hebrew,” or “Paleo-Hebrew.” This is what our letters looked like in the First Temple period and earlier. But the shapes of the letters later changed. There are a few opinions among the Tannaim on this topic. The one that is partially correct (but not exactly correct, see below) is the one that believes that there was a change in the script instituted by Ezra and that this is when “ketav ashurit” (our square script) started. See the view of Rabbi Yosi at Sanhedrin 21b-22a (and elsewhere). Ezra came to Israel in the seventh year of Artaxerxes. See Ezra 7:7. This would be 458 BCE. (The Second Temple was built in 520 BCE).

But the truth is that there was no overnight change in the Hebrew script and the story of the script used by Jews is more complicated than what is stated above. Scholars today delineate three stages. After Old Hebrew, the next stage—beginning in the late sixth century BCE—(when the Persians defeated the Babylonians) is referred to as the stage of the “cursive Aramaic script.”

This was, probably, the script the Jews used for most of their writing in the “Persian period” (the period of Persian rule)—even in Israel. This period spanned the years 539-332 BCE. Two factors that caused writing in Aramaic to be widespread in Israel at this time are: 1) the Jews returning from exile in Babylonia spoke and wrote Aramaic, and 2) Aramaic was the official language of the Persian empire. As Ada Yardeni—a leading paleography expert—writes: “In the post-exilic period, in the Diaspora and in Judea as well, the cursive Aramaic script gradually replaced the ancient Hebrew script for secular writing as well as for holy scriptures.” See “Scrolls from the Dead Sea,” eds. A. Sussman and R. Peled (1993), page 130. See also Joseph Naveh, “Early History of the Alphabet (1987, second edition),” pages 78 and 112-24.

Hebrew letters, probably, did not take on the square shape that we are familiar with until around 300 BCE. As Yardeni writes: “The Jewish script is one of the offshoots of the late formal Aramaic cursive script. It emerged when the latter split into local scripts following the fall of the Persian empire, in the second half of the fourth century BCE.”

Now, I will explain what happened in the case of “nun,” “tzadi,” “peh” and “caf.” (I am not talking about “mem” now.) We do not have special final letter shapes in Old Hebrew or in the era of the cursive Aramaic script. There was merely one form of these letters.

The two forms of the above letters is something that began only in the square script era. Now, for the tremendous insight. Those special letters that we use today at the end of the word were the original forms of the letters! Think about the shapes of those final letters today. They all have an elongated shape. When you are writing such a letter in the middle of the word, your hand ends up too far down. It is hard to continue to the next letter. Shorter forms of each of these letters were needed to enable the writer to more easily reach the next letter. This explains the bottom horizontal shapes of the letters “nun,” “caf,” “peh” and “tzadi.” We had all thought that these were the original forms!

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After reading the short piece from the “Hebrew Academy of Language,” I asked Josh Waxman to ask ChatGPT about the origin of the final letters in Hebrew. It did make a lot of sensible points.

For example, it stated: “When the Hebrew script transitioned from monumental inscriptions to everyday use in manuscripts, scribes may have introduced rounded and compact forms of these letters to make writing faster and more efficient. These new forms became the medial forms used within words, while the original shapes were retained at the end of words, where clarity was still needed.” (The last point is alluding to the fact that documents were often written without spaces between words. An elongated final letter helps the reader to distinguish between the words.)

ChatGPT then added: “Some Jewish commentators—such as the medieval scholar Radak (Rabbi

David Kimchi)—suggested that the final forms might predate the medial forms, implying that they were the ‘default’ forms that evolved over time.”

I found this mention of Radak very interesting. I asked Josh to ask ChatGPT where this Radak was found. Here is its response: “I apologize for any confusion caused by my earlier statement. Upon reviewing the available sources, I could not locate a specific reference where Rabbi David Kimchi (Radak) explicitly states that the final forms of Hebrew letters were the original forms, with medial forms developing later. While Radak was a prominent medieval grammarian and biblical commentator—known for his works such as Sefer HaShorashim and his commentaries on various books of the Bible—there is no clear evidence in the available sources that he addressed this particular issue regarding the evolution of Hebrew letter forms.”

As Josh Waxman will tell you, please use ChatGPT with caution!

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A few further points:

• Regarding the letter “mem,” here is a brief summary of what happened. The original letter “mem” was not a closed one. Then an alternate form developed that was a closed one. Both forms coexisted for a while. (See, for example, Isaiah 9:6, where we have a letter in the shape of a final “mem” located in a non-final position. See also Nechemia 2:13, where we have the opposite: a non-final “mem” at the end of the word.) Eventually, the closed one became the one used as the final letter. The article that I cite below writes much more on this topic.
• There are statements in the Talmud at Shabbat 104a and Megillah 2b that צופים (the prophets) introduced the final letters, or reintroduced them after they were forgotten. I am disagreeing with these statements.
• Regarding Aramaic cursive letters, what these looked like can be seen in the letters in Aramaic sent by the Jewish military colony in Elephantine (in Egypt), in the fifth century BCE. Many of these letters have the name of the reigning Persian king on them, so they can be easily dated to the fifth century BCE.
• Above, I cited a passage in the Talmud at Sanhedrin 21b-22a. This passage and its parallels elsewhere—read literally—are referring only to the change in the script of the Torah.
• In Arabic, the shape of each letter varies depending on where it appears in the word.

For more information on this entire topic, see the article by N. Torzcyner in Leshoneinu 10, pages 99-118.

Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. He follows Josh Waxman’s advice and is cautious about using ChatGPT. But ChatGPT did help his friend, Josh Teplow, who used it to get the alliterative title for Mitchell’s recent book, “From Eden to Exodus.”