Did Moses Write Without Vowels?

“I recently learned that in Hebrew, there are no vowels in the words that Moses wrote. I had a question about whether that was true of all words in Hebrew, and how that works out.”

Great question, Aya! There are many different ways languages can be written. Hebrew is known as an Abjad writing system, and Hebrew and Aramaic are the only living languages that use it! In an Abjad writing system, only the consonants are written. For instance, the first word of the Hebrew Bible (the phrase “in the beginning” in English), which is pronounced like “be-ray-sheeth,” is written:

The characters in Hebrew go from right to left, so the bet, the letter that sounds like “b,” is on the right. This can be hard for people to read because some common letter combinations could possibly mean more than one thing, depending on the vowels that go with them. Hebrew scribes who lived after Christ added vowel markings to help people know how to pronounce the words. So the same word with vowel markings would look like:

The words have vowels when spoken, regardless of whether the word includes vowel points when written—having the vowel points just makes it easier to know what the vowel is supposed to be!

Hebrew is interesting for another reason—when most languages die, they stay dead. No one today speaks Phoenician or Sumerian as their native language. The Hebrew language died a few hundred years after Rome conquered Jerusalem, and Jews ceased to have a major homeland. However, starting in the 1800s, there was a Jewish movement to restore the Hebrew language, and it is now the official language of Israel! Hebrew is the only known language to be revived in this way.

Do you have a question about the Bible? Ask your parents to help you submit your question today. We’d love to hear from you!