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Concordances
Treasury of Biblical Knowledge
• Alphabetical Poem
Dictionaries
Hastings' BibleDictionary
• Alphabet
1910 New Catholic Dictionary
• Cyrillic Alphabet
• Alphabetic Psalms
• Alphabet, Cyrillic
Smith Bible Dictionary
• Alphabet
Webster Dictionary
• Point Alphabet
• Morse Alphabet
• Alphabetize
•   (only first 3 shown)
Encyclopedias
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Alphabet
• Alphabetical Index
• New Alphabetical Index
•   (only first 3 shown)
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
• Alphabet
• Sirach, the Alphabet of
McClintock and Strong's Bible Encyclopedia
• Alphabet
• Alphabetical Poems.
• Cross-Alphabets
•   (only first 3 shown)
The Catholic Encyclopedia
• Alphabetic Psalms
• Christian Use of the Alphabet
The Jewish Encyclopedia
• Akiba ben Joseph, Alphabet of
• Alphabet, the Hebrew
• Ben Sira, Alphabet of

(from the first two Greet letters, alpha and beta), the series of characters employed in writing any language. The origin of such written signs is unknown, having been ascribed by some to Adam and other antediluvians (Bangii Exercitationes de ortu et progressu literarum, Hafniae, 1657, p. 99 sq,), and, lately to an astronomical observation of the relative position of the planets in the zodiac by Noah at the deluge (Seyffarth, Unser Alphabet ein Abbild des Thierkreises, Leipz. 1834). (See LANGUAGE). The earliest and surest data, however, on which any sound speculation on this subject can be based, are found in the genuine palaeographical monuments of the Phoenicians; in the manifest derivation of all other Syro- Arabian and almost all European characters from that type, and in the testimony which history bears to the use and transmission of alphabetical writing (Carpzov, Crit. Sacr. p. 227; Kopp, Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit, Mannh. 1819; and especially Gesenius, Scripturoe linguoeque Phaenioc monumenta, Lips. 1837). (See WRITING).

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