The Alphabet That Changed the World: How Genesis Preserves a Science of Consciousness in Geometry and Gesture - Softcover

Tenen, Stan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556437234 ISBN 13: 9781556437236

Publisher: North Atlantic Books, 2011

Synopsis

Rabbinic tradition asserts that every letter of every word of the Torah is a word in itself. Author Stan Tenen demonstrates that each letter is also a hand gesture, and it is at this level that Hebrew forms a natural universal language. All people, including children before they speak and people without sight, make natural use of these gestures.
 
In The Alphabet That Changed the World, Tenen examines the Hebrew text of Genesis and its relationship to the alphabet. He shows how each letter is both concept and gesture, with the form of the gesture matching the function of the concept. There is thus an implicit relationship between the physical world of function and the conscious world of concept. Using over 200 color illustrations, Tenen demonstrates geometric metaphor as the best framework for understanding the deepest meaning of the text.
 
Such geometry models embryonic growth and self-organization and the core of many healing and meditative practices. Many subjects in contemporary science were derived from the methods and means available to the ancients; The Alphabet That Changed the World makes this authoritative recovery of the “science of consciousness” in Genesis accessible for the first time to the contemporary reading public.

About this title

About the Author

Born in 1942 and raised in a non-religious home in Brooklyn NY, author Stan Tenen has always been driven by curiosity. A natural visual pattern-recognizer, he has a BS in physics and holds numerous patents. Mr. Tenen is the Director of Research for Meru Foundation, which was founded in 1983 to support continuing study of the Hebrew alphabet, the text of Genesis, and the science of consciousness they preserve. He lives and works with his wife Levanah in Sharon, Mass.

From the Back Cover

"It is my conviction, based on my professional background in modern geometry and topology, that Tenen's utilization of this difficult material is impeccable. This book is an important and original contribution to the scientific research literature. It may boggle the mind, but the detailed brief presented in full in this book leaves no easy escape from Tenen's theory: our alphabet was designed from a proto-language of hand gestures."
--Ralph Abraham, Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Foundations of Mechanics (with Jerrold E. Marsden) and Bolts from the Blue

"The Alphabet That Changed the World is a stunning and remarkable book.... The investigation presented here will open up new vistas of understanding, not only of the Hebrew alphabet and Judaism, but also of the sacred texts of all the world's religious traditions. The amazing interdisciplinary scope ... will serve as a model for future researchers and even for nonspecialists who value the growth in consciousness on our planet."
--Joseph P. Schultz, Oppenstein Brothers Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies, Emeritus, and Director, Center for Religious Studies, Emeritus, at the University of Missouri, Kansas City

"I am continuously amazed by Tenen's brilliance in the perception of deep, multifaceted patterns completely overlooked by everyone else. An intriguing theory that the fluid rabbinic form of the Meruba Ashurit letters derives from gestures of a meaningfully shaped idealized hand is supported by sufficient evidence to provide a haunting sense of truth.... This book holds treasures of great value for both the secular and religious scholar.... Given a fair hearing, The Alphabet That Changed the World is likely to itself change the world."
--Elliot Pines, PhD, former research engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of Technology/NASA)

Edition details

• Publisher: North Atlantic Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1556437234
• ISBN 13: 9781556437236
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 392
• Editor: Stein Charles