Matthew 5:18
King James Bible
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
What are these jot and tittle? Hebrew? Greek? Niqqud?
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If you're asking about the English in KJV: Jot is from Iota, and means a small thing; tittle means a dot or mark; and the two together are usually interpreted as the main part and the dot respectively of the letter "i". If you're asking about the Greek, I can't help you (though I see that the first word is Iota).– Colin FineCommented Aug 12, 2020 at 20:47
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1חִידָה: I am a student, and I would like to cite this thread in a research paper. Would you be willing to have a conversation with me via email?– DBrinson4Commented Aug 28 at 12:32
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@DBrinson4 You can cite any website you read, no need to ask permission first.– curiousdannii ♦Commented Aug 29 at 12:51
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2 Answers
Excellent question! * What are the jot and tittle in Matthew 5:18 [KJV]?
- In Hebrew, the "Yod" (י) is the smallest letter of the Alef-Beyt and used numerically in the Masoretic text to note #10.
- In the Tanakh, "Yod" represents a #possessive hand used as a suffix with nouns like 'My-Help' ( עֶזְרִי ) from [Psalm 121:2]
- The word 'Yod' (יד) is literally a #Hand of YHVH in [Ezekiel 37:1] "The Hand of YHVH" ( יַד יְהֹוָֽה ) came upon him.
- In context to Matthew 5:18, Yeshua (Jesus) of Nazareth is making a deeper metaphor in stating God's Hand (Yod) will not pass away from the law. The Greek mistransliteration ' ἰῶτα ' (iota) loses the meaning.
- 'Tittle' (Stroke) refers to Latin (titulus) mistranslated from the Greek ' κεραία ' (keraia) from the Hebrew term 'Kera' ( כְרָעַ֨ ) - meaning the 'leg' a letter stands on. To Greeks, the 'Kera' meant a horn instead of leg, so scholars assume Yeshua meant the 'heel' stroke of a Dalet (ד). - Tittle is not referring to a 'dot' or 'dagesh', because the niqqud used by Masoretes was not applied to Hebrew manuscripts before 70AD. Which means Yeshua (Jesus) did not refer to niqqud.
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1In the Tanakh, as in Central and Northern Semitic languages generally, the suffix -i represents the inherited first-person-possessor. Nothing else. When it came to be written, it was written with a yod, because Hebrew script did not note vowels. Some fanciful literate people may have noticed the yod and thought of "hand", but to say it "represents" it is unwarranted. (It is possible that the letter name derives from the word yad, but far from established - though it could have been widely believed). Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 18:33
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Thanks for your feedback, Colin Fine! Regarding your hebrew suffix -i, which letter of the Alef-beyt would that be referencing?– חִידָהCommented Aug 12, 2020 at 18:39
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1Why would a sound reference a letter? Sounds are a part of language, nothing to do with letters. Some languages have the technology called writing applied to them, and in some kinds of writing there is a correspondence of some sort between letters and sounds, though it is often imperfect. Which letter of the alef-beyt does the -i in Maltese qalbi ("my heart") reference? It's the same suffix. Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 19:13
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Thanks for clarifying, Colin! The pronunciation of Hebrew words is not what assigns a word to a letter in the Alef-Beyt. It is based on their pictogram's meaning. * For example : The letter (א) is called the word 'Alef' (אלפ) found in [ Tehillim (Psalms) 8:8 ] because it's pictogram represents an 'Ox'.– חִידָהCommented Aug 12, 2020 at 19:38
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1I fundamentally disagree. While in some cases the name of a letter was a recognisable word and the letter bore some resemblance to the referent of that word (eg 'aleph') This was not generally the case. I have no doubt that there were mystics drawing ex post facto meanings from the written word, just as happened with gematria, I see no evidence that the writing the Hebrews borrowed from the Phoenicians was anything other than a technology to note down words by their sound. Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 20:39
This question is complicated by a slight vagueness in how the OP expresses it, which immediately brings in extra languages.
The "point" was simple in the original and KJV.
The original text is Greek: ἰῶτα ἓν ἢ μία κεραία
Don't add one letter i or one 'keraia' which is a peculiar diacritic which can be read about and examples seen at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals#Description
An iota is a single mark with the writing implement - which could be pen, chisel or stylus. ι - it often has a breathing mark ἱ or accent ί but what's being talked about is the 1-stroke core of the letter.
Keraias might look like something we don't need anymore: they're a reading-aid to help distinguish letters from letters-used-as-numerals, especially within the big blocks of capital-letter text that used to fill the whole page.
We do have something similar in these internet days - some fonts use a cross-stroke to distinguish an O from a 0. Physical letterplate printing also had them on 7s to avoid them being mistaken for a capital-L, which survives in some computer fonts even though there's no longer a risk of the 7 being inserted upside-down.
What KJV mean by "jot" and "tittle" is potentially harder to work out - "jot" is derived directly from "iota" and we still have "jot it down" as in to mark the page with the pen, but "tittle" really only has survived as the KJV's gloss for 'keraia'. From wikipedia it seems it firstly referred to the marks that completed a letter: such as the dot on an i. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tittle
Which makes KJV's translation nattier than the original, describing a single letter by its parts.
To be nattier than is not to add an iota though, so that's okay.
The KJV famously liked Ancient Hebrew above Greek in their approach to the Old Testament, but there's no obvious reason to think they are bringing in a different Hebrew letter by saying "jot or tittle".
Meyer discusses this though, and the idea seems to have been of interest in ancient time.
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/matthew/5-18.htm
Plut. Mor. p. 1100 A, 1011 D), especially also in single letters (Origen, ad Psalms 33), by which, for example, the following letters are distinguished, כ and ב, ר and ד, ה and ח.
The Origen reference should be in here somewhere: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sLpDsFbzv2wC&redir_esc=y but I'm not masochistic enough to wade into a big pdf of Migne's edition without an express request from the OP.
That deeper analysis doesn't seem necessary - it's nice that Greek, Hebrew and English can for once avoid a translation difficulty - thanks to our shared admiration of the Phoenician letter "yodh" (י).
