I see, rather regularly, people associating the Aleph-Tav (את) with Messiah Yeshua. If you are already familiar with what I am talking about, you may want to skip the next paragraph. If you're not familiar, here is a brief explanation.

In the Hebrew Aleph-Bet (alphabet), the first letter is Aleph (א) and the last is Tav (ת). This letter combination is pronounced et, as in "et cetera." People take the statement from Revelation where Yeshua says He is the "Alpha and the Omega" and they say, "Well Yeshua didn't speak Greek, so what He actually said was 'I am the Aleph and the Tav' since those are the Hebrew/Aramaic letters." They then take note of the number of places the et symbol (word) is used, and state that this symbol is actually a placeholder, or some sort of "hidden code" for Yeshua. Their favorite verse is Genesis 1:1, where we read (in English), "In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth." However, they say, in Hebrew, the untranslated et actually appears between the words ha'shamayim (heavens) and ha'arets (earth). Thus, since this symbol is a stand-in for Yeshua, we see how Yeshua "connects" heaven and earth. Fascinating, right? Yet there are some issues.

Those that are Torah-observant will know what I mean by the phrase “picking and choosing.” It’s a term that gets tossed at us a lot by those that either don’t understand, or by those that disagree. If you’re unfamiliar with the phrase, I’ll offer a brief explanation. On many occasions, while explaining my beliefs to someone, they ask why I do what I do. I tell them that I keep the commands of The Father because I love Him (John 14:15) and that obedience is the way to express devotion. The whole duty of mankind is to Fear Elohim, and keep His commandments (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

Introduction

Here lately I have seen many attacks on the Hebrew Masoretic Text. Many people out there claim that it contains certain readings that were altered after Yeshua's time, in order to combat the teachings of the early Believers. It is said that these sections alter prophecies that are applied to Yeshua in the NT. These people also say that the Greek Septuagint (LXX) is more accurate, because it does not contain these later alterations. They state that the NT writers quoted not from a Hebrew text, but from the LXX, and that the early "church" used the LXX far more than any Hebrew text. Thus, they conclude, we should trust it more than we do the Masoretic. Is this true? Is this indeed the route we should be taking in our quest for the Truths of Scripture? Surely no one wants a corrupted text. If your base text is corrupt, then any and every translation of it will also be corrupted (unless corrected based on a different text).

If you have not yet read my series, How We Got Our Scriptures, I suggest you go and do that first. That series will lay a foundation for what is going to be discussed here. If you already have an understanding of who the Masoretes were, what they did, and so on, then you probably know enough to continue reading. I just don't want to thrust the reader into an issue he/she knows little about.