The Aleph Tav at the Right Hand of the Father

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֶלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ
b·rashith bra aleim ath e·shmim u·ath e·artz
in·beginning he-created Elohim » the·heavens and·» the·earth
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

To understand the gospel of John one must necessarily know Genesis and the whole Torah for that matter. John was a Jew who was brought up on Torah teaching and he wrote like a Hebrew; his gospel is replete with Hebrew idiom and Torah teaching. Torah is the commandments of God and the first five books of the Bible written by Moses. It can also mean Law, but should not be confused with the law of man which most of the Jews of Jesus’ day were following. It is the holy Law given by God to His people through the prophet Moses. During Jesus’ time on earth the people of Israel were listening more to Rabbis than to the teaching of the Torah. They had the Torah, but chose to listen to men instead of God. This is a theme that gets us in trouble all through Scripture (i.e. Adam listened to his wife’s voice instead of God’s voice).

I have given you the first verse of Genesis in this format:

Original Hebrew Text
Transliterated words from Hebrew (taking exact letters and copying them over to English verbatim)
Literal translation from Hebrew to English
New American Standard Version of Genesis 1:1

What I want us to notice is the word “אֵת” that seems to have no transliteration or direct translation from Hebrew to English. This word (Aleph Tav) is the key to understanding why john starts his gospel off with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” The beginning of John bears striking resemblance to the beginning of Genesis. It was purposeful that John starts with a repeat of the beginning of Torah, “In the beginning…” To further this thought along we need to see John’s purpose in writing the gospel.

John 20:30-31
30 Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book;
31 but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.

John says that he wrote the gospel so that we may believe that Yeshua is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing, we may have eternal life. So John’s intentions of the whole gospel were that we would believe Yeshua is who He says He is and thus have eternal life. The big question is: How did he go about proving Yeshua is the Messiah? The answer lies in Yeshua’s fulfilling of the prophecies and His teaching of the correct way to observe Torah. Our God has not asked us to believe without proof, but provides us the Torah so that we would know the Messiah when He came; He would be the One that the Torah points to.

Back to the issue at hand, the “Aleph Tav”. Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew aleph bet and Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew aleph bet. Thus we get the same as in the Greek, Alpha and Omega. The Aleph Tav is the symbol for God, the beginning and the end. It is not transliterated because the understanding of it is confusing and misunderstood as to why it is sitting there in Genesis at the right hand of Elohim. Most of us are familiar with this expression, “at the right hand of God”:

Mark 16:19
19 So then, when the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.

Acts 7:55
55 But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God;

Romans 8:34
34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

Yeshua is at the right hand of God. He was seated at eh right hand of God in the beginning, came to earth, died, and is seated again at the right hand of God. Here comes the kicker. John was pointing back to Genesis and the Torah saying, “This Word that has come in the flesh is the same word that you have seen sitting at the right hand of Elohim in the Torah.” You can believe that Yeshua is the Messiah because He was with God in the beginning and is God. Do you see how important Torah study and knowing about the Aleph Tav can be to your faith and how you believe?

John knew that his audience would have to go back to Genesis and would remember that there was two Hebrew letters together that are mysteriously sitting next to the One True God. I am more and more convinced that unless we know the Torah, we will miss much of the message in the Renewed Covenant known by most as the New Testament(that is another paper altogether). I pray that this will strengthen your faith and draw your heart to the study of Torah so we can love God with all of our mind in all of His word.