Copyright

Aaron J. Koller;

Published On

2025-03-07

Page Range

pp. 491–528

Language

  • English

Print Length

38 pages

Alphabetical Order and Alphabetical Thinking in the East and West

From Antiquity to the Middle Ages

  • Aaron J. Koller (author)
Chapter of: Interconnected Traditions: Semitic Languages, Literatures, Cultures—A Festschrift for Geoffrey Khan: Volume 1: Hebrew and the Wider Semitic World(pp. 491–528)
The article examines the historical development and historiography of alphabetical order and alphabetical thinking from antiquity to the medieval period, focusing on its usage in the eastern Mediterranean, the Near East, and the Islamicate world. It challenges the Eurocentric perspective that alphabetical order was unused or insignificant during the first millennium ce. The study highlights early evidence of alphabetical systems, such as abecedaries, acrostics, and numerological calculations, demonstrating their presence in ancient Israel, Ugarit, and South Arabia. It discusses the metalinguistic use of alphabets for organisational purposes in texts, lexicons, and libraries, with special attention to the advanced application of alphabetical order in the Arabic and Jewish traditions. The findings suggest that the rediscovery and adoption of alphabetical organisation in medieval Europe were influenced by the intellectual and textual practices of the Semitic and eastern worlds.

Contributors

Aaron J. Koller

(author)
Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Yeshiva University

Aaron J. Koller (PhD, Yeshiva University) is professor of Near Eastern Studies at Yeshiva University, where he studies Semitic languages. He is the author of Unbinding Isaac: The Significance of the Akedah for Modern Jewish Thought (JPS/University of Nebraska Press, 2020) and Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2014), among other books, and the editor of five more. Aaron has served as a visiting professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and held research fellowships at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research and the Hartman Institute. In 2022-2023 he was a Bye-Fellow at Cambridge University and a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford.