Ralph Abraham, Ph.D. (Mathematics)
In the archeological literature we find a certain number of anomalies, which boggle the conventional scientific mind. These are the current Great Wonders of the World. The list of usual suspects include the great pyramid of Egypt, the 60-base arithmetic of Sumer, the Mayan calendar, and the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings. To this list we must now add, thanks to Stan Tenen’s decades of meticulous research, the text of Genesis and the origin of the Torah Hebrew alphabet in a gesture language. Tenen’s brief for his thesis depends upon a broad spectrum of technical material from mathematics and mathematical physics, such as might strain the capabilities of most readers, no matter their background. It is my conviction, based on my professional background in modern geometry and topology, that his 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
Joseph P. Schultz, Ph.D. (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)
When I was first introduced to the work of Stan Tenen and the research of the Meru Foundation, I felt that his lines of inquiry would lead to path breaking insights into the true nature of Torah and the Hebrew alphabet. I have not been disappointed. The Alphabet that Changed the World is a stunning and remarkable book. In my opinion, 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 of The Alphabet that Changed the World will serve as a model for future researchers and even for non-specialists who value the growth in consciousness on our planet.
—Joseph P. Schultz, Oppenstein Brothers Distinguished Professor of Judaic Studies, Emeritus; Director, Center for Religious Studies, Emeritus; University of Missouri-Kansas City
Elliot Pines, Ph.D. (Statistics)
I hold a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. In an over thirty-year career, I have held the positions of senior scientist and senior engineer in the aerospace & semiconductor industries, as well as spending two years in a university research laboratory. My work has extended to research & development, production, and pure research, and has largely been focused on mathematical modeling, statistical characterization, and special analyses.
I have also read The Alphabet That Changed the World from cover-to-cover, carefully.
The book is eye-catching—certainly what caught my eye the first time that I saw it. It has many graphics to leaf through in the first skim, truly beautiful in the artistic, but more so the mathematical symmetry sense. This, in fact, made me suspicious about the book because while clearly it took a great deal of work to produce, appealing graphics often hide shallow or erroneous content. [The publication and distribution houses for the book are certainly very reputable, but even the best laymen can be fooled by English text and illustrations of superior quality.] However, after briefly taking a look at a few sections I was much more than pleasantly surprised; I was—how to say it—pleasantly shocked! I realized that I was holding a unique work of genius in pattern recognition, developed carefully over many years with meticulous external research to support its findings.
The findings aren’t demonstrated by a statistical method because there doesn’t seem any obvious way to do so. What the author does instead is demonstrate different facets of this pattern—forming as it were, a multidimensional weave—which is very convincing.
One should not imagine that the author claims a “Bible code” type of finding, prophetic method or, or some type of magical method. Any of these would involve some semantic (meaning) relationship across syntactically (spelling/grammar) different sections. On the contrary, the author proposes the syntax as the direct generator of the semantic. This sticks totally with the letter form symbolism itself, making no flight of abstraction/fancy into gematria/numerology whatsoever.
The author, in fact, digs down under syntax to the more primordial psychology underlying it—back to animal gesturing. [This is based on modern scientific investigations, and not a return to certain discredited 19th century notions.] The author travels this road further back into nature and mathematics itself, to certain insights into the base fundamentals of tetrahedral geometry and torus topology. The journey, as well, takes us to the kind of information-based attraction of similar forms, as most simply manifested in certain quantum mechanical phenomena as the Bose-Einstein condensate. Going back up into human language, the author shows that these matters are most obvious in the Hebrew alphabet and specifically its weaving, at least in the beginning of Genesis, with hints of a conscious awareness of such indicated in Jewish Kabbalistic sources. Nonetheless, the author shows the phenomenon’s presence in other ancient languages—specifically Arabic and Greek, with hints to some conscious awareness there too (in the Arabic example, preserved in some customs of Sufi Islam). Most interestingly, the author proffers numerous examples of how such come about in more blurred, but still present formation through the syntax psychology of even modern language—specifically such a seemingly complex composite one as English.
The entire presentation of the author in fact itself follows a weave, passing through the subliminal to external development seemingly several times at different levels. It is a logical development, yet also stream of consciousness in a sense—as though the author wants you not just to get it intellectually, but actually to sense, be part of, the ebb and flow on a very basic level.
So I close as I opened, that this is a very unique work of scholarship, to my knowledge without parallel. Whether its conclusions are ultimately true, we cannot know—but the reader will at minimum find them haunting. Obviously, I recommend The Alphabet That Changed the World in the highest terms. It changed me and some of my long-held views radically. I don’t believe that it will leave you unaffected either.
—Elliot Pines, Ph.D., former Sr. Scientist/Engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company, Raytheon Company, Telasic Communications, Inc., Boeing Satellite Center, and JPL (California Institute of Technology / NASA)
Greg Been, MBBS, BSc (Neurology)
This book offers up the astonishing hypothesis that the Hebrew letter text of the Torah (Masoretic text) contains coded instructions regarding the fundamental nature of reality and meditations to access those fundamental truths. Initially these claims might seem outlandish, but throughout the book Stan Tenen gradually builds a powerful case based on masses of incontrovertible, rational and sensible evidence. In reading this book, many of my most fundamental assumptions were shaken through the sheer force of its logic. Without exaggerating, among the many thousands of books I have read in my life, I consider it among, if not the most important book I have come across.
Edward Mahood (Open University of Great Britain)
This may be one of the most insightful, if not profound, books you ever read … if you are willing to engage it honestly and openly. Tenen has taken his time bringing his findings to the public, primarily because he wanted to be sure that what he was saying has substance. Some things are simply easy to misunderstand or misinterpret, but what he has to say in this book deserves serious consideration. By his own admission his (and all of the already identified, related) research is far from complete, there is enough certainty that he is on to something, something of great significance. At any rate, now that this first, book-length, introductory text is available, it can be hoped that a continuing discussion will ensure that will shed new light on a very old subject.
The premise of the book is rather simple: the Jews have long claimed that their alphabet is sacred, and it appears that this may in fact be the case. Though simply stated, it is difficult to understand, on many levels. What is sacred? What makes something sacred? What does it mean for other things if something is sacred? The list of questions goes on and on.
The fundamental statement of the book is rather simple as well: there is a letter-level, self-referential coding in the text of the Torah that by all appearances has been placed there deliberately. How it got there and why it was put there are questions that the book cannot and does not attempt to answer, but the fact that it is there substantiates and provides support for a number of claims about the Hebrew alphabet and the most famous text it has generated. It is here that the flood of hey-wait-a-minutes starts flowing.
Tenen takes the time to move the reader step-by-step through his process of discovery and the conclusions that he has drawn so that one can follow precisely the development of the thoughts. Everything that is stated has been checked, verified, and examined by any number of relevant subject-matter experts who agree that what he is saying is well supported. The support does not come from anyone who might have a vested interest in what he is saying being true, rather scientific, mathematic, geometric experts who would often no doubt prefer that what he is saying weren’t being said.
It is, nevertheless, not a light read, by any stretch of the imagination. It takes both time and effort to grasp what is being said, and to avoid the temptation to lose oneself in where the consequences of those statements may lead. If what Tenen is saying is correct, there may be a good number of textbooks that need to be rewritten, and this in a number of fields, not the least of which are linguistics, physics, psychology, philosophy, and theology. But, much more work has to be done before we get there. This is not a story of someone trying to say, “Hey, look at me and what I found!”, but rather “Hey, I found this, what do you think of it?” For that very reason, it is well worth every minute you might spend struggling with it.
Raymond T. Bradley, Ph.D. (Sociology)
[The following is excerpted from email.]
I finished reading The Alphabet that Changed the World last night, and must say I think your work is among the best pieces of research, in terms of creativity, originality, and intellectual/methodological rigor—let alone implications—I have ever had the honor to read…
I had delved into parts of it before, but had not made the time to read it in one sitting from cover to cover. I wish I had done that earlier, because there are so many points of interconnection between the questions we have each been pursuing and the life story of the journey… BRAVO! An utterly amazing contribution which, in time, will literally change the world…