BOOK ONE

ON THE ELEMENTS

d

Both the teachings of the Jews and the instructions of Christians testify that there are twenty-two Hebrew letters. We use these letters to write everything we speak in Hebrew. Jerome Saint Jerome, a fourth-century scholar and translator of the Latin Vulgate, was the primary authority for Christians studying Hebrew in the Renaissance. confirms that this is also the case for the language of the Syrians and the Chaldeans Reuchlin uses these terms to refer to Aramaic and its various dialects.. The shapes and names of these elements element: a term used by Renaissance scholars to mean the individual letters of an alphabet are recorded in the following manner.