Bro. Anthony N Wilson
Golden Harvest Lodge
Hamilton, Canada

Good day Worthy Knights

In this part 13, we have something different:  the usage of Amen and Hallelujah and the Source of the Tiber River

Amen.

Amen, in English, means it is so, or so it be, or so be it, or even so mote it be.

The English word Amen is derived from the Hebrew āmēn, which means truth or certainty when used as a noun, and verily or truly when used as an adverb.

Amen is a Hebrew word then itself derived from the Aramaic word Aman, which means to confirm or to support, or lasting, made firm, reliable, faithful, or trusty, depending upon the context.

The opinion that Amen has its roots in the Egyptian god Amun or Amun-ra, has more to do with the similarities in spelling and pronunciation than in scholarly exegesis.

Some have claimed that the Israelites picked up the Egyptian prayer to Amun-ra when they were enslaved in Egypt, and that by saying it, they were essentially committing idolatry, by invoking an Egyptian god.

But, historical evidence has pointed away from that, and both Jewish and Catholic scholars agree that the similarities between Amen and Amun are merely coincidental at best.

Certainly, the context of the Old Testament and the Pentateuch, and especially The Torah, is distinctly monotheistic, and the word Amen would not have appeared in Deuteronomy, nor be uttered by the (Judaic) priests who held so tightly to monotheism, if indeed the word came to them via Egyptian.

 Hallelujah.

In Hebrew Hallelujah is actually a two-word phrase, not a single word.

The first part, hallelu, is the second-person masculine plural imperative form of the Hebrew verb hillel – to praise.

The second part, Yah, is a shortened form of YHWH, the tetragrammaton, the unpronounceable name for the Creator, the Almighty, because the vowels are missing.

Historically, the name ceased to be pronounced in Second Temple Judaism by the third century BCE. The correct pronunciation is therefore not known for certain; however, it is sometimes rendered as Jehovah (JHVH), though modern Catholic scholarship, supported by Jewish scholarship, has settled on Yahweh (YHWH) as more academically consistent with the early Hebrew and Aramaic texts.

The Septuagint translates Yah as Kyrios (the Lord), because of the Jewish custom of replacing the sacred name with Adonai, meaning the Lord.

However, hallelujah means more than simply praise Yah, as the word hallel in Hebrew is an imperative, a command, to joyously praise God (in song).
The variant spelling, Alleluia, is derived from the Greek words of the same meaning – praise God.

Anthony.

Source of the Tiber (Wikipedia)

The source of the Tiber consists of two springs 10 meters away from each other on Mount Fumaiolo.

These springs are called “Le Vene”. The springs are in a beech forest 1,268 meters above sea level.

During the 1930s, Benito Mussolini placed an antique marble Roman column at the point where the river arises, inscribed:

QUI NASCE IL FIUME SACRO AI DESTINI DI ROMA

“Here is born the river sacred to the destinies of Rome”.

There is an eagle on the top of this column. The first miles of the Tiber run through Valtiberina before entering Umbria.