alpha Summary and Overview
Bible Dictionaries at a Glance
alpha in Smith's Bible Dictionary
(A), the first letter of the Greek alphabet. With Omega, the last letter, it is used in the Old Testament and in the New to express the eternity of God, as including both the beginning and the end. #Re 1:8,11; 21:6; 22;13; Isa 41:4; 44:6| hence these letters became a favorite symbol of the eternal divinity of our Lord, and were used for this purpose in connection with the cross, or the monogram of Christ (i.e. the first two letters, ch and r, of Christ's name in Greek). Both Greeks and Hebrews employed the letters of the alphabet as numerals.
alpha in Schaff's Bible Dictionary
AL'PHA . See A and O.
alpha in Fausset's Bible Dictionary
(ALPHA (Α -α ), Greek): (ALEPH (א ), "chief," "guide," Hebrew.) The first letter, as OMEGA (Ω -ω ) is the last, of the Greek alphabet. So Christ is the First and the Last, including all that comes between, the Author and Finisher of the visible and invisible, and of the spiritual creations (Revelation 1:8; Revelation 21:6; Revelation 22:13; Hebrews 12:2; Isaiah 41:4; Isaiah 44:6). As He made originally, so will He complete the whole. ALPHABET comes from the first two Greek letters, Alpha (Α -α ), Beta (Β -β ) equating in Hebrew to 'Aleph (א ), Bet[h] (ב ).
The Moabite stone of Dibon, probably of the reign of Ahaziah, Ahab's son, who died 896 B.C., exhibits an alphabet so complete that at that early date it can have been no recent invention. It has been discovered as mason's marks on the foundation stones of Solomon's temple. Yet even it was not the earliest form of the Palestinian alphabet. The fine discrimination of sounds, implied in inventing an alphabet, could hardly be brought to perfection at once Rawlinson fixes the invention 15 centuries B.C.
The language of the Dibon stone, and the Hebrew of the Bible, most closely agree. Mesha's victories are recorded there in the same character, and even the same idiom, as in 2 Kings 3. In symbols of the early Christian church A and were often combined with the cross, or with Christ's monogram, e.g., on a tablet in the catacombs at Melos, of the early part of the second century. The rabbis (Jalkut Rubeni, fol. 17, 4, Sohoettgen, Hor. Heb., 1:1086) say, "Adam transgressed the whole law from Aleph (א ) to Tau (ת )" (the last Hebrew letter); so Christ fulfilled it from Alpha (Α -α ) to Omega (Ω -ω )