It has often been said that the Bible is a Hebrew book and we must learn to think like Hebrews to understand it. Unfortunately the church has been predominantly Greek for at least 1600 years. The influence of Greek philosophy, logic, and rhetoric upon Church doctrine and dogma cannot be denied.

Is it possible to reproduce a thoroughly Hebrew thought process at this late date?

The problem with turning to modern rabbis is that they are philosophically descended from the Jews who rejected Jesus. Their teaching can be expected to be biased against anything that would suggest that Jesus is the Messiah.

If the effects of these biases can be identified, is there a remnant of the early hermeneutic still contained in the modern version?

As an experiment, various teachings will be explored for that purpose and with those assumptions.

There are various Hebrew stories of how the alef-bet or the Torah came to be that personify the letters. Some even give them power of creation, supposedly justified by references to the Sefir Yetzira.

Rabbi Benjamin Blech suggests that the את consisting of the first and last letter, but left untranslated, before the heavens השמים in Ge 1:1 suggests that God created the letters before he created the heavens.

==Discerning

We must reject the personification of the letters.

We may accept that the letters were created first since when he spoke to create, he used words comprised of letters. Though we don't fully understand it, Jesus is the Word. He is the creator. He is diminished if we pass that work off to the letters.