Notaricon
Notaricon
(from the Latin notarius, a short-hand writer, one who among the Romans belonged to that class of writers who abbreviated and used single letters to signify whole words) is one of the thirteen Cabalistic rules (comp. Tenmurah, s.v. Atbach), which is employed when every letter of a word is taken as an initial or abbreviation of a word. Thus, for instance, every letter of the word , the first word in Genesis, is made the initial of a word, and we obtain , In the beginning God saw that Israel would accept the law; or , Adam, is made , Adam, David, Messiah; a proof, say the Cabalists, that the soul of Adam was transmigrated into David, and David’s into the Messiah; or , Sh’ma, is made , Lift up your eyes to heaven, or , To the almighty and most high King, or , In the morning, afternoon, and evening, from which the rabbins infer that three times every day, i.e. morning, afternoon, and evening, prayers are to be performed. Sometimes very curious and ingenious combinations are derived from this system. For instance, the word , passim, used in the passage, And he made him a coat of (passim) many colors (Gen 37:3), is made to indicate the misfortunes which Joseph experienced in. being sold by his brethren to , Potiphar, Merchants (Sochrim), Ishmaelites, Midianites.
It appears that the Christian fathers sometimes made use of the same rule; as, for instance, our Lord and Savior has been called by them (a fish), because these are the initials of those Greek words , , , Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior. Thus St. Augustine tells us, in his De civitate Dei, lib. 18, c. 23, that when they were speaking about Christ, Flaccianus, a very famous man, of most ready eloquence and much learning, produced a Greek manuscript, saying that it was the prophecies of the Erythrian sibyl, in which he pointed out a certain passage that had the initial letters of the lines so arranged that those words could be read in them. Then he goes on and gives these verses, of which the initial letters yield that meaning, and says, But if you join the initial letters of those five Greek words, they will make the word , that is, fish,’ in which word Christ is mystically understood, because he was able to live, that is, to exist, without sin in the abyss of this mortality as in the depth of waters. SEE CABALA. (B. P.)