The verb υφαινω (uphaino) means to weave or rather web-make or network. It stems from the Proto-Indo-European root "web-", to weave or braid, from which come our English words web and weave, as well as the Greek noun υφη (uphe), meaning a woven thing (i.e. fine clothing), any sort of web and particularly a spider's web.

Our verb also clearly reminds of the formally unrelated verb φαινω (phaino), to shine or appear, from φως (phos), light. This suggests that early Greek speakers may somehow have associated webs with light, and hence, over the centuries, accidentally converged these otherwise unrelated words. This didn't happen by design, of course, but by decree of the great "republic" that is the free conversation of a huge population of pre-Greek speakers. It revealed a collectively felt intuition, which nobody individually may have subscribed to but which emerged organically from the communal goings on as something that had been buried deep within, waiting to come out.

As we discuss in our article on the verb αρνεομαι (arneomai), to artificially select (i.e. to breed a domestic race), the act of weaving was the first industrial activity of early man, and preceded the Bronze Age as the true successor of the Stone Age. Weaving allowed people to make clothing and shelters from something other than the hides of slaughtered animals. And it allowed them to create designs, and hence to express personal tastes and tribal identity markers. But, as we discuss in our article on κομεω (komeo), to tend or take care of, in order to sustain a weaving industry, a whole world of social and technological sophistication had to be in place. There had to be animal husbandry, social stratification, complex social codes or even formal law, and hence government and probably even inter-tribal communications and exchange and hence long range trade (see our article on Abraham), out of which grew the "web" of trade routes, without which there would have been no Greek golden age, and later the military road system without which there would have been no Roman Empire (see our article on οδος, hodos, road).

The Age of Weaving also required a substantial technological sophistication. Weaving installations were the first actual machines, which were much more than simple tools but rather a slew of them, working together like a choir. The importance of technology in the development of modern man (and see our article on Adam) is in the Bible meditated upon in Exodus 31:1-11, where God calls Bezalel to manufacture the Ark of the Covenant, and fills him "with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship, to make artistic designs for work in gold, in silver, and in bronze, and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood, that he may work in all kinds of craftsmanship."

Because of the close association between the rise of technological complexity and the Age of Weaving, it's no surprise that our English word "technology" comes from the Proto-Indo-European root "teks-", which means to weave. From that same root also comes our word "textile" but perhaps more surprisingly, also the name of the professional craft of Jesus and Joseph, namely that of τεκτων (tekton), assembler and perhaps even "planner" of "project-manager" (and not "carpenter"). Most striking is that our root "teks-", to weave, is also the source of the word "text", which shows that writing was always recognized as a technology (specifically: information technology), which is the kind of thing that allows a great many narrative strands, concerns, legends and records to be "woven" into a single tapestry upon which an entire culture stands (hence stories like that of king Solomon's gigantic magic carpet, the wine-colored rug in The Great Gatsby, and hence the rug that tied the room together in The Big Lebowski).

Subsequently, every reference to any sort of textile or woven things in the Bible is also a subliminal reference to texts and sorts of script: from Moses' wicker-basket among the "papyri" of Egypt's river Nile (or אור, 'or, meaning "light") to the great sheet envisioned by Peter (Acts 10:11). See our article on μεμβρανα (membrana), for more on Biblical wordplay that uses the various materials on which people wrote, and which were commonly associated with particular languages and cultures.

Contrary to what is commonly believed, the Bible is mostly about the development of writing, as it emerged from the completion of language, and specifically the Hebrew language, which culminated in the completion of the alphabet, from the proto-alphabet as it emerged from Egyptian hieroglyphs, to the popular Phoenician abjad, and ultimately the Hebrew alphabet (hence the temple of YHWH, built as a joint venture between Solomon and Hiram or Tyre), which sported vowel notation as its most significant contribution, and which allowed any common person to learn to manage data, which until then had been the exclusive purview of elite priestly families (Exodus 19:6).

The alphabet was a technological masterpiece, which took the world by storm, liberated hearts and minds, and taught the peoples of the world to manage complex and abstract ideas, which in turn allowed modern humanity to emerge (Psalm 16:10).

The Hebrew language was not willfully manufactured and neither did it accidentally come about. Instead, the interactions of humanity became so efficient that a common global language emerged like salt that crystalized from water, or a single beehive from the business of many bees, and reflected natural law the way a quantum impact pattern reflects the qualities of a single quantum. The Hebrew language is the high water mark of that. It's to consciousness what DNA is to the body, and both are as natural and native to creation as the Standard Model of Elementary Particles and the Period Table of Elements.

Hebrew was discovered, sort of like math, and it compares to no other language on earth. In fact, and rather to the contrary, all other languages derive their soul and consistency from a single Hebrew core that sits within all of them, like living water that sits deep beneath all earth. Abraham was the first to be called Hebrew (Genesis 14:13), and to him the Word of YHWH first appeared (Genesis 15:1). But this was not because God started speaking.

Everything that has come into being did so because God spoke it into being, which is why the Hebrew word for thing (namely דבר, dabar, thing) is also the word for word (i.e. דבר, dabar, word, from the verb דבר, dabar, to speak). It's also why we don't live merely on bread (that's one thing), but on every other thing that's been spoken into existence by God (Matthew 4:4). The words of things were made before the things, so that words do not represent things but rather things represents words. The fabric of "heaven" mentioned in Genesis 1:1 is words: it's a realm of pure meaning and consciousness, that exists before any matter or energy. The "earth" mentioned in Genesis 1:1 is anything physical, anything from the deepest ocean to the clouds in the sky and the stars in outer space, for which there is a Hebrew word in heaven.

Hebrew is more fundamental than anything else, and was with God in the beginning, before there was anything besides God (John 1:1), or before there were individual words. How the One became Many has been considered since deep antiquity, and appears to have been accomplished by so-called breaches in symmetry — and this has produced vast and magnificent mystic schools: see our articles on σμαραγδινος (smaragdinos), and μεμβρανα (membrana), parchment. But essentially, God first created Hebrew words, and then spoke the world into being by pronouncing those words. In Abraham, the first true scientist, humanity had become transparent enough for that very language of creation to become apparent. Abraham and his house are celebrated because they began to willfully and consciously adapt the proto-Hebrew language that they left Babylon with into a form that crept ever closer toward the language of nature, which spoke to them from their deepest hearts (Deuteronomy 30:14).

Since God is One, divinity is unity, which is why God is love. And it is also why Hebrew is One, and eternal, and any human creation that can also be expressed in Hebrew is equally eternal (1 Corinthians 3:13). Everything else, everything for which there is no Hebrew word, will disappear, and will be is as if it never was. Creation is essentially a big dictionary with the names of all eternal things listed in it (Romans 1:20). And that includes names of eternal animals and people (Psalm 69:28, Philippians 4:3, Revelation 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:12-15, 21:27, 22:19).

People used to have very little access to Hebrew, and only knew about it indirectly from the Gospel, which told of strange people from another time and in another land. But today we have the Internet, and anybody can learn to master this miracle entirely for free (see Zephaniah 3:9). This is obviously utterly joyful since many people from all over the world have joined the ever waxing community of Hebrew speakers. But it's also a very clear sign that the end is near, and this sudden flood of Hebrew speakers is the final trust before the utter end (Revelation 20:9). Quite contrary to the familiar saying: there's not always a tomorrow.

Webs are things that consist of many nodes and strands that are brought together so that they cooperate and create something much greater than the sum of any of the individual nodes and strands. This principle of many little impulses that bring about a much greater unified effect is subsequently a cardinal principle of the Bible, and occurs everywhere. An obvious example is the word Torah, which comes from the verb ירה (yara), which means precisely that: to bring about of a unified effect by means of many little impulses (many drops of rain, many arrows, many kernels of sand, many stars in the sky). Less obvious, perhaps, is the way many little brooks bring forth one massive unified river (see our article on Tigris). Psalm 137:1 declares: "By the streams of Babylon, where we sat down, there we wept, as we remembered Zion", and uses for "stream" a word derived from the verb נהר (nahar), which both means to stream (what water does), and to shine (what a star does). That same noun is used in Psalm 93:3, which reads: "The streams have lifted up YHWH", where YHWH is not simply the abstract name of God but closely associates with the Word and hence the Hebrew language. The eternal Torah, which emerged upon the human stage over time during the centuries (Judges 5:11), was written down in its final form in Babylon.

In the classics, our verb υφαινω (uphaino), to weave, carries a strong double meaning of to contrive some cunning and complex plan. In the Odyssey, most famously, this double meaning provides a primary plot device, as Penelope promises to remarry when she's finished weaving a σπειρον (speiron), but deflects her suiters by weaving by day and undoing her work by night (Od.19.149). This double meaning is so strong that it can't even be said which one is the primary one, whether weaving clothes is like hatching a clever plan or rather vice versa. Our verb frequently appears with the meaning of expounding some carefully wrought scheme with few words but intricate design (Il.3.212). Not emphasized often enough: Penelope's began her weaving only after her suiters had begun to "weave" their own plan (Od.4.678). The word υφνα (uphna), a weaving or a weavery, literally means scheme or plot, with no hint to fabricating clothing (Od.4.739, Il.6.187). Our verb was also used to describe how spiders produce their webs, and everybody realized that while a spider wore her web like a splayed out robe, its primary function was to be a sticky trap for roaming flies (and remember that the name Beelzebub means Lord of the Fly).

Our verb υφαινω (uphaino), to weave, is not used in the New Testament, but from it derives: