The Discovery of Genesis (67 page)

So that no one need guess that the vertical line in
work
represented a
person, hair
is added in an earlier character
.

The
eight
common ancestors of today’s world population are seen in the character
meaning
common to all, public
, which would surely define nicely the members of Noah’s family. The word
also carries the more colloquial meaning of
grandfather
(the husband’s father). This could well have applied to Noah himself as the grandfather of all living. A
certain person
is derived as a shortened form of
mouth, person
.

Examine another word,
division
. One may identify
eight
and
a knife
. The Chinese may have pictured the eight people as having a problem in dividing their possessions after having lived together in the ark for a year. Symbolically, the
knife
is used to do the
dividing
.