Matthew

Chapter 5:17-18

"Do not think that I came to abolish the Torah or the Prophets: I did not come to abolish but to bring spiritual abundance. 18. For truly I say to you: until the sky and the earth would pass away, not one yod or one vav could ever pass away from the Torah, until everything would come to pass. (Lk 16:17)

Teaching about the Torah

From the glossary:

Yod and Vav are the two smallest letters in the Hebrew alphabet. In Matthew 5:18 the text says "For truly I say to you: until the sky and the earth would pass away, not one yod or one vav could pass away from the Torah, until everything would come to pass." Luke 16:17 is similar but lists only the vav. We know that every Rabbi taught in the Hebrew language from the earliest days in Israel all the way up to modern times.

The Hebrew language was preserved because Scripture was in Hebrew and Hebrew was and still is the language of the synagogue. Jesus would have used the Hebrew letter yod, which was recorded in Greek using the comparable Greek letter, iota. The Hebrew letter vav has no comparable Greek letter since there is no "v" sound in Greek. Both Matthew and Luke overcame the problem with the Greek word keraia, which some say refers to decoration of the Torah manuscript, but it actually means little horn or little hook. The Hebrew word vav, the name of the letter, means hook, so this is how we know that Jesus was speaking of the letter vav. It is not likely to refer to decoration because the Dead Sea Torah scrolls, dating from the days of Jesus, show that scrolls of that era were not decorated. Besides being the two smallest letters in the Hebrew alphabet the yod and the vav are also called soft letters because under some circumstances either one can be left out of a word and the word would still be spelled correctly. So Jesus was saying that even the letters that can properly be left out of a word will not be omitted from the Torah as long as the Earth exists. We need to learn more about the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.