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At the closing of the twentieth century, near Thebes, todays Luxor in upper Egypt, Egyptologists have found limestone inscriptions that they say are the earliest known examples of alphabetic writing, in a Semitic script with Egyptian influences, has been dated to somewhere between 1900 and 1800 B.C., two or three centuries earlier than previously recognized uses of a nascent alphabet. The first experiments with alphabet thus appeared to be the work of Semitic people living deep in Egypt. Their discovery is expected to help fix the time and place for the origin of the alphabet, one of the foremost innovations of civilization.

Proto-Sinaitic:
The previously oldest evidence for an alphabet, dated about 1600 B.C., was found near or in Semitic-speaking territory, in the Sinai Peninsula and farther north in the Syria-Palestine region occupied by the ancient Canaanites. These examples, known as Proto-Sinaitic and Proto-Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions, were the basis for scholars' assuming that Semites developed the alphabet by borrowing and simplifying Egyptian hieroglyphs, but doing this in their own lands and not in Egypt itself.
Dr. Frank Cross, professor of Near Eastern languages and culture (Emeritus, Harvard University) classifies oldest alphabetic texts in two groups; proto-Sinaitic, the oldest alphabetical script, found in 24 inscriptions from Sainai. Originally it was thought that around 1700 BCE, Sinai was conquered by Egypt, and thereafter its local West-Semitic population were influenced by Egyptian culture and adopted a small number of hieroglyphic signs (about 30) to write their own language.
Proto-Sinaitic, is only part of a complete corpus of Proto-Canaanite, the first consonantal alphabet. Even a quick and cursory glance at its inventory of signs makes it very apparent of this script's Egyptian origin. Recent discoveries in Egypt itself, however, have compounded this scenario. Inscriptions dating to 1900 BCE written in what appears to be Proto-Sinaitic were found in Upper Egypt, and nearby Egyptian texts that speak of the presence of Semitic-speaking people living in Egyptian terretory. (http://www.geocities.com/ctesibos/alphabet/gpt2pnc.html)

Mother of all inscriptions?
From other, nonalphabetic writing at the recent Theban discovery site, the Egyptologists determined that the inscriptions were made during Egypt's Middle Kingdom in the first two centuries of the second millennium B.C. And another discovery in June by the Darnells seemed to establish the presence of Semitic people at the wadi at the time of the inscriptions. South Arabian was also an early offshoot of Proto-Sinaitic, as its letters are very different in shape and order from Phoenician. used primarily in the Sabaean and Minaean kingoms in the Southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. It is thought to have diverged from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet as early as 1300 BCE, and a developing form appeared in Babylonia and near Elath of the Gulf of Aqaba around the 8th/7th centuries BCE. The South Arabian proper appears around 500 BCE, and continued to be used until around 600 CE (at which time, of course, the entire Arabian Peninsula was converted to Islam and Arabic became the most important language
Surveying a few hundred yards from the site, the Darnells found an inscription in nonalphabetic Egyptian that started with the name of a certain Bebi, who called himself "general of the Asiatics." This was a term used for nearly all foreigners, most of whom were Semites, and many of them served as mercenary soldiers for Egyptian rulers at a time of raging civil strife or came as miners and merchants. Another reference to Bebi has been found in papyrus records.
[Discovery of Egyptian Inscriptions ..., [By John N. Wilford]

Egyptian glyphs into Canaanite scripts:
No matter where and when the adoption of Egyptian signs onto a Semitic language occurred, the process of adoption is quite interesting. Egyptian hieroglyphs already have phonetic signs (in addition to logograms), but the Sinaitic people did not adopt these phonetic signs. Instead, they randomly chose pictorial Egyptian glyphs (like ox-head, house, etc), where each sign stood for a consonant. How did they decide which sign get which consonant? A sign is a picture of an object, and the first consonant of the word for this object becomes the sound the sign represents. In short, this is called the acrophonic principle. About 3700 years ago, West Semitic-speaking people of the Sinai became workers or slaves under the sway of Egyptian rule. The Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols these Semitic speakers saw made an impression on them, and encouraged the adoption of a limited number of hieroglyphics to write down sounds in their language. Because phonetic Egyptian hieroglyphs only recorded the consonants, and not the vowels, the Sinaitic script also adopted this convention. On the other hand, unlike hieroglyphs which had multi-consonant signs, the Sinaitic script only used single consonants letters. The result is a strange system whose symbols were very similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but recorded a language related to Phoenician and Hebrew. The result was Proto-Sinaitic, also known as Proto-canaanite.
[Read more, examine Script @ http://www.ancientscripts.com/protosinaitic.html]

Proto-Sinaitic/Canaanite to Phoenician:
Proto-Sinaitic, also known as Proto-Canaanite, was the first consonantal alphabet. Even a quick and cursory glance at its inventory of signs makes it very apparent of this script's Egyptian origin. Originally it was thought that at round 1700 BCE, Sinai was conquered by Egypt, and the local West-Semitic population were influenced by Egyptian culture and adopted a small number of hieroglyphic signs (about 30) to write their own language. However, recent discoveries in Egypt itself have compounded this scenario. Inscriptions dating to 1900 BCE written in what appears to be Proto-Sinaitic were found in Upper Egypt, and nearby Egyptian texts speak of the presence of Semitic-speaking people living in Egypt. By about 1100 BC, the North Semitic alphabet had settled down into a form known as Phoenician, because it was used by the Phoenicians, the great Semitic traders who lived in the land to the east of the Mediterranean, todays Lebanon. The Phoenician alphabet could have evolved from the more natural sytle of Proto-Sinaitic into a more linear form during about the 12th century BC. Most of the alphabets known today are descended from Phoenician. The immediate offspring of Phoenician were the old Hebrew alphabet, and Aramaic, as well as Archaic Greek.

The Invention of the Alphabet:
In his classic textbook, The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible, Brill, 1998, the eminent scholar Julio Barrera, narrates how Greece adopted the Phoenician script in 1100 BC, quoting Cross and Bernal. He starts the Alphabet story by Sir Alan Gardiner, the great Egyptyologist(& Bernal's grandfather) who was able to show that proto-Siaitic scripts are part of a complete Alphabet corpus.
"The standard scholarly position on Egypt and the Greeks goes as follows: The Greeks had great respect for Egyptian culture, which was (far) older than theirs, and they observed parallels in their religion and thought to what they found in Egypt. So they supposed that they had borrowed from the Egyptians. However, in the twentyth century we can show with the analytical tools of scholarship (above all, source criticism and documentary material such as inscriptions, coins and papyri) that they were wrong. I subscribe to this position, but we have to admit that it cannot be promulgated as proven fact."
- Glen Bowersock

What may be the oldest known Hebrew text, found on a hilltop above the valley where David is said to have battled Goliath, could lend historical support to some Bible stories, archaeologists say.

The 3,000-year-old pottery shard with five lines of text was found during excavations of the Elah Fortress, the oldest known biblical-period fortress, which dates to the tenth century B.C.

Science News Blog Cite Save Email Print Share Most Ancient Hebrew Biblical Inscription Deciphered, Scholar Says
ScienceDaily (Jan. 8, 2010) — A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. Professor Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription on a pottery shard discovered in the Elah valley dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing.


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See Also:
Fossils & Ruins
•Cultures
•Anthropology
•Fossils
•Ancient Civilizations
•Origin of Life
•Human Evolution
Reference
•Dead Sea scrolls
•Amarna letters
•Rosetta Stone
•Homo erectus
The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time.

Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa who deciphered the inscription: "It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the 10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research."

A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time.

Yahwist source, abbreviated as J, (labeled J after the German transliteration of YHWH), an early source that provides a strand of the Pentateuchal narrative. The basis for identifying a strand of the Pentateuch as the writing of the Yawhist—the Yahwist strands being specifically, Genesis 2–11, 12–16, 18–22, 24–34, 38, and 49; Exodus 1–24, 32, and 34; Numbers 11–12, 14, and 20–25; and Judges 1—is not only the use of the name Yahweh for God. The identification is also based upon the use of Yahweh in association with other indications. For example, in the Yahwist source, the name given to Moses’s father is Reuel, the mountain is always named as Sinai, and the Palestinians are referred to as Canaanites. In the source known as E in which God is called Elohim, Moses’s father-in-law is Jethro, the mountain is called Horeb, and the Palestinians are called Amorites. The Jahwist, also referred to as the Jehovist, Yahwist, or simply as J, is one of the "sources" of the Torah.[1] It gets its name from the fact that it characteristically uses the term Yahweh (more accurately, YHWH) for God in the book of Genesis.[2] In most English Bibles it is replaced with "the LORD", or sometimes "GOD", but in fact it is simply God's name.[3]

In the first half of the 20th century it was believed that the Yahwist could be dated to c.950 BCE,[4] but later study has demonstrated that J can not be earlier than the 7th century.[5] Current theories place it in the exilic and/or post-exilic period (6th-5th centuries BCE),[6] but the date and even the existence of J are currently the subject of vigorous discussion.[7]

Literacy was always important to Israel. As I said earlier in a previous post, the Jews were to write the laws on such things as their door frames to keep the ways of God in mind. When Gideon was chasing the Midianite kings, he took hold of a Jewish lad and had him write down the names of 77 prominent people of Succoth (Judges 8:14). This would make sense to no one unless childhood education was the norm for the Jewish family

A text dating to cir. 1200 BCE was found in Izebet Sartah evidently written by two students. The last line contains all the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.[1] Moreover, another archeological find of an ancient Jewish calendar, which some interpret to prove widespread Jewish literacy was found dating to the 10 century BCE in Gezer.[2] Josephus also wrote of how education of children was held in high regard by his people:

“Our principal care of all is this, to educate our children well.” (Against Apion I, section 12)

“The greatest part of mankind are so far from living according to their own laws, that they hardly know them… but for our people, if anybody but asks any one of them about our laws, he will more readily tell them all than he will tell his own name, and this in consequence of our having learned them immediately as soon as ever we became sensible of anything, and of our having them as if engraven on our souls.” (Against Apion II, section 19)

The stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (5 BCE-65 CE), although showing an anti-Semitic bias, also lends credence to what Josephus claimed:

“Meanwhile the customs of this accursed race have gained such influence that they are now received throughout the world. The vanquished have given laws to their victors… The Jews, however, are aware of the origin and meaning of their rites. The greater part of the people (Gentiles) go through a ritual not knowing why they do so.” (Seneca, De Superstitione – emphasis mine).

The problem is none of this fits our modern point of view. Much of what is appreciated today as a proper education was not appreciated in antiquity among the élite. For example,

“What race of men would you call more wretched than traders and shippers? They sail about seeking markets, ill-supplied, dealing with local agents and petty retailers, borrowing at unholy rates and risking their heads.”[3]

Again:

“I’ll teach him a trade—a barber’s or auctioneer’s or indeed a lawyer’s, for that’s what the devil alone can take away from him.”[4]

Often (but not entirely so) medical doctors, like Luke of the Gospel, were slaves, hardly a part of the élite of their culture. Nearly all Roman households had slaves. A typical middle class household had about eight or more. The upper-classes had hundreds, sometimes a thousand or more. Caesar had no less than twenty thousand salves. Who were they and what did they do? To be sure some handled the least favored menial tasks of their masters, but often the slaves were trusted stewards, scribes, musicians, geometricians, managers of farms and estates, masters of ships, accountants, and bankers. Literacy was a necessity for these trades........................

The Oldest-Known Fragments of the Bible
A Silver Amulet
In 1979 two small rolled pieces of silver were discovered in a burial cave in Jerusalem, Israel. When the little scrolls were carefully unrolled, researchers found words from the Book of Numbers inscribed into the silver, written in characters from an ancient Hebrew script.

The scrolls contain the text of the Priestly Benediction, which appears in Chapter 6 of Numbers, and which is still recited today by Jews in synagogue prayer throughout the world.


The dating of the silver scrolls is based on new laboratory techniques. The results were very recently published in a scientific journal in the United States. Tests carried out in NASA laboratories confirm that these words were written around 600 B.C.E., in the days when Solomon's Temple still stood on the Jerusalem mountain.

"Archaeologist Gabi Barkai of Bar Ilan University, who discovered the amulets during a salvage excavation on the slopes overlooking the Hinnom Valley in Jerusalem, said that additional fragments of texts on the amulets have been deciphered and one identified as a verse from the book of Deuteronomy."


Jewish tradition tells us that the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomony) was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. But, scholars have debated the origins of these writings, proposing that it is instead made up of separate strands of religious writings woven together sometime after the Second Temple was destroyed in 587 B.C.E. One of these sources, they hypothesize, was written by Priests long after the Jews returned from Babylon - in the time of the Second Temple.

The silver scrolls contain words from the Book of Numbers and possibly from the Book of Deuteronomy - all on material that is older than the destruction of the First Temple!!

The dating of these tiny silver scrolls may send scholars and skeptics 'back to the Bible'. It may also help silence those who have tried to revise history, and who would like to be able to say Israel had no First Temple in Jerusalem.

While developing an idea for a lecture program, I conducted a series of surveys over a period of two years, asking people to list the fundamental values and principles which they felt we needed to uphold in order to make our world as perfect as is humanly possible. In total, some 1,500 individuals were questioned. Overwhelmingly, my respondents -- predominantly Westerners, from the United States, Canada, South America, England, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, etc -- came up with remarkably similar answers, which could be grouped into these six categories:

1.Respect for Human Life. In a perfect world, all people would be guaranteed certain basic human rights, paramount among which must be the right to life. They should be able to live that life without constant fear of its loss and with certain basic dignity.
2.Peace and Harmony. On all levels -- whether communal or global -- people and nations should co-exist in peace and harmony with respect for each other.
3.Justice and Equality. All people, regardless of race, sex, or social status should be treated equally and fairly in the eyes of the law.
4.Education. Everyone should receive a basic education that would guarantee functional literacy within society.
5.Family. A strong, stable family structure needs to exist to serve as the moral foundation for society and as the most important institution for socializing/educating children.
6.Social Responsibility. On an individual, community, national and global level, people must take responsibility for the world. This should include an organized social network to address basic concerns such as disease, poverty, famine, crime, drug-related problems, as well as environmental and animal protection issues.
The respondents to my survey came from all walks of life, yet regardless of their backgrounds, they were in agreement. Indeed, they, and I venture to say most human beings the world over, deeply believe that a perfect world must include these universal values.

The question is: Why?

Are these six basic ideas intrinsic to human nature? Have people always felt this way? And if not, where did we get these values? What is the source of this utopian world vision?

My search for answers to these questions has produced this book. Where did the values and principles of the modern world come from? The answer I found will surprise, perhaps even shock, the reader.

As the respondents to my survey were predominantly residents of democratic countries, they naturally assumed that the values they hold dear have originated -- as did democracy -- with the Greeks and, to a lesser extent, with disseminators of Hellenistic, i.e. Greek ideas, the Romans.

Indeed, this issue is subject to much debate in academic circles these days. Traditionalists continue to insist that the values of ancient Greece and Rome underlie all our learning, philosophy, art, and ethics, while their opponents accuse them that their idealization of Greco-Roman standards of virtue, wisdom, and beauty is sentimental if not downright unreal..........................................