Biblical Hebrew Forum

[K Randolph <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Jim:

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 6:14 AM, <JimStinehart AT aol.com> wrote:

Karl:

 

You wrote:  “[T]here is absolutely no historical evidence to back it up.  None whatsoever.  That includes the claim that the ancient Hebrews didn’t have an alphabetic writing system until late, while the historical evidence points to that the ancient Hebrews brought their alphabetic system to Canaan around 1400 BC with Joshua, only later picked up by the Phoenicians.”

 

South of Lebanon and Syria, there is no significant amount of alphabetical writing attested until well into the 1^st millennium BCE, long after any historical Patriarchal Age.

Here you are wrong. Abraham and his sons and grandsons didn’t use stone or clay for their writing, rather parchment or other portable materials. Unfortunately for historians, those materials didn’t survive, so any writing from near their time is significant, and there is writing, some graffiti, that has been dated as early as the 18th century BC.

They were wandering shepherds, therefore they needed portable writing materials, of which stone and clay are not. Therefore they would not have used cuneiform. Rather they used a system better designed for pen or brush on paper or parchment. The graffiti that survive show a well developed alphabetic system, so to claim that the patriarchs were illiterate or using cuneiform cannot be made without evidence to back it up.

Karl W. Randolph.