The old-Hebrew alphabet , also called paleo-Hebrew, was adopted by the Greeks around the 12th century BC. While Hebrew is written from right to left, Greek was written from left to right. For this reason, the letters were reversed in the Greek alphabet.
Over the centuries, these ancient Greek letters evolved into their modern Greek forms. Our English alphabet is Roman, and because the Romans adopted the Greek alphabet, we are able to see our own modern English alphabet in these ancient Hebrew turned Greek letters, the A, B, C, D and E.
As previously mentioned, the old Hebrew alphabet was used by all Semitic peoples including the Arameans (also called the Chaldeans), but evolved independently from the Hebrew. By the 5th century BC, the time of the Israelites captivity in Aramea (also called Babylon), it longer resembled the old Hebrew it came from and it is this Aramaic "square" script that Israel adopted during their captivity. With the Aramaic alphabet in use by the Israelites, it continued to evolve into the modern Hebrew letters we are familiar with today.
By the end of the 19th century, the translation of the Semitic alphabet was well established. The only mystery was the origin of this alphabet as mentioned in the 1922 "New Larned History for Ready Reference, Reading and Research" in its entry for the letter A. "A, the initial letter of the English and almost all other alphabets The Phoenicians called the letter "aleph" seemingly because of the resemblance of the character to the head of an ox. Although nothing is known with any degree of certainty concerning the ultimate origin of this letter." --The New Larned History for Ready Reference, Reading and Research, Pub. 1922, Page
What the editors of the "New Larned History" did not know, was that this mystery was solved just a few years earlier.
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Virtually all sources I have read agree that that paleo-Hebrew script developed from the earlier proto-Semitic script. This means that the Greek script had to have come from the later paleo-Hebrew script.
"Hebrew" is a variant of ancient Canaanite/Phoenecian. THESE people (their language, culture, and myths) were the ones who were formative influences throughout the Mediterranean.
The Judeans (like the Romans, Greeks, etc) were not scientific peoples, and wrote fantastical (and anachronistic) PSEUDO-HISTORIES, often taking credit for accomplishments for long forgotten civilizations.
There are many similarities between the Bible and Greek mythology. One of my favorites is Gen 6 which says that the "nephilim" were "heroes of Olam." Olam is the Hebrew word translated as "old," but what if it was a place name-Olam, which is very similar to Olympus.
I also believe that most Greek mythology were adaptations of Hebrew bible's contents. Example: from Samson the Greeks have Heracles etc.
Hebrew, Phoenician and the rest of the Canaanite languages were originally a single language, so these letters belong to all of them.
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Wednesday, May 25th 2011 at 1:50PM
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