The Myth of Exodus and the alphabet.

[A.R.Amistad]

A long time ago I got into an argument with a friend of mine over the origins of the alphabet. I said that the modern Western alphabet was taken from the Phoenicians, who created a universal trade language so that they could sell products to various cultures around the Mediterranean. She disagreed and said that a tablet had been found in the Sinai desert. She said "and what happened in the Sinai desert?" and I said "ummmm....sand?" and she said "No, silly, Exodus." Shes not of any Judeo-religious denomination, but I couldn't convince her that Exodus is nothing more than a biblical myth and there is no historical evidence that anything like Exodus or even the mass enslavement of Palestinian Jews by the Egyptians ever occured. I also need some help on this alphabet question. Anyone care to give their two-cents?

[Devrim]

Most archaeologists,[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#cite_note-articles.latimes.com-4) including Israel Finkelstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Finkelstein), Zahi Hawass (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zahi_Hawass),[26] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#cite_note-25) Ze'ev Herzog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze%27ev_Herzog) and William G. Dever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Dever), regard the Exodus as non-historical, at best containing a small germ of truth. In his book, The Bible Unearthed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed), Finkelstein points to the appearance of settlements in the central hill country around 1200 BC, recognized by most archaeologists as the earliest settlements of the Israelites.[6] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#cite_note-Finkelstein_1994-5) Using evidence from earlier periods, he shows a cyclical pattern to these highland settlements, corresponding to the state of the surrounding cultures. Finkelstein suggests that the local Canaanites would adapt their way of living from an agricultural lifestyle to a nomadic one and vice versa. When Egyptian rule collapsed after the invasion of the Sea Peoples (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples), the central hill country could no longer sustain a large nomadic population, so they went from nomadism to sedentism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedentism). Dever agrees with the Canaanite origin of the Israelites but allows for the possibility of a Semitic tribe coming from Egyptian servitude among the early hilltop settlers and that Moses or a Moses-like figure may have existed in Transjordan ca 1250-1200.[27] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#cite_note-26)

You could do worse than start by investigating the links to the subject on Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus

Devrim

[Forward Union]

There is no historical evidence for the exodus, she just has to accept that. but you wont win the debate on that point...

As for Linguistics, Phoenician was a north semitic language that pre-dates the Canaanites. In other words, it probably existed long before the Biblical exodus occored, but Biblical Hebrew and Phoenician are not unrelated languages. Though no one has ever believed that the Hebrew Alphabet influenced Greek or Latin.

The Latin alphabet (which we use today) is, as you may be surprised to learn, from latin. Which is itself from Ancient Greek. Ancient Greek has an even earlier forbearer called (after a quick google) Mycenaen Greek which was around 1600 BC (proven fact), a few hundred years before the most popular supposed date of the mythical exodus. Ancient Greek is a combination of Mycenaen Greek and Phoenician. Phoenician is related to, but not a development that came after Hebrew. Most people seem to think that Hebrew actually comes from Phoenician.

There's a theory that Phoenician may have come from an Indic language much further east, but anyway, you are right by all modern linguistic standards, and I just checked most of this with my friend studying Linguistics... if that's not proof enough then there's not much more you should bother saying.

So a very crude drawing might depict it like this...

? > Phoenician > Greek > Latin
---------------> Hebrew
---------------> Canaan