«PROTO-CHANAANIC WRITING, the script of rock inscriptions (c. 10) discovered in the territory of Canaan (in Palestine) in the 1930s. A. Gardiner and W. Albright attribute the monuments of P. w. to the 18-13 centuries. BC e. An analysis of its characters (c. 30) showed that it has a common origin with the Proto-Sinaitic script and is also consonantal. ……….. The writing is not deciphered.»
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«The signs of ancient Canaanite writing do not have a convincing decipherment. Probably, ancient Canaanite writing was one of the experiments to create alphabetic writing. According to Maurice Dunant, the simple but indecipherable Palestinian writing system shows that during the first two-thirds of the second millennium, this country was a center of experimentation. There is a possibility of a connection of this script with the Egyptian, Cretan or Proto-Sinaitic script on the one hand and with the Phoenician alphabet on the other.»
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«It is believed that the first alphabet was invented in the Phoenician state about 3 millennia ago. However, some historians believe that such writing systems existed before, however, the Phoenician writing is the progenitor of modern alphabetic systems.»
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»The Paleo-Hebrew script, Hebrew script (Hebrew כתב עברי עתיק), Daatz script (Hebrew דַעַץ) is a consonantal script that is an offshoot of the ancient Semitic alphabet, which is identical to the Phoenician. Dating back to at least the 10th century BC. e. Used as the primary means of writing Hebrew by the Israelites, both Jews and Samaritans.»
It is worth noting that the cited Wikipedia and other articles on the origin of alphabetic writing do not take into account Jews at all as possible creators of the alphabet.
Scholars also do not consider Hebrew as a possible language of Proto-Canaanite and Sinaitic inscriptions, even as a hypothesis. Instead, vague terms like «West Semitic», «Proto-Canaanite», and «Proto-Sinaitic» languages and inscriptions are used.
But the finds of both «proto-Canaanite» and «Sinaitic» scripts were made on the territory of Israel / Palestine, on the Sinai Peninsula, and in the Nile Valley. That is, precisely in those places where the ancient Jews or their parts lived and moved.
In addition, scientists strangely ignore the evidence of the presence of Jews in the Nile Valley precisely during the period of El Amarna, that is, the monotheistic revolution in Egypt.
According to all data, including the Tanakh, the Jews were at that time and in those places where someone «conducted experiments» on the creation of both monotheistic religion and a new way of recording information and ideas accessible to all people, which was later called the «Alphabet», from its first letters «Aleph» and «Beth».
Has anti-Semitism also manifested itself in the scientific interpretation of historical data? And it was necessary to wait for the discovery of the Jewish cameo of the 13th century BC so that Dr. Stripling could bluntly call the sample of the alphabetic inscription he deciphered «Paleo-Jewish», and the language of the inscription — Hebrew, and not «Canaanite», «Western Semitic», «Sinaitic» or something else.
The mention of the god Yahu in the cameo did not leave any chance for anti-Semites to come up with another vague term to get around this unpleasant word «Jews».
As for the “experiments”, it should be noted that some of the discovered records in “proto-Canaanite” writing were made for teaching this script, for training purposes.
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“Biblical archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling, along with a group of world-renowned scholars, has deciphered what he says is the oldest Hebrew text ever found in the Holy Land, dated to around 1200 BC.
The discovery was made on Mount Ebal in Samaria, in the vicinity of Nablus (Shechem). Notably, the text also includes the holy name of God (YHVH)…
A tiny two-by-two centimeter defixio (curse tablet) was unearthed in December 2019 when Stripling, ABR excavation director and director of the Institute for Archaeological Research at Biblical Seminary in Katy, Texas, led an ABR team to wet-sieve discarded material from the excavations of Adam Zertal on Mount Eybal from 1982 to 1989…”
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«Adam Zertal grew up in Ein Shemer, a kibbutz affiliated with the Hashomer Hatzair movement. (Far left political movement — my note). Zertal was severely wounded during the Yom Kippur War.
He later told a Jerusalem Post reporter, “I spent a year in the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem and became interested in archeology. Although I claimed that the Bible was full of myths, after my recovery I decided to travel the Land on foot in search of archaeological evidence.”[2]
Zertal identified several locations he worked on as being related to places, events, and characters from the early periods of the Israelite presence in Canaan/Land of Israel.
The altar of Joshua (?). The structure on Mount Ebal is identified as an early Israelite altar.[3]»
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So, the hyper-critical approach to the Tanakh, which reeks of anti-Semitic odor, has just received a powerful blow as a result of the discoveries made by the followers of the research of the late Dr. Zertal from the University of Haifa.
Now it is established that already in the 13th century BC Jews were literate and wrote in the Hebrew language in the so-called «Paleo-Jewish» script. But some 50 years before the cameo with curses was created, Moses showed the Jews the Tablets of their Covenant (contract) with God Yahu. With that new God for the Jews, whom he borrowed from his Arabian father-in-law Jethro.
This means that at least those Jews who came with Moses from Egypt to Transjordan knew how to read what was written on the tablets. The writing that they used on the tablets was hardly different from the one used for the cameo from Mount of curses Ebal (as this mountain is called in the Bible).
Joshua bin Nun circumcised the people who joined the horde, in the center of which was the Ark with the treaty written on the stone tablets. Note that the Ark of the Covenant contained not the image of God Yahu, but the agreement of the people with God carved on stone tiles.
It is also believed that the tablet found on the Mount of Curses Eibal sealed the formal agreement that the people of Israel and the god Yahu entered into at the altar of Joshua bin Nun.
The existence of Bin-Nun, his altar, and the contract itself, which is mentioned in the Tanakh, was denied by the revolutionary hypercritical Professor Finkelstein, as usual, «due to lack of evidence.»
With his «hyper-criticism» Finkelstein belittled the meaning and significance of Zertal’s discoveries made at the excavations of Samaria in the 80s. Because of this «hyper-criticism» and lack of funding, Zertal’s research was delayed for 30 years, until the Americans from Texas «dig through the garbage» of his excavations again.
The value of new discoveries cannot be overestimated. It turned out that the ancient Jews in the 13th century BC wrote in the Paleo-Hebrew script, which was also called «Proto-Canaanite» and «Proto-Sinaitic», noting its connection with Egyptian hieroglyphic signs.
More than once it happened that people mastered a new script together with a new faith. This is confirmed by the history and the spread of Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam. This phenomenon began with Moses, his God Yahu, and the tablets of the Covenant (contract), on which the Treaty of people with God was carved in paleo-Jewish writing. The history of the spread of the alphabet together with the monotheistic religion will be rediscovered.
