How The First Biblical Writing Links To The Alphabet

SYNOPSIS: What are the connections between the alphabet and the Bible? Why does it matter when the alphabet was first invented? As it turns out, questions about the first Biblical writing are key issues in the debate over the reliability of the Bible that will be addressed in our next film, Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy – in theaters for three days only in March.

And the LORD said to Moses, “Write these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”

– Exodus 34:27 (ESV)

The Bible’s Link to the Alphabet

The Bible is a unique book to say the least. One unusual aspect is that it is made of many books. Something else that sets it apart is that its opening books were the first in the world to use an alphabet. This opens up all sorts of issues, ranging from challenges to the Bible’s historical credibility, to questions about the origin of the alphabet and who was responsible for creating it. Could it even be that the people of Israel invented the alphabet in the same era as the first writings of the Bible?

These are some of the themes addressed in our new film, Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy. The film will be released in over 900 theaters across America for three days only: March 14th, 16th, and 19th. Look for a sneak peek of a scene from the new film below.

As covered in our last post on investigating Moses’ authorship, the Bible in over forty places (half in the New Testament) names Moses as responsible for producing the Torah (also called the Pentateuch). The Torah consists of the first five books of the Bible.

The Bible has Moses writing from the time the Israelites came to Mount Sinai after their exodus from Egypt, to his death 40 years later. During this time he would have produced writings that became the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Moses would have been an eyewitness to the events from Exodus chapter two onward. According to chronological data in the Bible, this would have occurred in the 15th century BC (1400s BC). Yet, Moses’ ability to write the Torah is something that most mainstream scholars deny today.

Was There a Suitable Writing System for Moses?

There are many reasons why scholars are skeptical of the Bible’s claim that Moses wrote the Torah, however one reason lies at the beginning of any investigation of this question. A charge brought by some is that not only didn’t Moses write the Torah – he couldn’t have written it. This is because they think there did not yet exist any writing system, or script, at the time of the Exodus that Moses could have used to write what we see in the Bible’s first books.

This issue is absolutely critical to questions about the validity of the Bible. Obviously, if the Bible claims that Moses wrote the Torah, and he actually didn’t, that would be a major blow to the validity of the Bible. It would also call into question the authority of all the biblical authors and personalities who state that Moses wrote the accounts, laws and the covenants seen in the Torah. In the New Testament alone, Jesus (in all four Gospels), John the apostle, Luke, Philip, Peter, Stephen, Paul, James, and the writer of Hebrews all testify that Moses was the author of the early books.

This question goes far beyond whether Moses or some unnamed person was the one responsible for the text. Because scholars don’t think the Torah was written at the time of the Exodus, they believe its stories were passed down by word of mouth for generations until they were finally written down by multiple authors as much a thousand years after the events of Exodus.

The natural thinking in this view is that the oral traditions became mixed with fiction and exaggerations as the tales grew over the centuries. Therefore, they believe the historical events cannot be trusted as reliable history, especially when going back as far as the time of the Exodus.

Ancient Torah scrolls were written with a Hebrew alphabet. It turns out that the origin of the alphabet is a key factor in the controversy over whether Moses could have written the Bible’s first books.

Writing in the Ancient World

Most of us don’t give the alphabet much thought, but it is one of the most powerful inventions in history. With no alphabet there would be no Bible. But when did the alphabet emerge, and how does it compare with other writing systems in the ancient world?

The first major ancient scripts to develop are thought to have been cuneiform in Mesopotamia (the area of modern Iraq) and hieroglyphics in Egypt. These two scripts developed long before the time of Moses, but they were not suited to write the Torah.

Both cuneiform and hieroglyphics were much more complicated than the alphabet we use today. They began with about a thousand characters compared to the 26 symbols of our alphabet today.

Unlike the alphabet, hieroglyphics were ornate works of art designed for monuments. It also had symbols for whole words, parts of words (syllables), and determinatives that were not pronounced, but were visual cues for the reader that indicated what category the associated symbol belonged to (such as “city” or “people group”). They were so complicated that only the elite – scribes, priests and kings, had the time to devote the years it took to learn their full use.

In contrast, the alphabet was based entirely on the sounds that each letter stood for, making it easy to record the sounds of every word. The revolutionary invention of the alphabet suddenly made reading and writing simple and accessible to common people.

There are forms and patterns in the text of the Bible that are suited to the letters of an alphabet, but not to the symbols of hieroglyphs or cuneiform. However, one of the realizations of the investigation into the Moses Controversy, is that not only did there need a suitable writing system for Moses to produce the Torah, it also had to be simple enough for the Israelites to read what was written, as Moses commanded.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children … You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (ESV)

With a simple-to-learn yet powerful alphabet, it would have been possible to quickly teach large numbers of Israelites to read and write. With a non-alphabetic system this would have been improbable to say the least.

Did the Phoenicians Invent the Alphabet?

For the Bible’s claims to be true, an alphabet must have existed for Moses to use – preferably a Hebrew alphabet or something closely related to it. The question is, was such an alphabet available at the time of the Exodus?

For many years a popular claim in school textbooks has been that the Phoenicians invented the alphabet around 1100 BC. The first Hebrew script is thought to have developed from Phoenician a couple centuries later, around 900 BC.

If this were true, it would be a big problem for the idea of Moses writing the Torah over three centuries earlier. This is one reason why many are skeptical that he did. However, the startling fact is that leading experts in the field have long known that the earliest alphabet comes from an era before the Phoenicians, so why have textbooks not reflected this reality?

Timeline of the Phoenician Alphabet

We interviewed an expert on ancient inscriptions for the new film – Professor Christopher Rollston of George Washington University. He had this to say on the matter:

“I think what we can say, based on the evidence that we have is, the Phoenicians didn’t invent the alphabet, we certainly know that’s the case. The Phoenicians didn’t invent the alphabet. The Phoenicians, though, did standardize the early alphabetic writing system… But the alphabet itself was innovation and it was definitely Semites who invented it.”

Final Thoughts

What does this mean for Moses’ ability to write the Torah? Could the world’s oldest alphabet even have been a form of Hebrew? Bring your family, friends and neighbors for an amazing experience of discovery and Bible-affirming evidence in Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy – in theaters 3 days only, March 14th, 16th and 19th. To find a theater near you, purchase tickets and view the trailer, visit PatternsOfEvidence.com/moses. GROUP TICKETS are available for groups of 10 or more, click the “Get Tickets Now” button to see a link for Group Ticket information.

Now, Here Is a Scene from the New Film:

Stay tuned for next week’s post and a NEW sneak peek scene from Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy. Keep Thinking!

TOP PHOTO: Moses at Mount Sinai from Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy (copyright 2019, Patterns of Evidence LLC)