God gave Mankind the Alphabet
When God gave Moses the Ten Commandments on the Mountain of God in Midian aka Mt Sinai, He also gave mankind the first manageable alphabet, setting us free from the clumsey pictorial writtings available at that time. God told Abraham (Abram) in Genesis 12:3 (NI) "ALL PEOPLES ON EARTH WILL BE BLESSED THROUGH YOU". God blessed all the people of the earth by introducing the alphabet through Moses, a descendent of Abraham. If you consider any area of education you will realize how important the introduction of the alphabet is to mankind. Your Bible or Tanakh would not be possible without the alphabet. Prior to the alphabet there were some types of pictorial writing, like hieroglyphs and cuneiform, which Moses would have known, being educated in the Egyptian royal household. These old writing systems were clumsy and often involved hundreds of symbols compared to 20-30 letters in most alphabets. Although some claim there is archeological evidence at the Mountain of God in Midian, unfortunately the mountain is located in a country dominated by a hostile religion. Most of our society today does not appear to be in favor of giving credit or bringing honor to the one true God and no evidence will convince them.. The only evidence a man or woman following God needs is found in the bible.
Back in 1987 after learning Greek the previous school year, I was on an outdoor track at school and God said to me, "Now I want you to learn My language". God helped me by His spirit to realize that He was talking about Hebrew but today I understand more fully why God called it "My language". In the Hebrew text we used in school, I saw the association between the Hebrew letters and Greek and even English but I didn't realize then, that Hebrew was the first alphabet. Even the English word "alphabet" comes from the first 2 Greek letters "Alpha" "Beta" which come from the first 2 Hebrew letters "Aleph" "Beit". By contrast, Korean people, who trace their history back to 2333 BC, only developed their Korean alphabet in 1446 AD, enabling them to be free from the clumsy Chinese characters.
God gave Moses the 10 Commandments written by God (Exodus 32:16) in Hebrew on the Mountain of God in Midian where Moses saw the burning bush (Ex 3:1-4) and where God told Moses to return with the Israelites from Egypt (Ex 3:11-12) to "worship God". Note: Significant trivia is that the Ten Commandments were written on two stone tablets front and back that were small enough to both be carried by Moses (Exodus 32:15). Only a modern alphabet could fit the Ten Commandments on those two tablets. During the 40 days Moses spent with God on the Mountain of God is probably when Moses learned the alphabet from God and we know that during the next 40 years Moses is credited with writing the Torah or the first 5 books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Only Genesis and the first part of Exodus would have been from oral tradition or directly communicated from God. Someone else would have written the last few verses of Deuteronomy, as it records Moses death. Also during the 40 years of wandering, apparently Moses was teaching the children of Israel how to read and write. In Deuteronomy 27: 1-4 (NI), we discover that Moses and the elders of Israel commanded the people of Israel to obey all the commandments and to use large stones covered with plaster and "Write on them all the words of this law…" after they crossed the Jordan. Obviously if they told them to write the words of the Law, they knew how to read and write.
Eupolemus knew
Understanding that God originated the alphabet with the Ten Commandments, does not explain how it spread to the rest of the world. Remember the Philistines who were frequently giving the Israelites a hard time in the Bible and even ruled them (Judges 13:1) at times? They are also called Sea People as they are ancestors of the Greeks and through their conquest were possibly able to spread the alphabet to the Phoenicians and the Greeks. Although this may appear to be a logical explanation, Eupolemus, (also mentioned in 1Maccabees 8:17) a Jewish historian is the most credible source who states in 158/7 BC that Moses "first wrote the laws for the Jews and then taught the alphabet to the Jews who passed it on to the Phoenicians who passed it on to the Greeks". As men and women of God it is easy to see from scripture that God originated the first manageable alphabet when He gave the Ten Commandments to Moses.
Email to pastor@jesuscenter.net
Hearing God's Voice - Greek Miracle - We Center on Jesus - Honoring God Physically
Eye Healing Miracle * The Alphabet is from God * Family Prayer Outline * Jesus Knows the Bible and Spoke Hebrew *