SCRIPTURE
The first mention of writing in the Bible appears on the occasion of the defeat of Amalek (Ex. 17:14). Moses had been instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and in all their ancient monuments we find writing.
Other mentions also give evidence of a very ancient use of writing. The Aztecs recorded their laws, rituals, and had a complex system of chronology. Mexican writings look like a collection of drawings.
The Chinese, who claim to have had writing since time immemorial, with innumerable genealogies, keep their records in their 80,000 characters, for which they have 214 radicals. Both the story and the book of Job are considered to be extremely ancient. There they speak not only of writing, but of a book: «Who would give me now that my words were written!
Who would give me that they were inscribed in a book; that with an iron chisel and lead they were sculpted in stone forever! (Jb. 19:23, 24). The latter refers to carving his words into a rock, and filling them with lead. Writing on stone was practiced in ancient Egypt. An example is Cleopatra’s obelisk, now in London. Notable was the discovery of the Rosetta stone.
The fact of having the same text written in Egyptian, Demotic and Greek made it possible to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The oldest written records yet discovered were found in Uruk, south of Babylon. There were found some cylindrical seals, and clay tablets written with cuneiform ideograms.
The Babylonian Semites, heirs of the Sumerian culture, adopted cuneiform writing (from “cunneus”, Latin, a type of stylus with which marks were made on wet clay tablets). Excavations carried out in Mesopotamia have brought to light countless baked clay tablets written in this way. The Tell el-Amarna tablets, numbering three hundred, show that they were also used in Egypt for diplomatic relations (see AMARNA). Other discoveries of great importance have been those of Ras Shamra in Ugarit, northern Syria (1929-1937) and those of Ebla, in Tell Mardikh (1964-1973).
In that of Ebla, tablets written with a “proto-Hebrew” alphabet prior to Abraham have been found (see ABRAHAM, last section, and CREATION). On the other hand, F. Petrie discovered, at the beginning of the century, documents written in the proto-Semitic alphabet dating back to the 15th century BC, in the Sinai Peninsula, in Serabit el Kadem. That they were in the same country where Moses received the order to write is still an extremely significant fact.
The Israelites may have originally had a system of hieroglyphics. All alphabets have been related by Gesenius to the Phoenician. It is generally claimed that the Phoenician alphabet was derived from the Egyptian hieratic. From the Phoenician the archaic Hebrew alphabet was derived, from this the Samaritan, and then the modern square Hebrew. However, this connection is questioned by others.
Dr. Poole, writing in earlier editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, said that if the Phoenician alphabet had been derived from the Egyptian one, its names would describe the original signs. On the other hand, “alef” means an ox, not an eagle; “bet”, a house, not a bird; “guimel”, a camel, not a basket. No match is found between the two. It can be noted that God Himself wrote the Ten Commandments on the stones that He gave to Moses.
In the “ten words” the entire Hebrew alphabet is found, except for the letter “tet.” Writing is such an abstract activity that no people in a state of barbarism have been known to begin any writing system without having seen samples of this wonderful art. The case of a missionary who once wrote on a piece of wood the name of a utensil that he needed, and gave it to a chief, asking him to take it to his wife is well known.
The man asked him what he had to say. He didn’t have to tell him anything: just bring him the wood. He took it, and was amazed when the missionary’s wife threw down the piece of wood, and gave him the tool. It was beyond his ability to understand that marks on a piece of wood could carry a message. It was a profound mystery to him: he hung the piece of wood around his neck, and frequently told of the wonder he had done.
But we are so familiar with the writing that we do not consider it to be anything mysterious. However, there are very deep things involved in it. Our thoughts have to be expressed in words, our words are made up of phonemes. Each of these phonemes, in the alphabetic system, is represented by one or more letters.
These bring to mind the same sound, the same word when they are quickly chained in the reading process, which brings to the mind of the reader the same thoughts that were passing through the mind of the writer. Isn’t writing a wonderful gift from God?