Alphabet and Internet - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > December 2002

Alphabet and Internet

What do both tell you about the Bible?

By Mary Joan Winn Leith

One of my most vivid memories comes from my first year in graduate school, when I took a class from Professor Frank Cross on the religion of ancient Israel. For the first couple of weeks, there was little discussion of religion. Instead, Cross systematically led us through the development of the Hebrew alphabet. Letter by letter, he carefully and even lovingly drew for us the shapes he knew so well, from the earliest pictograms like the bull’s head aleph to the familiar Aramaic-influenced “square” script. In response to our obvious bewilderment at why he was “wasting time” on something […]

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Endnotes

1.

See “Frank Moore Cross—An Interview, Part 3: How the Alphabet Democratized Civilization,” BR 08:06. The origins of the alphabet were also discussed by P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., et al. in a presentation on the Wadi el-Hol inscription at the 1999 Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Boston.

2.

Most recently Michael Coogan, “Literacy and the Formation of Biblical Literature,” Realia Dei: Essays in Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation in Honor of Edward F. Campbell, Jr., at His Retirement, ed. by Prescott H. Williams, Jr., et al. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), pp. 47–61.