A while back, I posted about a discovery that showed that ancient Israel from the time of the Kings of Judah was more literate than many scholars believed: New Report… Ancient Israel more Literate than Expected These texts dated to ~600 BC. The actual oldest known inscription is the Khirbet Qeiyafa Inscription (11th–10th century BCE) in Ancient Hebrew. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Hebrew_writings) This is roughly the time of David. It is exciting that a well-dated inscription has been found in Israel dating from ~1400 BC. Archaeologists Find 3,450-Year-Old Alphabetic Inscription in Israel This is from the time of Moses! It is from an early date for Moses! The article reports: “The first letter can be identified as ʿayin (ע), which is based on the Egyptian hieroglyph ‘eye.’” and “The suggested reading for line two is therefore נפת, which in Hebrew means ‘honey’ or ‘nectar.’ If read from left to right — תפנ — this term could be a verb from the root פני (‘to turn’), or part of an unknown name.”
They are not saying that this is Hebrew or even Proto-Hebrew, but it is a very small step to make this an Egyptian influenced early form of Hebrew. Tim Mahoney’s Patterns of Evidence: “The Moses Controversy” explores whether or not Moses could have written the Torah. Was there an alphabetic form of Hebrew available to him? I think this finding strongly supports the case that a language was available and in use. Mahoney shows that a case can easily be made that the first alphabetic language was a form of Hebrew. This supports that. The Egyptian influence is very logical from a Biblical perspective. The more we learn about the history of the Middle East, the more credible the Biblical accounts are.
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