Here is some on the writings, very long so copied out some.
https://enslavedbyfaith.com/analysis-of-languages-of-the-old-testament/Canaanite language and the Phoenician Influence.
The dominant local culture in Canaan between 1200 BCE to 800 BCE were the Phoenicians and their language and alphabets were used in all of Canaan. The Phoenician were ship builders, merchants and they traded with all the nations in the area as far as modern Italy.
Canaan and particularly the Phoenician city states had a very special cultural and commercial relationship with ancient Egyptians, evidence of which exist from around 2800 BCE.
The relationship covered trade in cedar and material culture, including the development of what was to become the 22 alphabets of the Canaanite/Phoenician writing.[2]
Because of the prominence of the Phoenician material culture in Canaan, a lot of research went into understanding their history and writing. These studies led to the identification and division of the Canaanite writings into two main groups: Proto-Canaanite (those writing found in Canaan) and Proto-Sinaitic (those found in Sinai desert).
The Phoenician writing emerged from these Proto Canaanite/Sinaitic writings, which themselves originated from Egyptian Hieratic script. The Egyptian Hieratic was a writing style which existed side by side with the better known hieroglyphs. It was in wide use in ancient Egyptian commercial transactions, but within Egypt and foreign their trading partners.
It was in the process of these foreign commercial transactions that the hieratic was adapted the the Canaanite language, creating the proto-Canaanite script.
The Phoenician emerged from these proto- Canaanite script and attained its most advanced form around 1050 BCE, showing sophistication and improvement from its original Proto–Canaanite/Sinaitic origin.
With its 22 letters of its alphabet in place, the Phoenician set out to leave their mark around the world. A comparison of the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabets to what was offered in later centuries as the Hebrew alphabet, show no discernable difference at all.
Due to the sometimes repressive dominance of Christianity, the historicity of the events described in the Old Testament were not challenged until 1500 years later. When that challenge started,, it became necessary for the people who claim the historicity of the Bible to look for evidence to support the claim that biblical events were historical.
The earliest challenge was on the authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament, which books the Bible and tradition claim that Moses wrote.
To sustain the claim that Moses was the author, they had to show that the ancient Israelites had some kind of writing, even a rudimentary one that Moses could have used in writing the first five books of the Bible.
The search for Hbrew language was undertaken while complerely ignoring the fact that according to the Bible the only education Moses could have received was in Egyptian writing system and that woild have been the language he would have written in and not in Hebrew.
With emerging evidence that the Bible is nothing but allegorical myth, written for theological purpose and not a historical book, the pressure was on the advocates of the historicity of the Bible to provide tangible proof showing historical validity of the stories and Moses’ authorship.
The quest to prove the Bible stories as historical book led many Christian archeologists in early 1900 CE, the most prominent being William F. Albright, to go to Palestine and Egypt looking for such proof. Their approach was simple, they assumed that the Bible was history and with time they will find proof.
Bible versus History. The Exploration to find proof.
With that mind set they were quick to offer any archeological discovery as proof of the Bible, even where it does not apply. One of such application was the Proto-Canaanite writings, many of which were found in Canaan and the Egyptian Sinai.
Those false claims ushered in the debate as to whether the Proto-Canaanite writings that evolved into the Phoenician writing/alphabets were also possibly Proto-Hebrew/Paleo-Hebrew.
The proto-Canaanite script cannot be proto- Hebrew for the simple common sense reason that if we take the Bible claim that the Israelites spent between 215-430 years in Egypt. It is unrealistic to ascribe to them scripts that were in use in Canaan at the time they were supposed to be in bondage in Egypt.
Modern archeologists propose that the emergence of Israelite identity separate from its Canaanite roots was a gradual process and took a definite form around 700 BCE.
According to the proposal, the introduction of the Yahweh cult in Canaan by the Shasu, led a group of Canaanites who fanatically embraced Yahweh worship to distance themselves from their Canaanite cultute and religions.
They fantasized of the exclusive national worship of Yahweh, even if it required the killing of other Canaanites that worshipped other Canaanite gods. This began the polemics against the dominant Canaanite deity, Baal and less so against the chief Canaanite deity El.
The religious practice of Canaan and the group that later emerged as Israelite was polytheist, and remained so, even after the story of the discovery of the Book of the Laws of Moses during the reign of Josiah by the priest Hilkaih.
The story of the discovery of the book of laws has problems with its historicity. The first major problem being that the book of laws was attributed to Moses and modern scholarly consensus based on centuries of archeological excavation is that Moses was not a historical figure and the events in his life were theological myth.
The question now becomes how can there be a discovery of a writing ascribed to someone that did not have a historical existence. The point i raised earlier of the language of Moses’ education bocomes relevant on the question of the language of the book of laws.
The only option we have, shared by many scholars is that the book of laws was a seventh century BCE creation, heralding the resurgence of Yahweh worship.
This book found by Hilkiah has been suggested by some scholars of the Deuteronomistic History school as the foundation for the book of Deuteronomy and was also the foundation around which all the first four Old Testament books were written.
The content of the book of laws is presented as new information to Josiah that he was never aware of. It is surprising that all the people of Judah including their elites and Kings forgot the 10 commandments for centuries, because the writing had been misplaced in the ‘abandoned’ temple.
Josiah’s reaction shows that he was hearing the information contained in the book for the first time, because if the story of the Exodus and the 10 commandments were part of the social myth at that time, there is no way the followers of Yahweh would not have been spreading it, by oral tradition.
There is no way Yahweh worship and its core teaching including the only laws Yahweh gave to them could have been so relegated to the point that Josiah would not have heard about it before the discovery of the book of laws. 2 Kings 22:11-14. 2 Kings 23:4-7.
As the story goes, after the book of laws was read to Josiah, he embarked on large scale religious suppression, destroying places and objects of worship of others that were not Yahweh followers as in 2 Kings 23:20, he slaughtered the High priests and burned human bones on them.
It is surprising to me that most of the writers on this topic simply refer to what Josiah did as religious reformation without acknowledging the pain and devastation caused by his religious intolerance.
The book proved to be a very effective tool in advancement of the interest of Yahweh. Some scholars have proposed that the book found was the skeletal version of the Book of Deuteronomy[img]
https://enslavedbyfaith.com/analysis-of-languages-of-the-old-testament/[/img]
