The Book of Books--by Linden Malki

The Bible is a truly amazing book! We are used to it, so don't realize all the really interesting things about it. We know that it has been in its current form for at least 2200 years, which is astonishing in inself, but is the result of a process that takes us back to the beginnings of history itself.

The beginnings of Hebrew go back into the early days of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, which spoke several related languages.  A real breakthrough in these civilizations was the development of the "alphabet". It is believed to have originated in Lebanon, in Byblos, by the Phoenicians, with probable borrowing of hieroglyphic characters from the Egyptians. There are ancient inscriptions (that word itself is significant) dating as far back as 2000BC that are recognizable as alphabetic. The Phoenician alphabet is pretty well developed by 1050BC, and is considered the ancestor of most alphabets, including Hebrew, Greek, Latin and their descendants.

It is amazing how many alphabetic inscriptions have been discovered in this part of the world, most of which are in ancient languages which were lost and some have been recovered. The one exception is Hebrew, which was never lost. It was in continuous use until after the second Roman conquest of 132AD, but still retained as religious and literary language. It has been recovered again as a living language in Israel. (There were some indications that Aramaic was widely used in Roman days, but the Dead Sea Scrolls had many more documents in Hebrew than Aramaic, indicating that Hebrew was still in widespread use.)

The importance of this is that the Bible has been a living document for at least 2500 years, and much of it dates earlier. One thing that is interesting is that has been talk of it being a fake, and when claims are made that incidents are described that did not happen where or when they are described. It is amazing how often it is found that the problem is the dating at this end,  but it is too easy to make pronouncements on archeological guesses. There is some fascinating work being done in Biblical and Israeli research; we should not be too fast to pronounce something "impossible."

It is incredible that we still have a readable Book that goes back to the earliest mists of history. What I find interesting is the number of people that are mentioned: if I were writing a story, I would not have made these interminable geneological lists and civil service lists--there are thousands of individuals mentionen by nam, including hundreds of women. In all the other archeological information that has been found, there are practially no women. And they are real people--they have all the personalities we would expect. There are all kinds of interesting tidbits about people--what they looked like, who their parents and/or kids were. The Bible is a treasure--there is nothing like it anywhere, even in other religious writings. It has grown from an ancient language to one that is still with us, as well as translations in the hundreds. And still, whenever we pick it up, we find something new.