Early Alphabet

Pretty informative piece from Chris Rollston (an epigrapher) on the early alphabet. This is a favorite subject of mine. I post it here because from time to time I run across paleobabble about “mystical meanings” that derive from the shape of the Hebrew alphabet. Hate to disabuse anyone of this (actually, I don’t mind), but the Hebrew alphabet originally looked nothing like it does today (or even as it did in the days of the Qumran scribes). The alphabet began centuries before the “mystical block script” was ever even imagined). Just because someone can “explain” how kabbalists think doesn’t mean that what kabbalists claim conforms to reality. And when it comes to letter shapes, the *best* that could be said is that the Babylonian (not Jewish) scribes who invented the “block” style of Hebrew letters we know today had some sort of esoteric thoughts in their head about them — but it’s too bad they never wrote those thoughts down.