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  • 2 - THE BIBLICAL SCRIPTS

  • from I - LANGUAGE AND SCRIPT
  • Edited by P. R. Ackroyd, C. F. Evans
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Bible
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1970, pp 11-29

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the Biblical Scripts: Early Hebrew, Square Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic and Ethiopic. The Early Hebrew and the Phoenician alphabets were two branches from the Canaanite stem, which was a continuation of the North- Semitic. The Samaria ostraca, of the ninth or eighth century BC are the earliest documents written in Early Hebrew current or running hand. The Greek alphabet occupies in many ways a unique place in the history of writing. The numerous Greek inscriptions are of paramount importance for history; they form the subject of Greek epigraphy. The city of Antioch of Syria was one of the most important centres of early Christianity and it was there that 'the disciples were for the first time called Christians'. Coptic literature consists for the most part of translations from Greek, and includes versions of the Bible, apocrypha of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, the Martyrdoms and the Lives of the Saints, and so on.