INTRODUCTION
As a linguist who speak several languages and bits and pieces in over 30 language, I have quite a bit of knowledge and experience in linguistics and communications. I may also be biased since Hebrew is one of my primary languages and I absolutely love the language.
Hebrew is a member of the Semitic Language Family. But in analyzing Hebrew we must look at the spoken and written instances which actually have semi-independent journeys.
We begin with the spoken Hebrew and the origins here as discussed in the webpage entitled Hebrew Preface.
SEMITIC LANGUAGE TREE ABSTRACT FOCUSED
Following is a graphic image of the Semitic Language Family Tree from the perspective of Language Evolution. The Language Family Tree for the writing system will follow afterwards.
SEMITIC LANGUAGE TREE
I believe that the sources for creating this tree is rooted in archaeological evidence and as such is skewed. It is impossible to trace the abstract and verbal usage of language because it does not leave direct physical footprints. The Bible introduces Shem as the first born son of Noah which implies that he was around before Ham and Yafet. So it is logical that his language variation should have come first. But his clam was also very migrant in the early stages so the members of the clan were presumably speaking and using the Hebrew language before the Canaanites used their version. As the Canaanites were more static until the Conquest of Canaan they left more archaeological evidence at the outset.
SEMITIC WRITING SYSTEMS LANGUAGE TREE
From much of my recent research I am reading more and more that the writings systems began with Sumerian and Akadian Cuneiform along with Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the first phase. Furthermore some of the oldest Sumerian Cuneiform writings were found in a city called Ur or Uruk. So now we check the Bible and guess where Abraham came from It was Ur in Sumeria. Next we see that G-d commanded him to go to the Promised Land which was the Land of Canaan. And from there we know that Abraham and descendants also went to Egypt where the Egyptian Hieroglyph came from. But learning Hieroglyphics was a monumental task that require massive education. I don’t know about Abrahams curriculum vitae but we know that Joseph was second in command in Egypt and had access to anything he wanted and Moshe (Moses) also grew up in the palace of Pharoah and also had access to all the education available. Furthermore, Moshe was going to need all the writing skills possible to write the Bible. So there is a very good probability that the Hebrews were very instrumental in writing system development and they may have also provided a land based transportation path between Sumeria, Canaan, and Egypt in addition to what we know about the Phoenicians.
The Egypitan Hieroglyphs exploded to around 800 symbols and largely became untenable. So early people, very likely Hebrews in the region of Canaan through Egypt developed the early writing system by selecting around 20 or so phonetic based symbols from the Hieroglyphs and building a highly versatile unlimited phonetic based alphabet. Since the knowledge required was scarce some people suggest it might have been someone like Moshe (Moses) who had access to the unlimited education system of Egypt and the Hebrew language proficiency to build the new alphabet. Furthermore it is suggested that the Phoenician were maritime merchants who travel from place to place in the Mediterranean Sea, and happened upon the development work of the writing system, “Stole it” and disseminated it in the region among the various countries trying to achieve an alphabet and as such they had high visibility as the delivery boys but they did not invent it as suggested by the chart below.
