Nadene Goldfoot
Moses would have written in Proto-Sinaitic (an early linear alphabetic script), Hieratic (the cursive Egyptian script), or Akkadian cuneiform on leather scrolls or stone tablets. Raised in the Egyptian royal court, he was trained in official Egyptian administration, while his leadership of the Israelites utilized early West Semitic alphabetic characters. Proto-Sinaitic is an early linear alphabetic script consisting of pictographic signs carved on rocks, stone panels, and statuettes. Developed around 1900 to 1700 BCE by Semitic-speaking workers at turquoise and copper mines in Serabit el-Khadim, Sinai, it adapted Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols into a simple consonantal alphabet.
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The Syriac language is a dialect of Aramaic that once served as an intellectual and spiritual conduit across the ancient Near East. Syriac holds a pivotal place in the early Christian languages, standing tall alongside Greek and Latin as one of the three most important theological and literary languages of the Christian faith.
To understand Syriac, we must go back to its linguistic roots. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic, a Semitic language that stretches back centuries. Aramaic itself was once the lingua franca of vast empires, from the Assyrians and Babylonians to the Achaemenid Persians. It was the language spoken in Israel in 70 CE and many of the concepts found spoken by Early Christians have their New Testament Aramaic origins. Aramaic is an ancient Semitic language that includes Imperial Aramaic, Syriac, and Western Neo-Aramaic. It originated over 3,000 years ago and served as the common language of the ancient Middle East .Both Syriac and Aramaic were written in horizontal lines from right to left. They belong to the Semitic family of scripts, which traditionally use right-to-left abjads. Cursive forms: Syriac is a connected script where most letters link together in a word, though some final letters do not connect to the next one on the left. Consonantal alphabets: Both systems primarily represent consonants, with vowels indicated by reader familiarity or optional diacritic marks added later. Aramaic was used as a major spoken and administrative language from around 1000 BCE to 700 CE, while Syriac emerged as a prominent regional dialect and literary language from the 1st century AD through the Middle Ages, continuing today primarily in liturgical use.
These include the Assyrians and Babylonians, who permanently replaced their Akkadian language and its cuneiform script with Aramaic and its script, and among Jews, but not Samaritans, who adopted the Aramaic language as their vernacular and started using the Aramaic alphabet even for writing Hebrew,
displacing the former Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. The modern Hebrew alphabet derives from the Aramaic alphabet, in contrast to the modern Samaritan alphabet, which derives from Paleo-Hebrew. Below is Samaritan alphabet
The Syriac language history is intrinsically linked to the city of Edessa (modern-day Urfa in Turkey), which became a crucial center of Aramaic culture and learning. It was here, around the 1st century AD, that a distinctive script for Aramaic began to emerge, eventually evolving into the elegant Syriac script we recognize today. This script, along with a rich literary tradition, helped solidify Syriac's identity and pave the way for its incredible influence.
The early Christian communities, particularly in the regions of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Persia, embraced Syriac with fervor. It became the language of their scriptures, their liturgies, and their theological discourse. This is precisely the role Syriac played, offering a direct linguistic window into the original thought-world of the early Christians. It served as the primary cultural and trade language of Mesopotamia and Edessa, and it allowed local believers to build an independent faith identity away from Roman Greek influence. The significance of Syriac as an early Christian language cannot be overstated.
While Greek served as the primary language for the New Testament canon and the philosophical development of early Christian theology in the Roman Empire.
Modern Greek is written left to right. However, the way the Greeks wrote changed over many years in the ancient past. How Writing Direction Changed Over Time: Right to Left: The earliest Greek texts (around 800 BCE) went from right to left, just like the Phoenician alphabet it was based on. Back and Forth (Boustrophedon): Later, the Greeks used a style called boustrophedon, which means "turning like an ox" when plowing a field. One line went left to right, the next line went right to left, and the letters flipped backward to match. Left to Right: By the 5th century BCE, writing completely stabilized to a standard left-to-right direction used today.
Latin became the liturgical and legal language of the Western Church, Syriac thrived as the foundational language of Eastern Christianity. Its communities produced an astonishing wealth of literature: biblical translations, commentaries, theological treatises, hymns, hagiographies, and historical chronicles.Latin was written left to right. However, in very ancient times (the Old Latin period before the 3rd century BC), it was sometimes also written from right to left or in a alternating style called boustrophedon (where lines alternate direction like a plowing ox) like old Greek. Writing with ink and a pen from left to right prevents a right-handed writer from smudging the wet words.
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