Joel M. Hoffman, PhD

Hebrew as a language is just over 3,000 years old and the story of its alphabet is unique among the languages of the world. Hebrew set the stage for almost every modern alphabet, and was the first written language simple enough for everyone, not just scribes, to learn, making it possible to make a written record available to the masses for the first time.

Written language has existed for so many years — since around 3500 BC — that most of us take it for granted. But as Hoffman reveals in this informative work, even the idea that speech can be divided into units called "words" and that these words can be represented with marks on a page had to be discovered. Almost every modern system of writing descends from Hebrew; by studying the history of this language, we can learn a good deal about how we express ourselves today.