Did they write things in Genesis?
Little is known about the extent of literacy among the ancient Israelites and other Near Eastern societies. For the most part, only scribes, certain religious and governmental officials, and some wealthy businessmen, along with other elite persons, could read and write beyond the basics. Possibly those with lower socioeconomic standing would have had basic literary training, but the evidence is small. The invention of writing appears to have occurred in Egypt and Mesopotamia at about the same time—the late fourth millennium BC—but neither of those writing systems is alphabetic like ancient Hebrew. One must presume that some predecessor of ancient Hebrew, a Northwest Semitic language, is the language the Biblical text refers to in Ex 17:14 since the writing is to be preserved for future reference. Ancient Hebrew and most other alphabetic languages (including modern languages such as English) all derive from the same alphabet—likely a Semitic invention in the first half of the secon