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orion Phoenicians & Greeks
As the subject as come up, there is some evidence that Phoenicians (at the
very least) were aggressive in asserting their claims to primacy, as
against Greeks, as a result of their invention of the alphabet. This is
not speculation. See, for example, the discussion on p. 268 of my _The
Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos: A Commentary_ (Leiden, 1981).
Whether such an argument could or should be extended to the Jews is open
to debate, but there was real rivalry between the various nations of the
Levant (Phoenicians, Syrians and Jews, for example) which people had first
discovered the alphabet (see, e.g. my study of Philo of Byblos, pp.
232-235).
Al Baumgarten
Bar Ilan University