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Re: orion Phoenicians & Greeks
There are some slight indications that the Jews and Samaritans also
claimed to have originated the alphabet. In the book of Jubilees, Hebrew is
the language of angels, spoken in the garden of Eden; angelic [largely
calendrical/astrological] lore was revealed to Enoch (by implication in
Hebrew) -- Enoch is said to have been the first to learn writing (Jub. 4:17),
and the unspoken implication is that this writing was in Hebrew letters. The
theme of the transmission of the art of writing recurs in Jubilees, being
passed from father to son. Specific links in this chain are Enoch,
Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Cainan, Serug, Nahor, and lastly
Abraham; literacy is for the purpose of reading Chaldean books of astrological
lore in post-flood references. Most signicant is Jub. 12:25-27, where an
angel teaches Abraham to read and speak Hebrew, the lost language of creation,
so that he could read the books of ancient angelic [astrological] wisdom from
before the flood.
In the brief summary of Pseudo-Eupolemus, as in Jubilees, Enoch
discovered astrology (and presumably also writing). This Enoch lore was
somehow passed down to Abraham, and Abraham transmitted his astrological lore
(and presumably also writing) to the Phoenicians and Egyptians. It is implied
that astrological knowledge (along with writing) passed from the Phoenicians
to the Greeks.
It is thus probable that both Jews and Samaritans claimed to have
originated writing, but these claims appear to have been internal
nationalistic propaganda; such claims are never repeated in classical sources,
to my knowledge, as the frequent assertion that Greek letters originated from
Phoenicia.
Russell Gmirkin