This selective study of Bronze Age Semitic and Early Iron Age Hebrew alphabetic evidence will demonstrate that, while the view that large percentages of ancient Israelites were composing sophisticated literature is a caricature, both the earliest alphabetic West Semitic evidence and later texts bear witness to this medium of scribal activity throughout the second millennium BC. A survey will be made of the evidence and discussion for the beginnings of the alphabetic script in the late third millennium BC and its attestation in Egypt, Canaan, and beyond during the Bronze Age. Finally, a summary of discoveries in the region of the emergence of the Hebrew script will be provided. This review will argue that the linear alphabetic script was potentially available to biblical figures as early as Abram and Sarai, given their traditionally attested dates, and later continued to be found in the regions where, according to the biblical witness, the family and nation of Israel were said to have developed. It thus provided an available means for recording the faith experiences of this group and thereby for bearing witness to each successive generation and to all whom they came in contact with, as well as to others who may have had the opportunity to read or hear read the witness of texts written in the simpler and easier to read linear alphabetic script.