It's generally understood that the oldest alphabet we can verify the existence of is the Phoenician alphabet, used in the Iron Age to write Semitic languages but ultimately spreading across the Mediterranean and evolving into the Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek alphabets, as well as the one you're reading right now. For some Greco-Jewish historians, however, this explanation didn't hold water, and obviously Moses, in addition to his other accomplishments, invented the alphabet and then passed his version on to the Phoenicians.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, a widely quoted fragment by the historian Eupolemus claims, "Moses was the first wise man, the first who imparted the alphabet to the Jews; the Phoenicians received it from the Jews, and the Greeks from the Phoenicians; also laws were first written by Moses for the Jews." Inventing the idea of letters is pretty big. Inventing the very concept of law is huge. That's like Dolly Parton writing "Jolene" and "I Will Always Love You" on the same day. The historian Artapanus went a step further, claiming Moses was the figure known to the Greeks as Musaeus, the teacher of the great musician Orpheus and the inventor of sailing, architecture, and philosophy. And, oh yeah, he was also the deity known to the Greeks as Hermes and the Egyptians as Thoth, the legendary figure who taught the alphabet, science, and mathematics to humankind. That's quite a claim, right there.

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