The foundations of Modern Hebrew can be found in a proto-Canaanite script which was a pictographic script, developed approximately 18^th century BCE. Sometime in the 13^th century BCE the proto-Canaanite script evolved into the Canaanite script, considered the father of Paleo Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician and Archaic Greek. Around 1100 BCE the early Greek alphabet diverged from the Canaanite script, giving rise to Modern Greek, Latin and the European languages. The two alphabets are thus closely connected: aleph, beth, gimmel in Hebrew is alpha, beta, gamma in Greek and A, B, G in the modern alphabet.

The Modern Hebrew alphabet is a branch of the Aramaic alphabets that evolved around 1300 BCE. Some scholars believe that the Brahmi script, the parent of the Tibetan, Bengali and Devanari scripts, was also a branch of Aramaic and therefore related to Hebrew. For example, the word for India -Hodu – in Hebrew, and Jew -yahud- may be related, as veda, meaning ‘knowledge’ in Sanskrit, may be related to yeda, meaning knowledge in Hebrew.