Douglas Petrovich has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, with a major in Syro-Palestinian archaeology, and minors in both ancient Egyptian language and ancient Near Eastern religions. Petrovich is the former academic dean and professor at Novosibirsk Biblical-Theological Seminary and currently teaches Ancient Egypt at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is the author of numerous academic, peer-reviewed articles and the groundbreaking new book The World’s Oldest Alphabet: Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-consonantal Script (Carta Jerusalem, 2016).

The World’s Oldest Alphabet is divided into four sections: (1) background matters to the proto-consonantal inscriptions, (2) the inscriptions of the period of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, (3) the inscriptions of the period of Egypt’s New Kingdom, and (4) concluding thoughts. Most readers will do well to spend time in the initial section of the book. Petrovich does a phenomenal job introducing the issues and methodology of the book, including the placement of…