Given that Mesopotamian writings includes lots of commercial records and that Canaan” was on the trade route between Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, that the alphabet probably began as a short-hand for merchants of the area, it hardly seems likely that the people of the area would not be literate and numerate. IAC, my feeling is that scholarships have been betrayed by their desire to treat the Bible as not a record of history events. They can do this because writing materials are quickly perishable.
The Sumerian syllabary grew out of their use of ideographs. It is now believed that Egyptian hieroglyphics AND Shan Dynasty characters were developed by individuals who'd acquired knowledge of the earlier Sumerian work.
The Sumerian writing system was in work by 3400BCE, or 5,410 years ago! That's more than 1,000 years BEFORE Father Abraham (give or take a few). Given that "The Bible" necessarily starts there, it was probably a written document from the very first ~
I saw in looking up the dates for Abraham that some folks dispute when the various "stories" in Genesis were written (down) or "created" and date them as early as the 8th century BCE, or 2,750+/- years ago.
Anyway, the archaeological discovery reported in the lead story pretty much demonstrates that something having to do with Hebrew/Jewish religion was written down a long time ago. The various stories within Genesis are, in part, attested to having an extremely ancient origin because they are the "topics" of 7,000 year old pictoglyphs in Russia and Norway. Sumerian documents (clay tablets) clearly report trips to the far North by Sumerian nomads as far back as 6,000 years ago. That particular discovery fostered an enormous cult within the framework of the Nazi movement regarding what they thought was a demonstration of the supremacy of the Aryans. Little did they know the Sumerians, the Sa'ami and the ancient Hebrews had little to do with any Aryans!
It would be hard to believe ancient people who had access to writing did not, in fact, write down their sacred stories as soon as possible.
I'm not yet ready to defend ancient proto-Hebrew/Sumerian/Sa'ami contact circa 5000BCE, but Celiac disease, or wheat gluten intolerance has been "traced" to the Sa'ami. That particular problem means you can't safely eat wheat, barley or rye.
The earliest "Passover" rules include the prohibition of the consumption of wheat, barley or rye during the appropriate period ~ that's what "Kosher for Passover" means ~ wheat, barley and rye are, of course, acceptable under Kosher, but they may not be consumed for a period of time every year.
That's pretty much the world's most ancient still extant ceremony. It's my suspicion that the caste of Scribes introduced the prohibition when they accreted to Abraham's party.
A good argument can be made that the Sa'ami languages pre-date all Finno-Ugric languages, and actually contributed some grammatical features to Germanic and other Indo-European languages. At the same time Sa'ami is the only extant relative of any sort to ancient Sumerian, and both have features demonstrating a probable Dravidian origin (for the languages if not the people speaking them).
Finding Sa'ami stories among the cultural baggage of the Hebrews is actually not all that surprising. And finding Sumerians associated with both isn't surprising either.