How to read like an Israelite

Ketav Ivrit

A blast from the past; how our distant Biblical ancestors (who could write) wrote. Do you think there is any value from a Jewish perspective in knowing the Proto-Semitic script today? Do/ should talmidei chachamim have at least a rudimentary proficiency in this script? Or should that be left to nebech-an-apikoires academic types?

Update: Parsha Blog points out the following:

There is a discussion of how in the Ten Commandments, engraved through and through on two tablets, the samach and mem sofit were miraculous, in that the middle portion had to have floated (Shabbat 104a and Megilla 2b-3a). How to understand the Yerushalmi that has instead "ayin and tes?" You need to know Ktav Ivri (in which these two letters are circular - the ayin looks like a samach, and the tes looks like an X inside an O, in what seems a modification of the letter tav) - to really understand this - and it is clear that Chazal knew Ktav Ivri.

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