Do you mean with regard to the alphabet? If so, that is because Hebrew is a derivative of the Phoenician alphabet, like Greek and Latin scripts. Here is an image showing examples of paleo hebrew: http://hebrewresources.com/images/AncientHebrewGesenius.jpg Arabic script is quite possibly a derivitive of the Syriac alphabet as seen here: http://www.omniglot.com/images/writing/syriac_estrangelo.gif Syriac is a dialect of aramaic, a language originally spoken by nomadic tribes which eventually became one of the primary languages of the ancient near east.