Although the earliest surviving Greek inscriptions written in an alphabet date from the eighth century B  C  , a strong case can be made that <b> the Greeks actually adopted alphabetic writing at least two centuries earlier </b>  Significantly, the text of these earliest surviving Greek inscriptions sometimes runs from right to left and sometimes from left to right  Now, the Greeks learned alphabetic writing from the Phoenicians, and in the process <b> they would surely have adopted whatever convention the Phoenicians were then using with respect to the direction of writing </b>  Originally, Phoenician writing ran in either direction, but by the eighth century B  C
it had been consistently written from right to left for about two centuries
The first is the position that the argument seeks to establish; the second presents an assumption on which the argument relies.