(This thread reminds me a little of the 'confusion of tongues', each having a different way of correlating letters, planets, signs, etc.)
That first website mentioned,
http://www.ancientscripts.com/protosinaitic.html,
is the first attempt I’ve seen to ‘fill in the holes’ of the proto-Sinaitic theory of origin (though the end result is a definite stretch): the idea that Phoenician derives from ‘proto-Sinaitic’ is, in my studied opinion, simple ignorance of the much more coherent theory developed during the course of the 19th century (and since discarded, as so much previous learning has been), which traced almost all the Phoenician letters to hieratic forms of Egyptian single-sound hieroglyphs (and some two-sound figures used to transcribe single sounds in foreign words, for example ‘recumbent lion’,
rw, for L, which Egyptian lacked) whose shapes AND sounds are a close match, unlike most of ‘proto-Sinaitic’ (a term based on flimsy evidence to start with). I have finished, corrected, and refined the 19th-century argument and do not see anything in proto-Sinaitic theory that calls it into question, though two forms it gives are correct (those for shin and tav). (One ought to consider Meroitic writing as well, another offshoot of hieroglyphs, and of course Libyan, and bronze-age ogam consaine: all these show branches and ramifications of the poetic tradition underlying letters in the first place, based on alliteration.)
And jmd, K. Barry misunderstood what Kabbalah is (not hard, since many rabbis themselves do), thinking it primarily gematria and other ‘tricks’. His work does remind us of one important point, though, which is that the numbering of letters in Hebrew is relatively late and a probable offshoot of the Greek practice. This consideration adds much weight to my argument that an earlier, more fundamental
symbolic numbering – preserved clear into the Middle Ages and beyond in Ireland and Wales – takes precedence over the later, somewhat artificial (though based on alef-bet-ical order) numbering got from copying Greeks, who were the skeptics of their age (unless we are speaking of the earlier Orphic tradition, which was revived around the time of the philosophers). Unfortunately, there is much of which Mr. Barry is unaware concerning evolution of letters (he is not alone), though I did learn a thing or two from reading him.
Finally, as to planetary correlations and exaltations and so on, I have been able to reconstruct considerably more of the original Qabbalah than the rabbis themselves (since I shun not the help of British and Irish Kelts), and even I have not been able to definitievly attribute planets to the seven doubles: signs on the Cauldron of the surroundings, yes, but planets, only imperfectly. Planetary rulership I can show the derivation of (it involves alchemy and the original,
symbolic numbering), but exaltation as yet I have not been able to explain.
I would be very interested in a good source for the actual textual history of when these ideas (exaltation, rulership, current names of signs, and so on) first crop up in the written (or inscribed) record. I have spent hours looking through astrology sections in bookstores with no real result.
[Edited to correct the mis-typed 'bold' switch around the first
symbolic.]