3. Chapter II
Chapter II N oah ָהֲאָדָמה ִאיׁש [a man of the ground] — The fable of Saturn and Rhea born from this — Janus a herald of justice — The Sibylline oracles are fictitious — The authors of the Sibylline poems — Why the Sibyls were so named — Traditions mixed with their oracles — A specimen — The builders of the tower of Babel; the rationale and cause of its construction —
What the primeval language was — The opinion of Grotius examined — Why the holy language is called Hebrew, Gen. 10:21; Josh. 24:2, 3 — The most portentous fables of the Targumist Uzziel — Abraham called Hebrew from Eber — The time of the division of languages.
I. That Noah was ִאיׁש ָהֲאָדָמה [a man of the ground] — that is, "a man of the earth" — occupied with a humble manner of living, Scripture notes at Gen. 9:20. This befitted the wretched condition of sinners on earth, and his own in particular, since he had seen the dreadful judgments of God upon the antediluvian world. Hence the fabulists called Saturn the husband or consort of Rhea — that is, of Earth. This is the conjecture of Bochart, Sacred
Geography, Bk. I, ch. 1. Whatever later generations thought of this, it is
plain that that manner of life displeased the impious of his age. Planting a vineyard also, he ַוֵּיְׁש ְּת ִמן־ַהַּיִין [drank of the yayin] — that is, of wine — hence he was called Janus. That he was a herald of righteousness among the antediluvians, the apostle affirms, 2 Pet. 2:5. Duly discharging that office, the world which he could not heal he condemned by faith and deeds, Heb.
11:7. His preaching is commemorated in the poems called Sibylline oracles, in these and other verses:
Πάντα γὰρ οἶδενἈθάνατος σωτὴρ πανεπίσκοπος, ὃς μ' ἐκέλευσενἈγγέλλειν ὑμῖν, ἵνα μὴ φρεσὶν ἐξαπολῆσθε.
Νήψατε, τὰς κακίας ἀποκόψετε, μηδὲ βιαίως Ἀλλήλοις μάρνασθε, μιαιφόνον ἦτορ ἔχοντες
[O faithless men, smitten by a great sting of madness, the works you have committed shall not escape God.
For the immortal Saviour who oversees all knows all things — he who commanded me to announce to you that you should not perish in your minds.
Be sober, cut off your wickednesses, and do not fight violently against one another with murderous hearts, drenching the broad earth with the blood of men.]
This is the author who a little later feigns herself to be Noah's daughterin-law, and to have been with him in the ark along with her husband. But everything that circulates under the name of the Sibyls is fictitious. I wonder that any mortal was ever of so debased a credulity as to think
otherwise. Their authors not only drew very many things from the sacred Scriptures, but were Christians — and heretics. That Prisca and Maximilla, the prophetesses of Montanus, composed these centos — if women were the authors of the work — is not improbable. Only after their prophecies were made public were the mysteries of the Christian religion claimed to be derived from the Sibylline oracles. I would not deny that certain prophesying women, whom they called Sibyls — as Diodorus says, Bk. IV,
61: τὸ γὰρ ἐνθεάζειν, Σιβυλλαίνειν [for to speak by divine inspiration is Sibyllising] — lived among the nations as consultants of the gods in their more secret counsels. But that their lots and oracles were diabolical, all historical testimony teaches. Let the things which Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Cicero, Varro, Livy, Tacitus, Zosimus, and others have committed to memory — drawn from their books at various times by order of the Roman senate — be consulted: all of it savours of diabolical superstition and Hellenism. The sum of all is given by Cornelius Tacitus,
Annals XV, ch. 44: "It was the custom," he says, "to seek expiations from the gods, and the Sibylline books were consulted, from which supplication was made to Vulcan and to Ceres and Proserpine, and Juno was propitiated through matrons — first on the Capitol, then at the nearest point of the sea."
But perhaps the ancient serpent also mixed certain true things with false ones, after his manner — in order to render true things suspect and to win credence for false ones through them. Also things which by a thin report, from the tradition of the first promise and of other divine revelations, had invaded the earlier centuries of the world concerning the future kingdom of the Messiah — drawn out into pagan swamps and mingled with those prophecies — appear to have been of this kind. Such appears to be that which Marcus Tullius mentions in On Divination, Bk. II, ch. 54: "We
observe," he says, "the verses of the Sibyls, which she is said to have poured forth in a frenzy; whose interpreter was lately thought, on certain false popular report, about to say in the senate that he whom we had in truth as king ought also to be called king, if we wished to be safe. If this is in the books — for what man and what time is it? For the one who composed those things cleverly contrived that whatever happened should appear to have been foretold, by removing the definition of person and time." He is noting Lucius Cotta, a member of the college of fifteen, who at the instigation of Antony attempted to gratify the ambition of Julius Caesar — who desired to add even the name of royal power — by using the common report of those times about a greatest king to come. The same oracle is expounded in almost the same words by two of the most noted of the Roman historians: Suetonius in the Life of Vespasian, and Tacitus in the fifth book of the Histories. Suetonius calls it "an old and constant opinion."
Tacitus calls it "a persuasion from the ancient books of the priests."
Namely: Ἐξ σοῦ ἐξελεύσεται ὁ ἡγούμενος [Out of you shall come forth the ruler] — that is, the east would prevail, and the one set over Judaea would gain dominion of affairs. But these things have nothing to do with our subject.
II. Now we showed above that Noah admonished his antediluvian contemporaries of their crimes. That he did not also strive more earnestly to restrain his sons and grandsons after the flood from impiety and defection from God, it would be wicked to suspect — and both efforts were in vain.
For although he was the father of the whole new people, he could not restrain his degenerate sons from the foolish attempt to celebrate their own name by building a great tower, Gen. 11:3, 4.
III. That Noah himself and all the pious abstained from that mad enterprise of the apostates, holy Scripture clearly hints. Those who undertook that deed were ְּבֵני ָהָאָדם [bene ha-adam] — Gen. 11:5 — that is,
"sons of men." These are set against the "sons of God" — that is, the pious and God-fearing. For "sons of God" from the days of Enosh, both before and after the flood, were the pious men adhering to the Adamic theology and to the divine worship; "sons of men" were the deserters and apostates.
So the Holy Spirit here hints at the impious apostates and deserters of the church. That from this was born the gigantic fable, boys know. The tower moreover they built not to ascend into heaven. Nor is it credible that they were seized by that madness — since God prevented them from completing what they had begun, v. 6. Nor did they take in hand that deed in order to render themselves immune from another flood — for they could not be ignorant that no universal flood would occur again. Nor would they for that end have descended from the highest mountains of the whole earth into a most deep valley. But Moses expressly testifies that puffed up with pride and κενοδοξίᾳ [vainglory] they had determined among themselves to obtain a NAME and glory for themselves by that work, v. 4.
IV. Many things are disputed here and there concerning the confusion of languages, which do not belong to this place. Let us add a few words concerning the primaeval language and the rationale of the name it subsequently acquired. We said that the "sons of God" in no way joined themselves as participants in the wickedness of tower-building. With them, therefore, and their posterity, the use of the primaeval language remained.
That this language was the Hebrew — which was afterwards so called — the learned almost universally agree. The distinguished Bochart rightly says, Sacred Geography, Bk. I, ch. 10: "The languages of others being
confused, these" — that is, the pious participants in the covenant — "retained their own — that is, that most ancient one which was called
Hebrew from Eber, because it remained safe and sound among the posterity of Eber." So far as I know, among more recent writers Grotius alone is of a different opinion, Annotations on Gen. 11:1, "The earth was of one language." "The Hebrews," he says, "call that language their own; the Syrians call it theirs." This is right — the Hebrews say so, and consistently.
So the Targum of Jonathan: ְּבִליָׁשן קֹוְד ָׁשא ֲהוֹו ְמ ַמְּלִלין ְּדִא ְתְּבִרי ֵּביּה ָעְלָמא ִמן ׁשּוָרָיא
[They spoke in the holy language in which the world was created from the beginning]. The Jerusalem Targum has the same words. Rabbi Solomon
Jarchi on the passage: "One language is the holy tongue." So also Aben Ezra, and all the ancient Christians except Theodoret. "But the Syrians think it was their language," says Grotius. This is also true. The Maronites are of this opinion, after Theodoret. That they think so absurdly is too plainly established. That the Syriac language derives its origin from the Hebrew — not the Hebrew from the Syriac — is acknowledged by all who have any understanding of their analogy. The purity and simplicity of the Hebrew language proclaim it. "The Maronite Syrians," says Joseph
Scaliger, Letter to Richard Thomson, "contend with every pledge that Syriac is more ancient than Hebrew — which is the height of ignorance; for it is the same as if one said the Italian idiom was more ancient than Latin.
For certainly ְֶמֶל [melek] is prior to ַמְלָּכא [malka], and many other things we can adduce to refute this obstinacy." "But the Hebrew language," says
Grotius, "is the language of ִעְבִרים [iverim] — of sojourners from Chaldaea.
For this is the origin of the name 'Hebrews,' not from Eber. See Josh. 24:2, 3. The Hebrew language of Abraham and his posterity therefore, through
their dwelling in Canaan, ever more and more drew close to the Canaanite language." This he said, οὐδὲν ἠγνίς [having concealed nothing].
V. I confess that that account of the ὀνομαστοθεσίας [notable institution] — namely, of 'Hebrew' and 'Hebrews' — has pleased, and still pleases, certain learned men. The arguments in favour of that opinion have been collected by Erpenius, Oration on the Hebrew Language. Fuller refutes them, Sacred Miscellanies, Bk. IV, ch. 4; and Rivet, On Genesis, Exercise
66; and we showed above that Bochart rejects that derivation of those words. It was doubtless once a great thing to have gone out from Mesopotamia — for the nations whom συγκλεισάντες οἱ ποταμοὶ ἔχουσιν
[the rivers enclosing them] hold: Νησιώτας ἑαυτοὺς νομίζοντες ὡς ἐπὶ θάλατταν καταβαίνειν φάσκειν, ὅτ' ἐπὶ τοὺς ποταμοὺς βαδίζοιεν, ὅρον τε ποιεῖσθαι τῆς γῆς τὸν τῶν ποτάμων κύκλον — "They consider themselves islanders, so that they say they are going down to the sea when they go to the rivers, and make the circuit of the rivers the limit of the earth," as Philostratus says in the Life of Apollonius, Bk. I, ch. 14. But that Abraham was hence called Hebrew, and the holy language Hebrew — that is, he was called "a crosser" and it "the language of those who cross" — is far too incredible. Moses says that "Shem was the father of all the sons of Eber,"
Gen. 10:21. What this can mean other than "the father of all the Hebrews" can scarcely be understood.
VI. The sons of Eber are therefore the Hebrews, and the Hebrews are the sons of Eber. And this is the rationale of the ὀνοματολογία [nomenclature].
Some say these words can signify "that Shem was the father of all those beyond the river." But this is said without any precedent and is destitute of all probability. Indeed, if the Holy Spirit had said חּוא ֲאִבי ָּכל ָהִעְבִרים [He is the father of all the Hebrews], that conjecture would not have been quite so
futile. But as the words stand — ָּכל־ְּבֵני־ֶעֶבר [all the sons of Eber] — that the posterity of Eber and none others are denoted is clear from the common usage of the holy tongue. Nor can any probable reason be assigned why
Shem should be called emphatically the father of all those beyond the river, since the greatest part of his own posterity always dwelt on this side of the river, while very many families of Hamite origin crossed it. But what we said of Eber is expressly affirmed by Balaam in his last prophecy, Num.
24:24: "Ships from Kittim shall afflict Asshur, and shall afflict Eber" — where the interpreters agree that the prophet uses national and patronymic names in place of the individuals, so that the Vulgate renders "Assyrians and Hebrews."
VII. But Grotius refers us to Josh. 24:3. There Joshua does indeed say that God took Abraham ֵמֵעֶבר ַהָּנָהר [from beyond the river] — from the place that was across the river. Grotius thinks therefore that Abraham was thence called ִעְבִרי [ivri] — as one might say "a crosser" — and that for this same reason, namely that Abraham crossed the river, this name was so given by the Holy Spirit to serve as the surname of all his posterity, and that they would be called "crossers" or "a people of crossers" throughout all ages.
But such a rationale of ὀνομαστοθεσίας [the notable institution] — similar or like to this — exists nowhere in the records of things anywhere in the world. No trace therefore of the reason for this conjecture appears here. Nor was Abraham the only one in that age who had crossed the Euphrates to migrate to the land of Canaan. For that reason — and not because he had dwelt in Mesopotamia — he was not to be called "a crosser" or "one beyond the river" any more than very many others. Indeed it is most certain that very many of the Canaanites, of Hamite origin, crossed the Euphrates not long after the Babylonian dispersion. These therefore — from this
derivation of the word — ought no less to be called Hebrews than Abraham himself and his posterity, and could have gloried no less in being Hebrews of the Hebrews than the apostle Paul.
VIII. Some gratuitously state in this cause — indeed falsely presuppose — that Abraham was first called Hebrew by the Canaanites, as if they wished to denote by that name his crossing, which they had almost, as they say, seen with their eyes. For it was by the Holy Spirit himself that he was first distinguished with that surname, Gen. 14:13: "There came he who had escaped, and reported to Abraham the Hebrew." These are the words of the Holy Spirit, not of the Canaanites. It is true that he was first so named among the Canaanites; but by the Canaanites by no means. But the Septuagint renders those words Ἀβραμ τῷ περάτῃ [to Abram the crosser].
From this also Chrysostom, far too incautiously, thought him to have been called Abram, and that name to have that signification, Homily XXXV on Genesis: Ἐξ ἀρχῆς, he says, οἱ γονεῖς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῷ ἐπετίθεσαν προμηνύοντες αὐτῷ τὴν ἐκεῖθεν μεταστασιν. Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ περῶν ἔμελλε τὸν Εὐφράτην, καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν Παλαιστίνην ἔρχεσθαι, διὰ τοῦτο καὶ Ἄβραμ ἐκαλεῖτο — "From the beginning his parents gave him this name, signifying beforehand his migration from that place. For since he was going to cross the Euphrates and come to Palestine, he was therefore called
Abram." Would that the most learned man had blundered on this point alone from ignorance of the Hebrew language. But boys know that the signification of that name is entirely different. That the Septuagint called
Abraham περάτην [the crosser] from ְּפָרת [the Euphrates], some think. But the force of the word plainly deceives them — they rendered the interpretation of the word, not the word itself. That this was customary with them, Jerome observes on Isa. 27:12, where conversely they render ַנַחל
ִמְצָרִים [the brook of Egypt] by "Rhinocorura": "For 'the brook of Egypt,'" he says, "the Septuagint translated 'Rhinocorura,' which is a town on the border of Egypt and Palestine — expressing not so much the words of the Scripture as the meaning of the words." So also deceived by similarity of letters, not once did they translate ִעְבִרי [ivri] as "slave" in place of "Hebrew" — reading Daleth in place of Resh: 1 Sam. 13:3, ִיְׁש ְמעּו ָהִעְבִרים
[Let the Hebrews hear]; the Septuagint has Ἠθετήκασιν οἱ δοῦλοι [The slaves have revolted]. What Ἠθετήκασιν means, I do not know; δοῦλοι is
ִעְבִרים [Hebrews]. And Jonah 1:9, ִעְבִרי ָאֹנִכי [I am a Hebrew]; the Septuagint has Δοῦλος Κυρίου εἰμὶ ἐγώ [I am a servant of the Lord] — adding Κυρίου
[of the Lord] of their own accord to give colour to the blunder. There is therefore no reason why their interpretation of this name should move us in any way. If moreover Moses wished to call him a crosser and not a Hebrew, he would not have called him ִעְבִרי [ivri], which is most plainly a patronymic — as ֱא ֹמִרי [Amorite] and ֲעָמֵלִקי [Amalekite] — but ֹעֵבר [over] or ֵעֶבִרי [everite], as Augustine, Steuchus, Drusius, and Buxtorf show. But the rationale of the nomenclature is at hand. The whole people of the Canaanites, destined to be extirpated, was at that time formed from many families which, driven from their eastern seats by various chances or impelled by some force of God, had flowed together under various leaders into that land. And all of them were distinguished from one another by the well-known surnames of their ancestors — as Moses narrates, Gen. 10:1518. This one was an Amorite, that one a Jebusite, another a Hivite, another a Hittite. Each was named from his stock or the author of his stock. Abraham, dwelling among them, was called Hebrew from the most famous author of the family from which he sprang — Eber — and was thereby separated from every branch of Ham, even by a familiar appellation. For in the very
same passage where Abraham is first called ִעְבִרי [Hebrew], his companion Mamre is called ֱא ֹמִרי [Amorite] — so that we can easily see that the rationale of both surnames was the same; for both are equally patronymics.
Therefore, just as all the inhabitants of that land were distinguished from one another by some patronymic name, so Abraham was called Hebrew from the most celebrated author of his stock, Eber. Nor do the Targumists take that word in any other sense. Whoever consults Uzziel on the passage will encounter the fable which I have judged should be set out here, so that the reader may understand what coals he is likely to find for treasure who happens to come upon this Talmudic fabulist — for scarcely anywhere does he surpass himself more than here. Thus he writes on Gen. 14:13: "And there came Og, who had escaped from the men who had died in the flood; and he had ridden upon the ark, and there was a covering on its top; and he was fed from the foods of Noah; and it was not for his righteousness that he was rescued, but so that the inhabitants of the world might see the power of God and say: Did not the giants who were from the beginning rebel against the Lord of the world, and were they not destroyed from the earth? And he came to Abraham, at the going down of the Passover day, and found him making unleavened cakes." To these you may add the same Og's antediluvian death — for he was antediluvian, I presume — which the same
Uzziel narrates at Num. 22 thus: "And it came to pass that after the wicked Og... saw the camp of the Israelites, which was spread over six miles, he said to himself, I will draw up a battle line against this people, so that they will not do to me as they did to Sihon. He went and uprooted a mountain six miles wide, and placed it upon his head to throw at them. Immediately the Word of the Lord prepared a worm which gnawed through the mountain and perforated it, and his head sank into the middle of it; he wished to pull
his head out of it" — not as in the London translation "he wished to pull it out of his head" — "but could not, because his teeth and molars had been pulled hither and thither; then Moses went and took an axe of ten cubits, and leapt ten cubits, and struck him on the heel of his foot, and he fell and died." This is worthy to be numbered among the fables of Aesop — yet not even worthy of that, since it is tasteless and entirely useless — indeed harmful. The Alcoran of Mohammed is no more crammed with the most impudent lies than this Pentateuch of Ben Uzziel. And he is the more to be detested for this, that this trifler proposed to defile the holy oracles of God.
The Targum of Onkelos has ַעְבָרָאה [the Hebrew]; and at Exod. 2:6, ָהִעְבִרִּיים
[of the Hebrews] it renders by ִהיהּוָדֵאי [of the Jews]; and at Deut. 15:12, ָָאִחי
ָהִעְבִרי [your Hebrew brother] by ֲאחּוְך ַּבר ִיְׂש ָרֵאל [your brother the son of Israel]. For him Hebrew and Jew and son of Israel are the same — that is, the name is patronymic.
IX. Some object that no probable reason can be assigned why the whole family was named from Eber rather than from others — namely, from Shem himself or from Arphaxad — or why Abraham rather than other grandsons of Eber was called Hebrew from Eber. But probable cause and rationale for both are not lacking. That Eber was greatly eminent in the new people is probable from the fact that Shem is pointedly said to be "the father of all the sons of Eber" — Gen. 10:21 — to the exclusion of others. And no reason can be assigned why he obtained that degree of honour except through holiness and virtue toward God. Furthermore, he was μακροβιώτατος
[longest-lived] of all the patriarchs born after the flood, and survived his son Peleg. After the death of Peleg, no one can doubt that he took particular care of his grandsons and was to them in the place of an immediate parent.
So although Aram was the youngest son of Shem, yet because he outlived
all his brothers, the Syriac language used by very many others besides his own progeny is called Aramaic — as Elias Levita teaches us in his preface to the Methurgamim. Eber also lived, distinguished for piety, at the time when the languages were confused, and the earth was divided — in view of which specimen of adorable divine providence he gave his son the name
Peleg. And also from the preservation of the primaeval language in his family, he appears to have been the leader of those who did not consent to the building of the mad tower. Not without most weighty reasons therefore was his name transmitted to his posterity. That they constituted a separate family or tribe from the rest of the posterity of Shem appears most plainly from those words of Moses which we cited above.
X. Furthermore: that not only all the sons of Joktan — who was the younger son of Eber — received themselves into the apostate crowd, but that very many also from the line of Peleg himself mingled with them and bid farewell to the paternal family in which pure worship of God flourished
— this is evident from the outcome. Abraham, however, above all others followed in the footsteps of his pious forefathers and of Eber himself, though he was not himself immune from the stain of the common defection.
At last, however, led by God and by the benefit of new revelations, he restored the ancestral piety and the worship of God that had gone into exile from the earth. Should it then seem wonderful — especially since he became celebrated above all other mortals of his age, and was constituted the head and founder of a most glorious nation — if he claimed for himself and his posterity the celebrated patronymic name which apostasy had discarded, or at least esteemed at nothing, of what remained of that kinship?
Nor was the crossing of a river of such importance that from it a name lasting for all ages should be imposed upon him and the whole holy nation.
The migration of Abraham from his country and the land of his kindred, to follow God to a place he did not know, was indeed an illustrious testimony of his faith. But he who thinks that this Abrahamic obedience is to be assessed from the crossing of a river — which he had in common with innumerable others — judges wrongly. That in obedience to God's word, yielding to his will and commands, leaving his ancestral household gods, his own home, and the superstitious worship in which he had been nurtured, allured by no hope of a better condition, he followed him where he knew not — this, among innumerable other things, commends his faith.
Compared with those things, the crossing of a river is nothing. Moreover, that that migration so pleased God that for this reason he received promises
— that his posterity should possess the land into which he was going to journey as an inheritance, and that in him all the families of the earth should be blessed — as some affirm, is false and ἀθεόλογον [contrary to theology].
False, because he had received those promises before he had crossed the Tigris, let alone the Euphrates — as is seen at Gen. 12:1-4. And ἀθεόλογον
[contrary to theology], because it teaches that what is most certain to have come from pure grace in every way is in any manner to be imputed to Abraham's obedience. For that God gave those promises to Abraham without any respect to any preceding obedience is more agreed upon than to need proof. Concerning this derivation of the name of the Hebrews, the same opinion as ours is held among the Jews by Josephus, Antiquities, Bk.
I, ch. 6; the Triple Targum; Aben Ezra on Exod. 1; Kimchi, root ָעַבר; Elias Levita, Methurgaman. Among the Fathers and ancient Christians: Eusebius,
Praeparatio Evangelica, Bk. VII, ch. 2; Jerome, Questions on Genesis; Augustine, City of God, Bk. XVI, ch. 3; Eucherius on Genesis, Bk. II, ch. 7;
Zonaras, Annals, Bk. I. Among the more recent: Calvin on Gen. 10:20;
Pererius on Gen. 20; Mercer on Gen. 14:13 and in the Pagnine Lexicon, root ָעַבר; Münster on Gen. 11:16; Drusius on Gen. 14:13; Paraeus on Gen.
14:15; Junius, Oration on the Hebrew Language; Cornelius à Lapide on Gen. 14; Buxtorf, Dissertation on the Preservation of the Hebrew
Language; Sigonius, On the Hebrew Republic; Schindler, Lexicon, root ָעַבר; Bochart, Bk. I, ch. 10; and innumerable others.
XI. Let us return to the distinguished Grotius treating of the primaeval language. He grants that the Hebrew was the language of Abraham; but what that language was — since it was not that ancient one coeval with the world — he does not show. "Chaldaic," says Cappel, Sacred Chronology,
Notes on the Second Table. "That language of Abraham and his posterity," says Grotius, "through their dwelling in Canaan drew closer and closer to the Canaanite language." Cappel asserts that Abraham learned the Canaanite language from the Canaanites — which Canaanite was the primaeval language that is now called Hebrew. We grant that the language of the Canaanites — whence the Punic — drew near to the Hebrew language. This has been most plainly shown after others by the distinguished Bochart in his wholly admirable work — the argument being from the proper names of cities and men. But that those who were without doubt among the chief builders of the tower of Babel retained the primaeval holy language pure, while those who religiously abstained from that wickedness — among whom, above all others, were the progenitors of Abraham — forgot it, surpasses all credibility. Cappel was preceded in this opinion by Joseph Scaliger, Letter to Thomson, and Observations on Eusebius, at number 804. But we are about to show that the Hebrew language was the primaeval one. The loss of that language was penal.
Whether moreover anyone can bring himself to believe seriously that those
were punished with ignorance or corruption of that language who had never consented to the wickedness which merited that punishment — I greatly doubt. That some of them in the course of time deviated somewhat from the purity of the dialect is probable. Elias affirms in his preface to the Methurgamim that this kind of deflection was the origin of the Chaldaic language. But that the accursed Canaanites — devoted to eternal destruction
— retained the primaeval language pure; that Abraham also learned their language, whatever it was, and communicated that alone to his posterity, who were most gravely forbidden to have anything in common with those
Canaanites whom they were about to exterminate from the face of the earth — these appear παράδοξα [paradoxes].
XII. Furthermore, it is most certain that the Philistines — contrary to what the learned man thought — did not use the Hebrew language. For those born of Jewish fathers but Ashdodite mothers "spoke partly in Ashdodite, and did not know how to speak Judaically" — for which Nehemiah was most angry with them, ch. 13:24, 25. And Jerome, on Isa.,
Bk. VII, ch. 19, affirms that "the language of Canaan is intermediate between Egyptian and Hebrew." "Wherefore," says Grotius, "it is more true that the primaeval language exists nowhere in purity, but that its remains are in all languages; and that the names of Adam, Eve, and the rest, expressed in Hebrew speech by Moses, were expressed for the sake of the Hebrews with the same signification which they had in the primaeval language. So Curtius says that certain soldiers were called by the Persians 'immortals'; that the pass into Cilicia was called 'the Gates' by its inhabitants; and that those who commanded individual thousands of soldiers were called
'chiliarchs' by the Persians." He so dismisses both those who contend for Hebrew and those who contend for Syriac, awarding the palm of antiquity
to neither. And in this opinion, he is almost alone. Goropius Becanus indeed attempted to claim the honour of primaeval antiquity for his own vernacular language — but in vain, since all are settled here. But that God wished to commit his oracles to that language which was mixed from others and those themselves corrupt, does not seem credible. But the most learned Mercer long ago responded to these things, and we need no other words to convict the vanity of these objections: "I hold it as certain, persuaded, and indubitable that that primaeval language was Hebrew," he says, "although certain persons hostile to it say that proper names were changed by Moses and translated into his own language which he favoured — as if historians were not generally accustomed to retain proper names even barbarous ones unchanged, though sometimes they change them when in the course of time the names of regions or places have been changed. But they generally keep the names of men unchanged, only accommodated to the inflection and usage of their own language, somewhat twisted and corrupted; yet so that the origin is easily recognised. Add to this: the etymology of all proper names before the flood, and after it until the division of languages, cannot be attributed to any other language; nor can that of others after that time, of which Moses makes use, other than Hebrew: as ָאָדם [Adam] from ֲאָדָמה
[adamah]; ַחָּוה [Eve], because she was the mother of the living. Cain, Abel, Seth, Mahalaleel, Kenan, Noah, etc. — of all of which and the rest, the source can only be Hebrew." This he says learnedly and piously.
XIII. Whether moreover it is probable that all these proper names of men were translated into another language by Moses — when for very many of them no adequate reason for such a translation can be given — let the learned judge. ַקִין [Cain] is said from ָקִניִתי [I have acquired], "because God has set another seed" — what will those on the other side also say of the
allusions drawn from the Hebrew language? Such as that ַיְפְּת ֱא ֹלִהים ְלֶיֶפת
[God shall enlarge Japheth]. But some say that these words were also in use in the Chaldaic or Syriac language; but their pretension is plainly met by those words of Adam: "She shall be called woman, because she was taken from man" — ִאיָׁשה [ishah] from ִאיׁש [ish]. But among the Chaldeans ִא ָּתא is
"woman" and ְנַבר is "man" — words between which there is no such community as ὁ πρωτοπλάστης [the first-formed man] hints at.
XIV. But this whole argument not long ago was so treated in a special dissertation on the origin and antiquity of the Hebrew language by the most learned Buxtorf the son that no place for doubting in the future seemed to be left for anyone. The primaeval language therefore — the use of which God implanted in man at his very creation — is Hebrew. After it had been common to the whole earth for 1757 years, at the division of languages it remained among those posterity of Shem who had not been present at the construction of the mad tower. So Genebrard, Chronicle, Bk. I: "The Hebrew, which before was common, remained uncorrupted with Eber — from whom both the language and the people take their name — because he had not participated in the counsels of those, nor in the work, whose pleasure it was to erect a tower to heaven." But just as many of them gradually defected from the true worship of God, so they also seem to have gradually deviated from the pure dialect of the language — from which the Chaldaic dialect was born, as the distinguished Selden thinks, Prolegomena
II, On the Syrian Gods. And so Elias Levita teaches us in his preface to the Methurgaman: ִליָׁשן ֲאַרִּמית הּוא ִליָׁשן ַה ֹּקֶדׁש ִמ ְׁש ַּתֵּבׁש [The Aramaic language is the holy language corrupted]. Elsewhere he proves from R. Aben Ezra that it is closer to the holy language than all other languages; and he further adds: "It appears that in the time of the patriarchs that language was
corrupted. The evidence of this is ְיַגר ָׂש ֲהדּוָתא [a mound of witnesses]. It therefore seems to me that it must be said it was corrupted as soon as Abraham went out from Chaldaea. For without doubt he and his fathers spoke the holy language, as they received it from Adam down to Noah —
ִאיׁש ִמִּפי ִאיׁש [one man from the mouth of another man]."
XV. Where the church remained — and especially that family from which it was fated to be renewed — there also the purity of the ancient language remained. That was the family of Eber, from whom this Hebrew language was called, which had previously been distinguished by no title. Nor did it need a title by which to be distinguished from others, when it was the only one — as Augustine rightly says, City of God, Bk. XVI, ch. 11: "Because," he says, "this language remained in the family of Eber while the remaining nations were divided into other languages — which language is deservedly believed to have been formerly common to the whole human race — it was therefore henceforth called Hebrew. For then it was necessary to distinguish it from other languages by a proper name, just as the others also were called by proper names. But when it was the only one, it was called nothing other than the human language, or human speech, in which alone all the human race spoke." From Eber also, Abraham — who almost alone sincerely embraced his ancestral religion — was called Hebrew, as we proved; and he brought that language with him into Canaan, the land promised to himself and his seed. But the remaining brothers and kinsmen of Abraham himself, and others of his contemporaries from the family of Eber, as they degenerated from true religion, so also appeared gradually to have deviated from the pure use of the holy tongue — from which was born the Chaldaic dialect, as the distinguished Selden thinks.
XVI. But the sacred page affirms that this division of languages occurred either a little before the birth of Peleg, or about that time — Gen. 10:25; 1
Chron. 1:19. The Jews in the Seder Olam — or Series of the World — count 340 years from the flood, says Münster; for thus he makes the computation in the margin of his translation. The text has: from the flood to the division, two hundred and seventy-two years; for they narrate that the division occurred when Abraham was forty-eight years old. From the flood to the forty-eighth year of Abraham, however, there are 340 years; hence Münster added fifty-two years to their number so that his computation might be consistent with itself. But this is false; and that division falls in the two hundred and forty-first year before the birth of Abraham, around the birth of Peleg, as was shown above. But this controversy is also most learnedly decided by Buxtorf, in his Dissertation on the Confusion of Languages;
David Paraeus treats of it at length in his Commentary on Genesis, ch. 12; and most recently Ussher in his Sacred Chronology, ch. 5, where he vindicates the faithfulness and truth of the computation of the Hebrew text from the objections of Morin.
XVII. But when the whole of the human race had been brought to this state and condition, and left to the counsel of their own minds — since, that is, weariness of the true God and his worship had seized them — they gradually poured themselves into every form of idolatry. The earlier ages indeed could not wholly cast aside whatever knowledge of God they had received either from the instruction of their parents or from wandering tradition. From these therefore we find that very many — as is the way of men convicted by the sparks of divine light — feared God indeed, but served idols. But with the passing of time, all revealed theology having gradually been rejected, the memory of the solemn promise and the divine
covenant being utterly abolished, the whole world of nations polluted itself universally with nefarious and most foul idolatries. Their origin and progress therefore — which we promised above — it is our pleasure to investigate here more diligently.