Language

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Language. See Tongues, Confusion of.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863


the faculty of human speech, concerning the origin of which there have been entertained different opinions among philosophers and learned men. The Mosaic history, which gives us an account of the formation and first occupations of man, represents him as being immediately capable of conversing with his Maker; of giving names to the various tribes and classes of animals; and of reasoning consecutively, and in perfectly appropriate terms, concerning his own situation, and the relation he stood in to the other creatures. As in man's first attempt at speech, according to this account, there appear no crudeness of conception, no barrenness of ideas, and no inexpressive or unappropriate terms, we must certainly infer, that God who made and endued him with corporeal and mental powers perfectly suited to his state and condition in life, endued him, also, not only with the faculty of speech, but with speech or language itself; which latter was as necessary to his comfort, and to the perfection and end of his being, as any other power or faculty which his Creator thought proper to bestow upon him.
Among the antediluvians there was but one language; and even now the indications that the various languages of the earth have had one common source are very convincing. Whether this primitive language was the same with any of the languages of which we have still any remains, has been a subject of much dispute. That the primitive language continued at least till the dispersion of mankind, consequent upon the building of Babel, there seems little reason to doubt. When, by an immediate interposition of divine power, the language of men was confounded, we are not informed to what extent this confusion of tongues prevailed. Under the article Confusion of Tongues some reasons are given to show that the primitive language was not lost at that event, but continued in the form of the Hebrew.
There are, however, other opinions on the oft disputed subject as to the primitive language. The Armenians allege, that as the ark rested in their country, Noah and his children must have remained there a considerable time, before the lower and marshy country of Chaldea could be fit to receive them; and it is therefore reasonable to suppose they left their language there, which was probably the very same that Adam spoke. Some have fancied the Greek the most ancient tongue, because of its extent and copiousness. The Teutonic, or that dialect of it which is spoken in the Lower Germany and Brabant, has found a strenuous patron in Geropius Becanus, who endeavours to derive even the Hebrew itself from that tongue. The pretensions of the Chinese to this honour have been allowed by several Europeans. The patrons of this opinion endeavour to support it, partly, by the great antiquity of the Chinese, and their having preserved themselves so many ages from any considerable mixture or intercourse with other nations. It is a notion advanced by Dr. Allix, and maintained by Mr. Whiston, with his usual tenacity and fervour, that the Chinese are the posterity of Noah, by his children born after the flood; and that Fohi, the first king of China, was Noah. As for those which are called the oriental languages, they have each their partisans. The generality of eastern writers allow the preference to the Syriac, except the Jews, who assert the antiquity of the Hebrew with the greatest warmth; and with them several Christian writers agree, particularly Chrysostom, Austin, Origen, and Jerome, among the ancients; and among the moderns, Bochart, Heidegger, Selden, and Buxtorf. The Sanscrit has also put in its claims; and some have thought that the Pali bears the character of the highest antiquity. All these are however useless speculations. The only point worth contending for is, that language was conveyed at once to the first pair in sufficient degree for intellectual intercourse with each other, and devotional intercourse with God; and that man was not left, as infidel writers have been pleased to say, to form it for himself out of rude and instinctive sounds. On this subject the remarks of Delaney are conclusive: “That God made man a sociable creature, does not need to be proved; and that when he made him such, he withheld nothing from him that was in any wise necessary for his well being in society, is a clear consequence from the wisdom and goodness of God; and if he withheld nothing any way necessary to his well being, much less would he withhold from him that which is the instrument of the greatest happiness a reasonable creature is capable of in this world. If the Lord God made ‘Adam a help meet for him,' because ‘it was not good for man to be alone,' can we imagine he would leave him unfurnished with the means to make that help useful and delightful to him? If it was not good for him to be alone, certainly neither was it good for him to have a companion to whom he could not readily communicate his thoughts, with whom he could neither ease his anxieties, nor divide or double his joys, by a kind, a friendly, a reasonable, a religious conversation; and how he could do this in any degree of perfection, or to any height of rational happiness, is utterly inconceivable without the use of speech.
“If it be said, that the human organs being admirably fitted for the formation of articulate sounds, these, with the help of reason, might in time lead men to the use of language. I own it imaginable that they might: but still, till that end were attained in perfection, which possibly, might not be in a series of many generations, it must be owned that brutes were better dealt by, and could better attain all the ends of their creation. And if that be absurd to be supposed, certainly the other is not less absurd to be believed. Nay, I think it justly doubtful, whether, without inspiration from God in this point, man could ever attain the true ends of his being; at least, if we may judge in this case, by the example of those nations who, being destitute of the advantages of a perfect language, are, in all probability, from the misfortune of that sole defect, sunk into the lowest condition of barbarism and brutality. And as to the perfection in which the human organs are framed and fitted for the formation of articulate sounds, this is clearly an argument for believing that God immediately blessed man with the use of speech, and gave him wherewithal to exert those organs to their proper ends; for this is surely as credible, as that when he gave him an appetite for food, and proper organs to eat and to digest it, he did not leave him to seek painfully for a necessary supply, (till his offence had made such a search his curse and punishment,) but placed him at once in the midst of abundant plenty. The consequence from all which is, that the perfection and felicity of man, and the wisdom and goodness of God, necessarily required that Adam should be supernaturally endowed with the knowledge and use of language. And therefore, as certain as it can be, that man was made perfect and happy, and that God is wise and good; so certain is it, that, when Adam and Eve were formed, they were immediately enabled by God to converse and communicate their thoughts, in all the perfection of language necessary to all the ends of their creation. And as this was the conduct most becoming the goodness of God, so we are assured from Moses, that it was that to which his infinite wisdom determined him; for we find that Adam gave names to all the creatures before Eve was formed; and, consequently, before necessity taught him the use of speech.”
It is true that many languages bear marks of being raised to their improved state from rude and imperfect elements, and that all are capable of being enriched and rendered more exact; and it is this which has given some colour to those theories which trace all language itself up from elemental sounds, as the necessities of men, their increasing knowledge, and their imagination led to the invention of new words and combinations. All this is, however, consistent with the Scripture fact, that language was taught at first by God to our first parents. The dispersion of mankind carried many tribes to great distances, and wars still farther scattered them, and often into wide regions where they were farther dispersed to live chiefly by the chase, by fishing, or at best but an imperfect agriculture. In various degrees we know they lost useful arts; and for the same reasons they would lose much of their original language; those terms being chiefly retained which their immediate necessities, and the common affairs of a gross life, kept in use. But when civilization again overtook these portions of mankind, and kingdoms and empires were founded among them, or they became integral parts of the old empires, then their intercourse with each other becoming more rapid, and artificial, and intellectual, their language was put into a new process of improvement, and to the eye of the critic would exhibit the various stages of advancement; and in many it would be pushed beyond that perfection which it had when it first began to deteriorate. See LETTERS.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.


[TONGUES, CONFUSION OF]




The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.


Language
( לָשׁוֹן[Chald. לַשָּׁן], tongue; שָׂפָה). An indication of the manner in which man may have been led to the formation of a vocabulary is thought to be given in Gen_2:19. But it is evident from the whole scriptural account of creation that speech was coeval with the formation of our first parents. At a later date the origin of the various languages on the earth (see Van den Honert, De lingua primaeva, L.B. 1738) is apparently given in connection with the building of the tower of Babel (comp. Romer, De linguar. in extruenda turri Babyl. ortu, Viteb. 1782) and the dispersion of men (Genesis 11); but it is probable that the diversities of human speech have rather resulted from than caused the gradual divergence of mankind from a common center (Diod. Siculus, 1:8; comp. Jerusalem, Fortges. Betracht. Brschw. 1773, page 263 sq.; Eichhorn, Diversitatis linguar. ex tradit. Semit. origines, Gotting. 1788; Abbt, Vermisch. Schrift. 6:96 sq.). SEE TONGUES, CONFUSION OF.
The later Jews inferred from Genesis 10 that there were generally on earth seventy (nations and) languages (compare Wagenseil, Sota, page 699; Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. page 754, 1031, 1089: see a list in the Jerusalem Talmud, Megill. fol. 71, chapter 2). Individual tongues are only mentioned incidentally in the Bible, as follows: the Canaan fish (שְׂפִת כְּנִעִן, Isa_19:18), the Chaldean (כִּשְׂדַּים לְשׁוֹןDan_1:4), the Aramean (אֲרָמַית, familiar to the Assyrians [2Ki_18:26], the Magians [Dan_2:4], and the Persian officials [Ezr_4:7]), the Jewish (יְהיּדַית, i.e., Hebrew; 2Ki_18:26; Neh_13:24; compare Est_8:9; Josephus, Apion, 2:2), the Ashdodite (אִשְׁדּוֹדַית, Neh_13:24); in the N.T. the Hebrew, i.e., Syro-Chaldee ( ῾Εβραϊvς, ῾ΕβραÞστί, Act_22:2, etc.), the Greek (ἡ ῾Ελλησικη, ῾Ελληνιστί, Joh_19:20; Act_21:37; Rev_9:11), the Latin ( ῾ΡωμαÞστί, Joh_19:20; Luk_23:8), and the Lyconian (Λυκαονιστί, Act_14:11). It is remarkable that, in all the intercourse of the Hebrews with foreign nations, mention is very rarely made of an interpreter (Gen_42:23); but the passages in 2Ki_18:26; Isa_36:11, prove that the common Jews of the interior at least did not understand the Aramaean dialect. That the Jews of later times, especially the bigoted citizens of Palestine, despised heathen languages, is notorious (Josephus, Ant. 20:11, 2); that they made use of the Greek, however, is evident from the Talmud (Sota, 9:14; comp. Jadaim, 4:6, where Homer is mentioned), to say nothing of the N.T. — Winer, 2:498. SEE HELLENIST.
The question as to the common language of Palestine in the time of our Lord and his apostles has been keenly discussed by learned writers with very opposite conclusions. On the one hand, Du Pin (Dissert. 2), Mill (N.T. page 8), Michaelis (Introd. 3), Marsh (ibid. notes), Weber (Untersuch. ub. d. Ev. der Hebraer, Tüb. 1806), Kuinol (Comment. 1:18), Olshausen (Echtheit der Evang. Konigsberg, 1823, page 21 sq.), and especially De Rossi (Della lingua propria di Cristo, Parma, 1772), and Pfannkuche (in Eichhorn's Allgem. Bibliothek, 8:365 sq.) contend for the exclusive prevalence of the Aramaean or Syro-Chaldee at the time and in the region in question. On the other hand, Cappell (Observatt. in N.T. page 110), Basnage (Annul. ad an. 64), Masch (Von der Grundsprache Matthcei), Lardner (Supplement to Credibility, etc., 1 c. 5), Waleus (Commentarius, page 1), and more particularly Vossius (De Oraculis Sibyll. Oxon. 1860. page 88 sq.), and Diodati (De Christo Graece loquente, Neap. 1767, London, 1843), insist that the Greek alone was then and there spoken. Between these extremes Simon (Hist. Crit. du N.T. Rotterd. 1689, c. 6, page 56), Fabricy (Titres primitifs de la Revelation, Rome, 1773, 1:116), Ernesti (Neuste theol. Bibliothek, 1 [1771], 269 sq.), Hug (Einleit. in d. N.T. Tub. 1826, 2:30 sq.), Binterim (De ling. originali N.T. non Latina, Dusseld. 1820, page 146 sq.), Wiseman (Horae Syriaae, Rom. 1828, 1:69 sq.), and the mass of later writers, as Credner (Einleit. in d. N. Test. Halle, 1836), Bleek (id. Berl. 1862), and (though with more reserve) Roberts (Language of Palestine, London, 1859) hold the more reasonable view that both languages were concurrently used, the Aramean probably as the vernacular at home and among natives, and the Greek in promiscuous and public circles. For additional literature on this question, see Fabricius, Biblioth. Graeca, 4:760; Biblical Repository, 1831, page 317 sq., 530 sq.; and the monographs cited by Volbeding, Index Progqrammatum, page 18. On the Greek of the N.T., SEE NEW TESTAMENT. On the tongues cognate with the Hebrew, SEE SHEMITIC LANGUAGES.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.





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