that the language of the Pentateuch is | wrought for what end? To maintain sufficiently explained, if Moses spoke in its purity among the Hebrews the and wrote Hebrew perfectly. Yet how language-not of the primitive home should Moses,-who, for the first forty of the Hebrew race, but—of the idolayears of his life, was brought up in trous tribes of Canaan! Pharaoh's house, 'in all the learning 1276. Upon the whole, the simple of the Egyptians,'-who may, of course, fact, that the Pentateuch is written have spoken Hebrew, as well as Egyp-in such pure Hebrew, appears to us tian, but could only have learned it a strong confirmation-if we do not from the speech of his fellow-country-press it, as a positive direct proof-of men, when they had already been liv- its having been written, not at a time ing in Egypt, under the circumstances when the tribes were just fresh from above described, for 130 years to the their long Egyptian sojourn, but at day of his birth, and who spent the a much later period of their national next forty years of his life in the history, when the language of Canaan deserts of Midian,-have maintained had become, after several generations, all along the perfect Hebrew tongue, the common tongue of the invading pure and simple, without the slightest Hebrews, as well as of the heathen adulteration from any foreign influ- tribes, whom they deprived of their ences, neither vocabulary nor syntax possessions in Canaan, and whom they being in the least degree modified? were unwilling to acknowledge as brethren, although, it is plain, the language of the Canaanites belongs to the same group, as that spoken by the collateral branch of the Hebrew family in the city of Nahor.' Thus, in those later days, conversation is supposed to pass without difficulty between the Philistine garrison and Jonathan, 1S.xiv. 12, and between the Philistine Achish and David, 18.xxix. 6-10; and we do not read of any interpreter interfering in the colloquy between David and Goliath, 1S.xvii. 43-47. 1275. What effect the residence of 150 years in Babylon had had already upon the language of the captive Jews, notwithstanding the noble literature which they had among them, in the writings of their psalmists, prophets, and historians, may be seen, as we have said, in the numerous Chaldaisms, which distinguish the later Scriptures of the O. T. The natives of Natal, though they have lived only thirty years under European government, have already adopted many corruptions of English and Dutch words into their common language. Who can 1277. But what seems to demonstrate believe that the Hebrews, so small a plainly the later authorship of one imcommunity at first, only seventy souls, portant passage, at least, of the Penof whom many were mere children, and tateuch, is this, that the prophecies many others did not speak Hebrew as of Balaam, who was brought from their original tongue, and who at that Aram, out of the mountains of the time possessed no literature, -main-east,' N.xxiii.7, comp. D.xxiii.4, and tained their language amidst the joys who is represented as speaking in the of their prosperous, and the oppres-ears of Balak, king of Moab, and of sions of their miserable, days in Egypt, all the princes of Moab, v.6, are exwithout adopting a single idiom, or a pressed in the purest Hebrew. His single term,- -even the name of a com- conversation with the Moabite mesmon article of food or dress, tool, im-sengers, and with the ass, which also plement, &c. from the Egyptians, or speaks and, apparently, understands from those with whom they may have intermarried, when they did not marry Canaanitish women? Did these foreign mothers not affect in the slightest degree the speech of their children? It may be said, 'a special miracle may have been wrought for this.' But Hebrew, may be supposed to have been modified, and to be merely described and reported in the 'language of Canaan.' But the prophecies, to be worthy of credence as historically true, must have been delivered in the form in which we now possess them, and in in the purest Hebrew, to a company of Moabites. which we have an Aramaan, speaking | Cain and Seth, iv.1,25,-by Lamech, shortly before the Flood, when he explained the name of Noah, v.29. And, indeed, it is obvious that the names of the whole series of Patriarchs, from Adam to Noah, in G.v., and from Noah onwards in G.xi.10-26, are, in almost every instance, pure Hebrew names. 1278. By whom, it may be further asked, were these prophecies remember ed, or written down, as Balaam uttered them, and by whom were they communicated to Moses? Is it not plain that we have here a grand composition of a later age, profitable,' no doubt, for instruction in righteousness,' but not to be received as an infallible record of historical matter-of-fact, involving the obligation of believing in the story of the speaking ass, or imputing the massacre of 68,000 Midianitish women and children to a direct Divine Command? 1279. What missionary, indeed, would not shrink from reading either of these passages, in the ears of an intelligent class of catechumens, as undoubted facts, to the truth of which the Divine Veracity is pledged,-upon belief in which depend all our hopes for eternity,'-of which to express any doubt or disbelief, is to shake the very foundations of our faith,' to 'take from us all our nearest and dearest consolations'? CHAPTER XI. 1280. G.xi.. And the whole earth was of one lip and of one language.' 1281. On the traditionary view, then, we must suppose that Hebrew was certainly the primitive tongue. And so WILLET writes, Hex. in Gen. p.133: Now, if any be desirous to know what language this was, which before this confusion of tongues was used through the world, it is agreed by the most learned interpreters, that it was the Hebrew. (i) AUGUSTINE's reason is, de civ. Dei, xvi. 11,xviii.39, because the Hebrew is so called of Heber, in whose family that, which was the common tongue before, remained: that tongue, which Heber used before the division of tongues, was the common speech; but that was the Hebrew. (ii) HIEROM's reason to prove the Hebrew to be matrix, the mother of all other languages, [is] because every tongue hath borrowed some words of the Hebrew. (iii) TOSTATUS's reason is, because those names, which were first given, as Adam, Eve, Cain, Seth, are Hebrew words, as may appear by their several derivations in that tongue. 1282. DELITZSCH, however, as we have already seen (1034), finds himself unable to adopt this view, and writes as follows, p.315: But The Synagogues, the Fathers of the Church, and many of our orthodox teachers, are, indeed, of opinion that Hebrew was the primitive tongue, maintained in the family of Eber, the tongue already used before the Flood, the tongue of Paradise. It is said that Noah, The Jehovist-a person, evidently, (who overlived the event), Shem, and those of of a very enquiring and philosophical godless undertaking, and, consequently, were kindred mind, certainly took no part in the mind, and, for the age in which he not affected by the confusion of tongues.' lived, singularly well-informed on geo- Reference also is made to the names of the graphical and ethnological matters-primeval history, with some of which the derivations are given, as Adam,' 'Ishah'= wishes, apparently, to account for the woman, Khavvah Eve, Kain,' &c. variety of languages, which he finds both these arguments want convincing power. existing among the different families The family, from which Abram proceeded, was certainly an Aramaic, not a Hebrew, of the human race. He assumes that family; it was a family speaking Aramaic, as from the time of the Creation-for the history of Jacob and Laban shows, about 2,000 years-no diversities of G.xxxi.47,comp.D.xxvi.5. The Hebrew language,' says ASTRUC, and his view is inconlanguage had yet arisen. Mankind testably correct, was the common language was still of 'one lip,' and still spoke of the Canaanites; and Abraham, when he the same primeval tongue, the arrived among them from Chaldæa, needed to learn it, which was not difficult for him, beHebrew, we must suppose, - which cause the language of the Chaldæans, which was spoken by Adam, when he named was his natural tongue, had considerable his wife in Paradise, ii.23,iii.20-by affinity with it, and was a sort of dialect of Eve, after their expulsion from Para-it. Hence the assertion of Arabic and Persian writers, that the Syriac or Nabatæan dise, when she gave names to her sons, tongue,-that which, after the confusion of tongues, was maintained at Babylon itself,- tongues,-this possibility, before maintained was the primitive tongue, is comparatively by us, we now dismiss, as though awakened more probable. However, dialects are branches from a dream. which imply a common stem. We should, 1283. It is manifest thatDELITZSCH'S therefore, in place of Hebrew or Aramaic, have to assume the existence of a Semitic great difficulty is this-to account for fundamental language, which later, though the fact that the primeval Hebrew at a very early age, branched into dialects. But in opposition to this stands the fact that tongue, spoken in Paradise, and by the Semitic family of languages, setting aside all before the Flood, and in Noah's its peculiar honours, is inferior to others, as family after it, should have been rethe Indo-Germanic, in richness and expres- tained amidst the 'curse-laden' tribes siveness, and does not by any means possess the completeness which must have belonged of Canaan, and not in the family of to the primitive tongue,-as also the fact, Abraham,-so that the latter must that the family from whom Abram proceeded, had fallen away to idolatries just as the actually first have learned it, when he others, Jo.xxiv.2,14, and that the so-called came into contact with them. Hebrew,' which we should rather call Ca- being able to allow the possibility of naanite,' Is.xix. 18, although, as a sacred tongue, it has had a very peculiar course of this, he falls back upon the notion development, appears originally as the lan- that the names, Adam, Eve, Cain, guage of Canaan, the curse-laden, to whom Abel, Nod, Noah, &c., are all transit had passed from the equally-heathen abori-lations of the original forms, into ginal inhabitants of the land. Also, the proof drawn from the names of the primeval history so little avails, that, in point of fact, the ante-Babylonic language cannot possibly have been the language of Paradise. Adam says in Dante, Par. xxvi. 124-6: The speech, which once I spoke, was quite extinct, Before that to th' impracticable work The race of Nimrod set their energies. How can it possibly have been otherwise? Certainly, the principle of the dispersion' was first powerfully energetic after the event in G.xi.1-9. But the Fall of Man must have changed their mode of speech as well as thought it brought among them everspreading loss of spirituality, materialisation, and since the nature of sin is false -self-seeking, the destruction of their unity, though, perhaps, at first, not yet to the extent of losing the power of mutual intelligence. "The first man,' as DRECHSLER thence justly infers, was not called Adam, nor the first woman Eve, nor their sons Cain and Abel; only they are so-called in Hebrew; their names are all true, but only relatively true. With the occurrence of G.xi.1-9, the names of the old traditionary history degenerated also in, and with, the general language, without any damage thereby to the authenti Not words of similar meaning in Hebrew, -a theory, which requires also to be swelled by the assumption, that all the conversations, recorded in G.i.1-xi.9, are only translations, and that all the names in G.v are, in like manner, modified from the original forms into pure Hebrew words, expressing literally the same meaning, and not only these, but also the names in G.xi.10–25, at least, till we come to Peleg, in whose time 'the earth was divided." 1284. The extravagance of these assumptions, to which this able writer has been driven in attempting to maintain the traditionary view, makes it unnecessary to discuss them at further length. It is sufficient to remark that, if the authority of Scripture may prove the fact of the existence of a primeval language, it will also prove that this language was Hebrew. We have no right to assume a process of city of these names and their etymologies; since translation, to which the original docuit is the same thing, for example, whether Iments make no allusion. say that Adam's firstborn had a name, which corresponds to the name Kain, from Kanah, acquire,' or to the Greek name ktesias from the Greek word for acquire.' The veracity of the Law, which imparts to us here the tradition, viewed in the light of the spirit, which was inherited to Abraham and Israel, through Shem from the family of Noah, is not a verbal, but a living, veracity, it stands not in the letter, but in the spirit.' So it is. 1285. KALISCH notes on this point as follows, Gen.p.318: The linguistic researches of modern times have more and more confirmed the theory of one primitive Asiatic language, gradually developed into various modifications by external agencies and influences. Formerly, the Hebrew tongue was, by many scholars, advocated as the original idiom: for it was mainThe deriva-tained, both by early Jewish and Christian authorities, that, as the race of Shem were no partners in the impious work of the Tower, they remained in possession of the first language, which the fathers of the earliest age had left to Noah. But this view,-like the tion of all languages from one primeval tongue we hold fast upon the authority of the Scripture. But the possibility of demonstrating such a primeval language, out of a more or less close relationship of all existing more recent one, that a child, if left alone | Language has shown that man may at the without human society, would speak Hebrew, first have been mute, and certainly that he At -is now classed among popular errors. was unable, during a long period, to express present, the scale of probability inclines more more than the merest bodily sensations. Its to the Sanscrit, although the disquisition is dispassionate analysis has shown thatfar from being concluded or settled. According to Prof. MAX MÜLLER and Baron BUNSEN, the Sanscrit and Semitic tongues are alike modifications of an agglutinative' language, that is, of a form of speech in which the original compound roots had not been rubbed down into affixes and suffixes. 'It was an event in the history of man, when the ideas of father, mother, sister, husband, wife, were first conceived and first uttered. It was a new era, when the numerals from one to ten had been framed, and when words like law, right, duty, virtue, generosity, love, had been added to the dictionary of man. It was a revelation, the greatest of all revelations, when the conception of a Creator, a Ruler, a Father, of man,-when the name of God was for the first time uttered in this world.' Prof. MAX. MÜLLER, Lectures on Language, second series, p.308. 1288. G.xi4. "And they said, Come, let us build for us a 1286. But KALISCH's observation applies only to the different languages of one race, as the Caucasian or the Mongolian. No one would say that city, and a tower with its head in heaven." The story of the dispersion of there was any affinity between the Chinese tongue and the Indo-Euro-tongues' is connected by the Jehovistic pean family of languages, or between writer with the famous unfinished these and those of the North-Ameri- Temple of Belus (Birs Nimroud), can Indians. Card. WISEMAN, Lect. ii., of which, probably, some wonderful On the Connection between Science and reports had reached him, in whatever Revealed Religion, admits a radical age we may suppose him to have lived. difference' among languages :— The language and actions, which are As the radical difference among the lan-here ascribed to the Divine Being, are guages forbids their being considered dialects, or offshoots of one another, we are driven to the conclusion that, on the one hand, these languages must have been originally united in one, whence they drew their common elements, essential to them all (?), and on the other, that the separation between them, which destroyed other and no less important elements of resemblance, could not have been caused by any gradual departure or individual development,-for these we have long since excluded,-but by some violent, unusual, and active force, sufficient alone to reconcile these conflicting appearances, and to account at once for the resemblances and the differences. 1287. But the truth is, as an able writer has said, West. Rev. Jan. 1865, p. 62, that the Analysis of Language has taught some strange lessons.' It tells us that man had lived, perhaps for ages, before the process of metaphor had created a single term to convey an immaterial conception. It has traced the working of metaphor, in its conversion of general notions into personal beings, and in the translation of phrases applied originally to outward phenomena into incidents professedly historical. And, thus teaching us, it has brought us to a point from which we may well turn to survey the ground which we have traversed. Christendom strangely anthropomorphic. But the derivation of the name Babel, from the Hebrew balal, 'confound,' which seems to be the connecting point between this story and the Tower of Babel, is, as we have already noticed (949), altogether incorrect, the word being compounded probably of 'El' or 'Il,' so that 'Bab-Il' means 'Gate of God.' This is sufficient to show that the story before us is not historically true. It does not, however, necessarily imply, as TUCH and KNOBEL assume, that the Jehovist himself originated the story, as he may have received it in this form from others. Prof. RAWLINSON says, SMITH'S Dict. of the Bible, i.p.149: The name is connected in Genesis with the Hebrew root, balal, confundere,'-' because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.' But the native etymology is Bab-Il, the gate of the God Il,' or, perhaps, most simply, the gate of God.' And this, no doubt, was the original intention of the appellation as given by Nimrod, though the other sense came to be attached to it after the 'Confusion of Tongues.' 1289. The following account of Birs The popular theology of asserts that man started into being in the Nimroud is from KALISCH, Gen.p.315: full perfection of his mental powers, and The huge heap, in which bricks, stone, with the privilege of an immediate inter-marble, and basalt, are irregularly mixed, course with his Maker. The Science of covers a surface of 49,000 feet; while the chief mound is nearly 300 feet high, and from | shows that astronomical observations 200 to 400 feet in width, commanding an ex- had made considerable progress among tensive view over a country of utter desolation. The tower consisted of seven distinct stages or the Chaldæans at the time when it was square platforms, built of kiln-burnt bricks, built, the traditions connected with it each about twenty feet high, gradually dimay have embodied stories of a much earlier date, to which the new building gave fresh currency. minishing in diameter. The upper part of the brickwork has a vitrefied appearance; for it is supposed that the Babylonians, in order to render their edifices more durable, submitted them to the heat of the furnace; and large fragments of such vitrefied and calcined ma I have made and finished. With bricks en 1291. Prof. RAWLINSON, however, says, SMITH'S Dict.i.p.159: The supposed date [of the building of the Temple of Mugheir] is B.C. 2300-a little earlier than the time commonly assigned to the building of the Tower [of Babel]. Probably the erection of the two buildings was not separated by a very long interval, though it is reasonable to suppose that, of the two, the tower was the earlier. If we mark its date, as perhaps we are entitled to do, by the time of Peleg, the son of Eber and father of Reu, we may perhaps place it about B.C. 2600. But it is evident that the above rea terials are also intermixed with the rubbish at the base. This circumstance may have given rise to, or at least countenanced, the legend of the destruction of the Tower by heavenly fire, still extensively adopted among the Arabians. The terraces were devoted to the planets, and were differently coloured, in accordance with the notions of Sabæan astrology, the lowest, Saturn's, black, the second, Jupiter's, orange, the third, Mars', red, the fourth, the Sun's, yellow, the fifth, Venus's, white, the sixth, Mercury's, blue, the seventh, the Moon's, green. Merodach-adan-akhi is stated to have begun it B.C. 1100. It was finished five centuries afterwards by Nebu-soning is very loose, and based almost chadnezzar, who has left a part of its history entirely on traditionary prepossessions. on two cylinders, which have lately been excavated on the spot, and thus deciphered by And here the date of the building of the RAWLINSON. The building, named the Pla- Tower is carried up beyond 2348 B.C., the nisphere, which was the wonder of Babylon, date which the Hebrew Scriptures fix for riched with lapis lazuli, I have exalted its the Deluge, though it is still below that head. Behold now the building, named "the fixed by the LXX,- --on which point see Stages of the Seven Spheres," which was the below (1303). wonder of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two cubits of height: but he did not finish the head. From the lapse of time it had become ruined. They had not taken care of the exit of the waters; so the rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork. The casing of burnt brick lay scattered in heaps. Then Merodach, my great lord, inclined my heart to repair the building. I did not change its site, nor did I destroy its foundation-platform. But, in a fortunate month, and upon an auspicious day, I undertook the building of the raw-brick terraces, and the burnt-brick casing of the Temple. I strengthened its foundation, and I placed a titular record on the part which I had rebuilt. I set my hand to build it up, and to exalt its summit. As it had been in ancient times, so I built up its structure. As it had been in former days, thus I exalted its head.' 1292. Mr. BEVAN also gives from OPPERT, in SMITH'S Dict. of the Bible, iii. p.1554, another version of the inscription, agreeing substantially with the above; but instead of the passage,- Behold now the building, named 'the Stages of the Seven Spheres,' which was the wonder of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two cubits of height: but he did not finish the head. From the lapse of time it had become ruined OPPERT translates: And this is quoted as mentioning the Tower in connection with the Confusion of Tongues,'-though OPPERT says, This edifice, the house of the seven Lights of the Earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa, a former king built it, (they reckon forty-two ages), but he did not complete its 1290. If the Jehovist lived in Solo-head. Since a remote time people had abanmon's days, about B.c.1015-975, and doned it, without order expressing their words. the Temple of Belus was begun, as KALISCH has just said, by Merodachadan-akhi in B.c.1100, not more than a century would have elapsed to his time, hardly long enough for the unfinished building, however wonderful, to have become the subject of a legend. But, as the tower was apparently an observatory, and the fact of its being dedicated to the seven ancient planets This allusion to the Tower of the Tongues is the only one that has as yet been discovered in the cuneiform inscriptions. The reader must judge for himself as to the degree of support afforded to the probability of the historical reality |