What Language Was Spoken In Eden?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19258, 20 December 1930, Page 8

What Language Was Spoken In Eden?

XTO SUBJECT has been more fertile of speculation than the origin of language; and on few, perhaps, can less satisfaction be obtained. The .Tews positively insist that the Hebrew tongue is the primitive language, and that spoken by Adam and Eve. The Arabs dispute the point of antiquity with the Hebrews. Of all the languages except the Hebrew, the Syriac has had the greatest number of advocates, especially among eastern authors. Many maintain that the language spoken by Adam is lost; and that the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic are only dialects of the original tongue. Goropius published a work in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise. Andre Kemp maintained that God spoke to Adam in Swedish, Adam answered in Danish, and Eve spoke in French, whilst the Persians believe three languages to have been spoken in Paradise —Arabic, the most persuasive, by the Serpent; Persian, the most poetic, by Adam and Eve; and Turkish, the most threatening, by the angel Gabriel. Erro claims Basque as the language spoken by Adam, and others would make the Polynesian the primitive language of mankind. Leaving these theories, we may sum up in the words of Darwin; “ With respect to the origin of articulate language, alter having read on the one side the highly interestng works of Wedgewood, Farrar, and Professor Schleicher, and the celebrated lectures of Professor Max Muller on the other side, I cannot doubt thafc language owes its origin to the imitatio* and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man’s own instinctive cries.”