On the Origins or the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language

—language was the first of all, and whether speech consists of art or nature. That dispute has remained under the judge until now. The Phrygians, related to the vanity of Greece, contend with this fable that it is from nature. They say that once, for the sake of experience, young boys were committed to a mute nurse so that she might raise them outside the commerce of men, and finally it would appear, if they sought or uttered anything, what it was and of whose people the language was: finally it happened that one of them uttered "Bec," by which word they contend they name bread in Phrygian: whence by that one word they assert their language is the first of all. The Arcadians refer the antiquity of their race to before the moon, whence they were once called proselēnoi antelunarians, for no other argument than lust. Therefore, when Aristophanes wanted to recall the most ancient thing, he composed a word from both in this verse: "O you fool, and smelling of Saturn, and becceselene Phrygian-Arcadian," that is, Phrygian and Arcadian. No argument is needed to confute the Arcadian vanity, which rests on nothing. But it is certain that the Phrygian history is a mere fable and ambitiously concocted, because no one writes under which prince or at what time it was: because it was so ancient that there was not yet the use of milling or kneading, or perhaps even of carrying, whence those youths did not seek bread, for which there was no use yet, but sought whatever sufficed for a grumbling belly with that word. For how would they, destitute of all things, seek bread unknown to them? Let faith be given to the fables and histories of that time. Furthermore, these sounds—ba, be, bi, bac, bec, bic, etc.—which consist primarily of the lips, are very often common to both mutes and three-month-old infants. Diodorus, who accumulates all histories and fables of past times from a most lofty beginning, indeed with no judgment but only with a certain diligence, not obscurely refers the ancient use of letters to the Chaldeans, for which, however, the Egyptians contend, attributing nothing to themselves except from the fertility of their Nile, although divine Plato, a most diligent author, has left it written that the Egyptians do not admit their origin—