On the Origins or the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language

—from Egypt, but from Asia and the Chaldeans. Pliny, that glutton of books, who viewed no part of antiquity without the greatest diligence and recorded it in his commentary, asserts that the use of letters was so ancient among the Syrians and Chaldeans that many have thought them eternal among them, but I prefer to bring his words so that no one might think I am inventing anything. In his Natural History, Book 7, Chapter 56, he left it written: "I believe that letters were always Assyrian, but others want them to have been found among the Egyptians by Mercury, as Gellius says, or others among the Syrians." This in truth teaches most openly that the Hebrews and Chaldeans wrote with the first and most ancient letters: for they are the same as the Assyrians. And before Heber, from whom they were called Hebrews, they were one race with the Chaldeans, from which race Abraham, celebrated by all ancient authors, was first chosen. Pliny also in Book 5, Chapter 12 confirms the aforesaid opinion: "The race of the Phoenicians (by Phoenicians he understands all the Syrians of whom he speaks there) was in great glory for the invention of letters and the stars, and naval and bellicose arts." But to know that there is a certain language to man by nature without the conversation of other humans is indeed arduous. Since I hear even today that in the almost desert parts of Africa toward the Tropic of Capricorn there are men who are said to explain the senses of their mind by hissing and whistling, if it is true, I am easily led to believe that language and the names of things were imposed by human art, not by nature. Which, however, if I were in the place of some magnate, I would prove repeatedly until the truth of the matter was established. For it would be done with no danger, since a boy kept outside the association of men for seven years or thereabouts could, if he remained mute up to that point, finally learn the ancestral language through conversation. But our discourse is about the first letters and languages, which by the consensus of all became known to mortals, not whether they are by art or nature. That the first was Chaldean or Hebrew (for, as I said, Moses himself recognizes the race of the Chaldeans to be more ancient than that of the Hebrews) is established by both profane and sacred authors, so that faith may be made for the heathens and the chosen Christians may be amplified. Beyond those—