II. THE SACRED THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITS SECOND FORM.

But the war was soon to be waged on a wider and far more important field. The inspiration of the Hebrew punctuation having been given up, the great orthodox body fell back upon the remainder of the theory, and intrenched this more strongly than ever: the theory that the Hebrew language was the first of all languages—that which was spoken by the Almighty, given by him to Adam, transmitted through Noah to the world after the Deluge—and that the "confusion of tongues" was the origin of all other languages.

In giving account of this new phase of the struggle, it is well to go back a little. From the Revival of Learning and the Reformation had come the renewed study of Hebrew in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and thus the sacred doctrine regarding the origin of the Hebrew language received additional authority. All the early Hebrew grammars, from that of Reuchlin down, assert the divine origin and miraculous claims of Hebrew. It is constantly mentioned as "the sacred tongue"—sancta lingua. In 1506, Reuchlin, though himself persecuted by a large faction in the Church for advanced views, refers to Hebrew as "spoken by the mouth of God."

This idea was popularized by the edition of the Margarita Philosophica, published at Strasburg in 1508. That work, in its successive editions a mirror of human knowledge at the close of the Middle Ages and the opening of modern times, contains a curious introduction to the study of Hebrew, In this it is declared that Hebrew was the original speech "used between God and man and between men and angels." Its full-page frontispiece represents Moses receiving from God the tables of stone written in Hebrew; and, as a conclusive argument, it reminds us that Christ himself, by choosing a Hebrew maid for his mother, made that his mother tongue.

It must be noted here, however, that Luther, in one of those outbursts of strong sense which so often appear in his career, enforced the explanation that the words "God said" had nothing to do with the articulation of human language. Still, he evidently yielded to the general view. In the Roman Church at the same period we have a typical example of the theologic method applied to philology, as we have seen it applied to other sciences, in the statement by Luther's great opponent, Cajetan, that the three languages of the inscription on the cross of Calvary "were the representatives of all languages, because the number three denotes perfection."

In 1538 Postillus made a very important endeavour at a comparative study of languages, but with the orthodox assumption that all were derived from one source, namely, the Hebrew. Naturally, Comparative Philology blundered and stumbled along this path into endless absurdities. The most amazing efforts were made to trace back everything to the sacred language. English and Latin dictionaries appeared, in which every word was traced back to a Hebrew root. No supposition was too absurd in this attempt to square Science with Scripture. It was declared that, as Hebrew is written from right to left, it might be read either way, in order to produce a satisfactory etymology. The whole effort in all this sacred scholarship was, not to find what the truth is—not to see how the various languages are to be classified, or from what source they are really derived—but to demonstrate what was supposed necessary to maintain what was then held to be the truth of Scripture; namely, that all languages are derived from the Hebrew.

This stumbling and blundering, under the sway of orthodox necessity, was seen among the foremost scholars throughout Europe. About the middle of the sixteenth century the great Swiss scholar, Conrad Gesner, beginning his Mithridates, says, "While of all languages Hebrew is the first and oldest, of all is alone pure and unmixed, all the rest are much mixed, for there is none which has not some words derived and corrupted from Hebrew."

Typical, as we approach the end of the sixteenth century, are the utterances of two of the most noted English divines. First of these may be mentioned Dr. William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, in the University of Cambridge. In his Discovery of the Dangerous Rock of the Romish Church, published in 1580, he speaks of "the Hebrew tongue,... the first tongue of the world, and for the excellency thereof called 'the holy tongue.'"

Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, Dr. William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and Master of St. John's College at Cambridge. In his Disputation on Holy Scripture, first printed in 1588, he says: "The Hebrew is the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone prevailed in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the Tower of Babel. For it was this which Adam used and all men before the Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures, as the fathers testify." He then proceeds to quote passages on this subject from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others, and cites St. Chrysostom in support of the statement that "God himself showed the model and method of writing when he delivered the Law written by his own finger to Moses."(415)