II. Historii of the Ilebreiv Language.— \. Its Origin.— The extant historical notices on this point caiTy tis back to the age of Abraham, but no fiu-ther. The best evi- dences whicli we possess as to the form of the Hebrew language prior to its first historical period tend to show that Abraham, on his entrance into Canaan, found the language then prevailing among almost all the different tribes inhabiting that country to be in at least dialec- tual affinity with his own. This is gathered from the following facts : that nearly all the names of places and persons relating to those tribes admit of Hebrew ety- mologies ; that, amid aU the accounts of the intercourse of the Hebrews with the nations of Canaan, we find no hint of a diversity of idiom ; and that even the com- paratively recent remains of the Phoenician and Punic languages bear a manifest affinity to the Hebrew. But whether the Hebrew language, as seen in the earliest books of the Old Test., is the veiy dialect which Abra- ham brought u-ilh him into Canaan, or wlicther it was the common tongue of the Canaanitish nations, which Abraham only adopted from them, and which was after- wards developed to greater fulness under the peculiar moral and political influences to which his posterity were exposed, are questions which, in the absence of conclu- sive arguments, are gencraUy discussed with soiriC dog- matical prepossessions. Almost all those who support the first view contend also that Hebrew was the primi- tive language of mankind. S. Slorinus {Ling. Priman:) and Lcischer (De Caiisis Ling. Hebr.') are among the best champions of this opinion; but Hiivernick has more recently advocated it with such modifications as make it more acceptable {Einleit. in das A lie Test. I, i, 148 sq.). The principal argument on which they depend is that, as the most important proper names in the first part of Genesis (as Cain, Seth, and others) are evidently found- ed on Hebrew etymologies, the essential connection of these names with their etymological origins involves the historical credibility of the records themselves, and leaves no room for any other conclusion than tliat the Hebrew language is coeval with the earliest histor\' of man. The evidence on the other side is scanty, but not without weight. (1.) In Dent, xxvi, 6, Abraham is called a Syrian or jVrama;an ('^52'njSt), from which we naturally conclude that Syriac was his mother tongue, es)iccially when we find, (2.) from Gen. xxxi, 47, that Syriac or Chaldee was the language sjioken by Laban, the grandson of Nahor, Abraham's brother. Sloreovcr, it has been remarked (3.) that in Isa. xix, 18, the He- brew is actually called the laugnage of Canauii ; and (4.) that the language itself furnishes internal evidence of its Palestinian origin in the word C, sea, which means also the vest, and has this meaning in the very earliest document.*. (,5,) Finally, .Jewish tradition, what- ever weight may be attached to it, points to the same conclusion (Geseniu.s, Ceschichte, sect, vi, 4).
If we inquire further how it was that the Canaanites, of the race of Ham, spoke a language so closely allied to the languages spoken by the principal members of
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the Shemitic family of nations, we shall soon discover that the solution of this cUfHculty is impossible with our present means of information; it lies beyond the his- toric perioil. It may be that long before tlic mi^^ration oF Abraham a Shemitic race occupied Palestine; and that, as Abraham adopted the language of the Canaan- ites, so the Canaanites themselves had in like manner adopted the language of that earlier race whom they gradually dispossessed, and eventually extirpated or ab- sorbed. However this may be, leaving speculation for fact, is it not possible to discover a wise purpose in the selection cf the language of Tyre and Sidon— the great commercial cities of antiquity — as the language in which was to be embodied the most wonderfid revela- tion of himself and of his law which God made to the ancient world ? When we remember the constant in- tercourse which was maintained by the Phoenicians with the most distant regions both of the East and of the West, it is impossible to doubt that the sacred books of the Hebrews, ^vritten in a language almost identical with i!iG Phoenician, must have exercised a more im- portant intiuence on the Gentile world than is usually acknowledged.
Of course the Canaanitish language, when adopted by the Hebrews, did not remain unchanged. Having become the instrument of the Hebrew mind, and being employed in the expression of new and very pecidiar ideas, it must have been modified considerably thereby. How far may possibly be yet ascertainetl, should acci- dent or the successful zeal of some explorer bring to light the more ancient monuments of the Phoenician nation, which may still have survived the entombment of centuries.
2. Injluctices modifijinr/ Ihe Form of the Hebrew Lan- gmtfie, and the Stij/e of the Hebrew Writings. — (1.) Time. — The historj' of the Hebrew language, as far as we can trace its course by the changes in the diction of the documents in which it is preserved, may here be con- veniently divided into that of the period preceding and that of the period succeeding the Exile. If it be a matter of siu-prise that the thousand years which inter- vened between Moses and the Captivity should not have produced sufficient change in the language to warrant its history diuring that time being distributed into sub- ordinate divisions, the following considerations may ex- cuse this arrangement. It is one of the signal charac- teristics of the Hebrew language, as seen in all the books prior to the Exile, tliat, notwithstanding the ex- istence of some isolated but important archaisms, such as in the form of tlie pronoun, etc. (the best collection of which may be seen in lliivernick, I. c. p. 183 sq.), it preser\-es an unparalleled general uniformity of struc- ture. The extent to wliich this uniformity prevails may be estimated either by the fact that it has fur- nished many modern scholars, who reason from the analogies discovered in the changes in other languages in a given period, with an argument to show that the Pentateuch coidd not have been written at so remote a date as is general!}' believed (Gesenius, Gesch. der Iltbr. Spriiche, § 8), or by the conclusion, a fortiori, which Hiivernick, whose express object is to vindicate its re- ceived antiqiuty, candidly concedes, that " the books of Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah are the earliest in whicli the language differs sensibly from that in the historical portions of the Pentateuch" {Einleit. i, 180). Even those critics who endeavor to bring down the Pentateuch as a whole to a comparatively late date al- low that a portion at least of its contents is to be assign- ed to the age of Moses (Ewald, Lehrbuch, sec. 2, c) : and thus, uidess it can be shown that this most ancient portion bears in its language and style the stamp of high antiquit_y, and is distinguished in a very marked manner from the other portions of the Pentateuch (which has not been sho^v^l), the phenomenon still remains un- explamed. But, indeed, the phenomenon is by no means unexamiiled. It does not stand alone. It is said, for example, that the Chinese language displays the same