David Parry continues his Scholar’s Call series on communication and language. See Part 1 here.Â
Post 2: The quest for the Adamic language
So what language did Adam and Eve speak in the Garden of Eden? This was a question of significant interest in the early modern period (around the 16th and 17th centuries).1 The majority scholarly opinion, following Augustine, went with Hebrew.2 However, other options were available. For instance, Jan van Gorp argued in his 1569 work Origines Antwerpianae that the original language was Dutch, and, in particular, the dialect of Antwerp, since the ancestors of the burghers of Antwerp were not present at the Tower of Babel when the languages were confused.3 Georg Philipp Harsdörffer argued in 1641 that it must have been German, since German “speaks in the languages of nature, quite perceptibly expressing all its soundsâ€.4 The varied suggestions were parodied in a 1688 pamphlet by Andreas Kempe, Die Sprachen des Paradises (The Languages of Paradise), which proposes that God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French. Some concluded that the original God-given language was lost at the Tower of Babel and so was no longer in existence.5 [Read more…] about Communication for Communion, Part 2: The Quest for the Adamic Language (Scholar’s Call)