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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adamic language | 1/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamic_language | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:33:42.683318+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Adamic language, according to Abraham Abulafia and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden. It is variously interpreted as either the language used by God to address Adam (the divine language), or the language invented by Adam with which he named all things (including Eve), as in the second Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 2:19). In the Middle Ages, various Jewish commentators held that Adam spoke Hebrew, a view also addressed in various ways by the late medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri. In the early modern period, some authors continued to discuss the possibility of an Adamic language, some continuing to hold to the idea that it was Hebrew, while others such as John Locke were more skeptical. According to Ethiopian and Eritrean traditions, the ancient Semitic language of Geʽez is the language of Adam, the first and original language. More recently, a variety of Mormon authors have expressed various opinions about the nature of the Adamic language.
== Patristic period == Augustine addresses the issue in The City of God. While not explicit, the implication of there being but one human language prior to the Tower of Babel's collapse is that the language, which was preserved by Heber and his son Peleg, and which is recognized as the language passed down to Abraham and his descendants, is the language that would have been used by Adam.
== Middle Ages ==
Traditional Jewish exegesis such as Midrash says that Adam spoke the Hebrew language because the names he gives Eve – Isha and Chava – only make sense in Hebrew. By contrast, Abraham Abulafia (1240-1291) assumed that the language spoken in Paradise had been different from Hebrew, and rejected the claim then-current also among Christian authors, that a child left unexposed to linguistic stimulus would automatically begin to speak in Hebrew. Both Muslim and Christian Arabs, such as Sulayman al-Ghazzi, considered Syriac the language spoken by Adam and Eve. Umberto Eco (1993) notes that Genesis is ambiguous on whether the language of Adam was preserved by Adam's descendants until the confusion of tongues, or if it began to evolve naturally even before Babel. Dante Alighieri addresses the topic in his De vulgari eloquentia (1302–1305). He argues that the Adamic language is of divine origin and therefore unchangeable. He also notes that according to Genesis, the first speech act is due to Eve, addressing the serpent, and not to Adam. Paracelsus believed in an Adamic language, as did Johann Reuchlin. In his Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1320), however, Dante changes his view to another that treats the Adamic language as the product of Adam. This had the consequence that it could no longer be regarded as immutable, and hence Hebrew could not be regarded as identical with the language of Paradise. Dante concludes (Paradiso XXVI) that Hebrew is a derivative of the language of Adam. In particular, the chief Hebrew name for God in scholastic tradition, El, must be derived of a different Adamic name for God, which Dante gives as I.
== Early modern period ==
=== Proponents ===
Elizabethan scholar John Dee makes references to a language he called "Angelical", which he recorded in his private journals and those of scryer Edward Kelley. Dee's journals did not describe the language as "Enochian", instead preferring "Angelical", the "Celestial Speech", the "Language of Angels", the "First Language of God-Christ", the "Holy Language", or "Adamical" because, according to Dee's Angels, it was used by Adam in Paradise to name all things. The language was later dubbed Enochian, due to Dee's assertion that the Biblical Patriarch Enoch had been the last human (before Dee and Kelley) to know the language. Dutch physician, linguist, and humanist Johannes Goropius Becanus (1519–1572) theorized in Origines Antwerpianae (1569) that Antwerpian Babrantic, spoken in the region between the Scheldt and Meuse Rivers, was the original language spoken in Paradise. Goropius believed that the most ancient language on Earth would be the simplest language, and that the simplest language would contain mostly short words. Since Brabantic has a higher number of short words than do Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, Goropius reasoned that it was the older language. His work influenced that of Simon Stevin (1548–1620), who espoused similar ideas in "Uytspraeck van de weerdicheyt der Duytse tael", a chapter in De Beghinselen Der Weeghconst (1586). By the 17th century, Adamic was the most popular theory of the nature of language.
=== Opponents === The existence and nature of the alleged Adamic language was commonly discussed amongst European Jewish and Christian mystics and primitive linguists. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) was skeptical that Hebrew was the language best capable of describing the nature of things, stating:
I could never find, that the Hebrew names of animals, mentioned in the beginning of Genesis, argued a (much) clearer insight into their natures, than did the names of the same or some other animals in Greek, or other languages (1665:45). John Locke (1632–1704) expressed similar skepticism in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690).
== Modern period ==