This report will prove that the original pure language spoken of by Adam and Eve and created by God, which was the original pure language, and once again will be the pure language of the world in the Millennial Kingdom, is Hebrew.
Is it significant to know this, or even necessary?
Absolutely! For a few reasons. (1) The original pure language will be the pure language of the millennial kingdom of Christ. (2) It will influence how you look at the Bible text debate. This subject has a major influence on the Bible Text issue, how one views the Old Testament (OT) text.
A typical lie and falsehood from the “evangelical” and Critical Text camp goes something like this:
"The Hebrew language, in consonantal form only, evolved from the Canaanite language around 1200 BC." (Christo H. J. van der Merwe, Jackie A. Naude, Jan H. Kroeze, A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar, [Sheffield Academic Press, 2002], pp. 15-17).
Two major lies in this one sentence, lies oft repeated in the Critical Text world, the world of the Textus Rejectus. But repeating a lie over and over doesn't make it more true. The Hebrew language didn't exist in just the consonantal form, first lie, and the second, the Hebrew language did not evolve from any language, no less the Canaanite language.
The Bible clearly teaches that until several centuries after the universal flood, all people on Earth spoke the same language. The fact that many supposedly unrelated languages have similar sounding words with the same or similar meanings supports the teaching that all languages derived from one language at one point in time. A study undertaken by researchers of babies and the sounds they make, corroborates this and corresponds to what the Bible plainly teaches.
"Now some language researchers say that they have developed another line of research that supports the belief that all humans once spoke the same language. Language researchers have spent years listening to babies in many different language groups babble. Babies younger than four months make a variety of sounds as they learn to use their voice. Speaking is a highly complex activity, requiring the coordination of 70 different muscles as well as several different body parts. By seven to ten months of age babies typically begin making sounds that alternate vowels and consonants. Researchers found that there are three distinct patterns of alternating sounds that are universal among babies in English-speaking households. Then they found that these three patterns are also common among infants from a wide range of language groups around the world. Researchers comparing infants from varying language groups then identified a fourth pattern among all groups. These findings have been interpreted as independent evidence that all people once spoke one language. We accept what the Bible says by faith, not because it has been proven. But when Scripture’s truths are supported by science the Bible’s integrity is upheld before skeptics." Ref: Science News, 5/27/00, pp. 344‑346, ‘Building Blocks of Talk.’” (Creation Moments, March 15, 2023)
This one language of the universe, the original language that God created and divinely originated in the garden and given to Adam and Eve, until such time of Babel, was Hebrew. That can be shown internally, by Scripture, and externally, through other historical means. God gave a language to Adam for clear expression and communication and it was Hebrew. Here is the evidence for it.
1. God created Adam and gave him a fully functional and divinely originated language and vocabulary. This wholly complete language permitted Adam to think ideas and enunciate words for communication. The first 10 chapters of the Bible, are filled with word puns, or paronomasia, a play on words. When we are introduced to the first man ("Adam") in Genesis, "there was not a man ("adam") to till the ground ("adamah")." (Gen 2:5). There is an obvious pun between the first man's name, Adam, and "man" ("adam") and "ground" ("adamah"), the kind you get your hands dirty in. Not only is it a play on words—a pun—it is humorous in Hebrew. Like Peter peters out. Later "Adam" is humbly told that after his life of toils and snares is done, he will "return unto the ground ("adamah"); for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19). "Adam" will return to "adamah."
Many of the first words Adam spoke are called paronomasia, or word puns, found in no other language of the world outside of Hebrew. For instance, the following first recorded human words were spoken by Adam and they contain paronomasia, his response to God’s creation of Eve,
“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” (Gen 2:23).
Adam punned on the word “man” (‘ish) with the word “woman” (‘ishshah) which means “from the man,” puns only carried forward in the language of Hebrew, and no other ancient, or otherwise, language. John Gill makes the case for that here:
"This paronomasia does not appear in the Syriac version, nor in the Chaldee paraphrases of Onkelos and Jonathan. The Syriac uses Gabra for a man, but never Gabretha for a woman, not even in places where men and women are spoken of together . . . The Syriac or Chaldee language will not admit such an allusion as is in the text. Just a Gabra is used for a man, and not Gabretha for a woman, so Itta, and Ittetha, and Intetha or Antetha, are used for a woman, but never Itt for a man . . . this seems to prove that the language Adam spoke to his wife must have been the Hebrew language, and consequently is the primitive one." (John Gill, A Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language, Letters, Vowel Points, and Accents, [London: G. Keith, 1767], p. 11).
We find extensive play on Abraham’s name. The text in Genesis plays on the Hebrew word for “multitude.” God says to Abram,
“As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee." (Gen 17:4-5)
God expands Abram’s ("abram") name, which means high or exalted father, to Abraham ("abraham") by adding the Hebrew letter heh. But there is no Hebrew word from the root “raham.” What we have here is word play with double meanings. The first syllable, “ab,” means father. The last syllable is “ram,” and the Lord puns it to “ab-r-ham” (ab hamon), which in Hebrew means “father of a multitude.”
There are hundreds of these kinds of puns of a theological nature in the Hebrew text of Genesis between chapters 1 and 10, all of which would be meaningless if Hebrew was a secondary language. Neither are any translatable into any other language, including the English of the KJV. These puns are not found in any Bible language of the world besides Hebrew, and some are actually comical when read in Hebrew, something completely lost in translation. These paronomasia give us the very essence of what the original language was written in. This is very important and key because in chapter 11 we have the tower of Babel and the confounding of the languages and no more puns. If you take away Hebrew, you lose the hundreds of puns in Gen 1-10. And so it becomes evident that when the Bible says in that pivotal passage of Gen 11:1, “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech,” Hebrew was that "one language" and "one speech" that filled "the whole earth." The LORD God then divided this original language into many to disunite man’s rebellion (Gen 11:6-9).
Another detail corroborating Hebrew as the original language, the mother tongue we could say, is Adam naming all the living creatures:
"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field;" (Gen 2:19-20)
But Adam didn't just randomly name the living creatures, as one drawing a name out of a hat. Every creature was named according to their characteristics, nature, disposition, and features — in Hebrew. We know it was Hebrew because Hebrew is the only language that conveys the actual meaning of each animal by its name. No other language does that, but rather, if we reverse the process, the translations of animals' names, such as the following for example, Skunk, Gopher, Giraffe and Horse, actually have corresponding meanings in Biblical Hebrew, such as: Stinker, Digger, Neck and Plower. Now isn't that interesting. Naturally, a man tasked with the responsibility of naming animals, would name them according to their characteristics or trademarks, not randomly. And Hebrew is the only language that actually conveys that inherently.
2. Restoration of the original tongue in the last days. It’s a pure language.
“Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy. For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent." (Zeph 3:8-9)
What would this language be? Would it be Akkadian, or Canaanite, or German, or Russian, or English or some other ancient language? The Bible actually does tell us quite convincingly, if you haven't been convinced already. Again, it would be the language of the Hebrews, which is Hebrew, for the Scripture calls Abram “the Hebrew” in Gen 14:13 (where "Hebrew" is translated from "Eber"), because he was a descendent of "Eber." From whence did Eber's lineage derive? From Shem, for "Shem [was] the father of all the children of Eber" (Gen 10:21). Thus father of the Hebrew race was Eber and Shem the “father of all the children of Eber” (Gen 10:21) which directly links Shem with the Hebrews who spoke Hebrew, thus it is reasonable to suggest that Shem spoke Hebrew. Eber was the great-grandson of Shem. So Eber and family were Shemites, who trace their lineage back to Shem (cf. Gen 10:21-31; 11:10-32), and these are the Jews, Shem being, by extension, the father of the Hebrews. (Asshur on the other hand was the father of the Assyrians who spoke Assyrian, Num 24:23-24). It was in Eber's (translation: Hebrew) generation when Hebrew, the mother tongue, was last universally spoken before the tower of Babel (cf. Gen 14:13; 10:21). After the Tower of Babel, this same region wherein the tower was geographically located, continued speaking Hebrew for they were Shemites, and this region was home to Ur of the Chaldees and thus "Abram the Hebrew." (Gen 14:13). Abram was called “the Hebrew” because he obviously spoke Hebrew, which then means his father Terah spoke Hebrew when he was in the land of Chaldea where Nimrod build the tower of Babel.
Eber had a son named Peleg and it was “in his days the earth was divided” (Gen 10:25), which division allocated geographic regions to nations according to language group, after God confused the languages at the tower of Babel. God’s purpose in confusing the languages was to stop construction of the Tower and prevent its completion. The godly line of Shem (or Eber) would not have participated in construction of the Tower and their language would not have been confused. Some years after, God communicated to Abram in Ur of the Chaldees and told him to go “to a land that I will show thee” (Gen 12:1), and Canaan became known as “the land of the Hebrews” (Gen 40:15). When God scattered the people according to their languages He placed the Hebrew race in the land of Canaan at the Geographic centre and cross-roads of the three great continents of Europe, Asia and Africa, to become God’s witness to all the nations through the centuries.
The lineage of the pure language of Hebrew can be traced throughout Scripture. As aforementioned, Adam named the animals in Hebrew ascertained by the fact of their peculiar names exclusive to Hebrew (Gen 2:19-20). We know Adam wrote Hebrew for we have his book preserved in the Bible. When Moses wrote the book of Genesis (“beginnings”) he incorporated the inspired writings, preserved through the centuries, of Adam (Gen 5:1), of Noah (Gen 6:9), of the sons of Noah (Gen 10:1; 11:10), of Terah (Gen 11:27), of Ishmael (Gen 25:12), of Isaac (Gen 25:19), of Esau (Gen 36:1,9), of Jacob and Joseph (Gen 37:2). When Noah went into the ark he took the “book of the generations of Adam” (Gen 5:1) with him, written in Hebrew. He also took “the generations of the heavens and the earth” (Gen 2:4) which could only have been written by God or dictated by God in Hebrew. The Patriarchs spoke Hebrew and were called the Hebrews. Abraham was called “the Hebrew” (Gen 14:13); Jacob spoke Hebrew (Gen 31:47); the Egyptians called Joseph “an Hebrew” (Gen 41:12) and the promised land, Canaan, was called the “land of the Hebrews” (Gen 40:15). During the captivity in Egypt, which was around 1500BC, the “Hebrew mid-wives” would not kill the baby boys in Egypt (Ex 1:15). When God sent Moses to Pharaoh, He called Himself “the LORD God of the Hebrews” (Ex 9:13).
All of the OT Scriptures were written in Hebrew except for portions in Daniel and Ezra which were in Aramaic. When Jesus came to earth, He spoke Hebrew, not Aramaic. When Pilate wrote a public announcement on the cross he used letters of Greek, Latin and Hebrew, not Aramaic. Undoubtedly, Jesus would've spoken several languages but at 12 years of age, He reasoned with the scholars in the Temple in Hebrew. When He began His ministry in his hometown synagogue at Nazareth, He read from the Book of Isaiah in Hebrew. Hebrew was the common language of the Jews in Jesus’ day and only became corrupted after the Jews were scattered among the Gentiles in 70AD.
So the pure language, the mother tongue created by God and first spoken by Adam and then spoken universally until such time of the Tower of Babel, and thereafter continued by the Shemites in the region of the tower (including "Abram the Hebrew")—the lineage of the Jewish people, can only be a reference to the Jewish language of Hebrew, which must have been the original language, the pure language. This is the language that God is referring to when He told Zephaniah in the last days, He would “turn [restore] to the people a pure language” (Zeph 3:9). God was referring to the pure Hebrew language planted by Him into the brain of Adam at the moment of creation in the Garden of Eden and spoken by the nation of Israel right down through the centuries.
This prophecy of Zephaniah concerning "a pure language" applies to the time of the future Millennial reign of Christ. After the Lord Jesus Christ has poured out His wrath on the world, He will rule what is left of the nations from Jerusalem, as the King of kings over the entire world, and give all people of the world one language, a pure language—which is the pure language of Hebrew given to the first man and woman, so that the whole world may "serve him with one consent." Not a confounded language created from Hebrew but a return to the original language, which was a pure language, which is Hebrew corroborated above but also obvious from this text of Scripture in Zephaniah, spoken to the Hebrew people, the Jews. With their return of the Israelites to their land 75 years ago, and reigniting their original Bible Hebrew language (thanks in large part to Theodore Herzl), we see this prophecy already taking root.
3. Extra-biblical arguments such as linguistic studies tying English and other languages to Hebrew. The roots of all human words are universal, and these words have related synonyms and antonyms that must have been intelligently engineered and must have a mother source. The one mother language God confounded at the tower of Babel was Hebrew (Gen 11:1). God didn’t confound 70 languages but one language, which He turned into many different languages. We know that it was Hebrew not only because of the previous argument, but also how all languages in the world relate to Hebrew. They don't relate to Arabic, as the dishonest, deceitful, and envious Arab would attempt to claim, or to any other language for that matter, but to Hebrew. In Judges 12:6 we read of certain Gentiles, pretending to be Jews, that could not pronounce the “Sh” of the Hebrew, only the “S.” Mentally they could not frame the word, proving they were non-Jews, and thus all 42,000 were killed. This is part of the curse of the confounding of the languages.
English has >22,000 English words that trace directly to Hebrew. English letters for example when interchanged with Hebrew consonants according to their sound (e.g. “f” for “p” — same pronunciation) show the English words in the Hebrew. Modern linguists however, holding to the evolution of language, dismiss the possibility that Hebrew could have been Adam’s language. Linguistically they ought to acknowledge that a mother tongue would have descendants in the present languages and therefore traceable, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Their renunciation of God leads them to hold to a corrupted and unintelligent belief that language evolved from a series of grunts into highly sophisticated languages, including the lately developed Hebrew. This is both unBiblical and refuted by languages with roots traceable to Hebrew. In a significant and enlightening work, Isaac Mozeson demonstrates beyond any “coincidence” or "chance" that over 22,000 English words trace their roots back to Hebrew. He writes,
"Don’t worry if you’ve never read anything on language, or if you’ve never heard a Hebrew word. You will soon know that you’ve never heard a word that wasn’t Hebrew. . . . Hebrew vocabulary has as much affinity with English as it has with Arabic. More English words can be clearly linked to Biblical Hebrew than to Latin, Greek or French. Most known English words or roots are treated in this book . . . The curriculum of Harvard was full of Hebrew, and an early graduate theses at Harvard concerned Hebrew as the Mother tongue. Noah Webster’s etymologies (discredited for 200 years now) were full of English words traced to “Shemitic” sources. Most significant of all, if a vote in the Continental Congress had gone the other way, America, and much of today’s world, would now be speaking Hebrew." (Isaac E. Mozeson, The Word: The Dictionary that Reveals the Hebrew Source of English, pp. 1-2)
4. The original language did not evolve or derive from Canaanite or any other language. The Hebrew language predates all other languages and the claims by some that cuniform writing existed before Hebrew is false. Cuniform writing was one of the languages at the time of the Sumerian and Akkadian kingdoms several hundred years after the Flood in the time of Nimrod; it was Nimrod who built the city of Accad (Gen10:10).
The descendants of Canaan were cursed by the Lord (Gen 9:25). Biblically it is impossible to reconcile how God could use the cursed Canaanites to produce a language from which the blessed Shemites and their language would come (Gen 9:26). Hebrew is not a derived or evolved language as some "scholars" claim, as quoted in the introduction but also many others such as the Bible commentator Merrill Unger and Paine (BJU). This would mean it was not the original language, but that contradicts what the Bible clearly outlines. These "scholars" claim the Canaanite language influenced Hebrew as a consonantal text only. That is plain heresy and unbelief, for more reasons that just the original language debate. A component of this lie, is that the consonants only were found and originally inspired in the Hebrew text, while the vowels (and consequently the pronunciations) were passed on through oral tradition. Like the denial of Hebrew language being the original divine language of the universe, this view rejects the perfect preservation of the Hebrew text, while the Word of God is replete with God-given promises of the perfect preservation of the Lord’s words (e.g. Ps 12:6-7, 119:111, 152, 160; Matt 4:4, 5:18, 24:35, etc). Bible consonants on their own are not words; words must include consonants and vowels. When the Bible declares that “every word of God is pure” (Pr 30:5-6), one is entirely confident that these pure Words are complete words with consonants and vowels. When the Lord God spoke the heavens and earth into existence He used words (Gen 1:3), as He did when He gave His commandments to Moses, writing His words on the tablets (Ex 34:1; cf. 20:1 ff.; De 10:2). When the apostles and prophets, such as Amos, saw God’s revelation, they penned complete words (cf. Am 1:1; Ob 1:1; Hab 1:1). The Bible is replete with such examples, of which none allow that God’s revelation was in the form of consonants only.
I reject the verb and noun evolution of Hebrew. Nothing evolves. With perfect preservation of God’s Word, there is no evolution. It is blatantly false that the inspired Hebrew text contained only consonants and that vowels and pronunciations were passed on by oral tradition. It is also false that Masorite scribes invented vowel forms for inspired consonantal Hebrew text. If you are enamoured with textual criticism and scholarship, you’re going to put your brain aside and follow their mantra. You would accept, without Biblical authority while assuming evolutionary principle, that all languages including Hebrew evolved, an unBiblical and heretical lie claimed by many heretical OT "scholars" and Hebrew grammarians. I don't get enamoured with people who criticize the Bible because the Bible changed my life. I've got personal investment in the Bible.
Jer 36 is a classic passage on the inspiration and preservation of all of the words in God’s Word. This chapter of scripture took place between the years 605 B.C. and 627 B.C., where Jeremiah was commanded by the LORD God to write in a scroll (vv. 1-2). He was to write consents and vowels (“all the words that I have spoken unto thee” v. 2). You cannot speak and write consonants: words without vowels. You can only hum them. “Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neriah: and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the LORD, which he had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book.” (v. 4). Lord —> Jeremiah —> Baruch —> Scroll. All the words from the LORD were perfect and pure. No errors. No erroneous words, or missing letters. No confusion with only consonants and no vowels. God inspired His perfects words onto a perfect scroll using imperfect tools (humans), all of which He superintended. This is the inspiration of Scripture and it utterly rejects the heresy of God-given words without vowels.
Anti-semites have also behind the lies and deception in generating other linguistic alternatives to Hebrew as the original language created by God and spoken by Adam and Eve and their descendants until the Tower of Babel. Hebrew lexicons edited by rationalistic German linguists have not hidden their notable anti-Semitism through their promotion of the evolution of the Hebrew language in the Akkadian—Canaanite—Hebrew lineage.
Prior to the publication of the evil, diabolical, and damnably destructive book by Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), most Bible commentators embraced the Biblical view of a recent creation of the universe, that is around 6,000 years, and that Hebrew was the original tongue that God gave to Adam and Eve. Evolution tragically impacted all academic disciplines, including linguistics. John Davis affirms the history of Hebrew being the original tongue in the following:
"That all men were of one language and dialect should not be surprising since they were fundamentally united in the sons of Noah. Research in the area of comparative grammar has demonstrated that known languages are related and could have descended from one language. Of course it is unknown whether that language resembles any modern language, but until the nineteenth century the theory that the original language was Hebrew was practically unquestioned." (John J. Davis, Paradise to Prison: Studies in Genesis, p. 144.)
When we trace the language spoken by the Jews throughout Scripture, we find that Hebrew was always spoken by the Israelites and Shemites, and can in fact be traced back all the way to Adam. The language is pure because God spoke it.
In closing, the Holy Scriptures demand that the original pure language that God created, the language of Adam and Eve and the language of the future Millennial kingdom, be Hebrew. We rest our case on the fact that Moses used many puns in Gen 1-10 that have never been duplicated in any ancient or modern version; Zephaniah’s prophecy concerning the restoration of the original language united across the world during the Millennial kingdom; the designation of Abram the Hebrew; and the course that Hebrew has taken from Adam throughout the Scriptures and the ages, requires the aforementioned premise that Hebrew was the language that God created and our first parents spoke. Extra-biblical arguments such as linguistic studies tying English and other languages to Hebrew, along with historical Biblical belief concerning this matter, corroborate this truth.