Adamic language

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See also: Divine language

The Adamic language is, according to Abrahamic traditions, the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Adamic is typically identified with either the language used by God to address Adam, or the language invented by Adam (Book of Genesis 2:19).

Contents

[edit] Medieval and early modern discussions

Further information: Confusion of tongues

Traditional Jewish exegesis such as Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 38) says that Adam spoke Hebrew because the names he gives Eve - "Isha" (Book of Genesis 2:23) and "Chava" (Genesis 3:20) - only make sense in Hebrew. By contrast, Kabbalism assumed an "eternal Torah" which was not identical to the Torah written in Hebrew. Thus, Abulafia in the 13th century 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.[1]

Eco (1993) notes that Genesis is ambiguous on whether the language of Adam was preserved by Adam's descendants until the confusion of tongues (Genesis 11:1-9), or if it began to evolve naturally even before Babel (Genesis 10:5).[2]

Dante addresses the topic in his De Vulgari Eloquentia. He argues that the Adamic language is of divine origin and therefore unchangeable.[3] He also notes that according to Genesis, the first speech act is due to Eve, addressing the serpent, and not to Adam.[4]

In his Divina Commedia, however, Dante changes his view to other, that treats the Adamic language as the product of Adam.[5] This had the consequence that it could not any longer be regarded 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 reconstructs as I.[6]

One might note with the Hebrew scholarly theory that Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the source of these is believed to be Ethiopia, where the greatest diversity of these languages can be found, including the Ge'ez language used in the Book of Enoch. Arabic, which is related to Hebrew, could also be theorized as being the original Adamic language for this reason, which many Muslim scholars do. This Muslim theory is based on the fact that the name Adam آدم comes from the skin which is named Adamah أدمه, and especially on knowledge that Adam name refers to the skin color which was tanned. These Muslim scholars argue that according to their Hadith script, Adam being the father of humans, was made from all kinds of earth with all colors types, hence the color of skin was neither black nor white, but something a bit in between closer to the darker skin. Similar arguments there are in the Jewish teachings in Talmud, where the Adam אדם and Adamah אדמה wording has similar meanings, but Adam was referred to as having neither black nor white color, but colors closer to yellow skin and dark red hair[7].

Those scholars who do not believe in the Afro-Asiatic languages as descendants of the Adamic language trace them to Abraham instead of Noah and Adam.[citation needed]

Some Christian scholars based on Genesis 10:5 have assumed that the Japhetite, or Indo-European, languages are rather the direct descendants of the Adamic language, having separated before the confusion of tongues, by which also Hebrew was affected. For example, a few early Christian fathers claimed that Adam spoke Latin to explain why God would make it the liturgical language of his Church, although "Latin" here would be a loose way of referring to its ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. The same is claimed by Anne Catherine Emmerich (1790), who stated in her private revelations that the most direct descendants of the Adamic language were Bactrian, Zend and Indian languages (i.e., the Indo-Iranian languages), associating the Adamic language with the then-recent concept of the "common source" of these tongues, now known as Proto-Indo-European, that presumably was written in an assumedly sentence-level ideographic script that was more abstract than word-level ideographic script.[8] One interesting fact is that the Behistun Inscription, written in Old Persian, begins with adam, meaning "I am".[9]

According to Ernst Cassirer, "The sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers of language still supposed that phenomena of onomatopoeia offered the key to the basic and original language of mankind, the lingua adamica".[10] The modern concept corresponding to that of the Adamic language is that of the Proto-World language, but rather than positing divine inspiration, linguists also assume that it arose from proto-linguistic forms of communication.[citation needed]

[edit] In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, in his version of the Bible, declared the Adamic language to have been "pure and undefiled".[11] Some Latter Day Saints believe it to be the language of God.[12]

Some other early Latter-day Saint leaders, including Brigham Young,[13] Orson Pratt[14] and Elizabeth Ann Whitney[15] claimed to have received several words in the Adamic language in revelations. Some Latter Day Saints believe that the Adamic language is the "pure language" spoken of by Zephaniah[16] and that it will be restored as the universal language of humankind at the end of the world.[17][18][19]

Latter-day Saint Apostle Orson Pratt declared that "Ahman", part of the name of the settlement "Adam-ondi-Ahman" in Daviess County, Missouri, was the name of God in the Adamic language.[14]

The Latter-day Saint Endowment prayer circle once included use of the words "Pay Lay Ale",[20] which some adherents believed were Adamic words meaning "Oh God, hear the words of my mouth".[21] The untranslated words are no longer used in temple ordinances and have been replaced by the English version.[22] Some think that the "Pay Lay Ale" sentence is derived from Hebrew sentence "pe le-El", 'mouth to God'.[22]

Other words thought by some Latter-day Saints to derive from the Adamic language include deseret ("honey bee", see Ether 2:3, but some argue "deseret" can be traced to the Egyptian word dsrt, which in fact refers to the honey bee), [23] and Ahman ("God"). Some[who?] have also taken the word shelem to mean "height" (see Ether 3:1) though the passage states, "...which they called the mount Shelem, because of its exceeding height..." not necessarily implying that the word actually means "height," but more practically that the word has at least something to do with "exceeding height."[citation needed]

In the Pearl of Great Price, a section of Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible, it refers to "a Book of Remembrance", written in language of Adam.[24] It is believed that this was the beginning of what is recognized as the Old Testament today.[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Eco (1993), p. 32 f.
  2. ^ Eco (1993), 7-10.
  3. ^ Mazzocco, p. 159
  4. ^ mulierem invenitur ante omnes fuisse locutam. Eco (1993), p. 50.
  5. ^ Mazzocco, p. 170
  6. ^ Paradiso 26.133f.; Mazzocco, p. 178f.
  7. ^ Anne Catherine Emmerich, Life of Jesus Christ And Biblical Revelations, 4. The family of Adam. (1790)
  8. ^ Anne Catherine Emmerich, Life of Jesus Christ And Biblical Revelations, 6. Noah and his posterity, 7. The tower of Babel. (1790)
  9. ^ The Behistun Inscription
  10. ^ The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms I, p.191 (English translation, 1953).
  11. ^ Book of Moses 6:6.
  12. ^ John S. Robertson, "Adamic Language", in Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan) 1:18–19.
  13. ^ Brigham Young, "History of Brigham Young", Millennial Star, vol. 25, no. 28, p. 439 (1863-07-11), cited in History of the Church 1:297, footnote (Young prays in the Adamic tongue).
  14. ^ a b Journal of Discourses 2:342 (God = "Ahman"; Son of God = "Son Ahman"; Men = "Sons Ahman"; Angel = "Anglo-man").
  15. ^ Woman's Exponent 7:83 (1 November 1878) (Whitney sings a hymn in the Adamic tongue).
  16. ^ Zephaniah 3:9
  17. ^ Oliver Cowdery, "The Prophecy of Zephaniah", Evening and Morning Star, vol. 2, no. 18, p. 142 (March 1834).
  18. ^ Bruce R. McConkie (1966, 2d ed.). Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft) p. 19.
  19. ^ Ezra Taft Benson (1988). Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft) p. 93.
  20. ^ Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, The Mormon Murders (New York: St. Martins's Press, 1988) ISBN 0312934106, p. 69. "the sign of the Second Token [is] raising both hands and then lowering them while repeating the incantation "Pay Lay Ale" three times"
  21. ^ Tamra Jean Braithwaite, A Mormon Odyssey (Xlibris Co., 2003) ISBN 1413418783, p. 212. "In 1990, several significant portions of the endowment ceremony performed worldwide in Latter-day Saint temples were eliminated" including "the chanting in unison of "Pay Lay Ale, Pay Lay Ale, Pay Lay Ale" (supposedly meaning Oh God, hear the words of my mouth in the Adamic language)."
  22. ^ a b "Current Mormon Temple Ceremony Now Available", Salt Lake City Messenger, no. 76, November 1990.
  23. ^ Dr. Hugh Nibley, Lehi in the Deseret and the World of the Jaredites (Shadow Mountain, 1998) ISBN 0875791328 pp. 184-85
  24. ^ Moses 6:5, 46.

[edit] See also

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