Divine language
For the fictional language used in the 1997 film The Fifth Element, see The Divine Language.
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Divine language, the language of the gods, or, in monotheism, the language of God (or angels) is the concept of a mystical or divine proto-language, which predates and supersedes human phonetic speech.
Indic traditions
In Vedic religion, Vedic Sanskrit was considered the language of the gods.
In Tamil national mysticism, the Tamil language is considered "more divine" than Sanskrit (see Devaneya Pavanar).
Abrahamic traditions
In the Judeo-Christian religion (including offshoot Islam), it is unclear whether the language used by God to address Adam was the language of Adam, which as name-giver, (Gen 2:19) used it to name all living things, or if it was a different divine language. But since God is portrayed as using speech during creation, and as addressing Adam before Gen 2:19, some authorities[citation needed] assumed that the language of God was different from the language of Paradise invented by Adam, while most medieval Jewish authorities maintained that the Hebrew language was the language of God.
Regarding the question as to whether God spoke Hebrew, Jacob Grimm in 1851 pointed out that if God spoke language, indeed any language that involves dental consonants, God must have teeth, and since teeth were created not for speech but for eating, it would follow that he also eats, which, as Frits Staal puts it, "leads to so many other undesirable assumptions that we better abandon the idea altogether"[1]
According to the Quran, this scripture contains the direct revelation from Allah in pure Arabic. Thus, Muslims can deduce and it has been deduced that Arabic is the divine language. Today, this theory continues in practice by South Asian and South-East Asian Muslims, who continue to pray, chant and read their Holy Book in Arabic[citation needed]. They are not required to understand the meanings of these prayers, chants or passages, however. As Arabic is deemed as a divine language, simply by verbalizing Arabic sounds or reading the Arabic alphabet suffices as acts of religious devotion.
Anne Catherine Emmerich stated in her private revelations that most direct descendants of the divine language were Bactrian, Zend and Indian languages. In this way Emmerich identifies divine language as Proto-Indo-European language.[2]
Some Early Modern scholars on basis of Genesis 10:5 have assumed that the Japhetite languages are the direct descendants of the divine language, having separated before the confusion of tongues, by which also Hebrew was affected, confirming in this way Emmerich's private revelations.
The Ahmadiyya Muslims believe thatArabic is the mother of all languages, the original tongue of mankind and that it is a Divine language which was taught to man by God, hence according to them the Quran was revealed in Arabic for this reason.
Occultism
In 1510, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa published Book I of his De Occulta Philosophia, which included further information concerning the Divine Language. Chapter 23 of the book is entitled "Of the tongue of Angels, and of their speaking amongst themselves, and with us" - wherein he states:
- We might doubt whether Angels, or Demons, since they be pure spirits, use any vocal speech, or tongue amongst themselves, or to us; but that Paul in some place saith, If I speak with the tongue of men, or angels: but what their speech or tongue is, is much doubted by many. For many think that if they use any Idiome, it is Hebrew, because that was the first of all, and came from heaven, and was before the confusion of languages in Babylon, in which the Law was given by God the Father, and the Gospel was preached by Christ the Son, and so many Oracles were given to the Prophets by the Holy Ghost: and seeing all tongues have, and do undergo various mutations, and corruptions, this alone doth alwaies continue inviolated.
Later, in chapter 27, Agrippa mentions the Divine Language again:
- But because the letters of every tongue, as we shewed in the first book, have in their number, order, and figure a Celestial and Divine original, I shall easily grant this calculation concerning the names of spirits to be made not only by Hebrew letters, but also by Chaldean, and Arabick, Ægyptian, Greek, Latine, and any other...
In the late 1500s, the Elizabethan mathematician and scholar John Dee, and the medium and alchemist Edward Kelley (both of whom were familiar with Agrippa's writings), claimed to have received the "Celestial Speech", during skrying sessions, directly from Angels. They recorded large portions of the language in their journals (published today as "The Five Books of the Mysteries" and "A True and Faithful Relation..."), along with a complete text in the language called the "Book of Loagaeth" (or "Speech From God"). Dee's language- called "Angelical" in his journals, but often known today by the misnomer "Enochian", follows the basic Judeo-Christian mythology about the Divine Language. According to "A True and Faithful Relation..." Angelical was supposed to have been the language God used to create the world, and then used by Adam to speak with God and Angels and to name all things in existence. He then lost the language upon his Fall from Paradise, and constructed a form of proto-Hebrew based upon his vague memory of Angelical. This proto-Hebrew, then, was the universal human language until the time of the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel. After this, all the various human languages were developed, including an even more modified Hebrew (which we know as "Biblical Hebrew"). From the time of Adam to the time of Dee and Kelley, Angelical was hidden from humans with the single exception of the patriarch Enoch - who recorded the "Book of Loagaeth" for humanity, but the book was lost in the Deluge of Noah.
George William Russell in The Candle of Vision (1918) argued that (p. 120) "The mind of man is made in the image of Deity, and the elements of speech are related to the powers in his mind and through it to the being of the Oversoul. These true roots of language are few, alphabet and roots being identical."
Because of the relation to mathematics, Epsilonists hold that Greek language is divine or of extraterrestrial origin (see Gematria).
In popular culture
The Divine language is mentioned and spoken by Leeloo in the film The Fifth Element, directed by Luc Besson. See Leeloo's Language at Everything2.com
References
- ^ J. Grimm, Über den Ursprung der Sprache (1851, reprint 1958); Staal, Noam Chomsky Between the Human and Natural Sciences, Janus Head. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts, Winter 2001, pp. 25-66. [1]
- ^ Anne Catherine Emmerich, Life of Jesus Christ And Biblical Revelations, 6. Noah and his posterity, 7. The Tower of Babel (1790)