Thanks, I'll do that! Now, look what I found:
Is Hebrew the oldest language on Earth?
Jeff Benner, 20+ years teaching Biblical Hebrew and Bible interpretation.
Was Hebrew the first language spoken in the world?
I am going to answer this question from a Biblical Perspective and from this perspective, the answer is yes, Hebrew was the first language spoken in the world.
According to the Bible, all people spoke one language (Genesis 11:1) until the construction of the Tower of Babel in southern Mesopotamia, which occurred sometime around 4000 BC. During the construction of the Tower, God confused the language of man and scattered the nations (Genesis 11:7,8).
The first quotation in the Bible is in Genesis 1:3 when God said;
יהי אור y’hiy or (let there be light)
This is Hebrew, but one could easily argue that he spoke these words in another language, but was “translated” into Hebrew at some point. Fair enough. So let’s take a look at another piece of evidence that is often overlooked.
In ancient times the
name of a person was a word or phrase, taken from their language, characteristic of that person. As an example the name Adam means "man" in the Semitic language since Adam was the first "man". Eve means "life" because Eve is "the mother of all the living" (Genesis 3:20). Below is a list of the names, and their meanings, found from Genesis chapter one to chapter five. Each of these names are of Semitic origin as the words used within the names are Semitic words.
According to the Biblical account, Noah and his three sons and their wives escaped a catastrophic flood in a boat. At some point after the flood, the descendants of Noah began to build the "Tower of Babel". At which time God came down and confused their languages and the "Tower" was abandoned and the people scattered across the land, "each to his own tribe and language". This event occurred sometime after the birth of Shem, Ham and Japheth's children. Below is a list of the names of their descendants as found in Genesis chapter ten.
It is not until about the time of the Tower of Babel that we find names that are not Hebrew, they are of a different language.
Since all of the names up to the time of the "Tower of Babel" are Hebrew names, it is most likely that the Hebrew language existed from Adam to the Tower of Babel. To be fair, it is possible that these “foreign” names were translated into Hebrew names, but if this were true, why didn't they translate the existing foreign names into Hebrew?
