Texts in Conversation
Jubilees represents an early tradition where Hebrew was the original language of creation, lost at Babel but restored to Abraham by God. Rabbinic tradition in Genesis Rabbah echoes this, saying Hebrew was the sacred language used to create the world.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jubilees 12:26
Pseudepigrapha
25 Then the Lord God said to me: ‘Open his mouth and his ears to hear and speak with his tongue in the revealed language.’ For from the day of the collapse it had disappeared from the mouths of all mankind. 26 I opened his mouth, ears, and lips and began to speak Hebrew with him — in the language of the creation. 27 He took his fathers’ books (they were written in Hebrew) and copied them. From that time he began to study them, while I was telling him everything that he was unable to understand. He studied them throughout the six rainy months.
Genesis Rabbah 18:4
Aggadah
Rabbinic
“The man said: This time, it is bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, because this one was taken from Man” (Genesis 2:23). “The man said: This time [hapaam]” – Rabbi Yehuda bar Rabbi said: At first He created her for him, but he saw her full of viscera and blood, so He distanced her from him, and then fashioned her for him a second time. That is what is written: “This time” – this is the [same] one from that time. [Another interpretation:] This is the one who is destined to bang on me as [an anvil on] a bell. That is what it says: “A golden bell [paamon] and a pomegranate” (Exodus 28:34). This is the one who would excite me [mefaamtani] the entire night. They asked before Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish: Why is it that all dreams do not exhaust a person, but this one exhausts a person? It is because from the beginning of her [woman’s] creation it was only in a dream, as it is stated: [“The Lord God cast a deep sleep upon the man” (Genesis 2:21).] “Bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh” – Rabbi Tanḥuma said: If a person marries one of his relatives, in his regard it was said: “Bone from my bones.” “This one shall be called Woman [isha], because this one was taken from Man [ish]” – from here we learn that the Torah was given in the sacred tongue [Hebrew]. Rabbi Pinḥas and Rabbi Ḥilkiya say in the name of Rabbi Simon: Just as the Torah was given in the sacred tongue, so, the world was created in the sacred tongue. Have you ever heard anyone saying: Gyne, gynea; anthropos, anthropa; gavra, gavreta? But ish and isha – one form corresponds to the other.
Date: 500 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Jubilees portrays animals as even more rational than in the Bible. Language is important to Jubilees and is original to creation. Thus, it seems that even animals spoke Hebrew in the beginning. (Vander Kam sees this possibility as well, referencing Jubilees 12:26 about Hebrew as the language of creation. Ruiten notes that “it was universally believed among Jews that Hebrew was the primitive language of man ... God also spoke Hebrew when creating the world”. See also Jerusalem Talmud, Megillah 1:11; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 11:1 ... “and all the inhabitants of the earth were of one tongue and one speech and one counsel”) Targum Neofiti (Genesis 11:1) may also hint that animals could speak with humans and each other: “and all the inhabitants of the earth were of one tongue and one speech, and in the language of the Temple they used to converse, for through it had the world been created in the beginning.” ..."
Wells, A. Rahel
'One Language and One Tongue': Animal Speech in Jubilees 3:27–31
(pp. 319-337) Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2019
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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