Texts in Conversation
The book of Jubilees represents an early tradition where Hebrew was the original language of creation, lost at Babel but restored to Abraham through divine instruction. The Rabbinic midrash in Genesis Rabbah later echoes this idea, treating Hebrew as the sacred language connected to the creation of the world.
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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.
Date: 150-100 B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
Genesis Rabbah 18:4
Aggadah
Rabbinic
Resh Lakish was asked: Why do not all other dreams exhaust a man, yet this [a dream that intimacy takes place] does exhaust a man? Because from the very beginning of her creation she was but [formed] in a dream, replied he. BONE OF MY BONES, AND FLESH OF MY FLESH. R. Tanhuma said: When a man takes one of his relations to wife, of him it is said, BONE OF MY BONES, AND FLESH OF MY FLESH. SHE SHALL BE CALLED, WOMAN (ISHAH), BECAUSE SHE WAS TAKEN OUT OF MAN (ISH). From this you learn that the Torah was given in the Holy Tongue.’ R. Phinehas and R. Helkiah in R. Simon’s name said: Just as it was given in the Holy Tongue, so was the world created with the Holy Tongue. Have you ever heard one say, gini, ginia; itha, ittha; antropt, antropia; gabra, gabretha?* But ish and ishah [are used]: why? because one form corresponds to the other.
Date: 500 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Source
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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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