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 Chap I.

another. So there are several words common to the Turks, Germans, Greeks, French, sometimes of the same, and sometimes of several significations; which is not sufficient to argue that all these were of the same Original.

Besides these European, there is likewise great variety of Languages in other parts of the world. As for the Hebrew Tongue, which is by many learned men supposed to be the same that Abraham learnt when he came into Canaan, to which that expression Isai.19.18. The language of Canaan, is thought to allude; this is supposed to be the first Mother tongue amongst all those that are now known in the world, from which there are sundry derivations, as the Chaldee, Syriac, Punic, Arabic, Persian, Æthiopic.

When the Jews were in Captivity at Babylon, mixed with the Chaldeans for 70 years, in that tract of time they made up a Language distinct from both, which is sometimes called Syriac, and sometimes Chaldee, and sometimes Hebrew. Those passages in the Gospel, which are said to be in the Hebrew tongue, as Talitha Kumi, Elohi, Elohi, Lamma sabachthani, are properly Syriac; onely they are called Hebrew, because that was the Language which the Hebrews then used. A great part of this Syriac tongue is for the substance of the words Chaldee, and Hebrew for thefashion, so degenerating much from both. After the Captivity the pure Hebrew ceased to be vulgar, remaining onely amongst learned men, as appears by that place in Nehem.8.7,8. where we find the Priests, upon reading of the Law to the people after their coming out of Babylon, were fain to expound it distinctly to them, and to make them understand the meaning оf it; the common people, by long disuse, being grown strangers to the Language wherein ’twas written. So in our Saviour's time, the unlearned Jews, whose vulgar Tongue the Syriac was, could not understand those parts of Moses and the Prophets read to them in Hebrew every Sabbath-day. Which was the reason of those public speeches and declarations of any learned men, who occasionally came into the Synagogues, after the reading of the Law: though neither Priests, nor Levites, nor Scribes, yet was it ordinary for them to expound unto the people the meaning of those portions of Scripture that were appointed to be read out of the Hebrew, which the people did not understand; and to render their meaning in Syriac, which was their vulgar Tongue.

As for so much of the pure Hebrew as is now in being, which is onely that in the old Testament, though it be sufficient to express what is there intended, yet it is so exceedingly defective in many other words requisite to humane discourse, that the Rabbins are fain to borrow words from many other Languages, Greek, Latin, Spanish, &c. as may appear at large in Buxtorf’s Lexicon Rabbinicum, and a particular Discourse written to this very purpose by David Cohen de Lara. And, from the several defects and imperfections which seem to be in this Language, it may be guessed not to be the same which was con-created with our first Parents, and spoken by Adam in Paradise.

What other varieties of Tongues there have been, or are, in Asia, Afric, or America, I shall not now enquire.

Rh