APPENDIX.

HEBREW HAMITE NOT SEMITIC: THREE KINDS OF LANGUAGES: CONFUSION OF TONGUES AT BABEL: LANGUAGE NOT A HUMAN INVENTION.

THE original object of this work was to illustrate the affinity of the Indo-European languages; but as the latter portion of it has been unexpectedly taken up with the consideration of various Hamite idioms, it has become worth while to give, in an appendix, a general sketch of the whole Hamite class; and I shall take occasion to add some remarks which arise out of the general subject, but which could not very well be introduced elsewhere.

Among Philologists the Hebrew and allied dialects have been included under the general name of Semitic, because Hebrew itself was the language of the Israelites, the descendants of Shem; but this arrangement is plainly objectionable from the circumstance, that the Canaanitish or Punic idiom, an acknowledged Hamite dialect, evinces a close affinity with Hebrew. Mr. Beke, in his “ Origines Biblica," was the first to place this obvious inconsistency

in its proper light, and to meet the difficulty by classifying the Hebrew with the other acknowledged dialects of Ham.

He says: My reasons for attributing a Mitzrite, and therefore Hamitish, origin to the so-called Semitic languages, are as follows: When the Almighty, for his own good purposes, was pleased to call Abraham from his native country-the land of the Arphaxadites or Chaldees-first into the country of Aram, and afterwards into that of Canaan, one of two things must necessarily have had place; either that the inhabitants of these latter countries spoke the same language as himself, or else that he acquired the knowledge of the foreign tongues spoken by these people during his residence in the countries in which they were vernacular. That they all made use of the same language cannot be imagined. Even if it be assumed that the descendants of Arphaxad, Abraham's ancestor, and the Aramites, in whose territories Terah and his family first took up their residence, spoke the same language, or, at the furthest, merely dialects of the same original Shemitish tongue, we cannot suppose that this language would have resembled those which were spoken by the Hamitish Canaanites and Philistines, in whose countries Abraham afterwards sojourned, unless we at the same time contend that the confusion of tongues at Babel was practically inoperative ; we have no alternative, therefore, as it would seem, but to consider (as, in fact, is the plain and obvious interpretation of the circumstances) that Abraham, having travelled from his native place (a distance of above five hundred miles) to "the south country," the land of the Philistines, where he "sojourned many days," he and his family would have acquired the language of the people amongst whom they

thus took up their residence. But, independently of the above arguments, how are we to explain the origin of the Arabic language? This is clearly not of Aramitish derivation it is the language which was spoken by the countrymen of Hagar, amongst whom Ishmael was taken by her to reside, and with whom he and his descendants speedily became mixed up and completely identified. Among these people it is not possible that the slightest portion of the Aramitish tongue of Abraham should have existed before the time of Ishmael; nor can it be conceived that the Mitzritish descendants of the latter would have acquired that language through him. I apprehend, indeed, that the Mitzritish origin of the Arabic language is a fact which cannot be disputed; and, if this fact be conceded, there remains no alternative but to admit-indeed it is a mere truism to say-that the Hebrew, which is a cognate dialect with the Arabic, must be of common origin with that language, and consequently, of Mitzritish derivation also. And, in truth, when we consider the subject dispassionately, and unbiassed by the assumptions (for they are nothing more) that the Hebrew tongue must necessarily be of Shemitish derivation, because the Israelites who spoke it were descended paternally from Shem; and that it possesses a peculiar character on account of its having been chosen by the Almighty as the medium through which his law should be promulgated: although there is no such peculiar sanctity or merit attributed to the Greek language, in which has been preserved to us the Gospel " of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises :" we can have no difficulty in conceiving how a family like that of Jacob, going down to settle in a foreign country, and forming alliances with the inhabitants of that country, should, in the course of a

couple of centuries, have lost their own language, and have adopted that of the people amongst whom they had become domiciled. It may be remarked in illustration, that the French Huguenots who came over into England about the year 1685, in consequence of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and by whom a sort of colony was formed in Spitalfields, have, in less than a century and a half, lost almost every thing derived from the country which they left, except their names (Beke's Origines Biblicæ, p. 230).

In addition to the arguments adduced by Mr. Beke, to show that Hebrew was a Mitzrite dialect, I would observe that there appears to have been a peculiar fitness in the law of Jehovah being proclaimed to the nations at that period in a Hamite tongue. It has been often noticed as a providential dispensation, that the New Testament was written in Greek, which was a kind of universal language at the commencement of the Christian era; and a similar reason seems to have led to the selection of Hebrew for the record of the Old Testament. It is most certain that Hamite dialects were in current use throughout the whole East in the first ages of the world; and it is at least probable that the language of the first two universal empires, the Assyrian and Persian, was Hamite. In the West, also, the language of Ham was early made familiar by the daring enterprises of the Tyrians and Phenicians, and the numerous colonies from Egypt; but if, in addition to these, the Pelasgians, Tyrrhenians, and Tuscans were of Hamite origin, the language of Ham must have been actually vernacular over a vast extent of country in the West. From the time of Moses, then, and during the existence of the first two empires when Hamite dialects were in vogue, a Hamite dialect would necessarily form the most general medium of com

munication; but when the seat of empire was removed to the West, and established among the Greeks and Romans where Japhite dialects now prevailed, a Japhite idiom became best adapted for that purpose, and accordingly Greek was selected for publishing abroad the new revelation.

The most learned philologists of the present day, have included all known languages under three great classes or genera, which are distinguished from one another by strongly marked characters.

(1). Languages composed of monosyllabic roots incapable of composition, and, therefore, without any organisation, without any forms of grammar; to this class belong the Chinese idioms, in which we find nothing but naked roots, and in which the shades of meaning are determined not by grammatical relations, but by the position of words in a

sentence.

(2). Languages composed of monosyllabic roots, but capable of composition which gives rise to nearly the whole of their organisation and grammar; to this family belongs the Indo-European class of languages, and all idioms not otherwise included under numbers 1 and 2, and of which the grammatical forms are still resolvable into their simplest elements.

(3). Languages, whose verbal roots consist of two syllables, and require three consonants for the expression of their fundamental meaning; this class is limited to the Semitic languages, and its grammatical structure is produced, not only by composition after the manner of the second class, but also by a mere internal modification of the root (Comp. Gram. p. 112). In the same passage, Bopp quotes A. W. Von Schlegel's arrangement, which is to the