[Mesorah] At/Atah

[R Davidovich]

If you choose to understand the story of Migdal Bavel in its simplest,
miraculous way, then I would say the following: When the "neis" of Bilul
Leshonos occured, it was a neis.  There is no reason to assume that the
languages that burst out of Migdal Bavel were philologically descended from
Hebrew.

Furthermore, given what we know about language development over the course
of as little as two hundred years, there is no reason to assume that the
"Loshon Kodesh" there was something we would recognize as our "Hebrew".

RD

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 3:26 AM, Amihai & Tamara Bannett <atban at inter.net.il
> wrote:

>  What about "Vayhi ... Safa achat" - "Lashon HaKodesh" (before Migdal
> Bavel)
>
>
> Amihai Bannett
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* R Davidovich <raphaeldavidovich at gmail.com>
> *To:* mesorah at aishdas.org
> *Sent:* Tuesday, August 26, 2008 6:29 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [Mesorah] At/Atah
>
> Wow.  I remembered that Rashi all wrong.  The correct version supports my
> point more than the phantom Rashi I imagined.
>
> I thought the Chazal was about Adam Harishon, which could conceivably lead
> a person to conclude that Hebrew is the literal first language, which led to
> my counter-argument that this is no reason to think that it must also be the
> origin of all post-Mabul languages.
>
> However, Chazal say even less than that.  The claim, which is pure Medrash
> that has no practical human language conclusion, is that Hashem created the
> world with Hebrew.  That has NOTHING to do with the development of languages
> in the history of Olam Hazeh.  It is entirely plausible to suggest that
> while from a aggedeta point of view, Hebrew was the "language" that made
> Creation, Hebrew as a human language evolved and developed in a manner
> similar to all other languages.
>
> Raphael Davidovich
>
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 7:09 PM, kennethgmiller at juno.com <
> kennethgmiller at juno.com> wrote:
>
>> R' Michael Hamm wrote:
>> > That's nice from a linguist's point of view, but I thought
>> > we hold that Hebrew was spoken before any other language?
>> > See Rashi, B'reshis 2:23.
>>
>> R' Raphael Davidovich responded:
>> > Just because Chazal midrashically identify the language of
>> > the Torah as the language of Adam Harishon does not mean it
>> > is the historical origin language of all other languages.
>>
>> Chazal do far more than merely "identify the language of the Torah as the
>> language of Adam Harishon". The Rashi which RMH said to look at says, "Mikan
>> shenivra haolam bilshon hakodesh", which I would translate as, "From here we
>> know that Lashon Hakodesh was used to create the world."
>>
>> In other words, Rashi is saying that Hebrew existed before the world. This
>> does not necessarily preclude the concurrent (whatever that means in this
>> context) existence of other languages, but it *would* preclude the
>> possibility of Hebrew developing from them.
>>
>> OTOH, I suppose there could be those who disagree with this Rashi.
>>
>> Akiva Miller
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> RD
>
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-- 
RD
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