History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

Typical, as we approach the end of the sixteenth century, are the utterances of two of the most noted English divines. First of these may be mentioned Dr. William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, in the University of Cambridge. In his Discovery of the Dangerous Rock of the Romish Church, published in 1580, he speaks of "the Hebrew tongue,... the first tongue of the world, and for the excellency thereof called 'the holy tongue.'"

Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, Dr. William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and Master of St. John's College at Cambridge. In his Disputation on Holy Scripture, first printed in 1588, he says: "The Hebrew is the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone prevailed in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the Tower of Babel. For it was this which Adam used and all men before the Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures, as the fathers testify." He then proceeds to quote passages on this subject from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others, and cites St. Chrysostom in support of the statement that "God himself showed the model and method of writing when he delivered the Law written by his own finger to Moses."(415)

(415) For the whole scriptural argument, embracing the various texts on
which the sacred science of Philology was founded, with the use made
of such texts, see Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft in
Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, pp. 22-26. As to the origin of the vowel
points, see Benfey, as above; he holds that they began to be inserted
in the second century A.D., and that the process lasted until about the
tenth. For Raymundus and his Pugio Fidei, see G. L. Bauer, Prolegomena
to his revision of Glassius's Philologia Sacra, Leipsic, 1795,—see
especially pp. 8-14, in tome ii of the work. For Zwingli, see Praef. in
Apol. comp. Isaiae (Opera, iii). See also Morinus, De Lingua primaeva,
p.447. For Marini, see his Arca Noe: Thesaurus Linguae Sanctae, Venet.,
1593, and especially the preface. For general account of Capellus,
see G. L. Bauer, in his Prolegomena, as above, vol. ii, pp. 8-14. His
Arcanum Premetationis Revelatum was brought out at Leyden in 1624; his
Critica Sacra ten years later. See on Capellus and Swiss theologues,
Wolfius, Bibliotheca Nebr., tome ii, p. 27. For the struggle, see
Schnedermann, Die Controverse des Ludovicus Capellus mit den Buxtorfen,
Leipsic, 1879, cited in article Hebrew, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. For
Wasmuth, see his Vindiciae Sanctae Hebraicae Scripturae, Rostock, 1664.
For Reuchlin, see the dedicatory preface to his Rudimenta Hebraica,
Pforzheim, 1506, folio, in which he speaks of the "in divina scriptura
dicendi genus, quale os Dei locatum est." The statement in the Margarita
Philosophica as to Hebrew is doubtless based on Reuchlin's Rudimenta
Hebraica, which it quotes, and which first appeared in 1506. It is
significant that this section disappeared from the Margarita in the
following editions; but this disappearence is easily understood when we
recall the fact that Gregory Reysch, its author, having become one
of the Papal Commission to judge Reuchlin in his quarrel with the
Dominicans, thought it prudent to side with the latter, and therefore,
doubtless, considered it wise to suppress all evidence of Reuchlin's
influence upon his beliefs. All the other editions of the Margarita in
my possession are content with teaching, under the head of the Alphabet,
that the Hebrew letters were invented by Adam. On Luther's view of
the words "God said," see Farrar, Language and Languages. For a most
valuable statement regarding the clashing opinions at the Reformation,
see Max Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 132. For the prevailing view
among the Reformers, see Calovius, vol. i, p. 484, and Thulock, The
Doctrine of Inspiration, in Theolog. Essays, Boston, 1867. Both Muller
and Benfey note, as especially important, the difference between the
Church view and the ancient heathen view regarding "barbarians." See
Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 127, and Benfey, as above, pp. 170 et
seq. For a very remarkable list of Bibles printed at an early period,
see Benfey, p. 569. On the attempts to trace all words back to Hebrew
roots, see Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Language, chap. vi. For
Gesner, see his Mithridates (de differentiis linguarum), Zurich, 1555.
For a similar attempt to prove that Italian was also derived from
Hebrew, see Giambullari, cited in Garlanda, p. 174. For Fulke, see
the Parker Society's Publications, 1848, p. 224. For Whitaker, see his
Disputation on Holy Scripture in the same series, pp. 112-114.

This sacred theory entered the seventeenth century in full force, and for a time swept everything before it. Eminent commentators, Catholic and Protestant, accepted and developed it.

Great prelates, Catholic and Protestant, stood guard over it, favouring those who supported it, doing their best to destroy those who would modify it.

In 1606 Stephen Guichard built new buttresses for it in Catholic France. He explains in his preface that his intention is "to make the reader see in the Hebrew word not only the Greek and Latin, but also the Italian, the Spanish, the French, the German, the Flemish, the English, and many others from all languages." As the merest tyro in philology can now see, the great difficulty that Guichard encounters is in getting from the Hebrew to the Aryan group of languages. How he meets this difficulty may be imagined from his statement, as follows: "As for the derivation of words by addition, subtraction, and inversion of the letters, it is certain that this can and ought thus to be done, if we would find etymologies—a thing which becomes very credible when we consider that the Hebrews wrote from right to left and the Greeks and others from left to right. All the learned recognise such derivations as necessary;... and... certainly otherwise one could scarcely trace any etymology back to Hebrew."

Of course, by this method of philological juggling, anything could be proved which the author thought necessary to his pious purpose.

Two years later, Andrew Willett published at London his Hexapla, or Sixfold Commentary upon Genesis. In this he insists that the one language of all mankind in the beginning "was the Hebrew tongue preserved still in Heber's family." He also takes pains to say that the Tower of Babel "was not so called of Belus, as some have imagined, but of confusion, for so the Hebrew word ballal signifieth"; and he quotes from St. Chrysostom to strengthen his position.

In 1627 Dr. Constantine l'Empereur was inducted into the chair of Philosophy of the Sacred Language in the University of Leyden. In his inaugural oration on The Dignity and Utility of the Hebrew Tongue, he puts himself on record in favour of the Divine origin and miraculous purity of that language. "Who," he says, "can call in question the fact that the Hebrew idiom is coeval with the world itself, save such as seek to win vainglory for their own sophistry?"

Two years after Willett, in England, comes the famous Dr. Lightfoot, the most renowned scholar of his time in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; but all his scholarship was bent to suit theological requirements. In his Erubhin, published in 1629, he goes to the full length of the sacred theory, though we begin to see a curious endeavour to get over some linguistic difficulties.