I’ve been intrigued by Biblical Hebrew’s lack of verb tenses (past, present, future) and what it might have to say about the psychology of the people who originally spoke it.
Considering the Bible account, it seems likely that Hebrew or something like it was the original human language. According to one way of thinking, the worshipers of the true God would not have gotten involved in the rebellious centralization and tower-building project of Nimrod and his cohorts, so presumably their language would not have been confused (see Gen 11:1-9). So the language of Jehovah’s true worshipers would have been preserved, and this would be the one in which the Bible got written.
Although the Bible writers were able to express ideas of past, present, and future, time as a factor in Hebrew verb expression has a relatively low priority. Rather, Hebrew verbs are expressed in two states, perfect (action completed) and imperfect (incomplete action).
Kyle M. Yates, in The Essentials of Biblical Hebrew, writes:
The time as understood in most modern languages is not the same as that of the Semitic mind. The discernment of the time of an action is not of vital importance to the Hebrew thought pattern. It is necessary for the Indo-germanic thinker only to fit the action into his overemphasized estimation of time. The understanding of the condition of the action as to its completeness or incompleteness was sufficient generally to the Semite and if not, there was some word of temporal or historical significance which would bring time into focus.
So the question is, what does this indicate about the psychology of the original speakers of this language? Did they have a different view of time from modern humans, because they had a longer lifespan (and originally the prospect of living forever)? Interestingly, the Bible encyclopedia Insight on the Scriptures (Vol. 1, Watchtower, 1988) follows this line of thinking:
If, as the Bible indicates, Hebrew was the original tongue used in Eden, this lack of emphasis on verbal time may reflect the outlook of man in his perfection, when the prospect of everlasting life was before Adam and when life had not been reduced to a mere 70 or 80 years.
— ARK, 3 Dec. 2010
A. Roy King 
Hi, there. I’m a linguist so I thought I’d respond to a few of your thoughts and maybe offer up some food for thought 🙂
I can tell you that the original language that the first humans used was definitely not Hebrew. That language was spoken a long time before Hebrew ever existed. Historians and Linguists are unable to determine whether or not every language that has ever existed sprang from one source (one original proto-language for humanity) or various sources (think Babel).
Abraham himself did not speak Hebrew, firstly, because he lived before Hebrew existed and secondly, because Abraham was from Mesopotamia so he spoke a language from that part of the world (one that would fall under the “confused languages” category, as Nimrod is also associated with Mesopotamia).
Hebrew is a member of a large family of languages called Afroasiatic. Hebrew’s sister and cousin languages (which all are demonstrably all descendants of the original Proto-Afroasiatic language) include Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Aramaic, Akkadian (the language of ancient Babylonia), and the majority of the languages of north Africa. The Hebrew language has its genesis around the 12th century B.C. in Caanan (more than 3000 years ago). When the Isrealites moved into the promised land, they began to adopt the language of their new neighbors, with whom they were intermarrying and engaging in trade. The Caananite language, as it was spoken among the Israelite’s communities, began to undergo change over the centuries until it developed into a language in its own right.
As for Hebrew being a language, which lacks Grammatical Tense, that’s absolutely right. But it is rather un-noteworthy when compared to all the languages of the world. It is very common for languages to make no tense distinction at all (see East Asian and Southeast Asian languages in particular). Hebrew does indicate Grammatical Aspect (perfect, imperfect) which does not place the event of the verb in time relative to the speaker (as tense does) but rather indicates what the speaker knows about the completeness of the vent of the verb. Even this distinction is not grammatically indicated in a large number of the world’s languages. (I myself live and work in Souteast Asia so I have spent quite a bit of time studying verbal systems which do not indicate tense and apsect.) The speakers of such languages, with whom I work, do not really conceive of time differently than you and I. They understand the passage of time just as you and I do, but they simply are not required to mark time distinction on their verbs. It is a matter of grammatical structure, not of any psychological difference.
I hope you find that information helpful as you ponder.
Blessings,
-Ryan
Ryan,
If you were planning to travel in time to the pre-Flood age, what language, or languages would you study? I am writing a Christian speculative novel and am looking for this answer for my characters!
Anyone?
Don,
That is a difficult question!
If you are writing from a literalist view point – that every human on the earth died in the flood leaving only Noah and his family – then we have to assume that there were two starting points to human language; Adam and Noah. At the time of the flood, all human linguistic diversity that had developed between Adam’s day and Noah’s day would have been lost leaving only the language(s) spoken by Noah and his family.
If you are writing from a less rigid interpretation – that the flood was localized to the ancient near east somewhere, since most ancient near eastern cultures have a great flood story – then you don’t have to assume a cataclysmic interruption in the evolution and spread of linguistic diversity. This view is actually much better supported in historical linguistic and human genetic evidence, which both indicate a human starting point in Africa, not the near east.
So, if you are taking a literalist perspective, there’s really no answer to your question because they were speaking the original human language from which all the rest of our languages descend. We know nothing about that language.
If you are taking the second perspective, then I would look into the important ancient near eastern languages – Sumerian and Akkadian – the languages of Sumer and Akkad/Babylon respectively.
I hope that’s clear. If you have any follow up questions I’d be happy to tell you what I know, but we’re reaching back to pre-history here so there are usually more questions than answers. I assume that’s what’s stoking your imagination for speculative fiction in the first place!
Blessings,
-Ryan
Ryan,
Thank you for your response. That is all good news as I have been using Sumerian already, so that means I made a good guess! It’s always nice to get confirmation from someone who is an expert, so I appreciate your feedback.
I ran across an interesting (at least to me) article I thought you might like to see: http://www.khouse.org/articles/2000/284/#notes
If the names in Genesis 5 have been translated into Hebrew from the original language, would they carry the same meaning?
Regards,
Don
Ryan,
Are you out there!?! I just received an email from a gentleman who stated: “If I recall correclty, they have not found any known human language that is related to Sumerian.”
Is this correct? If so, that would add some legitimacy for my novel…
Regards,
Don
Hi Don,
That’s correct about Sumerian. It is what’s called a “language isolate”. That is, linguists are unable to demonstrate its relatedness to any other known language. Doubtless there were other languages that it was related to that existed in the deep past, but they were apparently not developed enough to leave behind a written record. The Sumerians were the first people in the near east to develop a writing system and it took time for it to diffuse out to the other languages of the area.
Usually language isolates are languages which survived a large population movement. For example, in Europe, the Basque language, which is spoken in the Pyrenees mountains on the border between Spain and France is a language isolate. It seems clear that Basque people (and people who spoke languages related to Basque) were living in Europe before the speakers of the modern European languages moved in to the area. Every other language except Basque was destroyed by the people migrations. They all disappeared under pressure from these new European languages but Basque survived in the mountains up to the present day. It seems that a wave of Semitic language speakers swept through mesopotamia and overwhelmed people who spoke languages related to Sumerian, but the Sumerian city states that we know of today were apparently strong enough to resist. There is a theory which archaeologists are trying to prove now that the Persian Gulf was much smaller in the the past and that the real Sumerian homeland has been underwater for millennia. These studies are inspired by the flood stories no doubt.
So, that’s about all I know about Sumerian off the top of my head.
That was a very interesting article about the Genesis 5 names. Thanks for sharing it.
-Ryan