"
Amid such great authorities as these even Gregory of Nyssa
struggled in vain. He seems to have taken the matter very
earnestly, and to have used not only argument but ridicule. He
insists that God does not speak Hebrew, and that the tongue used
by Moses was not even a pure dialect of one of the languages
resulting from "the confusion." He makes man the inventor of
speech, and resorts to raillery: speaking against his opponent
Eunomius, he says that, "passing in silence his base and abject
garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the
midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents God
teaching words and names to our first parents, sitting before
them like some pedagogue or grammar master." But, naturally, the
great authority of Origen, Jerome, and Augustine prevailed; the
view suggested by Lucretius, and again by St. Gregory of Nyssa,
died, out; and "always, everywhere, and by all," in the Church,
the doctrine was received that the language spoken by the Almighty
was Hebrew,--that it was taught by him to Adam,--and that all other
languages on the face of the earth originated from it at the
dispersion attending the destruction of the Tower of Babel.
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