All the early Hebrew grammars, from that of Reuchlin down, assert
the divine origin and miraculous claims of Hebrew. It is
constantly mentioned as "the sacred tongue"--_sancta lingua_. In
1506, Reuchlin, though himself persecuted by a large faction in
the Church for advanced views, refers to Hebrew as "spoken by the
mouth of God."
This idea was popularized by the edition of the _Margarita
Philosophica_, published at Strasburg in 1508. That work, in its
successive editions a mirror of human knowledge at the close of
the Middle Ages and the opening of modern times, contains a
curious introduction to the study of Hebrew, In this it is
declared that Hebrew was the original speech "used between God
and man and between men and angels." Its full-page frontispiece
represents Moses receiving from God the tables of stone written
in Hebrew; and, as a conclusive argument, it reminds us that
Christ himself, by choosing a Hebrew maid for his mother, made
that his mother tongue.
It must be noted here, however, that Luther, in one of those
outbursts of strong sense which so often appear in his career,
enforced the explanation that the words "God said" had nothing
to do with the articulation of human language.
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