He Heaven It was imagined as a fertile place, bathed by rivers and surrounded by trees that bore fruit effortlessly. Adam And Day before They lived there in peace, without knowing work or pain. The biblical story describes that they lived with animals and had a direct relationship with God. Everything changed when they disobeyed the only rule imposed: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This transgression caused his expulsion, which forever transformed the idea of the origin and perfection of humanity.
Interest in reconstructing this origin reached its most intense point when different traditions attempted to reconstruct this origin. identify the language spoken in this lost paradiseas shown in The green compass. Religious literature attributed to this language a purity prior to the confusion of Babel. Over the following centuries, the debate moved from the theological to the philological realm, becoming a trying to recover the first voice of the human being and the word with which the world was named.
The attempt to recover the lost language spoken by primitive humanity
The Dutch humanist Johannes Goropius Becanus He trained at the University of Louvain, where he studied philosophy and medicine. Born in 1519 in the municipality of Gorp, in North Brabant, he traveled through several European countries before settling in Antwerp. He served as physician to the sisters of Emperor Charles V and received an offer from Philip II to become a personal physician, which he rejected, preferring research and study.
His best-known work was based on a singular idea: the original language of humanity had not been lost, but had survived Brabant dialectspoken in the region between the Scheldt and the Meuse. Goropius argued that its simplicity, based on short, direct words, made it the primordial language of Adam. in his book Hieroglyphic He even linked Egyptian hieroglyphs to this dialect, claiming that all languages came from it.
The hypothesis has generated interest, but also strong criticism. Some intellectuals like Abraham Ortellius either Richard Hakluyt admired his audacity, while figures like Justo Lipsio, Hugo Grotius And Joseph Scaliger They called it absurd. The term goropism It ended up designating any linguistic theory without scientific basis. Leibniz included it in his writings to refer to arbitrary etymologies that sought to explain the origin of human languages.
Religions also researched the language used by Adam and Eve.
The debate over the language of Adam and Eve comes from much older traditions. Jewish exegesis places the origin of the Adamic language in the words with which Adam named beings and his companion, while Christian patristics and Muslim thinkers offered different interpretations. Saint Augustine defended in The city of God that this language was preserved by Eber after the confusion of Babel. On the other hand, the chronicler Abu al-Fida He records that Eber refused to participate in the tower and thus preserved the pure language he later bequeathed to Abraham.
In these traditions, the hEbrean appeared as the heir to the language of Paradisealthough not everyone agreed. The Kabbalist Abraham Aboulafia denied this continuity, and the Arab Christian bishop Sulayman al-Ghaazi He argued that the original language was Syriac. He Genesisby not specifying what it was, left the question open, allowing for centuries of speculation and reinterpretation. Dante AlighieriHe dealt with the issue in two works, first defending the immutability of the Adamic language, then contradicting himself in The Divine Comedy.
Goropius collected these discussions and transferred them to their political and cultural context. At a time of religious and linguistic tensions, his theory served to assert the dignity of Dutch over Latin. His influence extended to authors such as Simon Stévin who promoted the use of Dutch in science. However, excess local pride led his proposal to be considered a case of exaggerated patriotism.
In addition to his linguistic theory, Goropius collaborated with the printer Christoffel Plantin in the publication of Royal Bible either Antwerp Polyglot Bibleone of the most important of its time. He also wrote poems in Latin and the treatise Antwerp Originswhere he describes the antiquities of Antwerp and includes anecdotes about popular customs. He died in 1573 in Maastricht, summoned by the Duke of Medinaceli, and was buried in the city’s Franciscan church, where his epitaph is still preserved.
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