The Bible Shows the Origin and Progress of Language (c. 1848)
The Bible Shows the Origin and Progress of Language (c. 1848)
The Bible Shows the Origin and Progress of Language (c. 1848)
The Bible Shows the Origin and Progress of Language (c. 1848)

The Bible Shows the Origin and Progress of Language (c. 1848)

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The Origin and Progress of Language. Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union; London: Religious Tract Society, c. 1848. [7509]

Cloth spine with marbled boards, paper title label to spine, all quite worn with the front outer hinge splitting at the cloth (nothing detached). 4 x 6 inches, old Sunday School library inscription at front, some light pencil scribbles on the end papers and a few pages of text. 196 pp.

The anonymous author argues that language was given to man at his creation by God, that man was not created in a state of brutality but one in the image of God; accepts the Mosiac account as historical.

I find one reference suggesting it was written by George Smith, F. S. A., Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, of the Royal Society of Literature, of the Irish Archaeological Society, &c. “A learned layman.” – Allibone.

"We have sought in this disquisition on language, when tracing its history and unfolding its structure and manifold benefits, to prove our great obligation to the Creator for having conferred this boon on the human race. We deem our proofs as to the Divinity of its origin conclusive and unassailable...Allowing our conclusions to be correct, there falls to perish, amidst the ruins of its own absurdities, that pile of human folly which represents man as emerging from a brutal and brute condition, by his own unaided powers, to a state of civilized existence, in the progress of which transformation he invented language to assist his advancement to the dignity of a rational being. The theory was reared, on a worthless foundation, by parties who attempted, with vast labour and ingenuity, to cover its defects by the addition of meretricious ornaments..." - pp. 195-6.