8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 102 



holy language was confounded, which God had given our father 

 Adam when he created him, and which had remained the sole language 

 up to the year 1996, when he confounded it, 339 years after the pass- 

 ing of the Flood, when Abraham was 45 years old. 



Chapter IV 



Continuing the Description of the Preceding Subject. 



19. After the natural and holy language had been confounded 

 through the ingratitude and sins of mankind, it remained with Eber, 

 who was righteous, the great-grandson of Noah, who likewise assisted 

 in the construction of Babylon and its tower, as many saints and 

 learned doctors hold ; and that is why it is called Hebrew, and they 

 even assert further that if a child were brought up without hearing 

 any language spoken, it would naturally speak Hebrew. Among the 

 others who assisted in the building of the city and the tower, it was 

 confounded into 72 principal languages, in such a way that they 

 neither understood the original language nor one another. There- 

 upon the construction ceased and they scattered over all the coun- 

 tries of the world and the languages split up into numerous mother 

 tongues and special languages, as we see and recognize by experience 

 all over the world. 



20. After the passage of 1,704 years from the confounding of the 

 original language into jz, in the year 3700, the King of Egypt, Ptolemy 

 Philadelphus, sent a present to the High Priest Eleazar, brother of 

 Simon the Just, whom he succeeded in the priesthood, and at the 

 same time requested that Eleazar send him some of the most learned 

 rabbis that he had, to translate the Holy Bible from Hebrew into 

 Greek; and the High Priest Eleazar (not without mystic significance) 

 chose from each of the Twelve Tribes, 6 of the most learned rabbis, 

 thus making ']2, to translate it; since if the original holy language 

 had been confounded into 72 mother tongues, there should be ^2 

 interpreters to clarify and interpret it, translating it into Greek. 

 These are the 72 translators, who are so renowned ; for if it was true 

 that through men's ingratitude and sins the original language was 

 confounded and obscured, nevertheless through the clarification of 

 these translators, one comes to understand many of the mysteries 

 which the Holy Bible contains within itself. All this was done at 

 the request and cost of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which means "lover 

 of sciences." 



21. And since the confusion of tongues had gone on increasing 

 over all the regions and provinces of the world, so that men were 



