UNIVERSAL ERUDITION. 



the tower of Babel, when all languages were 

 mixed and confounded , for we have no proof, 

 nor even any account, that the Hebrew was ex- 

 empted, and preferved its purity amidft the ge- 

 neral confufion. There is not, moreover, at 

 this time, any one work of antiquity exift- 

 ing that is wrote in Hebrew, except the Old 

 Teftament, and of that there are even fome parts 

 in Chaldaic, and words of that and other lan- 

 guages are to be found dilperied .in different 

 parts of it. 



III. There is one more remark we muft here 

 make. The firft time we find the word Hebrew 

 in the Bible, is in the 13 verfe of the xiv. chap- 

 ter of Genefis ; and it is manifeft that Abraham 

 and his defcendants took that name from th 

 patriarch Uebcr, the fon of Salah, and third 

 grandfather of Abraham : it is therefore evident, 

 that in the time of Abraham this name -was that of 

 a family, and not of a people who had a feparate 

 language. We are therefore to fuppofe, that 

 Abraham, and the patriarchs after him, fpokc 

 the cuftomary language of the country where 

 they lived ; that this language changed by degrees, 

 as all living languages have done and ever will 

 do : that Jacob and his fons having palled into 

 Egypt, they and their defcendants, under the 

 flame of the Children of Ifrael, did not pre- 

 ierve the language of their fathers in all its 

 purity; but that they mixed with it many ex- 

 preflions borrowed from foreign languages, and 



elpecially 



