Was Hebrew the First Language?

Is there a proof in whether the first language spoken was hebrew?

Shalom!

Thank you for your question.

There is a strong Jewish tradition that Hebrew was the first language to be used, certainly the first spoken language to be used.

The famous commentator Rashi, on his comments to Genesis 2:23, says that the language spoken by Adam was “lashon hakodesh/the holy language,” which is the original Hebrew language. (This is not to be confused with modern Israeli Hebrew, which although based on original Hebrew, contains imported words from all sources.) Indeed, Adam named all the animals in Hebrew, as well as his wife. He called her “Chava” which, in Hebrew, means “[mother of] all life.” We are also told that God’s pronouncements when creating the world (“Let there be light”) were in Hebrew.

So, if God created the world from nothingness using Hebrew, that would certainly suggest that it is was the first language. So too, we are told that the people of the generation of the “Tower of Babel” spoke “one language.” It follows to reason that the “one language” was the language passed down by Adam, namely, Hebrew.

That being said, it is quite possible that there were some concurrent languages at the beginning of time. For example, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b) says that Adam spoke Aramaic. So too, the Jerusalem Talmud suggests that all the world’s languages were used before the flood of Noah.

It is interesting to note that Hebrew is called “the holy language” because it (at least in its original biblical form) contains no improper words.