one in the earth; he was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord;) and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.”  According to this passage the early Chaldaeans should be Hamites, not Semites—­Ethiopians, not Aramaans; they should present analogies and points of connection with the inhabitants of Egypt and Abyssinia, of Southern Arabia and Mekran, not with those of Upper Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine.  It will be one of the objects of this chapter to show that the Mosaical narrative conveys the exact truth—­a truth alike in accordance with the earliest classical traditions, and with the latest results of modern comparative philology.

It will be desirable, however, before proceeding to establish the correctness of these assertions, to examine the grounds on which the opposite belief has been held so long and so confidently.  Heeren draws his chief argument from the supposed character of the language.  Assuming the form of speech called Chaldee to be the original tongue of the people, he remarks that it is “an Aramaean dialect, differing but slightly from the proper Syriac.”  Chaldee is known partly from the Jewish Scriptures, in which it is used occasionally, partly from the Targums (or Chaldaean paraphrases of different portions of the Sacred Volume), some of which belong to about the time of the Apostles. and partly from the two Talmuds, or collections of Jewish traditions, made in the third and fifth centuries of our era.  It has been commonly regarded as the language of Babylon at the time of the Captivity, which the Jews, as captives, were forced to learn, and which thenceforth took the place of their own tongue.  But it is extremely doubtful whether this is a true account of the matter.  The Babylonian language of the age of Nebuchadnezzar is found to be far nearer to Hebrew than to Chaldee, which appears therefore to be misnamed, and to represent the western rather than the eastern Aramaic.  The Chaldee argument thus falls to the ground:  but in refuting it an admission has been made which may be thought to furnish fully as good proof of early Babylonian Semitism as the rejected theory.

It has been said that the Babylonian language in the time of Nebuchadnezzar is found to be far nearer to Hebrew than to Chaldee.  It is, in fact, very close indeed to the Hebrew.  The Babylonians of that period, although they did not speak the tongue known to modern linguists as Chaldee, did certainly employ a Semitic or Aramaean dialect, and so far may be set down as Semites.  And this is the ground upon which such modern philologists as still maintain the Semitic character of the primitive Chaldaeans principally rely.  But it can be proved from the inscriptions of the country, that between the date of the first establishment of a Chaldaean kingdom and the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the language of Lower Mesopotamia underwent an entire change.  To whatever causes this may have been owing—­a subject which will be hereafter investigated—­the fact is certain; and it entirely destroys the force of the argument from the language of the Babylonians at the later period.