Chinese as the Edenic Language in Webb's "Antiquity of China" (1678)

When Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden, some seventeenth-century Protestants believed they possessed a kind of wisdom that postlapsarian societies failed to restore. This included knowledge of the universal language, which had supposedly been lost by the confusion of tongues at Babel in the events of Genesis 11:1-9. Before God punished the inhabitants of the land of Shinar for attempting to build a tower to heaven by confounding their tongue, "the whole of earth was of one language, and of one speech."¹ This was the language that Adam used to name the creatures of Eden.

In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Sir Francis Bacon laments that God’s destruction of the tower of Babel and the subsequent division of tongues set back mankind’s intellectual progress. He says that "after the Floud, the first great iudgement of God vppon the ambition of man, was the confusion of tongues; whereby the open Trade and intercourse of Learning and knowledge, was chiefely imbarred."² 

A great intellectual preoccupation with speculating about the universal language began. Some claimed it was Hebrew, or Arabic, or an ancestral language from which both Hebrew and Arabic were descended.³ If this language was recovered, it was thought that scholars could arrive at the truth without the risk of linguistic confusion. John Wilkins, a natural philosopher of the Royal Society, sought to construct an artificial language that would aid in the dissemination of knowledge across linguistic barriers, a purpose for which he thought Latin was in some ways deficient.⁴

Yet perhaps one of the most interesting and surprising contributions to the search for the universal language was advanced by the English architect John Webb. According to Webb, Adam and Eve spoke Chinese. He endeavors to prove this in his lengthy historical essay The Antiquity of China (1678).

In order to prove that a language is the universal language, a seventeenth-century thinker would have to focus on its purity, simplicity, and antiquity rather than on its eloquence. The language would need to be associated with great advancements of knowledge. Most importantly, any claims about its origin would need to be substantiated by the Bible, as the story of Babel was considered an inescapable historical fact.

Webb successfully uses the story of Babel in his defense, as he claims that Noah and some of his sons travelled east and settled in China. They preserved their language there, which was the Chinese tongue. They were simply not present in the land of Shinar at the time that the tower was being constructed, so their speech was unaffected by the divine punishment. According to Webb, Noah was said to be skilled in all arts and sciences, and he became revered as a sage by the Chinese population when he passed down this knowledge. Webb manages to assert his claims without contradicting the Bible. 

Throughout The Antiquity of China, Webb refers to Chinese as “the primitive language.” He uses the word “primitive” with positive connotations, emphasizing what he believes is its simple and pure nature. He says that the language consists of monosyllabic words, which mimics the speech of infants before they are corrupted by the influence of the world, and that this proves its closeness to nature.

And as if all things conspired to prove this the PRIMITIVE Tongue. We may observe, how forceably Nature struggles to demonstrate so much. The very first expression we make of life, at the very instant minute of our Births, is, as was touched on before, by uttering the Chinique word Ya. Which is not only the first, but indeed the sole and only expression, that Mankind from Nature can justly lay claim unto. The Language of China as hath been shewed also consisteth all of Monosyllables, & in our Infancy, the first Notions of speech we have are all Monosyllables⁵

Webb also claims that the Chinese lack obscene words in their language. He says that this seems to be an important criterion for what qualifies something as the universal language. “By all learned men, it is presumed that the PRIMITIVE Language, was an harmless and in nothing immodest speech; but as innocent as the time in which it had first infused into Mankind.”⁶ If a language contains obscenities, it must be a fallen tongue. He also claims that while all other languages have poetic traditions that involve “lascivious” verses, Chinese has none of this “for they are very modest in whatever they write.”⁷

In order to defend the purity of Chinese, Webb must refute the argument that it would have necessarily been corrupted by contact with other cultures throughout time. He says that if a culture is invaded by another that possesses inferior arts and sciences, the conquerors will actually adopt the customs of the vanquished rather than impose their customs on them. He says that the Romans adopted Greek sculpture, painting, and the use of their language for writing philosophical works. The Mongols also adopted Chinese customs for the same reason, and therefore “so far, it seems, the Chinois are from having their antient constitutions altered by this conquest” or from having their language corrupted by outside influence.⁸

Chinese is also apparently superior to Latin, the language most associated with learning at this time in Europe, because it has simpler grammar. Webb says "their Language is more easy to be learned, than the Latine, the Grammar only whereof taketh up all our younger years."⁹ Latin wastes away the youth of scholars who could apply themselves to worthwhile learning. Instead of studying things or notions, they waste much time in studying words. This issue was a major reason why many early modern thinkers like Wilkins and Bacon were invested in the pursuit of a universal language for scientific communication.

Because the initial obstacle of learning enough language to be able to express scholarly ideas is crossed much more efficiently in China, the population is able to dedicate itself more thoroughly to study. Webb speaks of Confucian scholars as Plato’s philosopher-kings. He lists some of the results of their learning: the lodestone and compass, guns and gunpowder, silk, porcelain, woodprints, and ink and paper of the highest quality in the world. He says that some of their advancements in learning are so great that they can not be expressed in English, concluding with what seems like it could be said with a sigh of admiration: "Physick not to be paralleld by any; Agriculture surmounting all: The Mathematiques; Mechaniques; Morality; I cannot have words for all unless from China."¹⁰

It is unclear how Webb would view the members of the Chinese population who are not members of the Confucian elite or who have no bearing on this knowledge production. Would he have separated them from the literati who he regarded as philosopher-kings? European scholars who occupied themselves with literary Arabic or the Hebrew of the Old Testament aimed to distance these languages from contemporary Arabs and Jews. Vernacular forms of Arabic such as the Egyptian dialect were regarded as corrupt, so much so the English professor of Arabic Thomas Erpenius chastised a teacher who was a native speaker for spreading this improper form.¹¹ The German Jewish vernacular of Yiddish was also viewed as corrupt, and as a sign of God’s withdrawal of favour from Jews if they could not understand biblical Hebrew.¹² John Webb must be considered within the context of this intellectual climate, in which the academic study of non-European languages was dominated by the interests of theology and the quest for a pure, unfallen, Edenic language rather than by the desire to understand these cultures.

Webb’s sound argumentation would have made it engaging for the early modern English reader. He also offers a utopian vision for anyone who longed to live under a stable monarchy after the English Civil War.¹³ Because they spoke the language of Adam, the Chinese excelled in learning, grew prosperous, and were governed by principles of logic and reason in a land where, to quote Webb "their Kings may be said to be Philosophers, and their Philosophers, Kings."¹⁴

[1] (Gen 11:1 (KJV))

[2] Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Learning. With Michael Kiernan. The Oxford Francis Bacon 4. (Clarendon, 2000), 34.

[3] Loop, Jan. “Language of Paradise: Protestant Oriental Scholarship and the Discovery of Arabic Poetry.” In Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe, with Nicholas Hardy and Dmitri Levitin, vol. 225. (Liverpool University Press, 2019), 399.

[4] Lewis, Rhodri. “The Same Principle of Reason: John Wilkins and Language.” In John Wilkins (1614-1672): New Essays, vol. 20. Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions (2017), 182.

[5] Webb, John. The Antiquity of China, or An Historical Essay Endeavouring a Probability That the Language of the Empire of China Is the Primitive Language Spoken through the Whole World before the Confusion of Babel. Wherein the Customs and Manners of the Chineans Are Presented, and Ancient and Modern Authors Consulted with. With a Large Map of the Country. By John Webb of Butleigh in the County of Somerset Esquire. (Printed for Obadiah Blagrave, at the Bear in St. Paul’s church-yard, near the little north door, 1678), 196.

[6] Webb 203 

[7] Webb 203

[8] Webb 134-135

[9] Webb 164

[10] Webb 206

[11] Mills, Simon. “Learning Arabic in the Overseas Factories: The Case of the English.” In The Teaching and Learning of Arabic in Early Modern Europe, with Charles Burnett, Jan Loop, and Alastair Hamilton. (Brill, 2017), 327.

[12] Elyada, Aya. “Protestant Scholars and Yiddish Studies in Early Modern Europe.” Past & Present (Oxford) 203, no. 1 (2009), 86

[13] Ramsey, Rachel. “China and the Ideal of Order in John Webb’s an ‘Historical Essay....’” Journal of the History of Ideas (Philadelphia) 62, no. 3 (2001).

[14] Webb 93