A theory has been advanced here in the Evening News to the effect that Gaelic was the language of the ancient Jews in Palestine.
“It is rather remarkable,” says the News article, “that throughout the Old and New Testament the language of the Jews is never once mentioned. The prophet Isaiah alone gives an indication when he states that the Jews spoke the language of Canaan (Isaiah ix, 18), and the question then arises as to what the language was spoken by the Canaanites?”
The author goes on to show the similarity between place-names in Palestine and Gaelic terms. “Og was king of the Amorites, and Endrei was his capital in Bashan. We are told by Josephus, the Jewish historian, that this town was also called Aadrei. In Scotland at the present day either of these words may be used to indicate ‘cattle king,’ a strong proof that the language of the Scots and the Amorites were the same.”
The article further states that “from the dawn of history the River Jordan has been known by its Gaelic name, Ard-Ban-Eas, meaning the high, white waterfall, or torrent. Lebanon in the Gaelic means the white solitude; Tiberias—the well at the waterfall.”
By using similar examples the author feels that his point is made.
The article further points out that “Isaiah provides another powerful argument in favor of this contention: Let it be borne in mind that all the nations speaking a dialect of the Semitic language, such as Syriac, Hebrew, Aramic, Arabic, and several others, could, without difficulty, hold a conversation with each other, yet when Rabshakeh, the Assyrian general, was offering terms of surrender to the Jews, the Jewish officers made the following request: Speak, I pray thee, unto thy servants in the Syrian language, for we understand it, and speak not unto us in the Jew’s language in the ears of the people that are on the wall.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
