But some who have carefully studied the Scriptures tell us that the Hebrew tongue is not even ancient56    μηδὲ ἀρχαίζειν: therefore, if they are not the Divine language, a fortiori this is not. The word cannot possibly mean here “to grow obsolete.” like the others, but that along with other miracles this miracle was wrought in behalf of the Israelites, that after the Exodus from Egypt, the language was hastily improvised57    hastily improvised. But Origen, c. Celsum iii. 6, says—“Celsus has not shewn himself a just critic of the differing accounts of the Egyptians and the Jews.…He does not see that it was not possible for so large a number of rebellious Egyptians, after starting off in this way, to have changed their language at the very moment of their insurrection, and so become a separate nation, so that those who one day spoke Egyptian suddenly spoke a complete Hebrew dialect. Allow for a moment that when they left Egypt they rejected also their mother tongue; how was it that, thereupon, they did not adopt the Syrian or Phœnician, but the Hebrew which was so different from both these?…For the Hebrew had been their national language before they went down into Egypt:” And, i. 16—“I wonder how Celsus can admit the Odrysians amongst the most ancient as well as the wisest peoples, but will admit the Jews into neither, notwithstanding that there are many books in Egypt and Phœnicia and Greece which testify to their antiquity. Any one who likes can read Flavius Josephus’ two books on the antiquity of the Jews, where he makes a large collection of writers who witness to this.” And yet, iii. 7, he goes on to say (what Gregory is here alluding to) that while any way the Hebrew language was never Egyptian, “yet if we look deeper, we might find it possible to say in the case of the Exodus that there was a miracle: viz. the whole mass of the Hebrew people receiving a language; that such language was the gift of God, as one of their own prophets has expressed it, ‘when he came out of Egypt, he heard a strange language.’” for the use of the nation. And there is a58    καί τις. This reading (and not the interrogative τίς, as Oehler) is required by the context, where Gregory actually favours this theory of the lateness of the Hebrew tongue: and is confirmed by Gretser’s Latin, “Et nescio quis Prophetæ sermo.” passage in the Prophet which confirms this. For he says, “when he came out of the land of Egypt he heard a strange language59    Ps. lxxxi. 5..” If, then, Moses was a Hebrew, and the language of the Hebrews was subsequent to the others, Moses, I say, who was born some thousands of years after the Creation of the world, and who relates the words of God in his own language—does he not clearly teach us that he does not attribute to God such a language of human fashion, but that he speaks as he does because it was impossible otherwise than in human language to express his meaning, though the words he uses have some Divine and profound significance?

φασὶ δέ τινες τῶν ἐπιμελέστερον ταῖς θείαις γραφαῖς ἐπηκολουθηκότων μηδὲ ἀρχαΐζειν τὴν Ἑβραίων φωνὴν καθ' ὁμοιότητα τῶν λοιπῶν, ἀλλὰ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων θαυμάτων καὶ τοῦτο τοῖς Ἰσραηλίταις θαυματοποιηθῆναι, τὸ τὴν γλῶσσαν ταύτην ἀθρόως μετὰ τὴν Αἴγυπτον ἐνσχεδιασθῆναι τῷ ἔθνει. καί τις ἐστὶ τοῦ προφήτου λόγος τὸ τοιοῦτον πιστούμενος: ἐν γὰρ τῷ ἐξελθεῖν αὐτόν, φησίν, ἐξ Αἰγύπτου τότε γλῶσσαν ἣν οὐκ ἔγνω ἤκουσεν. εἰ οὖν Ἑβραῖος μὲν Μωϋσῆς, τελευταία δὲ τῶν ἄλλων ἡ τῶν Ἑβραίων φωνή, ὁ μετὰ τὴν τοῦ κόσμου σύστασιν τοσαύταις ἐτῶν χιλιάσιν ὕστερον γεγονὼς καὶ τῇ καθ' ἑαυτὸν φωνῇ τὰς τοῦ θεοῦ διηγούμενος ῥήσεις ἆρ' οὐχὶ σαφῶς διδάσκει τὸ μὴ τοιαύτην φωνὴν τὴν κατὰ ἄνθρωπον σχηματιζομένην ἀναγράφειν ἐπὶ τοῦ θεοῦ, ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν λέγειν διὰ τὸ μηδὲ δυνατὸν εἶναι τὸ νοηθὲν ἑτέρως εἰπεῖν ἢ ἀνθρωπίναις φωναῖς, σημαίνειν δὲ διὰ τῶν λεγομένων θεοπρεπῆ τινα καὶ μεγαλοφυεστέραν διάνοιαν;