the first tongue of the world, and for the excellency thereof called 'the holy tongue.'" Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, Dr.
William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and Master of St.John's College at Cambridge.

In his Disputation on Holy Scripture, first printed in 1588, he says: "The Hebrew is the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone prevailed in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the Tower of Babel.

For it was this which Adam used and all men before the Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures, as the fathers testify." He then proceeds to quote passages on this subject from St.Jerome, St.Augustine, and others, and cites St.Chrysostom in support of the statement that "God himself showed the model and method of writing when he delivered the Law written by his own finger to Moses."(415) (415) For the whole scriptural argument, embracing the various texts on which the sacred science of Philology was founded, with the use made of such texts, see Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, pp.

22-26.

As to the origin of the vowel points, see Benfey, as above; he holds that they began to be inserted in the second century A.D., and that the process lasted until about the tenth.