Barbarians

BARBARIANS. This word is to be met with but once in the Latin translation of the sacred Books written in Hebrew, and this is in Psalm cxiii. 1. In exitu Israel de Egypto, domûs Jacob de populo barbaro. The word Loez which is rendred Barbarian¹ in the Hebrew sense of it, signifies a Stranger, who knows neither the holy language, nor the law of God. Barbarians, according to the notion which the Greeks had of them, were they who were not Greeks, or were not governed by laws like the Greeks; thus the Persians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Arabians, Gauls, Germans, and even the Latins were in their sense Barbarians. S. Paul, for example, comprehends all mankind under the names Rom. i. 14.of Greeks and Barbarians. I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise. S. Luke calls the Acts. xxviii. 2, 4.inhabitants of the isle of Malta, Barbarians, S. Paul in his Epistle to the Colossians uses the terms Barbarian and Scythian, as if they were almost of the same signification: 1 Cor. xix. 1and in the first Epistle to the Corinthians he says, that if he who speaks a strange language in an Assembly be not understood by those to whom he is discoursing, with respect to them he will be a Barbarian; and reciprocally, if he understand not those who speak to him they to him will be Barbarians. Barbarian therefore is used for every stranger, who does not speak our language, whether we are Greeks, Latins, or Hebrews, &c.

People do not agree in their opinions concerning the original of the word Barbarian: some derive it from Bar, which in Arabic signifies Desart. Others suppose it to come from the Chaldee adverb Bara, without: others from Barbar, which signifies to murmur. Others again will have it, that this word comes originally from a sound which signifies nothing, and that the Greeks imitating in the way of raillery the language of Strangers, said Barbar, from whence they formed Barbaros, or Barbarizein. The Council of Chalcedon calls the Bishops, whose Sees lay without the limits of the Roman Empire, Barbarians. We for many ages have termed that part of Africk, which is situated upon the Mediterranean, with E gypt to the East, the Bildalgerid and mount Atlas to the South, the Ocean to the West, and the Mediterranean to the North, Barbary. It is thought to be so called, because part of this country was not subject to the Roman Empire; now the Romans, as has been observed, named those Barbarians who were not within their Dominions.

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