Question Six of Chapter Six of the Third Decade
That Hebrew speech was the first language, and after the judgment will be the last language
It is asked in what language the demon addressed the first parents, what the first language was, what the last language among the blessed and the damned after the judgment will be, and in what language God spoke with the first parents in the terrestrial Paradise.
To this it is answered that the demon spoke to the first parents in an exterior Hebrew idiomatic voice, formed by the tongue of the serpent’s animal body.
God first gratuitously gave this Hebrew language to the first parents; and from the beginning he impressed it upon the good and evil angels who were to speak and instruct in the state of innocence, and upon the human beings who were to converse familiarly with them.
In this language Adam imposed names upon the animals. For it is certain, as Jerome says, that all the names which are read in Genesis from the beginning as far as the division of languages are Hebrew names.
In this language too God, walking in a subject creature in Paradise, addressed the first parents; and there they spoke in an exterior tongue with God and the devil.
The blessed and the damned will also use this language after the judgment, although the blessed will be able to speak with one another in all languages, but the damned will not.
Jerome together with Origen also says that it was proved by experience that an infant who had been shut away and, by a law imposed upon the nurse, had not been taught, burst forth with his first word in the Hebrew language: Lehem, that is, bread, and yain, that is, wine.
Herodotus, however, says in Book II that a Trojan infant, newborn and shut away and instructed by no one, spontaneously burst forth with his first word in the Trojan language: artos, that is, bread, and ynos, that is, wine.
These things are from Henry and the authors cited above.