The Origin of Language: Aspects of the Discussion from Condillac to Wundt

by George Albert Wells

Book by Wells, George Albert

138 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 1987

About the author

George Albert Wells (born May 22, 1926), usually known as G. A. Wells, is an Emeritus Professor of German at Birkbeck, University of London. After writing books about famous European intellectuals, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Franz Grillparzer, he turned to the study of the historicity of Jesus, starting with his book The Jesus of the Early Christians in 1971. He is best known as an advocate of the thesis that Jesus is essentially a mythical rather than a historical figure, a theory that was pioneered by German biblical scholars such as Bruno Bauer and Arthur Drews.

Since the late 1990s, Wells has said that the hypothetical Q document, which is proposed as a source used in some of the gospels, may "contain a core of reminiscences" of an itinerant Galilean miracle-worker/Cynic-sage type preacher. This new stance has been interpreted as Wells changing his position to accept the existence of a historical Jesus. In 2003 Wells stated that he now disagrees with Robert M. Price on the information about Jesus being "all mythical". Wells believes that the Jesus of the gospels is obtained by attributing the supernatural traits of the Pauline epistles to the human preacher of Q.

Wells is a former Chairman of the Rationalist Press Association. He is married and lives in St. Albans, near London. He studied at the University of London and Bern, and holds degrees in German, philosophy, and natural science. He has taught German at London University since 1949, and has been Professor of German at Birkbeck College since 1968.

Reviews

[Lance · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book makes for a very nice overview of language origin theories from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, though Wells overarching argument is less than clear -- restricted mostly to the epilogue. Wells wants scholars to recover the Enlightenment stance that language was an invention, an idea that was lost with the modern dismissal of language origin theories. Wells seems to think that this idea would support a more social idea of language, because language only arises as a communal need. Wells approaches LOT like so many others, as actual theories as opposed to rhetorics. Each of these theories has a rhetorical purpose. This is more useful to examine than the veracity of such claims.