Hiro Protagonist

A couple of weeks back it was pointed out to me a book that brought together my interest in primates (inspired by reading Desmond Morris) and my long standing interest in language. It was a $1 paperback copy of Eugene Linden's "Apes, Men, And Language." I bought it Mckays used books in Knoxville. It's been a very interesting read. Surprisingly, the first couple of paragraphs even include a bit of biblical commentary:

In the Antiquities of the Jews, Flavius Josephus, the historian of Roman times, notes that when man was banished from the Garden of Eden, he lost, among other things, the ability to talk wiht the animals. In his account of Genesis, Josephus was reflecting the belief common among Jews that before the Fall, man could speak with animals. The myth of the Fall has been seen as the expression of an ancestral memory of man's original usurpation of nature's authority; at the time of Josephus, the price of that usurpation was alienation from nature, reflected in the evolution of a language now distinct from that of other animals.

What I find most interesting about this is that I had a conversation with a co-worker who is a Jehova's Witness about whether the snake in the Garden of eden was actually a snake or something more than a snake. He argued that a passage in Revelation and the scientific knowledge that snakes cannot talk makes it clear that the snake was more than a snake. My argument, though perhaps it was a bit of playing devil's advocate, was that tGod's vengence appears to be toward the snake and not toward Satan.

[There's a sticker on the inside front cover that reads "Conrad M. Goodwin, Corotoman Archaeological Project, PO Box 47, Weems, Va. 22576." There is also an Inscription with the same name and the date of August, 1979. I'm curious to discover what this project was about.]