John Webb’s An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability that the Language of the Empire China is the Primitive Language is regarded as the first extensive European treatise on the Chinese language and among the earliest sinological studies. Webb’s argument in Historical Essay is that the Chinese language is the primitive language and Noah in the Genesis is Emperor Yao from the ancient Chinese history. For proof of his hypothesis, he gathered up various intellectual discourses circulating in seventeenth-century England, which inversely allows us to approach the pre-sinological discourses of his time. Through this, we can find to what extent he intervened in the current discourses and deviated from them. Webb enthusiastically responded to the reports from Jesuit missionaries, one of whose main aims were to collect mission fund enough to propagate their religion, which was carried out by first portraying China as an ideal nation to appeal to the Europeans. His idealization of the Chinese language conceals the anxiety of his time as the Europeans first encountered Eastern civilizations in the seventeenth century. We can see the symptoms when Webb wishes to attribute the ideal qualities of China delivered by the Jesuit authors to Noah. While he attempts to prove the primitiveness of the Chinese language, he incorporates Chinese civilization into European discourses by making pious Noah the common ancestor of England and China and by asserting that all the superiorities of Chinese civilization are derived from the figure of Noah in the Genesis.

1. Introduction
2. Reconciliation of Ancient Chinese History and the Biblical Chronology
    2.1 Cited Sources in Historical Essay 
    2.2 The Impact of Ancient Chinese History on the European Chronology
    2.3 Webb's Framework of Chinese History
3. Chinese as the Primitive Language by Identification of Noah with Yao
    3.1 Noah’s First Settlement
    3.2 The Chinese Language was not Confused at Babel
    3.3 Webb’s Early Comparative Linguistics of Noah and Yao 
    3.4 The Preservation of Primitive Language in China 
4. Conclusion
References
Abstract

• 이진숙(경성대학교 한국한자연구소) | Jinsook LEE