For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts, Isaiah 55:9.
A person's thoughts are composed of language. To illustrate that, there are two distinct times in your bible when a person's silent prayer to God is recorded. No words are spoken out loud in either but the prayer is recorded word for word. In each of those cases the person praying says that they prayed in their heart. Abraham's servant prayed a distinct prayer that we can see as he prays it and as he recounts it to Laban. He prayed silently, using intelligible words in his heart. And before I had done speaking in mine heart, behold, Rebekah came forth with her pitcher on her shoulder; and she went down unto the well, and drew water: and I said unto her, Let me drink, I pray thee, Genesis 24:45.
Another time that happens is with Hannah in the Book of 1st Samuel. When Eli the priest accuses her of drunkenness, he does so because he can see her lips move but there was no sound. Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken, 1st Samuel 1:13.
For the student of the word of God seeking to get King James Bible definitions to understand King James Bible words, the definition of the heart is made plain. That part of your thinking wherein you silently but plainly speak in your own language is what the bible calls your heart. If you have ever prayed in a crowded place and you wanted your prayer to be private, you may have realized that it is hard not to move your lips while praying, or if you are composing some specific speech or answer in your head you may have noticed the same thing. The bible identifies that part of you as your heart.
God has a heart and he thinks in his heart. He rebuked Israel about their abominations which they had ascribed to him. He said, which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart, Jeremiah 7:31. We are made in the image of God. He gave us hearts with which to muse over the things of God. Because of the fall of Adam, our hearts are inherently deceitful and that deceitfulness corrupts our hearts. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it, Jeremiah 17:9.
If we believe our bibles (and I do), there is nothing in the universe more deceitful than the human heart. I have often preached to my people that if the devil was to run into our heart in a dark alley, he would take a knee. It is more deceitful than him. It is deceitful above all things. That is the basis of human lies. We first lie to ourselves and then repeat that lie to the world and to God.
Enmeshed within the words with which we muse about the world, plan our futures or just plain idly think, are untruths. It is no wonder that we are told; Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord, Colossians 3:16. We are advised; Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things, Philippians 4:8.
The heart of God contains no lies. It is pure. God cannot lie. It is holy. The thoughts of God tend to love. For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end, Jeremiah 29:11. When we say that the thoughts of God are higher than our thoughts, we are not saying that his thought process is different. We are saying that it is all knowing, all powerful, all truth, and pure. Nevertheless, he expresses his thoughts in words that we can understand. There is no reason to think that the words inside of his mind are different.
God chose language as his medium to communicate to man. There is no wording in the heart of an arctic tern as the plan of God directs it and guides it to fly from pole to pole. No cat or dog has ever needed written or spoken instructions to know enough to lay on its side and suckle its new born babies. God wrote those instructions into their genetic code. God speaks to man and he does so in written intelligible language. It is God's nature to do so.
When we read a King James Bible, we read the thoughts of God. You can be sure that when God thinks in English, (don't tell the TR* men, it will confuse them), he thinks in perfect King James English. There has never been a time on earth when men spoke King James English. It is a high and perfect language. There has never been a time in heaven when God could not think in that same English. We know that when God thinks, that thinking is perfect. The language of the King James Bible is perfect. It elevates men to learn it. It blesses men to think in it. It revives men to remember it.
(*TR is the name given to a couple of competing Greek texts which some preachers think are the true word of God.)
The 16th century ended with the birth or possibly the rebirth of a language. Its gestation had been long and hard with its embryonic stage being written in such Old English epics as Beowulf, The Wanderer, and the Seafarer. Melvin Bragg in his Adventure of English, notes that in the 8th or 9th century the only other living languages that had such literature were Chinese and Arabic. Just as John the Baptist leapt in the womb, Old English was already stirring.
The 14th century saw the language which had quietly survived as the language of oppressed peasants suffering under the Norman yoke revive as the language of the court of London. By the end of the 15th century, writers had begun to notice that for purposes of expressing thought, emotion, law or science English took a second place to no language on earth. Lord Philip Sydney wrote, "But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceite [deep thoughts] of the minde ...Which is the end of thought...English hath it equally with any other tongue in the world." Sidney was conversant in Greek and Latin. His statement is no idle boast.
The 17th century dawned with Modern English in its ascendency. English had transitioned from its early days as a highly inflected Germanic Language, to a language structured by logic. It had run into and almost been swallowed by Old Norse only to have ended up doing the swallowing. The two languages melded together with English retaining the upper hand having absorbed much from the Norse. The English were conquered by the French speaking Normans who relegated English to the serfs and peasants. The English language absorbed many of their words but emerged triumphant in 1399 when Duke Henry of Lancaster became the King of England and used English in his court.
By the year 1604 when King James convened the Hampton Court Conference, the English Language of scholarship was a perfect blend of inflected pronouns (you plural, thou singular), conjugated verbs (I know, thou art known, thou knowest) and a careful structure to convey exact thought. It sits in literature as a high tower of beauty and scientific thought. It is the link which links all English speakers throughout the ages and throughout the world. The ouch which holds such a jewell is the King James Bible.
Could it claim to be the language of the Garden of Eden? It has as good a claim as any language on earth. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past, Ecclesiastes 3:5. Perhaps English's unique borrowing from so many languages throughout the earth is in fact the work of God reassembling the language of earth prior to the flood? That could explain the rise of English as the dominant language of business and science on the earth today.
John Gill's excellent treatise, A Dissertation Concerning the Antiquity of the Hebrew Language makes a good case for Hebrew going back all the way to the Garden. My objection to that is that God directed Israel to say that their Father (Jacob) was a Syrian; A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, Deuteronomy 26:5. One generation after Abraham left his kinfolk, they were speaking Syrian and Abraham was speaking Hebrew. And Laban called it Jegarsahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed, Genesis 31:47. In English that would be, the heap of witness. Jacob and his uncle were speaking two separate languages.Perhaps Hebrew was given to Abraham when he was separated from his kin. Perhaps Hebrew was part of that separation.
When the Apostle Paul referenced speaking the tongues of men and of Angels in 1st Corinthians 13:1, perhaps he meant Hebrew as a tongue of Angels. Certainly the angels spoke Hebrew when they spoke to the men of the Old Testament.
As for English and Hebrew vying for being the language of the garden, that is all fun speculation. What is far more certain is that God can speak and think in English. You can also be sure that when God does so, the thoughts of his heart are in King James English. God is able to think and speak in every language of men and I have no doubt that he could do it simultaneously. What the modern apostate doesn't believe is that God could give us his word in any language.
The same God who knows the thoughts of each and every one of the 7 1/2 billion people on earth, who know the name of every star, could name every electron in every star, and tell you where each one of them will be in a trillion years just can't get his word into other languages according to these silly scholars. Every year, like witches around a cauldron, they stir and brew new formulas to tell us what God really said.
I don't need them and neither do you. I have the mind and the heart of God in the person of Jesus Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and a King James Bible to speak those words aloud to me.