<p>Anyone ?</p>
<p>Latin would have been a better choice just for the fact that it would have been legible to everyone. (Hebrew has its own script.)</p>
<p>were devoted. The 1726 Yale College laws, reflecting such devotion, characteristically ordained that every student in his study should know God in Jesus Christ and answerably lead a, "Godly sober life." To the ancient Hebrews, the Urim and Thummim reflected the oracular will of God. To the Puritans who shaped early Yale, that oracular will was represented by Jesus--their seal proclaimed it. However, the Urim and Thummim seal might have had religio-political overtones. When the trustees first applied for the seal on October 17, 1722, the meeting in New Haven was one that was likely pre-occupied with the greatest scandal in University history--the dismissal of Rector Timothy Cutler. Because Cutler had challenged the ordination of of virtually every minister in New England with his Anglican-Arminian stance (a stance that went against the confession of faith professed by every minister),the trustees fired the rector on that day and instituted a new confession of faith to be required of Yale faculy (ministers). The declaration of Yale ideals was upheld by the Hebrew motto which appeared in the main divinity text used by students of that time--Johannes Wollebius's--The Abridgement of Christian Divinitie. This book was the mandatory study book of every student on every Friday afternoon in prparation for the long Christian Sabaath. Wollebius's book intreprets the Hebrew words that would eventually appear on the seal as, "Christ the Word and Interpreter of the Father, our light and perfection. Later on, Jonathan Edwards provided the stimulus in 1735 (the year before the seal first appears on diplomas) with his "Old Light" ideas (math and metaphysics had to go hand in hand with theology and ethics)--so by then Yale's leaders by choosing to translate Urim V'Thummim to Lut et Veritas--could insist that their collegeoffered the essentialsof proper learning at the time: the light of liberal educationan and the truth of an old New England religious tradition.</p>
<p>The short answer is that Ezra Stiles, the 5th president of Yale, was a Hebrew nut, who insisted on keeping Hebrew as a mandatory course of study until the students rebelled.</p>