Yājñavalkya

The formidable arguer of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad — who wins a debate for a thousand cows, is questioned so hard by the woman scholar Gārgī that he warns her head will fall off if she asks one more, and who, when pressed to say what the self actually is, will only say what it is not: neti, neti — not this, not this.

The first great apophatic voice on this bench, and he predates all of them. Centuries before Plato's "beyond being" and a millennium before Ein Sof, a teacher in northern India refuses every predicate for the same reason and in the same tone. Nobody borrowed it. It is what happens when you push that question hard enough.