Seeker2000

Hi everybody,

I'm currently having a debate on some other (German) forum with a guy, who believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. He posted a lengthy text about archeological discoveries that have been made, which had before been mentioned accurately in the stories of the Bible.

I'm especially interested in information regarding one paragraph though:
(Translated from German)

Well, can anybody here say anything about the accuracy of this statement? Unfortunately I don't know that much about the development of the languages.

Chris Weimer

It's all bunk. Every word of it. Every. First of all, God doesn't exist. Second of all, we've had language for 10 thousands of years. It was impossible that the Tower of Babel could have affected Native American speakers who were already on the new continent well before Adam supposedly was created by "God".

Toto

Sir Henry Rawlinson was a 19th century soldier and "orientalist". The study of linguistics, not to mention archeology, has progressed since his time. I don't think that any modern linguist would try to trace all current languages back to the plain of Shinar. If modern humans all came out of Africa, language probably developed there.

John Kesler

For an amusing look at the Babel story, see Farrell Till's "Biblical Babble about Babel." From the article:

Huon

Here is a list of all the language families :
http://www.ethnologue.com/family_index.asp

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002335.php
is another link which mentions criticism of the first link.

But it is not very easy to have a serious discussion with a "one-book person". On another side, it is comfortable to be a "one-book person". After a short study, s/he knows everything, and the poor guy who spent twenty years studying the reality, and has still no certainty, is in a bad situation in the discussion.

Language is certainly an innate property of Homo Sapiens sapiens, and we have traces of that species in European caves, which are dated much older than 6000 BCE.

spin

Working from biblical chronology, the Tower of Babel episode was less than 3000 years before this era. The first writings from Sumer were from around 3200 BCE. Now the Sumerian language is totally unrelated to the Semitic languages, the Indo-European languages, the Finno-Ugric languages and many others. How can the Tower of Babel story explain the existence of Sumerian with relation to the other languages?


spin

mopc

Of course the tale of the Babel Tower is just a tale, an explanatory tale that attempted to mock Babylon´s (Babel) zigurats. Babel was an ancient Hebrew word for confusion and thus was used as a pun on Babylon (Babilu in Akkadian). The Tower of Babylon was a main Zigurat and Babylonians had to have their great civilization mocked because they were an enemy of the Hebrews.

As stated above, most of humanity was already spread throughout the globe way before the Babel Tower story took place according to the Bible. In the Middle East itself, several unrelated languages were spoken by the time writing was invented 5,500 years ago. Sumerian and Elamite were unrelated to neighboring Semitic languages.

Besides, how can that idiot say that languages "come from Shinar" or any crap like that? Nothing points to that direction. Far Eastern languages such as Thai and Chinese are totally unrelated, not to mention African, Polynesian, Australian and American languages. Australian aborigenes have been in Australia for the past 40,000 years.

If there was a mother language, it was spoken in Africa some 130,000 years ago.

mopc

Besides, in chapter 10 of Genesis, the Bible says that the descendants of Noah were divided each according to his language. The Tower of Babel episode is narrated in chapter 11....

GIDEON MAGE

The stories probably came from two diffeent traditions, both of which were extant when the hebrew scriptures began to be written down. This happened many times, like the two different creation stories in Genesis I and II. Much of these things are symbolic, and we need to understand the symbolism, instead of pretending the original authors intended a literal interpretation. A lot of we have in the bible are left over from mysteries used in ancient initiatory cults, and were never intended to be taken literally.

John Kesler

Genesis 11:6-7 doesn't cast Yahweh in a favorable light:

What does it say about the omnipotence of Yawheh if puny humans, simply by virtue of having one language, threatened him? Also, if Yahweh is omniscient, why didn't he "confuse" the language before the Babel incident?