Has anyone read anything convincing on historical linguistics and the Tower of Babel? Jordan or Leithart, perhaps?
In high school, I took French. In college, I took Greek, Latin, German, and Hebrew. I also took a number of linguistics classes, and loved them; particularly, historical linguistics. My trouble is that I’m unsure how to think about historical linguistics in light of the Genesis accounts — particularly Babel and Noah/Flood.
One of my historical linguistic classes was a graduate level class, “The Linguistic Evolution of Greek and Latin.” The professor was a great teacher who encouraged students to think for themselves and didn’t push his own agenda. If we didn’t buy what he was selling, he told us to chuck it and find something that worked better: “that’s how historical linguistics works!” he said. I say this to defend myself against the theory that I may have been brainwashed by an over-dominant, liberal, anti-Christian professor. This isn’t true.
Anyhow, I really enjoy the course and our main focus was on Greek, Latin, and their relationship: namely, Indo-European linguistics. Basically, IE says that Greek, Latin, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Indic, etc.. languages are related. (One, very easy, example is the word father. pater in Latin and Greek, pitar in Sanskrit. We had dozens of examples like this. We looked not only at words, but also grammatical structure, syntax, etc…) This is one of the major family trees; there are others: Semitic, Oceanic, etc…
How does this reconcile with Genesis? Time frame is an issue. Young Earth creationists put the age of Earth around (correct me if I’m wrong) 6000 years or so? Regardless, you have God cleansing the earth in Genesis 6 leaving only Noah and his family, then you have the Tower of Babel in Gen 11. There definitely seem to be a short, finite number of years since Gen 9, whether you are Old Earth or Young Earth.
Then, you have this fellow. He’s attempting to show that the world languages evolved from Hebrew and that his theory makes much more sense than Indo-European (account for Greek, Latin, English, etc… you know, the important languages). My trouble is that he makes the humourous statement:
Reading the dictionary of Indo-European Roots (The American Heritage Dictionary, ed. by Calvert Watkins, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1985) can be painful or puzzling. The most incongruous words are grouped together with far less discernable sound or sense than the weakest of Edenic-English links. Reading the dictionary of IE roots, or noting these theoretical “roots” in The Word, can also be humorous. Especially if one knows the Biblical Hebrew word which would have neatly tied together the forced “cognates” of a bizarre entry. The Biblical Hebrew or ancient Semitic root word (etymon) is most often only a slight deviation from their fictional “root”.
My trouble is: first, I have Watkins book. I can read it. I’ve taken the classes. I know what all the little squiggly marks mean, and it makes perfect sense to me. Second: I took Biblical Hebrew with a bunch of language buffs (second semester, J.T. in case you’re wondering) and we discussed linguistics all the time and never did we find any profitable link between Hebrew and an IE language. The best dicusses were relating Biblical Hebrew to Modern Hebrew or Arabic … never a cross over with an IE language.
So, where does this leave me? I haven’t heard any good argument against IE (outside of “it may conflict with the Genesis account”), I haven’t found a way to reconcile the two, and I haven’t read a good arguement for the “Edenic” approach.
Back to my original question: has Jordan or Leithart written anything creative? Any other ideas?
John pointed me to this book review by Jordan: http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/ob/ob027.htm
It might be what you’re looking for.
Hmm … Jordan seems to buy into the same framework as the guy I linked to. Though Jordan is a bit more readable.
I’ll have to give it a second look over … or at least read the book they are discussing.
Not that I really have much of a clue at all about any of this, or have anything substantial to add to the discussion (what I can is a few typo corrections… I think you meant Young Earth creationists believe the earth is ~6K years old (which is right), not Old Earth. And The tower of Babel is in Genesis 11, not 9), but what is the problem with Genesis and IE? I don’t see why it has to contradict anything in Genesis.
Is it that the confusion of Babel had to be entirely distinct languages? And then there isn’t enough time to develop the different IE languages from one of those distinct languages?
Yeah, can you more clearly define the problem? To say he confused the languages, does that just mean slight structural changes or a major shift.
The point of the passage is that a confusion of tongues=Confusion of religions (reversed at Pentecost).
I guess I’m just missing something.
Typos fixed! I was supposed to do that last night, but I was half-asleep.
I am not sure what Mike’s main problem is, other than that the website (if you scroll down) calls IE bunk. I guess he is wondering whether most conservative Biblical scholarship regarding Babel makes the field of historical linguistics pointless.
I have wondered a few things — was Hebrew necessarily the Edenic/pre-Babel language? Could it have been IE or PIE?
Hm. IE is bogus and everything is from Hebrew? That guy is nuts.
I’m not sure trying to reconcile the Babel story and historical linguistics is a profitable activity. As one of the great theologians of my tradition would say, Richard Hooker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hooker_%28theologian%29), the Bible contains all things necessary for salvation, but as soon as we start asking it questions about other topics it wasn’t designed to address (say, ancient history), you’re asking for trouble.
I don’t think I can recommend anything that will answer your specific question, but this armchair linguist really enjoys a book by Robert Claiborne, Our Marvelous Native Tongue: The Life and Times of the English Language. Mr. Claiborne is an evolutionist, but his book is very informative.
Personally, I always assumed that the major divisions in the languages occurred at Babel and from there they just naturally changed since the tribes were separated from one another.
I know nothing about this discussion except, of course, what I’ve read in Jordan’s review. But it does strike me that Jordan makes an interesting point.
The names of pre-Babel people have meaning in Hebrew. There are puns: Adam is made from Adamah. Woman (Ishshah) comes from Man (Ish). Noah’s name has to do with rest. And so forth.
There seem to be a number of possibilities:
(1) The original language was Hebrew or something close to it, and that’s why all this wordplay works.
(2) The original language wasn’t Hebrew, but it had exactly the same wordplay and so the puns, etc., can easily be translated into Hebrew.
(3) The original language wasn’t Hebrew but something else, not even necessarily any language we have today, and there really was no wordplay in the original language, so that no one would have noticed any similarity between Adam’s name and the word for “dirt.” In that case, the wordplay is entirely something added by the Hebrew writer, but not something that (for instance) Lamech would have recognized.
But (3) doesn’t really work because Lamech deliberately gives Noah his name because of its (Hebrew) meaning.
(2) seems unlikely, given the difficulties today of translating wordplay from one language to another.
That leaves (1). Are there other possibilities?
Mind you, even if (1) is correct, I don’t know that it necessarily follows that all languages are derived from Hebrew. The scattering at Babel could have left Hebrew basically intact (the language of Seth’s line) but have also made such great shifts that there emerged IE, I suppose.
Again, I haven’t ever thought much about this. It’s rather interesting, though!
I suppose it could be Hebrew. This came to me yesterday as I was thinking about teaching Ancient History/Lit next year (starting with the Indo-Europeans) and a mom talking about the Greeks the descendants of Japheth.
I suppose the timeline could work … from Noah civilizations spread. God’s confusing the languages being a universal confusion, not a local confusion on Babel.
I was struggling making a timeline for my students from Noah to the Indo-Europeans which, if PIE holds, has to go through some serious changes before arriving at Greek. Though, that gets into a debate about the rate of change in linguistic evolution, which can’t really be answered.
Oh well. I suppose I don’t have a major issue in my head.
Though I do wonder … where did the native New Zealanders come from? One of Noah’s contemporaries stowed away? Man overboard??
Here’s a site that interacts with Mozeson: http://www.takeourword.com/Issue096.html.
I have to admit that as I read this stuff, I’m reminded more than a little of the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the dad “proves” that the word “kimono” comes from Greek.
If it’s a timeline you want, why reinvent the wheel?
;-)
My kids take world history from Peter Roise, a member of Peter Leithart’s church and a student at Greyfriars. He uses Barnes and Noble’s Wall Chart of World History, now out of print, and also Ussher’s Annals of the World which can be found here – “Essays on Chronology.” You have to download the Online Bible tool before you can read Ussher, but as far as I know, it’s the only English translation available online. Actually, you probably wouldn’t need the English translation anyway – he wrote it in Latin.
HTH
You know, this is a question that has plagued me as well. I have a BA in theoretical linguistics, and while I cared more for phonology than historical linguistics, I do entertain thoughts of the Tower of Babel from time to time.
My own understanding, to expand on what John said above about the three possibilities, is that the “confusing” of languages (wordplay on ‘babble’ and symbolism notwithstanding) could have been a miraculous division of tongues.
Think of the so-called tree of life that evolutionists use, with dotted lines in the fossil record supposedly connecting all species back to some pond scum. Linguists use a similar tree, in which Indo-European languages branch back into Proto-IE, which will connect with other languages (sorry, I don’t have my old textbook with me or I’d delineate the current theories more) in Proto-Proto-IE, etc. Of course, it’s a major criticism of historical linguistics that it devolves (pun intented) into extreme speculation. After all, proto-languages are theoretically constructed from so-called descendant languages, with no hard evidence to corroborate. You can guess where that leaves proto-proto-languages.
Taking the evolutionary tree analogy a bit farther, consider for a moment that it may not be a tree at all — it could be a forest, planted at the time of the Tower of Babel. This is the standard creationist response to evolutionary biology, so why not linguistics, too?
In this view, then, Hebrew could have remained consistent (with slight variation, but general integrity) from Eden to the first century after Christ. At the time of the Tower of Babel, God intervened and created new languages (and families of languages, such as Indo-European). Some bore resemblance to Hebrew (such as Arabic, Samaritan, Aramaic, etc), but many did not. Perhaps the Semitic languages evolved from Hebrew apart from the radical disjunction at Babel. Who knows? The other languages then evolved into their modern descendant languages.
How does this picture strike you?
What’s funny is that I know Lambert Dolphin personally, and he gave me a book years ago (The Word, I think) that provides Hebrew roots for English words. I never really took it seriously, because it seemed to be obvious speculation based on superficial and linguistically ignorant study. I haven’t had a chance to read the article you linked there, but I’ll check it out and comment on it later. Maybe I’ll have a discussion with Lambert about all this again sometime soon!
I am not qualified to talk about IE linguistics. But this sure is a fascinating little blog entry, Mike. Heck, I don’t even know Hebrew, though I’m still trying to learn it. (R.K. Harrison’s textbook opens with an introduction in which he recalls a professor who used to start each semester of Hebrew with the words, “This is the language that God spoke.”)
Two etymologies from these web pages reviewing Mozeson that I find somewhat intriguing (probable?) are Heb. “Tubal-Cain” –> Lat. “Vulcan”; and Heb. “Japheth” –> Gk. “Iapetos.” Given that both the former are credited with metalworking, and both the latter occupy the head of a large family tree, it gives one pause.
Of course, Mozeson’s project reminds me of some intellectual embarrassments. Cornell’s own Martin Bernal dug himself a huge scholarly hole — and probably undermined some of his more plausible claims — by doing historical linguistics by gut instinct in Black Athena, to attempt to derive Greek from ancient Egyptian — a move that brought down Jay Jasanoff and Alan Nussbaum on his head, saying “Nuh-uh. It’s linguistic hooey.” In like vein, I recently saw another misguided Christian with a book claiming that the Parthenon’s relief sculptures depict scenes from Genesis. The poor fellow tried to derive the name “Athena” from “a-thanatos” (immortal). Sorry, it doesn’t fly.
In a non-linguistic vein, however, Martin West’s book The East Face of Helicon might be of value in thinking about these issues. It covers all kinds of Greek cultural borrowing from the ANE.
Peter Leithart makes an interesting observation about Babel here.
You know, thinking about what Leithart wrote in that article, I think it’s completely feasible. Have you seen the recent commercials on television (if you dare turn it on) that show parents COMPLETELY befuddled by the crazy slang their children used? Linguistic change can happen VERY rapidly.
At the same time, if there was only one language spoken in the entire world prior to the confusion of languages at Babel (Hebrew), then gradual (even quick) linguistic change would be insufficient to account for radically different languages. You would be forced to adopt the edenic language notion, which holds little air for most of us, I think.
It seems that the gradual change occurred, but it’s fairly obvious to me that God’s divine intervention included the miraculous generation of new tongues (which we know can happen, as in the tongues at Pentecost). That’s the only realistic way I can wrap my mind around the Babel babble.
Unless there were different language families prior to Babel… Hmm.
In conjunction with what Leithart wrote, we have to remember that lifespans still hadn’t leveled out. We think of a generation as about 40 years today, but for Noah and his children, it would be a couple hundred years or so.