Old Testament tradition hands us the story of the Tower of Babel. Obviously depending on one's particualr view of things, some regard this as a literal recounting of a specific event in history, while others think of it as a meaningless myth of an ancient race of religious fanatics. I think it's ridiculous and dangerous to treat ancient and heavily translated artifacts of mystic revelation as if they were history books. Christ did not teach by demonstrating historical precedents: he taught by telling stories and asking questions. On the other hand, I think it's equally foolish to discount even what one views as being nothing more than ancient mythology as having no historical touchstone in the phenomenological world experience of our ancestors. The story of Babel exists for a reason and was inspired by actual events. This is not a religious statement: It is a statement of fact that can be generalized to describe all stories. Nothing from nothing, everything from something.
In this story we are given to believe what the etymologists believe is true: that we once held a common tongue. Any person could speak to any other person. Shrewd questions occur to the astute reader: Was this language constant? Was it evolving? Don't you think that the language simply diverged as the human family diverged geographically, the way we can see dialects develop in any modern language? The answers to these questions are yes, no, and no. Before an incident occurred, language was fixed and static. There was no evolution. Children of peoples who had lived thousands of mile apart and for hundreds of years could meet for the first time and communicate on exactly the same terms. The Tongue had a vocabulary on the order of magnitude of ten thousand words and contained only the present tense.
klik if you demand tedious explanations of every little thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment