Questions about the Judgment at Babel

Yesterday we were asked what we thought about the origin or the source of the multiplicity of languages which somehow led to Genesis 11:9 but also to the existence of the 70 nations: Deut 32:8 "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.“The New American Standard Bible , "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, When He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the sons of Israel.

There are multiple questions posed, and each can have a variety of responses.  The first item that comes up is the two citations of Deut 32:8.  This entire song has more than its share of textual variants.  Biblia Hebraica lists three variants on this verse alone, but only the last one is significant.  The MT and Vulgate have sons of Israel (בני ישראל), and the LXX and a Qumran text have αγγελων θεου, which the BH editor thinks was a corruption of some earlier text.  The LXX reading is undoubtedly not original, because there certainly more than 70 ministering spirits in God's host.   Given the context, the implied reference is likely Exodus 1:5, which indicates that 70 souls of Jacob's family went down to Egypt.  I do not know if anyone has attempted to work out a biblical chronology from the end of the flood to the events of Jacob's life, but I am sure that at least 1000 years separate the confusion of the languages and Jacob's arrival in Egypt. 

 We assume that the original eight on Noah’s arc had a common language that we may call proto-Hebrew (Genesis 8-10) until Genesis 11: „Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.“ Genesis 11:6 says again: „Behold they are one people and they have all the same language. According to Gen 11:9 „there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth.“ That’s where it all begun.  The nations were first formed according to three different directions headed by the sons of Noah. These three developed into the 70 different languages from which all the others developed further.

It seems to me that this is a common but gratuitous assumption based on the fact that the text we have is mostly written in a version of Hebrew that is relatively uniform in expression from beginning to end.  The expanded version of this assumption is that Hebrew is the native language of Heaven.  At least one author has written a book claiming that all human languages were derived from Hebrew by means of linguistic modification.  Now, heaven as generally conceived is the abode of spirit beings (God, ministering spirits, and disembodied spirits of the redeemed humans) who have no material body.  Language as understood by the authors of scripture required a material environment to permit propagation of sound made by material beings.  (Of course, they had no idea about the actual physics of all that this entails.)  In short, language in whatever form was the gift of God that was produced to fit both the material human body and the environment in which his creatures lived.  Speculation about the immaterial spirit environment and how they communicate is unproductive.

 

Starting with the first human pair, there was obviously a single language, and the first culture was agrarian; other forms of culture developed among those who were banished from the agrarian form of life.  As you know from your linguistics background, languages are extremely fragile and tend to change due to the slightest influence.  Genesis 6 asserts that humans multiplied and spread across the face of the land.  This provides a mechanism for development of regional dialects, though there is no such indication in the preserved text.  Could Noah's sons and wives each have spoken a different regional dialect?  Yes, certainly, but that assumes that they did not all live together as a single extended family unit.  If, as commonly assumed, Noah's sons assisted him in building the arc, then the latter view is more likely.

The Question is whether the people who were scattered at Babel spoke a Hebrew Proto language or whether they had already learned several other languages. Were they multilingual already? This would call into question the assumption that the language tree spread from the original three into 70 different branches, assuming that every nation had one language of their own.  

Genesis 11:1-4 states that all the people lived together, spoke the same language, and used the same words.  Even if regional dialects had developed before the flood, this passage indicates that the same development had not happened as of the time of the construction of the Tower of Babel.  This implies that all the division of languages occurred initially at that time.  You seem to imply that the linguistic divisions were based on family linkages to Shem, Ham, and Japheth. There really is nothing in the text to support that idea.   The stated reason for confusing the languages was to disperse the people throughout the world.  The relative connection of language family groupings is not addressed, so any assertion concerning this is mere speculation.

I do not know how many base languages have been postulated by linguists, but the number of 70 nations is based on the list of family names listed for Noah's sons.  The text does not assert that each family group ended up with a different language, though this may commonly be assumed.  The text merely states that a man could not understand his neighbor with the result that the people were scattered over the surface of the whole land.  As a maximum, every family ended up with a different language, ending up with a lot more than 70 base languages.  A lot less than 70 original base languages could have produced the same result.  The details are not addressed in the biblical text, so speculation is not particularly productive. 

What made Hebrew to be the most suitable language to reveal God’s name and nature to mankind? Was there no other language that he could have been equally suitable for his purpose? It obviously was the language AND the culture that belonged to the people whom he chose out of all the nations. The question is whether the members at the top of the biblical genealogy (at the time of Jesus) would have understood the members of the bottom of the genealogical tree? Did all the patriarchs understand each other so that Moses could have spoken to Peter, James and John and they could have responded without any problem on the Mt of Transfiguration?

The base agrarian culture was generally common to the Fertile Crescent, so I do not think that was an issue.  Also, Semitic languages were spoken throughout the region, so I do not think this was an issue.  (Proto Hebrew was spoken by the Canaanites, who came from Ham.  The Gezer calendar was written in paleo Hebrew script with recognizable Hebrew words, but it was a Canaanite city at the time this text was written.)  I think that Abram was a man like any other of his day, but he retained some fragment of memory concerning YHWH from his forefather Noah.  That I think is just the point: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses were not special in human terms, but they had received promises from YHWH and trusted in those promises despite current circumstances.  The fact that they were not in themselves special means that we who are not inherently 'special' can trust in the promises of YHWH just as they did and so expect blessing from YHWH as they did.

I do not think that there was anything corresponding to the modern concept of linguistic development 2000 years ago or even 200 years ago.  The text of the gospels indicate that Moses and Elijah spoke with Yeshua at the time of the transfiguration.  If Peter, James, and John were close enough to hear, they clearly understood enough to know who was present.  From the standpoint of linguistic development, Peter, James, and John would have been native speakers of the Mishnaic Hebrew dialect common to Galilee, and other passages in the NT indicate that their dialect was different from that of Judea.  However, I do not think linguistic limitations would apply to Moses and Elijah any more than they do for the Holy Spirit and Yeshua.  As someone has said, Babel was the judgment of God whose purpose was to disburse rebellious humans over the surface of the earth; the manifestation of tongues in the first century was a sign to indicate that this disbursal was being brought to an end.  The outworking of this sign has just taken a long time.