Misconception #50
Before the Tower of Babel, Everyone Spoke Just One Language
The first book of The Bible tells us of an ancient world in which all humanity spoke a single language. Then, at some point, the people united to thwart God’s purposes and, as a result, were punished for their rebellion by being scattered. This scattering was done, according to The Book of Genesis, through a miraculous event known as the “Confusion of Tongues,” whereby God simultaneously rendered all humans incapable of understanding the language of any family but their own.
Naturally, this story has many implications. Interpreted as an origin myth, scholars have assumed it’s simply a quaint tale designed to explain the inexplicable—of how all the different languages of humanity began. As such, this story seems to provide a neat and concise—however far-fetched—answer in our pursuit to understand the origins of human culture.
In the case of this present study, though, we’re not just trying to understand the foibles of human language; we’re trying to determine if The Bible can be accepted as a valid record of history and not just a series of naïve traditions conceived by so many misguided primitives. And to do this, we require more than stories like this to explain our origins; we need to know if The Bible has the ability to say what it means and mean what it says. Then and only then are we capable of having what The Bible calls “faith.” And when I say that, I don’t mean having faith in tales of magical worlds and mysterious acts of sorcery. I’m talking about having faith in a world that God alone can order for the sake of a humanity that can perceive that world in all its sublime wonder.
With that in mind, let’s examine what The Bible has to say about this phase of human development and how centuries of tradition have altered the scriptural context in which this story sprang.
Story Continues Below
To hear Kent and Zen Garcia talk about correcting biblical misconceptions, from September 9th, 2021, CLICK BELOW.
Story Continues From Above
The eleventh chapter of Genesis records:
And the whole Earth was speaking one language, and it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said to one another, “Let us build a city and a tower whose top will reach Heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered.”
And the Lord said, “Look, the people are united, and they all have one language, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Therefore, let us go down and confound their language so that they will no longer be able to understand one another.”
So the Lord scattered them across the face of the Earth, and they stopped building their city. And that is why the name of that city is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world.1
So there you have it—an origin story that provides us with a concise explanation, however fantastic, of how humans evolved from a single language root into a multi-branched tree of languages. Pretty straightforward stuff, right? I mean, thousands of years of tradition must be accurate about what The Bible says, wouldn’t you agree?
But wait; not so fast.
