Tongues, confusion of (Hastings' Dictionary)

The narrative of Gn 11'"* is too familiarly known to need detailed re- petition here ; and it will be sufficient to recall briefly its leading features. Mankind, at the time to which it refers, all had one speech, and lived together.

They journeyed, it seems to be implied, nomadically from spot to spot ; and on one of their journeys they found a plain in the land of Shin'ar (Babylonia), where they settled, and where also they determined to build a city, and a lofty tower, which should both gain them lasting re- nown, and also serve as a centre, or rallj'ing-point, to prevent their being dispersed over tlie surface of the earth. J", however, ' came down ' to view the building, and [supplj'ing here, with Stade, ZA W, 1895, p.

158, and others, words which v.' seems to show have been omitted] having returned to His lofty abode, signified to His heavenly counsellors or associates there (cf. 3^-) His disapproval of it : if this. He said, is the beginning of their ambition, what will be the end of it ? nothing will soon be too hard for them. So He ' came down' a second time, and 'confounded' (Ilcb.

bdlal) their language ; and from this occurrence the narrator (J) explains the diversity of exist- ing languages, the dispersion of mankind, and the name of the city of Babylon (in Heb. Babel). 1. From a critical point of view, the narrative presents considerable difficulties ; for, though it belongs to J, it is difficult to harmonize with otlier representations of tlie same source. Tlia distribution of mankind into dillcrent nations haa been already described by J in (parts of) ch.

10, and represented there, not as a pvinishment for misdirected ambition, but as the result of natural processes and movements ; and Babylon, the build- ing of which is here interrupted, is in 10'° repre- sented as already built. The narrative connects also very imperfectly with the close of J's narrative of the Flood ; for, though the incident which it describes is placed shortly after the Flood, the terms of v.'

('the whole earth'), and the general tenor of the following account, imply a consider- ably larger population than the 'eight souls' of Noah's famijy. In all probability (Dillm.) the story originally grew up without reference to the Flood, or the usual derivation of mankind from the three sons of Noah, and it has been imperfectly accommodated to the narratives in clis. 9 and 10 , perhaps, indeed, Wellh. and others (cf. the Oxf. Hex. ad loc.)

are right in conjecturing that origin- ally it belonged to the same cycle of tradition of which fragments are preserved in 4""", and formed part of the sequel to 4-". It is ditBcuIt to avoid the conclusion nVellh., Dillm., and others ; ct. the Oxf. Uex. ii. 6 f.)

that i"-^* (describing the beginnings of existing civilization) belongs to a cycle of tradi- tion, in which the continuity of buuian history was not inter- rupted by a Flood ; and if the conjecture, just mentioned, respecting ll'-^ be correct, the same assumption must of course be made with regard to that. 2. That the narrative can contain no scientific or historically true account of the origin of language, is evident from many indications.

In the first place, if it is in its right place, it can be demon- strated to rest upon unhistorical assumptions : for the biblical date of the Flood (Usslier's artificial treatment of Gn 11" and Ex l'^"" being disregarded) is B.C. 2501 (or, ace. to the LXX of Gen. and Ex., 3066) ; and, so far from the whole earth being at either B.C. 2501 or B.C.

3066 ' of one language and one speech,' we possess inscriptions dating from periods much earlier than either of these dates \vritten in three distinct languages — Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian. But, even if Wellh.'s supposition, that the narrative belongs really to an earlier stage in the history of mankind, be accepted, it wotild still be impossible to regard it as historical.

For (1) it could not, even then, be placed in a dif- ferent category from the other narratives in Gn 1-11, which (lor reasons which cannot be stated fully here ; cf. FALL, Flood, etc.) must relate to the prehistoric period. And (2) the narrative, while explaining ostensibly the diversity of lan- guages, offers no explanation of the diversity of races.

And yet diversity of language — meaning here by the expression not the relatively subordi- nate differences whicli are always characteristic of languages developed from a common pareni- tongue, but those more radical difl'erences relating alike to structure, grammar, and roots, which show that the languages exhibiting them cannot be re- ferred to a common origin — is dependent upon diversity of race.

Of course, cases occur in which a people li\'ing near a people of another race, or sub-race, have adopted tlieir language [a.s,e.g.

, the Celts in Cornwall have adopted English) ; but, sj)eaking generally, radically different languages are characteristic of difierent races, or (if the word be used in its widest sense) of subdivisions ol races, or sub-races, which, in virtue of thefacxilty of creating language distinctive of man, have created them for purposes of intercommunication and to satisfy their social instincts.

Difl'erences of race, in other words, are more primary in man than differences of language and have first to be accounted for. It is, now, a disputed ethnological •Ct. Sayce, Races of the OT, p. STL, 'Diversity ol race U older than diversity of language. TONGUES, CONFUSION OF TONGUES, CONFUSION OF 791 problem whether man appeared originally upon the globe at one centre or at many centres. The fonner of these altemativea is preferred by mwlem flcientiOc authorities. Mr.

Darwin in his Ijti^cj-nt of Man, vol. i. ch. 7, after reviewing the ar^'uinents on both sides, sums up (]>)>. 231-2;i:>, ed. lS71)in its favour (upon the ground, stated brielly, tliat the resemblances, physical and mental, between dilTert-nt rai;c3 are such that it is extremely improbable that they should have been acquired independently by aboriginally distinct species or races); see also to the same effect Lvell, yrinciphs 0/ Geology "(ISlb), li. ch.

43 ; Huxley, Crilir/net'arul Athlnsges (1883), p. 163 fl. (,= CollfCled Essays, vii. p. 240 lI.) ; and Dr. Tylor, art. 'Anthropology' in the Encijcl. lirdfiimi in his volume Anthropology (18S1), p. 0. But of course these authori- ties ]K>stulate for man a far higher antiquity than is ttUowed by the biblical narrative (so also Sayce, Itaat of Ihe OT iS, 37).

But, whichever of these alternatives be adopted, it is easy to see that diti'erences of raco are not accounted for in the biblical narratives: (lie case of primitive man appearing independently at dif- ferent centres (with, it may be sui)posed, racial distinctions, at least to some degree, already im- planted in him at these centres) is not contem- plated in them at all ; if, on the other hand, racial ditlerences were gradually developed by the plaj- of natural selection upon the descendants of a single pair, migrating into new climatic and other physical conditions, then the growth of these ditlerences is neither explained by the bib- lical narratives, nor, in fact, reconcilable with them.

For, taking account only of the simplest and most obvious division of mankind into the white, black, and jellow races,* even Gn 10 (Sayce, ECM 120) notices only (except Cush?)

tribes and nations belonging to the uwte race ; while, from the known lixity of racial types, in cases where we are able to observe them, it is certain that, if the wliite, black, and yellow races, with the many sub-races included in each, have been developed from a single original pair, the process must have occupied a vastly longer period of time than is allowed by the biblical narrative (which places the creation of m.an at B.C. 4157, or [LXX] B.C.

5328), however early after Adam the dis- persion of Gn 11' may be supposed to have actually occurred. :{. It does not fall within the province of a Diction.ary of the Bible to give an account of the languages of the world ; but a few particulars may be stated here for the purpose of indicating tlie general conclusions to which the study of the subject has led modem philologists. Prof. Sayce writes (Introd. to the Science 0/ Language, 18S0, ii. 31f.

): 'The genealogical classilication of lan- guages, that which divides them into families and subfamilies, each mounting up, as it were, to a single parent-speech, is based on the evidence of granmiar and roots. Unless the grammar agrees, no amount of similarity between the roots of two languages could warrant us in comparing them together, and referring them to the same stock. . The test of linguistic kinship is agreement in structure [i.e. the formation of sentences], craiiimar, and roots.

Judged by this test, tlie languages at present spoken in the world probably fall, £is Prof. Friednch Miiller observes, into "about 100 difl'erent families," between which science can discover no connexion or relationship. Wlicn we consider how many languages have' probably ' perished since man lirst appeared upon the globe, we may gain some idea of the number- less essays and types of speech which have gone to form the language-world of the present elay.'

Basque is an example of an isolated survival of an otherwise extinct family of speech ; and in Tasmania four dialects spoken when our colonists lirst landed on the island nave recently disappeared. On pp. 33-04 of the same volume Prof. Sajce gives a list * See, further, on the classiflcation of the races of mankind, Dr Tylor'a article and work (ch. 8) referred to above.

of 75 families of languages, all unrelated to each other, and each comprising mostly a variety of individual languages or groups of languages. Of these families the two best known are the Semitic and the Aryan (or Indo-Kuropean). The princip.al luiguages in- cluded in the Semitic family are Assyro-lJabyloni*!, liebrew, Ph(Enician and Ptinic, the different Aramaic dialects, Arabic, the S.

Arabian dialects (Himyaritic or Sabajan, and Minajan), Kthiopic and allied tliatects : "all these, though in subordinate details they often differ widely, ^-et display such obvious resem- blances in ' structure, grammatical form, and roots,' that they are manifestly merely varieties of a common parent-tongue. The principal groups included in the Anjan family are the Indian group (Sanskrit, with allied languai,'es and many modern verniuruiars), the Iranian group (Zend, Persian, etc.)

, the Celtic group (Welsh, Cornish, Irish, etc.), the Italian group (Unibrian, Oscaii, I..atin, with the dependent Romance languages), the Thrako-Illyrian group, the Hellenic group, the Letto-Slavonic ^'roup (Slavonic, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, etc.), and the Teutonic group (Gothic, Low German, Anglo-Saxon, Englisli, Dutch.

Ili^'h German, Old Norse, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Nor- wegian) : all these languages, though in details they differ even more widely than the Semitic languages, nevertheless exhibit so many common features as to make it evident that they are but varieties, which have arisen by gradual differentiation, under the inrtuence of separation and different local conditions, out of a single original parent-tongue.

Languages, however, differ not only in grammar and roots, but also in a manner which it is more diHicult for those, like ourselves, familiar with only one type of language, to realize, viz. ' morpho- logically,' or in the manner in which ideas are built up into a sentence. Different races do not think in the same way ; and consequently the forms taken by the sentence in different languages are not the same.

The only type of language with which we are practically acquainted is the ' inllectional ' type, which prevails in Western Asia and Europe, and to which both tlie Semitic and Aryan families belong ; but there are besides the 'agglutinative' type (of which Turkish is an example), spoken chielly in Central Asia, the Islands of the Pacific, and many parts of Africa, the 'incorporating,' of which Basque (in S.VV.

France) is the cliief representative, the 'poly- sj-nthetic,' which prevails throughout America,* and the 'isolating' (of which Cliinese is the best- known example), characteristic of Eastern Asia (Tiliet, Burmah, etc.) : all these types of language dillbring in the manner in which ideas are grouped by tlie mind, and combined into sentences (for further particulars reference must be made to Sayce, op. cit. i. 118-132, 374ff.,ii. 18811'.; Jiaces of tlie OT, 35 f. ; or Whitney's art.

'Pliilology' in the Encycl. Britannica, ed. 9).

It is remarkable, as even this cursory description will have indi- cated, that the morphological character of a lan- guage is correlateii, in some hidden way, with the geographical and climatic conditions of the country in which it originated : thus the different families of languages spoken in America, though utterly unrelated to each other, are nevertheless all 'poly- synthetic' It is an obvious corollary from the radical differ- ences which the various families of language dis])lay, as compared with one another, that, whatever may have been the case with the races of mankind, the families of language spoken by man- kind must have arisen independently at different centres of human life.

'The languages of the present world arc hut the selected residuum of the inlinito variety of tongues that have grown up and decayed among the races of mankind. . The idioms of manKind have had many independent starting-points, and, like the Golden Ago, which science has shifted from the past to the future, the dream of a universal language must be realized, if at all, not in the Paradise of Genesis, but in the unifying tendencies of civilization and trade ' (Sayce, Science of Lang. ii.

3'22, 323). * In polysynthetio languages the sentence is the unit of thought ; and in Diony of them separate words hardly exist. 792 TONGUES, COXFUSION OF TONGUES, CONFUSION OF As need hardly be remarked, what the iirimitive lanijuage of mankind waa. is unknown. Formerly, indeed, it was the ^reneral belief that it was Hebrew, and all other languages were sup- posed to be deri\ed from this (I); see Max Muller, Lectures on the Se. of Lang. 1st series, ed. 1SG4, p. 13iff.

Leibnitz appears to have been the first to point out the absunlitv of this view, remarkuig justly (i*. p. 135 f.) that 'to call Hebrew the primitive language was like calling branches of a tree primitive branches ' ; and the science of comparative philology, which has arisen since Leibnitz's day, has but confinned the sountiness of his judgment. Even among the Semitic languages, Anahic, in many respects, e.

xiiibits older and more original features than Hebrew ; besiiies, unless all analogy is deceptive, the language of primitive man must have been of a far more simple, un- developed type than any of the existing Semitic languages. 4. Differences of language and ditt'erences of race thus point independently to the great antiquity of man upon the earth. And their evidence is more than confirmed by testimony from other quarters.

Even during the last ten years the discoveries of Petrie and de Morgan in figypt, and of Hilpreeht and others in Babjlonia, have shown that civiliza- tion existed in tiiese two countries at a period considerably earlier than had previously been sup- posed ; while the existence of inscriptions, sculp- tures, paintings, and various objects of art, belong- ing certainly to a date not later than B.C.

4000, makes it evident that the beginnings of civiliza- tion and art in both these countries must have preceded tli.it date by many centuries, not to say by millennia.

And the numerous relics of human workmanship, especially stone implements of different kinds, and bone or other material, engraven with figures, which have been found during recent years in different parts of Europe and America, bear testimony, in the opinion of geologists, to a greater antiquity still, and show that man, in a rude and primitive stage of develop- ment, ranged through the forests and river-valleys of these continents, in company with mammals now extinct, during periods of the so-called 'glacial age,' when the glaciers (which then extended over large parts both of the British Isles and of the Continent of Europe) retreated sufBciently to enable him to do 80 (Dawkins, Early Man, 112-122, 137, 152ff.

, 161-164, 169, etc.) The date at which these relics of human workmanship were embedded in the deposits in which they are now found, can- not be estimated, precisely, in years B.C. ; but the late Prof. Prestwich, a geologist not addicted to extravagant opinions, assigned to pala-olithic man, as 'a rough approximate limit, on data very in- sufficient and subject to correction,' a period of from 20,000 to 30,000 years from the present time. See Prestwich's Geotoqy (1888), U.

534 ; In his ContTinerted Qiustimu of lieolngy (1895), p. 46, he gives similar but some- what higher figures. It was in 1869 that ' the barriers which restricted the age of man to a limited traditional chronologj were overthromi by the discoveries in the Galley of the Somme and Brixham Cave' (. p. 19). ' Palasolithic ' implements are those found in association with extinct mammalia ; ' neolithic' Implements, whicli show a higher type of workmanship, are those found with existing species.

In the pakpulilhic period, the • river-drift man ' hunted the elephant and the lion, the hippopotamus and the rhinoceros, in the valley of the Lower Thames. — See further on this subject Evans, The Ancient Stone Implements, It'capon*, and Ornaments of Great Britain^, 1S97 <on their antiquity, pp. 70:i-9) ; Boyd Dawkins, Earhi Man in Britain, If-SO (where, at the end of the several chapters, the characteristics of the civilization of the Bucce.'

^sive ages— the river-drift hunter, the cave man, the neolithic farmer and herdsman [contemporar>' with the beginnings of organized empires in the East), the bronze age, and the iron a^e— are well indicated) ; Lyell, A ntirndty of Man *. 1S73 ; Lord Avebury (Sir J. Lubbock), Prehistoric Tim'rsO (1900), esp. ch. 11 ; G. K. Wright, Man arid the Glacial Age (in the Intern. Scifnt. Series), 1892, p. 242ff. ; Morris, Man and hisAncestor(a small popularly written work), 19O0, p. 219.

; Tylor, Anthropolo'jij, p. 2SfT. That man was coeval in Western Europe with the glacial period is accepted by Sayce, Races o/ tite OT, p. 2;j. The general conclusion, resulting from all that has been said, may be summed up in Dr. Tylor's words : ' Man's first appearance on earth goes'back to an age compared with which the ancients, as we call I hem, are but moderns.

The four thousand years of recorded history only take us back to ■ prehistoric period of untold length, during which took place the primary distribution of mankind over the earth and the development of the great races, the formation of speech and the settlement of the great families of language, and the giowth of culture up to the levels of the old-world nations of the East, the forerunners and founders of modem civilized life' (Anthropology, p. 24). 5.

It is thus ajiparent that there are two great facts, the antiquity of man, and the ivide distril/u- tion of mnn over the surface of the earth, of which the biblical narrative, whether in 11'"' or else- where, takes no account.

It is true, of course, that 11*-' accounts ostensibly for the distribution of man ' over the face of the whole earth ' ; but it has been sliown above why it does not do so really : the dispersion is placed too late to account for the known facts respecting both the distribution of man and the diversity of races : how, for example, can the ' river-drift man ' of the glacial, or even of the post-glacial, period he brought within the scope of the biblical narrative ?

To say that the biblical writers spoke only of the nations of whom they knew is perfectly true ; but the admission deprives their statements of all historical or scien- tific value: ' pala?

olithic ' and 'neolithic' man, and the black and j'ellow historic races, all existed ; and any explanation, purporting to account for the populations of the earth, and the diversity of Iangua;_'es spoken by them, must take cognizance of them : an explanation which does not take cognizance of them can be no historically true account either of the diffusion of mankind, or of the diversity of speech.

The first 11 chapters of Genesis, it may be safely assumed, report faithfully what was currently believed among the Hebrews respecting the early history of mankind : they contain no account of the real beginnings of man, or of human civilization, upon the earth. 6. The true explanation of the story in Gn IP'*, it cannot be doubted, is that which is given by Prof, (now Bishop) Eyle in his Early Narratives of Genc-i-is, p. 127 ft'.

As in 2"'-4 the origin of various existing customs and institutions is ex- plained in accordance with the beliefs of Hebrew antiquity, so in 11'"* the explanation is given of the diversity of languages spoken by different peoples inhabiting difl'erent parts of the earth.

As soon as men began to reflect, they must have wondered wliat was the cause of differences of language, which not only impressed the Hebrews (Is o3''', Dt 2S*', Jer 5'^, Ps 114'), but also were an impediment to free intercourse, and accentuated national interests and antagonisms. ' The story of tlie Tower of Babel supplied to such primitive questionings an answer suited to the comprehension of a primitive time.

Just as Greek fable told of the giants who strove to scale Olympus, so Semitic legend told of the impious act by which the sons of men sought to raise themselves to the dwelling-place of God, and erect an enduring symbol of human unity to be seen from every side'; and how Jehovah inter- posed to frustrate their purposes, and brought upon them the very dispersal wliicli they had sought to avoid.

The narrative thus contains sim])ly the answer which Hebrew folk-lore gave to the question which dilierences of language and nation- ality directly suggested. At the same time, it is so worded as to convey (like the other early narra- tives of Genesis) spiritual lessons. Though the conception of Deity is naive, and even, it may be (v.')

, imperfectly disengaged from polytheism, the narrative nevertheless emphasizes Jehovah's supre- macy over the world ; it teaches how the self exaltation of man is checked by God ; and it shows how the distribution of mankijid into TOXGUES, CONFUSION OF TONGUES, GIFT OF 793 n nations, and diversity of language, is an element in His providential plan for the development and progress of humanity'. 7. No Bab. parallel to Gn II'"' has as yet been discovered. The reference in the fruenientary Brit.

Mua. Inscription (K. 8«5(), tr. by O. Smith, Chald.-Gt-n. 160, and mentioned in UC.M 153. is very uncertain ; for though the inscr. does seem to speak of the erection of some building in Babylon by the order of the king, which offended the gods, so that they 'made an end by night' of the work done by day, the crucial words, rendered 'strong place' and 'sjteech,* are (as is admitted for the latter [tullu] by Smith himself, p. 163) both extremely doubtful : see Delitzsch's note in the Germ. tr.

of Smith's book, p. 310 ; and for tdzimtu, 'strong place,' Del. UWB 37, where it is tr. H'r/i- kiage : Cf. the transcr. and tr. by Boscawen in TSBA v. (1877) p. 303 ft. (where, however, p. 303, ' speech ' for irulik, 'counsel' {llWli 413), is (juite gratuitous). In the Jewish Ilagj^ada of a later age, the tower was said to have been destroye<l by mighty winds : see the Orac. SihiiU. iii. 97 ff. (whence Jos. Ant. l. iv. 3 [the quotation j = Alex. Poh histor ap. Svricell. Chrun., ed.

Dindorf, L 81 C), and Juhilees' 10'9-M (tr. Cliarles, JQKvi. 208 f.): cf. (from Abydenus) Kus. Prap. £v. ix. 14 = Eus. CAron., Schoene, i. 33 = SynceU. I. 81 D, and (from Eupolenius ap. Alex. Polyhistor) ix. 17. 1. From the (act that m Jos. and Abyd. (toI< uti/Mvt Stein fieiSutrae a^arfii- •i'eu ri ^,j^a,»;,u«) the pluml ' pods ' is used, Stade (I.e. p. 161 f.) conjectured that these authorities have presen-ed reminiscences of an older polytheistic version of the tradition.

In fact, though the narrative plainly presupposes a knowledge of Babylonia, it does not seem itself to be of Babj-lonian origin : if any Bab. legend lies at the basis of it, it must have been strongly Heb- raized. As Gunkel has remarked, the narrator speaks as a foreigner rather than as a native : the unfavourable light in wliich the foundation of Babylon is represented ; the idea that the erection of wliat (ca; Ay/).)can hardly have been anything but a Bab.

zikkurat (or pyramidal temple-tower*) was interrupt eil by (ea; Ay;(.) a Bab. deity ; the mention, as of sometliing unusual, of brick and bitumen, as building materials, and the false etymology of tlie name ' Babel,' are all features not likely to h,ave originated in Babj'lonia. It does, however, seem a probable conjecture (Ewald, Jahrh. ix. [1858] l'2f., Schrader, Dillm.)

that some gigantic tower-like building in Babylon, which had either been left nnlinished or fallen into disrepair, gave rise to the legend. The tower in question has often Ijeen supposed to be luriminanki, the zikkurat of E-zida, the great temple of Nebo, in IJorsippa (a city almost contiguous to Babylon on the S.W.), the ruined remains of whicli form the huge pyramidal mound now called liirs Nimroud.

"YXub zikkurat, remarkably enough, Nebuchadnezzar states had been built partially by a former king, but not comideted : its 'head,' or top, had not been set np ; it liad also fallen into disrepair ; and Neb. restored it.

t Others regard it as an objection to this identification that E-zida was not actually in Babylon; and prefer to think of Itiminanki, the zikkurat of E-sagil, the famous and ancient leiiipio of Marduk in Babj'lon itself, the site of whieli is generally J considered to be hidden under the m.as- Bive oblong mound called Babil, about 20 miles N. of Birs Nimroud. § Schrader does not decide between E-zida and li-sagil : Dillm. thinks E-s.

-igil the more likely, but leaves it open whether, after all, the Heb. legend may not have referred to some halt-niined ancient building in Baliylon, not other- wise known to us. The high antiqiiity of Babylon, and the fact that it was the chief centre of a region in wliidi tlie Hebrews placed the cradle of the human race, would lit it to be regarded as the • Jastrow, IteL of Bah. and An. p. 81.' fT. t The inscr. is tr. In KAT' 124 f., KIB iii. , pp. B3, 55. 1 Sec, however, llommol In voL L p.

'ilS ; and Babvlox, { 8, In the kncyd. Blbl. i Sec the plan of Babylon and It environs In Smith's DB, 9.V. ; or in the Enctjcl. Bibl. ».p. Views of the two mounds referred to may be seen in Smith, ji.v. • Baliel,' and 'Babel (Tower of)' ; Kiehm, 11 WB, l.v. ; or Ball's Liyht froln the Haat, pp. 2211, 221. point from which mankind dispersed over the earth. See, further (besides the Conim.) Cheyne, art. * Babel (Tower of)' in the Encycl. BtU. ; and Vr.

Wuiccster in Oenesut in th« Lujht of Modern Knowledge (New York, lUOl), 491 ff. S. R. DllIVKR.