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Cover image: “The Tower of Babel” by Pieter Bruegel.

Figure 1. M. C. Esher, 1898-1972: Tower of Babel, 1928. A confused group of different peoples quarrel and cry out as the work comes to a standstill.

Question: At the beginning of the Tower of Babel story, we read that “the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.”[ii] Later, we are told that “the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.”[iii] But the scientific history of languages tells us that the diverse tongues of the world did not originate from the splitting of a single language. Must we choose between science and scripture?

Summary: To begin with, the Hebrew word eretz used in Genesis 11:1 (and also in the story of Noah’s flood[iv]) can mean either “earth” or “land,” and it is impossible to know which except from context.[v] Here, the phrase probably just means that the people in the land where the story took place originally spoke a common language.[vi] In addition, despite the chapter’s focus on the confounding (mixing up) of languages, God’s most important concern seems to have been the confounding (mingling) of the covenant people with their unbelieving neighbors.

As with other stories in Genesis 1-11, temple themes are woven throughout the account of the confusion at Babel. In this case, the Tower can be seen as a sort of anti-temple wherein its builders attempted to “make … a name”[vii] for themselves rather than acknowledging God as the one who gives names to those He has chosen because of their faithfulness. Abraham’s posterity will be separated out from other nations. His great name “will be achieved not in the present through heroic feats and imposing monuments but rather in a divinely promised future through the begetting of numerous offspring.”[viii] Though Abraham successfully passed the tests of his day,[ix] his latter-day posterity must continue their vigilance, for the project of Babel is making a strong comeback today.

The Know

Does science support the idea of a splitting of an original language at Babel? The answer is “no.” The story is an interesting puzzle for scholars and scientists. On the one hand, the details of the Babylonian setting and construction techniques for the tower are believable,[x] even if the time frame for the story is difficult to pin down.[xi] On the other hand, in light of what is known about the way languages evolve, the biblical story of the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel seems incredible.

Figures 2 and 3. Katherine Scarfe Beckett, 1972-: Family Trees of the Indo-European and Semitic Languages, 2005[xii]

Figures 2 and 3 beautifully illustrate the family trees of the Indo-European and Semitic languages. Guy Deutscher explains how the splitting of language occurs:[xiii]

Linguistic diversity is … a direct consequence of geographical dispersal and language’s propensity to change. The biblical assertion that there was a single primordial language is not, in itself, unlikely, for it is quite possible that there was originally only one language, spoken somewhere in Eastern Africa, perhaps 100,000 years ago. But even if this were the case, the break-up of this language must have had much more prosaic reasons than God’s wrath at Babel. When different groups started splitting up, going their own ways and settling across the globe, their languages changed in different ways. So the huge diversity of languages in the world today simply reflects how long languages have had to change independently of one another.

Figure 4. Tablet with Fragment of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta

Could there have been some kind of “confounding” of language at Babel after all? The answer is, possibly, “yes.” Perhaps there is a believable way to understand the “confounding” of language at Babel as referring to a local breakdown in the use of a common, regional language rather than a complete breakup of a single, universal language. Some scholars believe that such a language could have played the role of a lingua franca, enabling cooperative work among people who came together from throughout the empire to execute large building projects. In our times, languages such as English, French, and Swahili similarly allow individuals hailing from different places to do business with one another in a common language.

One candidate for such a lingua franca among the Babylonians is Akkadian.[xiv] A second candidate is Sumerian. In this regard, a segment of a Mesopotamian epic entitled Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta is of special interest. Although translators differ about whether the story describes a past event when one language became many or a future event when all languages would become one, it may resemble the Babel story in its account of the disruption of languages.[xv]

If we take the “one language” of Genesis 11:1 as being Sumerian, Akkadian, or even (as a long shot) Aramaic[xvi] rather than a supposed universal language,[xvii] some of the puzzling aspects of the biblical account become more intelligible. For example, “Genesis 10 and 11 would make linguistic sense in their current sequence. In addition to the local languages of each nation,[xviii] there existed ‘one language’[xix] which made communication possible throughout the world”[xx] — or, perhaps more accurately, throughout the land.[xxi] “Strictly speaking, the biblical text does not refer to a plurality of languages but to the ‘destruction of language as an instrument of communication.’”[xxii]

In summary, Victor Hamilton[xxiii] writes that it “is unlikely that Genesis 11:1-9 can contribute much, if anything, to the origin of languages … [T]he diversification of languages is a slow process, not something catastrophic as Genesis 11 might indicate.”[xxiv] The commonly received interpretation of Genesis 11 provides “a most incredible and naïve explanation of language diversification. If, however, the narrative refers to the dissolution of a Babylonian lingua franca, or something like that, the need to see Genesis 11:1-9 as a highly imaginative explanation of language diffusion becomes unnecessary.”[xxv]

Are “confounding” and “confusing” the same thing? While modern use of the word “confound” typically expresses the element of surprise experienced by someone when an event runs counter to expectations (“the inflation figure confounded economic analysts”[xxvi]), the King James Bible translators would have been aware of its Latin origin as confundere. This word means literally “to pour together, mix, mingle” (com + fundere = together + to pour).[xxvii] Because “confound” has changed its p