L'affaire de la tour de Babel – Apprendre langue

LA TOUR DE BABEL
ET
LA CONFUSION DES LANGUES

par Lambert Dolphin

La construction de la tour de Babel et la confusion des langues
(langues) dans l'ancienne Babylone est mentionné assez brièvement dans
Genèse Chapitres 10 et 11. Genèse 10 est ce qu'on appelle le "Tableau des nations" – une liste de 70 noms
des descendants de Noé par Sem, Cham et Japhet. La liste
probablement pas complet, mais on nous donne une bonne image de la
division de notre race en trois branches ayant chacune été douées
dons spéciaux et qualités uniques de Dieu, soulignant la
côtés spirituels, intellectuels et physiques de l'homme tel qu'il a été créé
à l'image de Dieu. Genèse 10: 6-12 comprend une parenthèse
section sur l'un des fils de petits-fils Ham, Nimrod le fils de
Cush.

"Les fils de Cham: Cush, l'Egypte, Put et Canaan. Les fils
  de Cush: Seba, Havila, Sabtah, Raama et Sabteca. Les fils
  de Rama: Sheba et Dedan. Cush est devenu le père de Nimrod;
  il était le premier sur terre à être un homme puissant. Il était un puissant
  chasseur devant l'Éternel; c'est pourquoi on dit: 'Comme Nimrod un
  puissant chasseur devant le SEIGNEUR. Le début de son royaume
  étaient Babel, Erech et Accad, tous dans le pays de Shinar.
  De ce pays, il entra dans l'Assyrie et construisit Ninive, Rehoboth-ir,
  Calah et Resen entre Ninive et Calah; c'est le grand
  ville … (Genèse 10: 6-12)

Le nom de Nimrod vient du verbe "révoltons-nous". Il
est dit être un puissant chasseur (gibbor tsayidh) à la vue
du Seigneur, mais la langue a un sens sombre. Il devient un
tyran ou despote menant une rébellion organisée contre la règle
de Yahweh. Il ne chasse pas les animaux, mais plutôt l'âme des hommes.
Cain, un meurtrier condamné avait commencé les premières villes avant
l'inondation. Nimrod construit les premières villes post-inondations. La région
il s’installe est maintenant principalement composé d’Irak moderne – inhabituel pour Ham
des fils de Ham sont allés au sud en Afrique ou à l’est en Chine. le
les habitants de Shem sont restés à proximité de la région où l'arche a atterri,
les Japhéthites se dirigeaient principalement vers le nord et l'ouest. Genèse 10 continue
avec une liste des autres descendants de Ham, puis présente une liste
de la lignée de Shem. Le chapitre 11 reprend le récit de Nimrod
Babylone:

"Maintenant la terre entière avait une langue et peu de mots.
  Et comme les hommes ont migré de l'est, ils ont trouvé une plaine dans le
  terre de Shinar et s'y sont installés. Et ils se dirent:
  «Viens, faisons des briques et brûlons-les bien. Et ils
  avait de la brique pour la pierre et du bitume pour le mortier. Puis ils ont dit:
  'Viens, construisons nous-même une ville et une tour avec son sommet
  dans les cieux, et laissez-nous un nom pour nous-mêmes, de peur que nous
  être dispersés à l'étranger sur la face de la terre entière. Et le
  SEIGNEUR descendit pour voir la ville et la tour, que les fils
  des hommes avaient construit. Et l'Éternel dit: 'Voici, ils forment un seul peuple,
  et ils ont tous la même langue; et ce n'est que le début
  de ce qu'ils vont faire; et rien qu'ils proposent de faire sera
  maintenant être impossible pour eux. Venez, laissez-nous descendre, et là confondre
  leur langue, afin qu'ils ne puissent pas comprendre le discours de l'autre. '
  Alors l'Éternel les dispersa loin de là sur la face de
  toute la terre, et ils ont quitté la construction de la ville. Donc
  son nom s'appelait Babel, parce que là-bas, l'Éternel confondit
  langue de toute la terre; et de là l'Eternel se dispersa
  à l'étranger sur la face de toute la terre. "(Genèse 11: 1-9)

"Babel" est composé de
deux mots, "bab" signifiant "porte" et "el"
"Dieu." Par conséquent, "la porte de dieu". Un lié
mot en hébreu, "balal" signifie "confusion".

Nimrod a probablement commencé à construire ses villes dans un délai de cent
années d'inondation. On pense généralement à la confusion des langues
avoir eu lieu pendant les jours de Peleg (Gen. 10:25). La chronologie
l’un provient de la plupart des Bibles anglaises, qui sont traduites de
le texte hébreu masorétique, situe le temps de Peleg seulement environ
100 ans après le déluge. Ceci est probablement incorrect. Barry Setterfield
Dates Peleg vivant 530 ans après le déluge, en utilisant le Vorlage
Texte et la Septante (LXX). Voir son Création
et chronologie des catastrophes. Les dates calculées par Setterfield
semble être un bien meilleur ajustement à ce que nous savons de l'archéologie et enregistré
histoire sur les anciennes civilisations de l'Egypte et du Croissant fertile
Région. La population mondiale au moment de la dispersion chez
Babel aurait pu être de l'ordre de dizaines de milliers de personnes.

Babylone devient, dans l'histoire, la source de la fausse religion
dans le monde post-inondation. La ville Babylone et l'Irak figure dans Biblique
prophéties liées à la fin du siècle. "Mystère Babylone"
est un thème encore plus important dans la prophétie biblique. Apocalypse 17-18 représente
Le jugement final de Dieu sur la religion mondiale plus le commerce mondial et
commerce depuis que ces systèmes synthétiques sont nés de la source
rébellion de Nimrod et Babel. Voir Tes
Royaume viens, que ta volonté soit faite … pour une description de la
place de Babylone dans l'eschatologie biblique.

La tour de babel

par Ray C. Stedman

L'apparition de la première ville [after the flood, built by
Nimrod] remonte dans l'histoire de Caïn et Abel, quand Caïn est allé
out et construit une ville. Il a illustré la faim de l'humanité à
se serrer les coudes pour la compagnie, même s'ils n'étaient pas vraiment
prêt à le faire (car, évidemment, ils ne sont toujours pas prêts à vivre
ensemble avec succès dans les villes). L'intention finale de Dieu est de
construire une ville pour l'homme. Abraham chercha "une ville qui a
fondations, dont le constructeur et le constructeur est Dieu. "Mais l'homme était
pas encore prêt pour ça. Maintenant, ils sont à nouveau prêts à construire
une ville pour satisfaire les désirs du corps et de l'âme. Il n'y a rien
cela fait mieux que pour les êtres humains de vivre ensemble dans
villes. Les villes sont des centres de la vie commerciale et des affaires où
tous les besoins du corps peuvent être mieux satisfaits. En outre, les villes sont des centres
de plaisir et de culture, où tous les affamés de l'âme peuvent
être satisfait: soif de beauté, d'art, de musique et de tous les ingrédients
de la culture.

La tour, quant à elle, est conçue pour satisfaire l’esprit
de l'homme. Nous voyons ici, reflétées dans ces deux choses, un élément fondamental
compréhension de la nature de l'homme en tant que corps, âme et esprit.
Tous doivent être satisfaits dans ces deux besoins élémentaires, la ville
et la tour. Il y a plusieurs années, creusant dans les plaines de
Shinar, les archéologues ont découvert les restes de certains grands
tours que ces premiers Babyloniens avaient construit. Quelques archéologues
ont estimé qu'ils avaient peut-être même trouvé le fondement de cette
tour originale de Babel. C'est très difficile à déterminer. Mais ils
a constaté que les Babyloniens avaient construit de grandes tours appelées ziggourats,
qui ont été construits de manière circulaire avec un escalier ascendant
qui se termine dans un sanctuaire au sommet, autour duquel sont écrits
les signes du zodiaque. De toute évidence, la tour était un religieux
bâtiment, avec l'intention d'exposer l'homme au mystère du ciel
et la grandeur de Dieu. C’est peut-être ce que l’on entend ici
par la déclaration qu'ils avaient l'intention de construire une tour avec sa
haut dans les cieux. Ils ont été impressionnés par sa grandeur architecturale,
c’est-à-dire que c’était une chose colossale pour les hommes de cette époque de construire
et ils peuvent donc avoir pensé à cela comme atteignant le ciel.
Mais ils pensaient aussi incontestablement à cela comme un moyen de
communication avec Dieu, de maintenir le contact avec lui. Dieu est
ne soyez pas en reste, voyez-vous, dans la cité de l'homme. Il est là,
représenté par cette tour.

Cependant, le cœur du problème apparaît clairement dans ces mots:
"faisons-nous un nom, de peur d'être dispersés à l'étranger
sur la face de la terre entière. "Déjà une peur obsédante
s'étaient installés. Ils étaient déjà conscients d'une influence perturbatrice
au milieu d'eux, d'une force centrifuge qui les séparait
afin qu'ils ne puissent pas vivre trop étroitement ensemble et qui, finalement,
ils ont peur, les dispersent à l'étranger et les laissent inconnus, non honorés,
et méconnus, vivant dans des communautés isolées où ils seraient
exposé à un grand danger. La peur de cela les a fait construire
une tour et une ville. Le motif ultime est exprimé dans ces
mots, "laissez-nous un nom pour nous-mêmes."

Depuis ce jour, telle est la devise de l’humanité ",
nous faisons un nom pour nous-mêmes. "Je suis toujours amusé de voir
combien d'édifices publics ont fait une plaque quelque part sur laquelle le
les noms de tous les fonctionnaires qui étaient au pouvoir quand il était
les édifices construits sont inscrits: le maire, le chef des travaux publics, etc.
"Laissez-nous un nom," est un fondamental
envie d'une race déchue. Il révèle l'une des philosophies de base
de l'humanisme: "Gloire à l'homme au plus haut niveau, car l'homme est le
maître des choses. "Telle est la pensée centrale de l'humanisme,
gloire à l'humanité.

Le fait que c’était une tour religieuse et pourtant construite pour faire
un nom pour l'homme – révèle le motif principal derrière la religion. Il est
un moyen par lequel l'homme tente de partager la gloire de Dieu. Nous devons
comprendre cela, sinon nous ne comprendrons jamais le pouvoir
de la religion comme il a imprégné la terre et imprégné notre culture
depuis. C’est un moyen par lequel l’homme cherche à partager ce qui est juste
Dieu seul. Cette tour était une structure grandiose, et sans aucun doute
c'était destiné à être un moyen par lequel l'homme glorifierait Dieu.
Indiscutablement, il y avait une plaque quelque part attachée à celle-ci qui
porté les mots pieux, "érigé dans l'année ___, à la
une plus grande gloire de Dieu. "Mais ce n'était pas vraiment pour la gloire
de Dieu; c'était un moyen de contrôler Dieu, un moyen de canaliser Dieu
en l'utilisant pour la gloire de l'homme. C'est ce que la religion de l'homme a
toujours cherché à faire. C'est une façon de rendre Dieu disponible pour nous.

L'homme ne veut pas vraiment éliminer Dieu. Ce n'est que sporadiquement
et alors seulement pour un temps relativement bref, que les hommes crient pour
l'élimination de Dieu. L'athéisme est trop stérile, trop pessimiste
et trop moralement en faillite pour vivre très longtemps. Les communistes
découvrons cela. Non, nous avons besoin de "cher vieux Dieu", mais
gardons-le sous contrôle. Ne le laissez pas sortir de sa place.
"Ne nous appelle pas, Dieu; nous t'appellerons." C'est le fondamental
philosophie de la société. C'est encore la tour de Babel.
(de Les débuts,
par Ray C. Stedman, Waco Books, 1978.

Nimrod le fils de Cush le fils de Cham

par Ray C. Stedman

Les quatre fils de Ham sont relativement faciles à retracer dans l'histoire.
Cush est associé aux peuples du sud de l'Arabie et de l'Éthiopie.
Les Ethiopiens retrouvent toujours leurs ancêtres jusqu'à Cush. Egypte (ou
Mizraim, en hébreu – un ancien nom pour l'Egypte) est devenu le père
de l'empire égyptien, s'installer dans la vallée du Nil. Put est associé
avec Lydia, à l'ouest de l'Egypte en Afrique du Nord. Canaan centré
principalement en Palestine et aux alentours, même si les Cananéens sont devenus plus tard
beaucoup plus répandu.

Le compte effectue un zoom sur une personne nommée Nimrod, qui est
appelé un grand chasseur. Il est une figure assez mystérieuse de grande
importance dans l'histoire ancienne. Il est le fondateur de Babylone
et Ninive, les deux grandes villes de l'Antiquité devenues, finalement,
ennemis d'Israël. La chose importante qu'on dit de lui
voici qu'il était un homme puissant, un puissant chasseur devant le Seigneur.
À l’époque antique, c’était le travail des rois d’être des chasseurs.
C'était une époque où la civilisation était rare et les animaux sauvages
étaient une menace constante pour le peuple. Kings, n'ayant pas grand chose
autre chose à faire, organisait des parties de chasse et agissait en tant que protecteurs
de leur peuple en tuant des animaux sauvages. Nimrod évidemment gagné
une grande réputation de chasseur, mais il était plus qu'un chasseur
d'animaux sauvages. Le Talmud juif nous aide ici, car il dit
qu'il était "un chasseur de l'âme des hommes". Par la fondation
de Babylone et de Ninive, nous avons un indice de la nature de cette
homme. On nous dit ici qu'il était "le premier homme puissant de
terre, "c'est-à-dire après le déluge. Cette phrase," puissant
l'homme "nous ramène à Genèse 6 où, dans cette étrange histoire
de l'invasion des "fils de Dieu" dans l'humain
race, il en résulta une race de géants appelée Nephilim.

On nous dit que "c'étaient les hommes puissants qui étaient
jadis, les hommes de renom. "Cette invasion démoniaque du
race, à connotation sexuelle, est devenue une race de géants
qui ont été moralement dégradés. Ceux-ci apparaissent également plus tard dans la
Tribus cananéennes. Nous avons trouvé cette ligne de pensée suggestive
en parcourant le récit biblique jusqu'à ce point. Nimrod
était apparemment l'un de ces "hommes puissants", et donc
introduit une forme de religion pervertie et dégradée dans le monde.
Il a commencé à Babylone, s'est étendu à Ninive et peut être retracé dans l'histoire
comme il s'est ensuite répandu sur toute la terre. Ainsi,
dans cet homme, Nimrod, nous avons la graine de l'idolâtrie et de la fausse religion
entrant à nouveau après l'inondation.

Si vous laissez tomber la première consonne du nom de Nimrod et prenez le
les autres M, R, D auront la racine fondamentale du dieu de Babylone,
qui s'appelait Marduk et que la plupart des érudits s'identifient à Nimrod.
Dans la religion babylonienne, Nimrod (ou Marduk) occupait une place unique.
Sa femme était Sémiramis. (Au Caire, en Égypte, l’hôtel Semiramis
porte le nom de cette femme.) Marduk et Sémiramis étaient les anciens
dieu et déesse de Babylone. Ils avaient un fils que Sémiramis a réclamé
était né vierge, et ils ont fondé le culte mère et enfant. Ce
était le personnage central de la religion de l'ancienne Babylone,
le culte d'une mère et d'un enfant, soi-disant vierge. Vous
peut voir en cela une tentative intelligente de la part de Satan pour anticiper
la véritable naissance vierge et ainsi jeter le discrédit sur l'histoire
quand le Seigneur Jésus serait né plus tard dans l'histoire.

Carte de l'ancienne Babylone (Unger)

Cet ancien culte babylonien de la mère et de l'enfant se répandit
à d'autres parties de la terre. Vous le trouverez en égyptien
religion comme Isis et Osiris. En Grèce c'est Vénus et Adonis,
et dans la religion hindoue, ce sont Ushas et Vishnu. Le même culte
prévaut dans diverses autres localités. Il apparaît dans l'Ancien Testament
dans Jérémie où les Israélites sont mis en garde contre les sacrifices
à "la reine du ciel". Cette reine du ciel est Sémiramis,
l'épouse de Nimrod, la mère originelle de la mère et de l'enfant
culte. Le culte a également pénétré dans le christianisme et forme le
base de la mariolâtrie qui a prévalu dans le catholique romain
Eglise, où la mère et l'enfant sont vénérés comme des rédempteurs conjoints.
Alexander Hislop, un écrivain faisant autorité dans ce domaine, a écrit
un livre intitulé "Les deux Babylons", qui devrait être de
Un grand intérêt si vous désirez poursuivre dans cette voie. Cet idolâtre
la religion culmine enfin dans la Bible dans le livre de l'Apocalypse.
Là apparaît une "grande prostituée" nommée "Mystère".
Babylone la Grande, "l'initiatrice de toutes les prostituées
et les fausses religions de la terre. L'essence du Babylonianisme, comme
nous comprenons à partir de l'Écriture, est la tentative d'obtenir un honneur terrestre
au moyen de l'autorité religieuse. C'est le Babylonianisme, et ça
a envahi les églises chrétiennes, les temples hindous, les sanctuaires bouddhistes,
et les mosquées musulmanes. Partout c'est l'élément qui marque
la fausseté dans la religion – la tentative d'obtenir le pouvoir et le prestige terrestres
au moyen de l'autorité religieuse. C’est ce que Nimrod a commencé et
ce que Dieu finira par détruire, comme nous le lisons dans le livre de l'Apocalypse.
(de Les débuts
par Ray C. Stedman, Word Books 1978).

Notes de James Montgomery Boice sur Nimrod et
Babel

LE PREMIER EMPIRE MONDIAL

Il y a une caractéristique intéressante des traitements de Moïse de ces
descendants de Ham reconnaissables à tous ceux qui lisent
ce chapitre. C'est la parenthèse qui remplit les versets 8-12. Il
vient au milieu de la table des nations et, dans un sens, interrompt
il. Ces versets ne traitent pas des mouvements généraux des peuples
et les nations, mais avec un descendant particulier de Cush, Nimrod,
qui est dit avoir été le fondateur du premier empire mondial.
Voici le premier endroit dans la Bible où le mot "royaume"
se produit. De manière significative, il est utilisé, pas du royaume de Dieu (comme il
est postérieur), mais de ce premier royaume rival de Nimrod. Cette matière
était évidemment d'une grande importance pour Moïse, pour une parenthèse liée
se produit dans les neuf premiers versets du chapitre 11, dans l'histoire de
la tour de Babel.

Qu'est-ce qui est si important chez Nimrod? Le fait qu'il ait établi
villes et construit un royaume est important, bien sûr. Mais là
est beaucoup plus que l'on peut dire.

Nimrod a été la première personne à devenir un "puissant"
homme. Notre texte attire l'attention sur cela en utilisant l'adjectif "puissant"
trois fois en le décrivant: "Nimrod … a grandi pour devenir un puissant
guerrier sur la terre. Il était un puissant chasseur avant
le Seigneur; C’est pourquoi on dit: «Comme Nimrod, un puissant chasseur
devant le Seigneur '"(vv. 8, 9). L'adjectif se trouve aussi dans
d'une manière similaire dans 1 Chroniques 1:10. Pourquoi cela est-il souligné? Est
c'est bon ou mauvais? Un peu de réflexion montrera que c'est mauvais. le
L’empire de Babylone sous Nimrod était un affront à Dieu et à
l'homme, un affront à Dieu en ce qu'il cherchait à se passer de Dieu (gén.
11: 1-9) et un affront à l'homme en ce qu'il cherchait à régner sur d'autres
les gens tyranniquement. Martin Luther était sur la bonne voie quand
il a suggéré que c'est ainsi que le mot "chasseur"
devrait être interprété. Cela ne parle pas de la capacité de Nimrod
chasser le gibier. Il n'était pas un chasseur d'animaux. Il était chasseur
des hommes – un guerrier. C'était par sa capacité à se battre et à tuer
et gouverner impitoyablement que son royaume de la ville de la vallée de l'Euphrate
États a été consolidée.

Un commentateur rend ce paragraphe: "Cush begat Nimrod;
il a commencé à être un despote puissant dans le pays. Il était arrogant
tyran défiant devant la face du Seigneur; pourquoi il est dit,
Même en tant que Nimrod, le puissant despote, hautain devant la face de
le Seigneur. Et la patrie de son empire était Babel, puis Erech,
et Accad et Calneh, dans le pays de Shinar. De cette base il
envahit le royaume d'Assur et construisit Ninive et Rehoboth-Ir,
et Calah et Résine entre Ninive et Calah. Ceux-ci constituent
une grande ville. (Barnhouse, La guerre invisible)

Ici nous avons une grande ville. Mais c'est génial, pas comme Jérusalem
est grand (comme la ville de Dieu), mais grand dans son défi à Dieu.
C'est la ville de l'homme, la ville laïque. Il est de homme, par
homme et pour la gloire de l'homme.

Babylone tardive de Nebucadnetsar est la plus claire des sources bibliques
illustration de ces éléments. Il s'agit de Nebucadnetsar, qui
incarne la ville laïque et Dieu, qui opère à travers Daniel
et ses amis. La clé du livre de Daniel est dans l'ouverture
des vers qui disent qu'après que Nebucadnetsar eut assiégé et conquis
Jérusalem (bien que ce fût "le Seigneur [who] a donné Jehoaikim.
roi de Juda entre ses mains "), il prit une partie du sacré
vases du trésor du temple, les a amenés à Babylone et là-bas
"mettre les navires [in the treasury] maison de son dieu "
(Dan. 1: 2). C’était la manière de Nebucadnetsar de dire que ses dieux
étaient plus forts que Jéhovah. Et ainsi il semblait! Dieu avait certainement
permis à Nebucadnetsar de triompher de son propre peuple en punition
pour leurs péchés.

Un soir, Nebucadnetsar a eu un rêve qui impliquait une grande
image. C'était d'or, d'argent, d'airain et de fer. La tête était de
or. Cela représentait le royaume de Nebucadnetsar et était à Dieu
façon de reconnaître que Babylone était vraiment magnifique. Mais,
comme Dieu a poursuivi, Babylone serait remplacée par une autre
royaume représenté par les bras et la poitrine en argent de la figure,
ce royaume par un autre représenté par le milieu en laiton de la figure
portions, puis que par un royaume représenté par les jambes de
le fer. Ce n’est qu’à la fin de cette période que le royaume éternel
de Dieu en Christ viendrait renverser tous les autres, grandir et
remplis la terre. Dans cette vision, Dieu disait à Nebucadnetsar
qu'il n'était pas aussi important qu'il le pensait et qu'il
C'était Dieu lui-même qui gouverne l'histoire.

Dans le chapitre suivant, Nebucadnetsar dresse une statue en or sur
la plaine de Dura. En surface, cela ne semble être que le fou
geste d'un monarque vain qui insiste pour que la statue soit vénérée
comme un symbole de l'unité de l'empire. Cependant, quand l'histoire
se lit avec la vision de la statue du chapitre 2 en vue, une
se rend compte que l'épisode tardif montre réellement Nebucadnetsar
se rebeller contre le décret de Dieu. Dieu avait dit: "Votre royaume
seront remplacés par d'autres royaumes, royaumes d'argent, d'airain
et fer. "Nebucadnetsar a répondu:" Non, mon royaume sera
supporter; il sera toujours glorieux – je créerai une statue de
qui non seulement la tête sera d'or, mais les épaules, les cuisses
et les jambes aussi. Tout sera d'or, car cela me représentera
et mes descendants pour toujours. "Cette implication personnelle avec
la statue explique la réaction violente du roi lorsque les trois
Les hommes juifs ont refusé de s'incliner devant elle.

Cela explique également la réaction violente de l’esprit laïque à
Revendications chrétiennes aujourd'hui. Ce n'est pas seulement une question de chrétien
Dieu contre d'autres dieux, chacun pensant probablement que son ou
son dieu est le vrai. C'est la rébellion de l'homme contre Dieu,
période. Dieu est celui envers qui nous sommes responsables. Mais tombé
les hommes et les femmes ne veulent être responsables envers personne. Ils veulent
se gouverner. Ils veulent exclure Dieu de son propre univers.
à la ville laïque est aussi par l'homme pour l'homme sort dans le reste
de l'histoire de Nebucadnetsar. Un jour, un ou plusieurs après le premier
incident, Nebucadnetsar se promenait sur le toit de son palais
à Babylone et il a regardé sur la ville. Il a été impressionné par
sa magnificence. Se juger responsable,
il a pris pour lui la gloire qui aurait dû être donnée à Dieu,
en disant: "N'est-ce pas la grande Babylone que j'ai bâtie comme roi
résidence, par mon pouvoir puissant pour la gloire de ma majesté? "
(Dan. 4:30). C'était une réclamation que la ville terrestre a été construite
par l'homme et pour la gloire de l'homme.

Dans un sens, c'était vrai. Nabuchodonosor avait construit
la ville, et ses conquêtes l'avaient amené à une grande architecture
splendeur. Encore une fois, il l'avait construit pour sa gloire,
Nimrod avait construit la première Babylone pour sa gloire. Ce que les deux
avait oublié est que finalement c'est Dieu qui dans les affaires
des hommes et que les réalisations d'un dirigeant séculier sont rendues possibles
que par les dons communs de Dieu à l'humanité.

Alors Dieu promet de faire tomber la ville laïque. Nebucadnetsar
s'était jugé supérieur à ceux qui l'entouraient à cause de son
réalisations politiques, si supérieures qu'il n'avait pas besoin de Dieu.
Dieu parle pour montrer à quel point Nebucadnetsar s'est trompé. Dieu dit
"C’est ce qui vous a été décrété, roi Nebucadnetsar: Votre
l'autorité royale vous a été enlevée. Vous serez chassé
des gens et va vivre les animaux sauvages; tu mangeras de l'herbe
comme du bétail. Sept fois vont passer pour jusqu'à ce que vous reconnaissez
que le plus est souverain sur les royaumes de et leur donne
à qui il veut "(Dan. 4:31, 32). Le jugement est de
effet immédiatement. L'esprit de Nebucadnetsar le quitte et il
est chassé de la ville. Le texte dit: "Il a été chassé
des gens et a mangé de l'herbe comme du bétail. Son corps était trempé de
la rosée du ciel jusqu'à ce que ses cheveux poussent comme les plumes d'un
un aigle et ses ongles comme des griffes d’oiseau "(v. 33).
Babylone elle-même est tombée pour ne plus jamais se relever.

Il est intéressant de noter que dans cette branche particulière de la famille de Ham
nous avons un renversement (probablement délibéré) du jugement de Dieu sur
Canaan pour le péché de Cham en ridiculisant Noé. Dieu avait prononcé un
malédiction sur Canaan par Noé, en disant: "Maudit soit Canaan!
Le plus bas des esclaves sera-t-il envers ses frères "(Genèse 9:25).
Mais autant que nous sachions, en ces premiers jours, Dieu n'a pas mis cela
la prophétie en soumettant Canaan, ses descendants, ses
frères, ou aucun de leurs descendants à Sem ou Japhet. Ce
est arrivé plus tard par l'invasion de la Terre Promise par Israël,
mais ce n'est pas arrivé dans ces premiers jours. Au lieu de cela, c'est le
frère de Canaan, Cush, et ses descendants qui décident de
asservir les autres.

Je dis que cela peut être délibéré, car je peux imaginer Nimrod avoir
pensé de cette manière. Il a peut-être dit: "Je ne sais pas
les autres, mais je considère cette affaire de la malédiction de Dieu sur Canaan
comme une honte majeure pour ma famille, une qui doit être effacée.
Dieu a-t-il dit que mon oncle Canaan serait un esclave? Je vais me battre
ce jugement. Je ne serai jamais esclave! De plus, je serai le
exact opposé. Je serai si fort que d'autres deviendront des esclaves
pour moi. Au lieu de "esclave", je leur ferai dire: "Voici Nimrod,
l'homme le plus puissant de la terre. "

C'est la réaction normale de l'esprit humain face à
avec la malédiction de Dieu. Il dit: "Je vais le défier. Je vais prendre soin
de mes propres problèmes. "Donc, il crée les arts, lève une armée,
construit ses villes et se lance pour se faire un nom
défi aux décrets de Dieu.

Mais les décrets de Dieu ne sont pas annulés de cette façon. La malédiction de Dieu
n'est pas défié avec succès. Il n'y a qu'une seule façon de s'échapper
La malédiction de Dieu, et c'est au moment où Dieu prend la malédiction
sur lui-même. Il n'y a aucune raison pour laquelle il devrait faire cela. Mais il fait.
Il vient en la personne de Jésus Christ "prenant la nature même
d'un serviteur Christ[une[une[a[aesclave], être trouvé en apparence
en tant qu'homme, il s'est humilié et est devenu obéissant jusqu'à la mort, même
mort sur une croix! "(Phil. 2: 7,8). Ainsi" le Christ racheté
nous du malédiction de la loi en devenant une malédiction pour nous "
(Gal. 3:13). Et qu'est-ce qui se passe? S'étant ainsi soumis,
On lui donne un nom "au-dessus de tout nom" (Phil.
2: 9) et déclaré comme le souverain du ciel et de la terre. C'est
notre modèle: venir à Christ où la malédiction de Dieu contre
le péché est répandu pour être vêtu de sa justice, puis
d'apprendre cette voie de service humble aux autres dans le humain
famille qui est le seul et vrai chemin de la vraie grandeur ….

La tour de babel

Les dixième et onzième chapitres de la Genèse sont composés de
généalogies des nations et des peuples conçus pour relier l'histoire
de Noé et le déluge, qui remplit les chapitres 6 à 9, avec
l'histoire d'Abraham et de ses descendants, qui remplit le reste
du livre. Les généalogies commencent avec les trois fils de Noé – Shem,
Jambon et Japhet – et finalement aller à Térah dont Abraham
est né. À deux endroits, il y a des parenthèses concernant
la fondation du premier empire mondial sous Nimrod. La première
la parenthèse est 10: 8-12. La seconde est 11: 1-9.

Ces deux vont ensemble. Le premier raconte les exploits de Nimrod.
La seconde ne mentionne pas Nimrod mais parle plutôt d'une tentative
pour construire le ville de Babylone, un élément central de
devait être une grande tour. En surface, il semble que ce soient des comptes
de deux incidents bien distincts. Mais ce n'est pas le cas. le
la seconde parle effectivement de la fondation de Babylone, mais nous apprenons
de la première que Babylone était la ville initiale de la construction de la ville de Nimrod
Empire. De plus, en les étudiant, nous voyons que la fondation de
Babylone et la construction de la tour de Babel au chapitre 11 sont
une élaboration du récit précédent. Dans le premier nous avons
l'accent sur Nimrod – comment il était, ce qu'il a fait, ce que son
les objectifs étaient. Dans la seconde nous avons un traitement du même thème
mais du point de vue des personnes qui ont travaillé avec lui. Dans
chaque cas, il y a un désir de construire une civilisation sans Dieu.

LE PREMIER "VENU"

Le récit de la construction de Babylone commence par dire que
le monde a une langue commune (comme on pourrait s'y attendre en raison de
la descendance commune du peuple de Noé) et depuis une partie de la planète
les gens se sont déplacés vers l'est, certains se sont installés dans la plaine de Shinar ou
Babylone. Jusqu'ici tout va bien. Dieu avait dit aux descendants de Noé
pour "augmenter en nombre et remplir la terre" (Genèse 9: 1),
une réitération du commandement originellement donné à Adam et Eve
au paradis (Genèse 1:28). Le règlement de Shinar pourrait être interprété
comme un accomplissement partiel de cette commande. Pourtant, en lisant, nous trouvons
que l'objectif de ce règlement particulier n'était pas de remplir
Le commandement de Dieu mais pour le défier. Depuis le début, l'objectif de Babylone
était de résister à toute dispersion ultérieure des peuples sur la terre
et au lieu de créer une ville où les réalisations d'un uni
et les personnes intégrées seraient centralisées.

La Bible rapporte ce désir comme une invitation à "venir"
ensemble pour travailler sur ce grand projet. C'est le premier important
"viens" de l'histoire. "Ils se sont dit,
'Viens, fabriquons des briques et cuisons-les à fond. Ils
utilisé de la brique au lieu de la pierre et du goudron au lieu du mortier. Puis ils
m'a dit, 'Viens, construisons nous-même une ville, avec une tour
qui atteint les cieux, afin que nous puissions nous faire un nom
et ne pas être dispersés sur la face de la terre entière "'(Gen.
3,4).

Cette invitation implique trois choses: 1) une vision pour
la ville, 2) le désir d'un nom ou d'une réputation, et 3) un plan
pour une nouvelle religion. Le plan d'une ville n'a pas besoin d'être examiné
enfin; nous en avons déjà discuté dans notre étude de Nimrod.
Le point important est que ce n'était pas la ville de Dieu, comme Jérusalem
était. C'était la ville de l'homme, la ville laïque. En tant que tel, il a été construit
homme pour la gloire de l'homme. Le dernier de ces désirs – construire un
place pour la gloire de l'homme – est impliqué dans le mot "nom":
Venez, laissez-nous … faire un prénom pour nous-mêmes et ne pas être dispersés
sur la face de la terre entière. "C'était le désir de
réputation, mais plus que cela, aussi un désir d'indépendance
de Dieu. Cette réputation devait être gagnée par l'homme en dehors de Dieu.
Ce devait être son seul.

Nous ne pouvons pas oublier qu'une caractéristique du Dieu de la
La Bible dit qu'il nomme les gens. Il leur donne des noms symboliques de
ce qu'il va faire avec eux ou en faire. Dieu nommé Adam
(Genèse 5: 2), Abraham (Genèse 17: 5), Israël (Genèse 32:28), et même Jésus
(Matt. 1:21). Dans chaque cas, les noms indiquent ce que Dieu a fait
ou va encore faire. Le peuple de Babylone ne voulait rien de tout cela. Ils
voulait établir leur propre réputation et éliminer Dieu entièrement.

ATTEIGNANT LES ÉTOILES

Jusqu'ici, dans notre étude de Babylone, le seul élément qui a été
il manque la religion. Mais c’est là que la célèbre tour de Babel
entre, à mon avis. Je dis "dans mon jugement", mais
Je dois ajouter que la plupart des commentateurs ressentent cette vérité, même si
ils interprètent la tour de différentes manières. Luther dit que le
les mots "atteint le ciel" ne devraient pas être appliqués
à la hauteur, mais devrait plutôt être considéré comme indiquant "que
ce devait être un lieu de culte. Candlish dit: "Le bâtiment
de la tour «au ciel» avait sans aucun doute un sens religieux.
Morris écrit que dans son désir de construire un grand empire, Nimrod
réalisé que les gens avaient besoin d'une forte motivation religieuse
assez pour surmonter leur connaissance que Dieu leur avait commandée
se disperser à l'étranger sur la terre. Il sent que la tour satisfait
ce besoin et était donc "dédié au ciel et à son
hôte angélique. Laissez-moi vous dire ce que je pense que la tour signifie.

Premièrement, il devrait être considéré comme ayant une fin religieuse parce que
la Bible retrace toutes les fausses religions à Babylone et c'est la
seul élément dans la description du début de Babylone qui peut avoir
ce sens. Nous nous attendons à quelque chose comme ça de la nature
de Babylone et de sa culture et de ce qui nous est dit de toutes les cultures
qui se détournent de Dieu. Romains dit que lorsque les gens rejettent la
la connaissance de Dieu, ils se tournent inévitablement vers de faux dieux, les rendant
comme "l'homme mortel et les oiseaux et les animaux et les reptiles"
(Rom. 1:23). Les citoyens de Babylone avaient rejeté la connaissance
du vrai Dieu. Par conséquent, nous devrions nous attendre à la création d’un
fausse religion dans le cadre de leurs réalisations culturelles douteuses.
Encore une fois, la Bible parle de "mystère Babylone", c'est-à-dire
de la réalité symbolisée par la ville terrestre, en disant qu'il
est "la mère des prostituées et des abominations de
la terre "(Apoc. 17: 5). Ceci se réfère, de même que les idées de prostitution
et l'abomination à travers la Bible, à la fausse religion.

Il existe des preuves que c'était le cas historiquement. Morris
note: "L'identité essentielle des divers dieux et déesses
de Rome, de la Grèce, de l’Inde, de l’Égypte et d’autres nations avec l’original
Le panthéon des Babyloniens est bien établi. [In fact], Nimrod
himself was apparently later deified as the chief god ('Merodach'
or 'Marduk') of Babylon.

Second, there is the description of the tower. Most of our
translations speak of a tower that should "reach" to
the heavens, but it is hard to think that even these people could
have been foolish enough to suppose that they could do this literally.
Or even if they did, it is hard to think of them as being foolish
enough to build their tower on the plain of Shinar, that is, almost
at sea level, when they could equally well have built it on the
top of a nearby mountain and thus have begun with a few thousand
feet head start. Actually, this is probably not at all what was
involved. In the Hebrew text the words "to reach" do
not occur. The text speaks of the top of the tower as "in,"
"on," "with," or "by" the heavens
(all four being possible translations of the one Hebrew preposition).
This could mean that the top was dedicated to the heavens as a
place of worship (the view of Morris) or even that it had a representation
of the heavens (a zodiac) upon it.

I think this last possibility is the real meaning, for the
reason that astrology, which focuses on a study of the zodiac,
originated in Babylon. Turn to any book on astrology and you will
find that it was the Chaldeans (another name for the inhabitants
of Babylon) who first developed the zodiac by dividing the sky
into sections and giving meanings to each on the basis of the
stars that are found there. A person's destiny is said to be determined
by whatever section or "sign" he is born under. De
Babylon, astrology passed to the empire of ancient Egypt where
it mingled with the native animism and polytheism of the Nile.
The pyramids were constructed with certain mathematical relationships
to the stars. The Sphinx has astrological significance. It has
the head of a woman, symbolizing Virgo, the virgin, and the body
of a lion, symbolizing Leo. Virgo is the first sign of the zodiac,
Leo the last. So the Sphinx (which incidentally means "joining"
in Greek) is the meeting point of the zodiac, indicating that
the Egyptian priests believed the starting point of the earth
in relation to the zodiac lay in Egypt, on the banks of the Nile.

By the time the Jews left Egypt for Canaan, astrology had infected
the population there. Hence, some of the strictest warnings in
the Bible against astrology date from this period (Lev. 19:31;
Deut. 18). Still later, astrology entered the religious life of
Rome.

The interesting thing about these biblical denunciations of
astrology is that astrology is identified with demonism or Satanism
in the sense that Satan and his hosts were actually being worshiped
in the guise of the signs or planets. This is the reason for the
Bible's denunciation of these practices. Are we to think, then,
that Satan was entirely absent from the original attempt build
a civilization without God? Was sent from the formation of this
first biblical religion? I don't think so. If as, then the religion
of the tower actually a satanic attempt to direct worship of the
human race to himself those former angels who, having rebelled
against God, were now already demons. No doubt, as Morris suggests,
"This project was originally presented to people in the guise
of true spirit. The tower in its lofty grandeur d symbolize the
might and majesty of the true God of heaven. A great temple at
its apex would provide a center and an altar where men could offer
their sacrifices and worship God. The signs of zodiac would be
emblazoned on the ornate ceiling and walls of the temple, signifying
the great story of creation and redemption, as told by the antediluvian
patriarchs." But God was not in this worship. Satan was.
Thus, the forms of religion became increasingly debased, the worship
of the devil and his became more noticeable. "From such beginning
soon emerged the complex of human 'religion'–an evolutionary
pantheism, promulgated system of astrology and idolatrous polytheism,
empowered by occultism and demonism. Satan is a great corrupter,
so it is even possible that this system of religion was version
of an earlier, true revelation heavens of God's plan of redemption
has been suggested seriously and considerable evidence that the
formations of stars were originally named by God (or the godly
patriarchs) as a reminder of godly things, perhaps to the point
of forecasting the coming of the great Deliverer who would crush
the head of Satan.

THE SECOND "COME"

The time when the Lord Jesus Christ was to crush Satan's head
was still far off, but in the meantime God was going to crush
this first attempt at Satanism. He was not going to do it with
flood or fire or some other fierce manifestation of His invincible
wrath. He was going to do it in an entirely unlooked-for manner.
Instead of destruction, God performed a miracle in the minds and
vocal cords of the builders. He confused their language so that
now, instead of speaking together and working together, their
words brought confusion and an inevitable (because it was divinely
appointed) scattering of these people over the earth.

There are several interesting features of this part of the
récit. The first is a second use of the word "come."
Earlier the builders had used this word for the calling of their
council: "Come, let's make bricks…. Come, laisser
us build ourselves a city" (vv. 3, 4). But now God uses the
word as He assembles His heavenly council and moves to confuse
their language: "Come, let us go down and confuse
their language so they will not understand each other" (v.
7). It is a way of saying that God always has the last word. Comme
Jonah, we can say "but" to God (Jonah 1:3), although
God always has the last "but" (Jonah 1:4, KJV). nous
can assemble our councils; but God will assemble His council,
and the decree of God's council will prevail. It follows that
those who choose to go their own way will always end up frustrated.
The prize so earnestly sought after becomes a bubble that bursts
at the first touch. The fruit of desire becomes like ashes in
the mouth. We may chafe against this, but it will always be this
way because we live in God's world, not our own, and because God
has determined to make bitter anything that is prized above Himself.

The second interesting feature of this part of the story is
that God venu down to see the tower the men of Babylon
were building. This is an anthropomorphism, that is, God being
described as if He were a man. (We are not to think that God actually
had to get off the throne of the universe and come down to earth
to determine what the builders were doing. All things are known
to God always.) But it is not a "crude anthropomorphism,"
as some have chosen to call it. It is used with effect. Here were
men attempting to build a great tower. The top was to reach to
the heavens. It was to be so great that it and the religion and
defiance of God it represented would make a reputation for these
citizens of Shinar. There it stood, lofty in its unequaled grandeur.
But when God wants to look at it He comes down. He has to stoop
low to see this puny extravagance.

It is always thus. When you stand on the ground and look up
at the great pyramids of Egypt they seem immense. But when you
fly over them in an airplane, even at a low altitude, they seem
like pimples on the surface of the earth. The twin towers of the
World Trade Center in New York City look great. But from the air
they look like miniature dominoes. The Eiffel Tower is a mere
protuberance. So also with our intellectual or spiritual achievements.
The greatest is nothing compared to the immensity of the universe,
not to mention the universe's Creator. The only truly significant
accomplishments are God's (sometimes in and through us), for only
these partake of the nature of God and endure forever, as God
Est-ce que.

INVITATIONS TO "COME"

We have seen two different uses of the word "come"
in this story. The first was spoken by man to man against God.
The second was spoken by God to God (another early
intimation of the Trinity) against man. It would not be
right to end without noting that the Bible also knows

a third use of the word "come" in which an invitation
is extended by God to man for man's benefit. God says,
"Come now, let us reason together–Though your sins are like
scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as
crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. 1:18). Jesus says,
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will
give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). "The Spirit and the bride
say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty,
let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of
the water of life" (Rev. 22:17).

What is the result when we who hear God's invitation come to
Him? It is just as He says! Our sins are washed away. Our burdens
are lifted. Our spiritual thirst is quenched. Moreover, the effects
of the curse are overturned and the proper desires of the human
heart are provided for, not by man in rebellion against God, to
be sure, but by the gracious and forgiving God Himself from whom
all truly good gifts come. The curse was the confusion of languages,
but God brings blessing from the curse. He gives understanding
in spite of the language barrier and even promises (Pentecost
is an earnest of the fulfillment) that the nations will worship
together, presumably in one voice and with full understanding
of each other. The Babylonians wanted a city. Their city could
not stand. But God provides His people with a city with foundations
that will endure forever. Nimrod's people wanted a name. But to
those who stand with God and who overcome, God promises: "Him
who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Jamais
again will he leave it. I will write on him the name of my God
and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is
coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on
him my new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches" (Rev. 3:12,13). ­James Montgomery
Boice Genesis: An Expositional Commentary.

The Confusion of Tongues

by Henry M. Morris

As far as the great proliferation of différent les langues
among men is concerned, the Biblical account is the only satisfactory
explanation. If all men came from one ancestral population, as
most evolutionary anthropologists believe today, they originally
all spoke the same language. As long as they lived together, or
continued to communicate with one another, it would have been
impossible for the wide differences in human languages to have
evolved.

Therefore, if anthropologists insist on an evolutionary explanation
for the different languages, then they must likewise postulate
extremely long periods of isolation and inbreeding for the different
tribes, practically as long as the history of man himself. Ce
in turn means that each of the major language groups must be identical
with a major racial group. Therefore, each "race" must
have had a long evolutionary history, and it is natural to assume
that some races have evolved more than others. This natural association
of racism with evolutionary philosophy is quite significant and
has been the pseudoscientific basis of a wide range of racist
political and religious philosophies that have wrought untold
harm and misery over the years.

On the other hand, it does seem obvious that all the different
nations, tribes, and languages among men do have a common origin
in the not-too-distant past. People of all nations are all freely
interfertile and of essentially equal intelligence and potential
educability. Even the "aborigines" of Australia are
quite capable of acquiring Ph.D. degrees, and some have done so.
Even though their languages are widely different from each other,
all can be analyzed in terms of the science of linguistics, and
all can be learned by men of other languages, thus demonstrating
an original common nature and origin. There is really only one
genre de man-namely mankind! In actuality there is only
one race among men–the Humain race.

The source de the different languages cannot be explained
en terme de evolution, though the various dialects and
similar languages within the basic groups are no doubt attributable
to gradual diversification from a common source tongue. Mais le
major groups are so fundamentally different from each other as
to defy explanation in any naturalistic framework.

Only the Bible provides an adequate explanation. Initialement,
after the great Flood, "the whole earth was of one language
and one speech" (Gen. 11:1). Because of man's united rebellion
against God, however, refusing to scatter throughout the world
as He had commanded, and concentrating instead in the vicinity
of the original Babylon, "the LORD did there confound the
language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter
them abroad upon the face of all the earth" (Gen. 11:9).

Presumably about seventy families were involved in this dispersion,
as suggested by the enumeration of seventy original national groups
and tongues in the so-called Table of Nations in Genesis 10. These
were represented originally by perhaps a thousand or so individuals,
divided into three main ancestral family bodies, the Japhethetic,
Hamitic, and Semitic. "These are the families of the sons
of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these
were the nations divided in the earth after the flood" (Gen.
10:32).

The rebellion at Babel was not some impossible undertaking,
such as attempting to reach heaven with a man-made tower, as one
might infer from the King James translation of Genesis 11:4. le
words "may reach" are not in the original; la bonne
sense of the passage apparently connotes the erection of a great
temple-tower dedicated to the worship of the "host of heaven,"
uniting all mankind in worshiping and serving the creature rather
than the Creator (Rom. 1:25). The most effective way of halting
this blasphemy and of enforcing God's command to fill the earth
was that of confounding their languages.

If people could not communicate with each other, they could
hardly cooperate with each other. This primeval confusion of tongues
emphasizes what modern man often fails to realize: the real divisions
among men are not racial or physical or geographic, but linguistic.
When men could no longer understand each other, there was finally
no alternative for them but to separate from each other.

If anyone is inclined to question this explanation of the origin
of the major differences among languages, then let him offer a
naturalistic explanation that better accounts for all the facts.
No one has done so yet. Obviously a miracle was involved, but
the gravity of the rebellion warranted God's special intervention.

Although the major language groups are so different from each
other as to make it inconceivable that they could have evolved
from a common ancestral language group (except, as noted above,
by such a long period of racial segregation as to cause the corresponding
races to evolve to different levels themselves), the very fact
that all the languages can be evaluated by common principles of
linguistics, and that people can manage to learn other languages
than their own, implies an original common cause for all of them.
Noam Chomsky, who is one of the world's foremost linguists, is
convinced that languages, though completely different on the surface,
reflect an underlying commonality related to the fundamental uniqueness
of man himself.

Dr. Gunther Stent, professor of molecular biology at the University
of California (Berkeley), has summarized Chomsky's concepts as
suit:

Chomsky holds that the grammar of a language is a system of
  transformational rules that determines a certain pairing of sound
  and meaning. It consists of a syntactic component, a semantic
  component, and a phonological component. The surface structure
  contains the information relevant to the phonological component,
  whereas the deep structure contains the information relevant
  to the semantic component, and the syntactic component pairs
  surface and deep structures. Hence, it is merely the phonological
  component that has become greatly differentiated during the course
  of human history, or at least since the construction Tower of
  Babel. (Limits to the Scientific Understanding of Man, Science
  187, Mar. 21, 1975:1054.)

No doubt the Tower of Babel is merely a figure of speech to
Stent as well as to Chomsky, but the figure is appropriate precisely
because the miraculous confusion of tongues at Babel does provide
the only meaningful explanation for the phenomena of human languages.
Thus the "phonological component" of speech (or its
surface form) is the corpus of sounds associated with various
meanings, through which people of a particular tribe actually
communicate with each other. Each phonology is different from
the phonology of another tribe so that one group cannot understand
the other group. Nevertheless at the "semantic" level,
the deep structure, the "universal grammar" (the inner
man!), both groups have fundamentally the same thoughts that need
to be expressed in words. It was the phonologies or surface forms
of languages, that were supernaturally confused at Babel, so that
even though all still had the same basic logic and understanding
of experience, they could no longer work together and, thus, finally
they could no longer stay together, simply because they could
no longer talk together.

It is significant that traditions similar to the Babel story
exist in various other ancient nations and even in primitive tribes.
Although not as frequently encountered as traditions of the great
Flood, many tribes do have a tradition of a former age when all
people spoke the same language until the languages were confused
as a judgment of the gods.

Thus there is good reason to accept the Biblical record of
the confusion of tongues at Babel as the true account of the origin
of the different major language groups of the world. Evolutionists
certainly have no better answer, and the only reason why modern
scientists tend to reject it is because it was miraculous. À
say that it would have been impossible, however, is not only to
deny God's omnipotence but also to assert that scientists know
much more about the nature of language than they do.

No one yet adequately understands the brain and its control
of human speech. Therefore, no one understands what manner of
physiologic changes in the brain and central nervous system would
be necessary to cause different groups of people to associate
different sounds with any given concept. Perhaps future research
will throw light on this phenomenon but, in the meantime, there
is no better explanation than that it was God who did "there
confound their language, that they may not understand one another's
speech" (Gen. 11:7).–Henry M. Morris, The Biblical Basis
of Modern Science 1984).

HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF THE MONO-GENESIS OF LANGUAGE

Chapter One from "The Origin of Speeches: From the Language of Eden to Our Bable After Babble"

by Mr. Isaac Mozeson and Mr. Joshua Ben

(to be published in the U.K. by summer 2004, details forthcoming at http://www.homestead.com/edenics)

History of the Idea of the Monogenesis of Language, (all languages from a single, created Mother Tongue)

Readings:

A. Genesis 11 and The Tower of Babel episode

B. Introduction of "The Word", pages 1-6

Recommended Readings:

a) [General introduction, reflecting the older thinking that there was no Mother Tongue:]
Langacker, Ronald D..

"Language and Its Structure: Some Fundamental Linguistic Concepts"
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, N.Y., 1973

b) [Documents language superfamilies, helped prove the viability of the Mother Tongue thesis:]
Ruhlen, Merritt,"The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue"
Wiley, N.Y., 1994

c) [Three recent authors who can accept a Mother Tongue,
but one which developed and diversified with no divine assistance:]

1) Dunbar, Robin, "Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language"

2) Pinker, Steven, "The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language"

3) McWhorter, John H., "The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language"

Chapter One

The oldest passage in recorded human history about historical linguistics is Genesis 11:1. Naturally, it is the last place that historical linguists will look for answers to the mysteries of the existence and dispersion of human language.

The Millennium Bible: Genesis, An Unpublished Translation and Commentary, renders Genesis 11:1 thusly [non-textual treatment in brackets]: [No mere chronology, the Bible has completed the theme of Noah’s progeny and now gets to the how and why they got scattered throughout the globe:]

"At first, the whole habitable earth [from Edenic AReTZ] had its one divinely programmed computing language — [Edenic, best demonstrated in Biblical Hebrew roots] with a unique and economical vocabulary — [so, despite their numbers and racial diversity, all people were on the same page]".

In the familiar K.J.V., Genesis 11:1 reads: "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech".

In the less familiar Hebrew it sounds this way:

"VaYiHee Kol HaAreTZ SaPHaH AKHaT ooDiVaRim AKHaDim".

Perhaps you can hear "whole" in KoL, "earth" in AReTZ, "speech" in SaPHaH, or even (with an anagram-like metathesis) German vort and English "word" in DaVaR?

If you can hear those echoes of Eden in the English words, it's all the more amazing that "scholars" or "scientists" could not or would not hear them all this time.

Fitting the historical movement of this chapter, most people first accepted the existence of The Tower of Babel (and its ramifications of an involved Creator), then modern linguists rejected it as a myth. Finally, contemporary linguists have come to accept an archaeological Tower of Babel, and even the concept of an original global human language — as long as there is no deity first creating, then "confusing" or diversifying tongues.

The premier evolutionists and linguists concede that human language and the uniquely human capacity for language is a mystery. M.I.T.'s William Chomsky, has recently speculated that the brain was hardwired for language by some sort of superhuman engineer. Middling academics and writers (see C in the readings above) still posit that humans developed grammars and vocabularies out of simian gestures and grunts.

The Brick and Mortar Babel, or the Archaeology of Genesis 11

There are a few possible sites for the historical tower of Babel. All of them in Saddam's hometown. One doesn't have to be a U.N. inspector or a geopolitical pundit to realize that Iraq (ancient Babel or Babylon) is an appropriate site for confused language.

Cristiancourier.com has the following on its website:

The precise site of the ancient Tower of Babel is a matter of uncertainty for there are remnants of several ruins in the region that are possibilities. Many writers, following Jewish and Arab traditions, locate the Tower ruins at Borsippa (the "Tongue Tower"), about 11 miles southwest of the northern portion of Babylon (formerly a suburb of the city). Others identify the site with Etemen-an-ki ("the temple of the foundation of heaven and earth"), which is located in the southern sector of the city near the right bank of the Euphrates river. One or the other of these ruins may represent the archaeological "descendant" of the original Tower of Babel.

Unfortunately, natives have been borrowing bricks from these sites for millennia.

The Tower of Babel will have to be reconstructed brick-by-brick, word-by-word, in the study of Edenics. Cultures as diverse and far apart as the Chinese and Maya have ancient traditions about a single, global language and an instant diversification by the Creator. Scholars shrug this off as a coincidental myth.

Does Genesis specifically say that Adam and Eve were created with a divine language, or that Hebrew was the language of Eden and the angels? No, but there are verbatim quotes of the Creator, the angels (even in later books like Ezekiel), and Adam and Eve that are always and only in Hebrew. Kabbalah classifies the human as "the speaker", and it is instructive to examine the passage on the creation of Adam.

Other Genesis passages quote these first homo sapiens (thinkers). Later on you will encounter Adam's naming of animals (Genesis 3:19), and can assess just how perceptive and apt these Edenic names are.

Check with your favorite Bible for Genesis 2:7. There, the first (modern) human has the divine spirit blown into his nostrils — (perhaps blowing out the suddenly large brain case of this strangely divine animal. In Eden, in touch with the Lord, Man becomes Homo Sapiens. Sapient means thinking, and unlike emoting, thinking requires language. Whichever way you interpret it, Adam receives the ability to think abstractly, truly something no animal can do, and something that classifies humans as being "in the image of God".

The antagonist of Eden, the Nakhash, also speaks. Some see this creature as a "Serpent", while others may prefer a more interpretive if logical "Neanderthal" – type of soulless hominid. Either way, the Nakhash is not considered rational enough to be given any rules, or to get a hearing after he has broken those rules. Importantly, the Nakhash would only later become the limbless (all tail, all animal) snake, who abused and lost his ability to chew food (snakes merely swallow), and has abused and lost the human ability to speak (snakes merely hiss). Just as the Bible references place names before they were named, Nakhash is named Serpent before this aspiring top animal was justly demoted to the lowest of reptiles. The Nakhash of Eden is relevant here as foil to homo sapiens, Man the thinker and speaker. Whether of not you prefer to demonize Nakhash, it embodies the animal, the instinctual – the opposite of what the Lord wants of us humans who are to use divine teachings to overcome our inner Serpent.

As you progress in the study of Edenics, you will see why NeeKHooSH means sorcery or magic, and why terms of instinct, like GUESS and HUNCH come from Noon-Het-Resh.

No matter how well Edenics 101 defends the Biblical thesis, it may not be true that ALL humans think in Edenic, and the output stage, or spoken language, is always a simple variation of the Edenic. There is one exception that proves the rule. The exception is the language of the African Hottentots. This isolated tribe speaks in an elaborate code of clicks and whistles — not with the usual consonants (whose variants we shall soon study) nor the ordinary vowels (which even vary within neighborhoods of large cities). Are the non-speaking Hottentots truly human? Are they some sort of pre-Adamic spawn of the animal-Nachash who are lacking true divine souls – (as some fear about sociopaths who have no divine conscience)? I don't think such drastic theories are necessary. Perhaps some children got lost and isolated from other speakers, and so developed a code of signals instead of the usual verbal phrases. Because the Hottentots have a human mind, their grammar and vocabulary are quite sophisticated – especially when compared to the most elaborate animal communication systems (such as that of dolphins).

Yes, there is the apocryphal story of a king who raised children without contact with speech…and those children spontaneously began to communicate in Hebrew. It's not anywhere near that simple — even if language, originally Edenic, was hard wired in the human brain. This is why Edenics will require the mastering of several basic linguistic givens, and a scientific, not a mystical, way to see that even Chinese, with its many dropped consonants replaced by tones, is a form of the language of Eden.

Language for homo sapiens is factory-installed, the language program that came with our neurological and other anatomical hardware. No mentally disturbed cat ever barked like a dog, but there is a paranormal, but not rare, phenomenon among humans where a speaker in a self-hypnotic trance can "speak in tongues".

Technically called Glossolalia, this ecstatic, unclear and repetitive speech is usually considered a speech-related neurological disturbance – not the brain accessing an unknown language. More rare and less documented or understood is the phenomenon called Xenoglossia. This involves the ability to spontaneously speak a foreign language without prior exposure. If this is ever scientifically confirmed, it would surely support the Edenics scenario, where people all have an original computing language primal language program, and are only a neurological disturbance (such as at Babel) away from being able to access even long dead languages.

The original 70 super-languages were variants of Edenic much like a spectrum bends light to different colors. The analogy may be all the more appropriate if the Creator only made the rainbow after the Deluge. In any case, the dominant activity of early Genesis creation involves "separation" or diversity. The Creator made the original or "pure" forms of language or dog. In the genome schema was the ability to adapt and diversify. Thus Chinese doesn't resemble English, nor do Great Danes look like Pugs.

A second Biblical passage is needed to establish the Edenic Language of Eden as the "Pure" Language of our past…and future. The second most significant Biblical verse on language, after Genesis 11, is at the other end of the Hebrew Bible, and forms a second bookend to it. The existence of a Sacred Tongue is a given, and the prophet Zephaniah must be referring to that same pre-Babel Edenic language of Genesis 11:1.

"I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent" [Zephaniah 3:9].

Here, in Zephaniah 3:9, the pure, primeval Edenic speech is the subject of a crucial prophecy describing the End Time. Knowledge of this global, unifying, uncorrupted language is envisioned to be a significant part of the worldwide god-consciousness of the Messianic Era. So, when will the Messianic Era be fully here? When enough of you Edenics students do teaching and www posting, and when the research is strong enough to convince everyone, of every tongue, that proof of our one Creator is at the tip of our tongues.

For millennia the Biblical account of a Mother Tongue is not challenged by the greatest scholars and thinkers – even though there would be some cultural advantage for the ancestors of Greek or Latin to gain independence from a Biblical patriarch. Some interesting illustrations of this involve Christopher Columbus. His expedition left the rabidly anti-Jewish Inquisition Spain at the same time of the Spanish Expulsion of the world's major Jewish community. No Jew was to be given a reprieve from the public pyres of the Inquisition with a ticket on the Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria, yet Columbus was permitted to bring a Hebrew speaker on board. Pourquoi? When they encountered exotic natives of new lands it was assumed that only a Hebrew speaker would be able to communicate with them.

The Jewish First Mate's name was De Torres, and he was responsible for naming the exotic New World's large, fan-tailed pheasant. He named it a TooKey (exotic bird in Hebrew). Others heard it as "turkey", (perhaps assuming that the country of Turkey was somehow involved with the search for a passage to India). De Torres also named the New World cannibals KeLeBH (dog in Hebrew). This was heard as "carib", and so the region of the Carib people came to be called the Caribbean.

The next chapter will involve the relatively few words from actual, historical Hebrew words. After that, we'll concentrate on Edenic words from pre-history. The paragraph above is only to illustrate the then catholic (worldwide) acceptance that Hebrew was the Mother Tongue.

For all the spread of Biblical knowledge that the conquering and colonizing European Catholicism can be "credited" for, it is only with the rise of Protestantism that the root language of the Bible can be heard above the Latin. After all, Catholicism de-emphasizes Bible reading, so centuries of new Christians were barely aware of Biblical texts about language, or the literal Hebrew roots of their faith.

More specifically, only when Puritan Protestantism emerges do we first find Christian scholars actively venerating Hebrew, rather than classical Greek and Latin. John Milton achieved a remarkable familiarity with the Hebrew of the Bible and of Biblical commentaries, and it informs his epics like "Paradise Lost". The Puritans of New England politicize their Hebraism, considering themselves the new Adams in a new world, and the new Hebrews in a promised land. On Burial Hill in Plymouth, Mass., the tombstones are in Hebrew, and Governor William Bradford's diary is in Hebrew.

The University of Kentucky website presents the following on Bradford, which may inspire many of us to take up Hebrew.

In 1650, three years after he had ceased to chronicle the happenings at Plymouth for posterity, and at the age of sixty years, William Bradford took up the study of Hebrew. He explained why, at an advanced age, he had embarked on a new path of learning:

"Though I am growne aged, yet I have a longing desire to see, with my owne eyes, something of that most ancient language, and holy tongue, in which the law and Oracles of God were written; and in which God and angels spoke to the Holy Patriarcks of old time; and what names were given to things at the Creation".

It was also Bradford's way of returning to the origins of Christianity, thus of purifying his faith by seeking a more direct, unmediated experience of divinity. Rather than English biblical scriptures translated from the Latin, themselves translated from the Greek and [a surface level treatment of] Hebrew texts, Bradford wanted the originals in that "holy tongue" used to name things "at the Creation".

It will soon be clear when we get to animal names, parts of the body, etc. that only Edenic is the language of Creation.

The first universities in America, Harvard and Yale, have Hebrew among their course requirements and their school mottos. The first doctoral dissertation in the New World, at Harvard's school of divinity, is about Hebrew as the Mother Tongue. A century later the Continental Congress debated whether Hebrew should become the new American language. Can you imagine if Hebrew would now be the world's lingua franca, as English is now?! However, regional rivals to the New England divinity-schooled delegates insisted that German or French would better serve as a break from the British. Practicality won out in the end, and English was retained.

Noah Webster, America's premier lexicographer, gives many "Shemitic" (Semitic) etymologies as sources for English words in what was supposed to be the great American dictionary. For example, he cites YeLeD, boy in Hebrew — (the LD root appears throughout Semitic) — as the source of LAD. In contrast, the Oxford English Dictionary, says "origin unknown". Webster's work would soon be eclipsed by the British Ben Johnson, and the European's new thinking that Biblical theories were embarrassingly old fashioned in their new Man-centered Age of Reason. The Mother Tongue stuff was now an old wives' tale of ancient superstition. So Harvard trashed the true truth, Hebrew EMeT, for the Latin motto veritas (truth). Latin truth is from Hebrew words like BaReeY, surely, and BaRooR, evident – but we shouldn't confuse academia for verity.

Benign neglect of things Biblical becomes sharpened to academic hostility as Eighteenth Century rationalism is stirred first by Darwinism and then by the pre-Nazi ideas of the Nineteenth Century. Not only is industrial Man in charge of his destiny, not some mythical creator, but the human species is the fittest, and some races are the most fit to survive. If God was dead, the concept of language being a divine gift was stillborn. Linguistics becomes a racially-tinged science in the age when the skulls of non-Aryans are measured for their racial inferiority. Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Man is not about to consider the sanctity of language in the age of propaganda and advertising, and when linguists think of the origin of words, they hear no more than the grunts of gorillas.

To post-Darwinian secularists, the concept of human language being created, and not evolved from ape-men, is dangerously mythic, primitive and medieval. Even for many ministers, priests and rabbis, a literal acceptance of the Tower of Babel scenario (Genesis 11) and a belief in Hebrew as the Mother Tongue is overly fundamentalist. There are even many fundamentalist Christians today who feel that the Hebrew as Mother Tongue thesis overly emphasizes the Bible's Hebrew (or
Jewish) roots, so they feel vaguely threatened. But Edenics is a science-based faith, not a faith-based science, so let us put any doctrinal differences aside.

Are those who see the engineering of a Higher Power or Divine Being in Edenics really the fanatics? On the contrary, Edenics students will see that believers in secular theories about the origin of ratiocination (the uniquely human ability to think and speak) are the alchemists of voodoo science, the die-hard fanatics of a soon-to-be bygone era. It is the atheists who have taken a blind leap of faith into nihilism, and have missed the elaborate patterning that makes it obvious that language in its pristine state — Edenics, as documented in Biblical Hebrew — has been created by the same unparalleled Engineer of anatomy, chemistry and physics.

Whether the field is geology or entomology (bugs, not words), scientists are usually good at WHATS, but avoid WHYS. Secular revelation's first commandment is "Evolution is the Lord thy God". The priests of godlessness can tell us that porpoises have leg-bones, and were once land creatures, but not WHY most species don't simply fail to survive as not the "fittest". WHY does the fossil record show no land mammals in the million-year process of becoming marine animals? The possibility of a Creator instantly morphing or "evolving" several species who couldn't make it to Noah's ark and allowing them to survive the Flood is not considered. The possible existence of a Higher Being who might care for the survival of all His creatures – even humans – is not in the equation. Secular science has eliminated the consideration of any divine care that may be behind Genesis, the adaptability of the created animal kinds, or, for us bipeds, the de-evolution of the original human programming language.

This Big Bang of language diversity was to have happened at Babel — traditionally breaking up the language of Eden into 70 superfamilies. To follow the 70, see Genesis 10 (where 70 ur-nations are listed), Genesis 46:27 (where a symbolic count of 70 sons of Jacob enter the Diaspora) and Deuteronomy 32:8 (where this symbolic number is equated to the original nations). The seventy original spin-offs have since continued to devolve or corrupt into the 5,000 dialects we have today.

When the scholars of the American Heritage Dictionary put out their chart of Proto-Indo-European and its derivatives they have thirteen branches. Germanic is to come purely from the source, while the little-known, extinct branch called Tocharian lumps together Tocharian A and B. When Genesis 10 lists the subfamilies of Japheth (the Indo-Europeans) the total is fourteen (remarkably close to the Bible's thirteen).

Scientists don't consider WHYS, but WHY might a Creator of a single human language fragment this precious gift and allow nations to talk past each other in Babel-babble? The Bible suggests that it was decided on high to kickstart multinational human history and not let Earth become the single-minded dominion of the Saddam Hussein of his time (Nimrod the first tyrant).

Evolution is a marvelous ideal for atheists. Things get better by themselves. Sadly, there is entropy in the world. There is morning and evening, birth and death, a frame around life to force us to make life a work of art – rather than an endless stroll in a garden of hedonism.

Entropy, that which drives everything to eventually break down, is certainly true in the constant creolization or pidginization of language.

De-evolution, breaking down into dialects, is what can be most easily observed. There is no evidence of languages progressing, magically coming out of Africa as apes began to lose hair and stand erect, as the "I love Lucy" anthropologists imagine. We all know how Latin broke into French, Italian, Spanish and several other dialects-turned-languages. The elaborate tracings of our many Earth languages to a Proto World or Mother Tongue involved excellent and accurate work. There is only one small error on the secular family tree of languages – involving one minor branch of West
Semitic called Hebrew.

Even Biblical scholars correctly point out that the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, including phrases like "after their tongues", precedes The Tower of Babel incident (when mankind goes into Chapter 11). But Torah is organized by logic (and theo-logic), not chrono-logic, and so there is no problem if the genealogies are listed earlier under the children of Noah, humankind's three primary colors: Shem, Ham and Japheth. It's true that there are Semitic, Hamitic and Japhethetic languages. (This group was first called Indo-Aryan, but then got sanitized to Indo-European after WWII). On the surface, Hebrew, seems to be just another Semitic language that developed centuries later than Akkadian or Ugaritic. Sadly, even Hebraists had a "surface" knowledge of Hebrew as compared to what you will soon know. Post-Biblical Hebrew is a later Semitic language, like Arabic. Ancient Hebrew, however, is ten generations older than even Noah. How is that possible, when Abram, a Chaldean who spoke Chaldee, only founded the Ivri or Hebrew people and language (Ivrit) ten generations after Noah, and was old enough to have his own language confused at Babel?

Abram's native Chaldee was spun off from Edenic at Babel. Ever since verse four in Genesis, the hallmark of Creation was diversity, and the key word "separation". Light and darkness, water and dryness are separated. After the Deluge, a "sign" of this divine diversity is showcased. The rainbow is one light bent into a spectrum or rainbow of what we call colors. Similarly, the one, factory-installed human computing program (Edenic) was diversified with a neurological disturbance at Babel. As we shall note in later chapters, root letters and their sequence were not just scrambled and shifted, but different peoples, the founders of different cultures, recalled and/or used different (scrambled Edenic) terms to describe
similar things.

How then could Abram found a clan of Hebrew speakers, rather than, at most, a dialect break-off of Chaldean? Would angels or some supernatural source teach the man who would later be Abraham the already lost language of Eden? Some of the more mystical Bible commentators assume so.

Observing the time line, it is easier to presume that Shem son of Noah never lost his Edenic language. Shem and his son Ever are thought to have taught Edenic (or Ivrit) to Abram. (Many think that Ivrit or Hebrew means the language of Ever, that is, the pre-Flood, pre-Babel Edenic tongue of Noah and beyond). This is not Scripture but Medrash or lore, but tradition even notes the cave in Sefad (Northern Galilee) where this took place. Of course, the recorded longevities and
the dates showing that Shem (b. 1558 of Creation d. 2158) and Abraham (born in 1948 d. 2123) shared 175 years of life are not usually considered when pondering a pre-Babel language or the mysterious appearance of Hebrew. Semiticists presume that Hebrew is later than Akkadian and Ugaritic, but the evidence reveals that the Edenic core of early Biblical Hebrew preceded the 70 oldest linguistic ancestors formed at Babel.

Abram was a youngster of 48 at Babel, so his Edenic could well have been lost. Old Shem was a mature 438. Perhaps other old-timers might have retained Edenic too, but only Shem had the spiritual concern to perpetuate the Sacred Language with his son Ever, and his spiritual successor, the future Abraham. O.K., so a literal Bible Believer might accept that the initial Big Bang of language dispersion was a divine act at Babel. How do the secularists explain it? Well, scientists don't really do WHYS, like "WHY are there separate languages?" They would say that The Tower of Babel is an etiological myth invented to answer the problem, akin to the Prometheus fable to explain fire. Why do so many distant, ancient cultures have the myth of a global deluge and Mother Tongue? They're not sure, but they know they don't like WHYS.

The now-debunked scientists who reigned during the first two centuries of linguists would say that separate human stocks (races, etc.) evolved from separate monkey species and troops. Naturally, each race had their own verbal signals evolved from the gesturing and grunting of different apes. (More in the introduction to The Word). After the racist monkey business fell out of favor, some contemporary psychologists (see Dunbar above) posit that the conspiratorial disguising of languages with dialects promotes select allegiances, an evolutionary trait we continue from our grooming, gossiping past as monkeys. But, like Ruhlen (see above), Dunbar also accepts the contemporary premise of the existence of a fairly universal, primeval Mother Tongue. WHY, then, did that first language break up into the separate language families that subsequently de-evolved into the 6,000 dialects or tongues that we have today? Again, WHY is the province of theology, not science.

(Beyond interpretations of the Bible's Tower of Babel "reasons", one must consider the entire enterprise of a multi-cultural Earth, having different perceptions, but seeking one objective Truth – finally finding it after six millennia of striving (Genesis 2:3 and Zephaniah 3:9). More on this later.

Then, WHY did this naked ape evolve a unique throat bone (the hyoid bone) to enable speech far more sophisticated than dolphins, or than other species that also coordinates hunting and gathering. WHY evolve a Pavoratti or a Shakespeare? Oh yes, scientists don't like WHYS. "Just the facts, Ma'am". It is unfair to speculate about an intended, engineered word with thinking and speaking, language, literature, or even, Heaven forbid, Scripture. Back to that hyoid bone. The oldest skeletal remains EVER found, ANYWHERE, with an intact hyoid bone — indicating a true human who spoke rather than the
monkey-business of archaeological skulduggery was found in the Carmel Caves near Haifa, Israel. In other words, the actual evidence indicates that, until proven otherwise, the oldest human speech was proto-Semitic.

(An on-line verification of this oldest speaker's skeleton (called Moshe) is at
http://faculty.vassar.edu/piketay/evolution/Atapuerca.html The Carmel Caves are called the Kabera Caves here).

If the same remains were dug up in India, China or Africa, you can bet that the so-called Indo-European roots in many dictionaries would be traced back to ancient forms of Sanskrit, Sino-Tibetan or Nilo-Saharan. Later on you will see many obvious examples of Indo-European roots that are mildly disguised forms of Edenic. Linguistics is about the essence of cultures and races, so it is naturally susceptible to racism. Beyond an aversion for WHYS, there is a clear antipathy for anything that points to a Creationist thesis, especially (shudder) if it should involve the Bible.

As reviewed in this chapter, the most intelligent, educated minds in previous centuries who accepted Genesis 11 as fact, went on, after Darwinism, to rejecting and replacing the Bible's take on language. Only in recent years has weird, twisted Nineteenth Century science been eclipsed by more thoughtful and objective work that can accept the existence of a Mother Tongue. Not yet completely objective however, contemporary linguists still assume that language evolved and devolved with no superhuman engineering. Much excellent work has been done in linguistics, even historical linguistics. But secular scientists still want to record observable, regular facts, rather than answer large questions. For instance, WHY are many
words universal?

Langacker (see above) provides the old, largely dismissed ways that words evolved. Words reflect sounds? Only for a few like "ding" or "chickadee". The Bow-wow theory predicts that languages would have names for dogs that sound like a bark. None do, so the Bow Wow theory is for the dogs. Langacker notes how dozens of unrelated languages have papa-type words for father and mama-sounding words for mother. His generation believed that M and P sounds were the earliest made by babies, and so they evolved into terms for parents. Academics don't have many babies, or they'd know that gaga is the first baby sound. And there are no mother or father words like gaga.

No one tracing the roots of language would search the first language ever called the Mother Tongue in recorded history, but Aleph-Mem, EM, the Hebrew mother, reverses to mean From, MeY, as in a matrix or mother. The Hebrew father, Aleph-Bhet, reverses (via the common phenomenon of metathesis) to mean Come, as in come from, the English preposition OF (from), or in the Russian suffix ov (GorbachOV), a locative meaning "comes from". See the "MAMA" and "PAPA" entries in The Word. Only Hebrew offers meaning, or sense to sounds. But linguists don't ask WHY a sound means something – unless it's like "ding" and rings a bell. WHY are only homo-sapiens sapient (thinking)? How does the human species get more fit or survivable by getting the ability to conceive of an Eternal Creator beyond time and space?

With all of their meticulous work tracing language families, studying grammar, etc., linguists remain bugs in a rug. They never get the elevation to see that the chaotic fibers they are studying add up to the immense patterns of a beautiful and elaborate oriental rug.

We will no longer stray from the topic of language. God is in the details, and we will study the divine details. But here at the start, where the clash of ideologies is relevant, let the reader be aware that we have more at stake than losing the forest for the trees, where the tree surgeons are battling forest rangers, or where Bible-haters with microscopes are pitted against Bible-Believers with telescopes. Those secular rug-bugs are skilled inspectors, but they lack vision. If you are reading this, you probably have vision. But Edenics wants you to wield the microscope too, so you can micro-manage the word of God, and see worlds and galaxies within Edenic sub-roots.

What's a Sub-root?

A sub-root is 2 consonants in the core of the Edenic word. Usually, it is either the first or last two significant letters. In these cases, the third letter acts as a steering wheel or rudder to steer the sub towards a fleet of words of similar sound and sense. Sometimes this first or third letter can be like a prefix or suffix.

The other divisional scheme is when the first two and the last two letters both are significant, and the three-letter root is really the combination, or subset of two distinct sub-roots. This may be far more common than is now known, but two good examples of this are seen at KeLeBH (see "LOBO") and PeRaKH (see "FRUCTIFY")]. Roots are examined in subsequent
chapitres.

The children of first-generation religion rejecters can be viciously antagonistic to Biblical ideas. Witness the rabid hatred of Israel and of early Edenics by America's most prominent linguist, M.I.T. Professor Noam Chomsky, whose father was a successful, and typically secular, Hebraist. Noam Chomsky authored several anti-Zionist books over his career, recently defended the 9-11 atrocity, and, in the 1990s, launched attacks against The Word and an Edenics newspaper column.

In godless Russia, scientists had no such prejudices. Cover stories of several magazines broke the electrifying news that a team of Soviet linguists working since the 1960s had concluded that much of the world's languages were linked by a common past. These include: The Sciences May/June 1990, U.S. News & World Report (November 5, 1990), and The Atlantic Monthly of April, 1991. (Feel free to look them up). It took decades of academic battles before the old guard relinquished their Darwinian myths. They still insisted that languages must have naturally evolved, but they had to admit to the evidence for Monogenesis of Language – that there once was a single human language spoken by nearly all humanity. They could keep the frightening specter of The Tower of Babel at bay by insisting that Hebrew was just a branch of West Semitic. True, it had not corrupted much, but that is because it was an unspoken language for 17,000 years. The secular professors of Semitic all agreed that Hebrew couldn't be older than the dead Semitic languages of Akkadian or Ugaritic, and saw nothing divine or even different about the amazingly unique Hebrew vocabulary that we will study here. This new ancestral superlanguage was called Nostratic – and, yes, it even linked Indo-European languages like English with Semitic tongues like Hebrew. This flew in the face of the old racist linguistics, that assumes that Hamites and Semites developed language from different monkeys that became the Aryan or Indo-European people. Moreover, they traced the geographical homeland of this prehistoric, single-language ancestral family very close to the Mt. Ararat landing site of Noah's ark.

If only some fundamentalist Christian or Jew were behind this research, Western academia could tear them apart. But what could be said about atheist Soviets led by a Vitaly V. Shevoroshkin? These dramatic controversies were stronger since the old racist linguistics was already under fire from the pseudo-scientist's greatest foes – the hard scientists. Geneticists like L.L. Cavilli-Sforza had done much to bring old linguistic theory on line with new archaeological data. Parallel studies in genetics research with the diverse mitochondrial DNA of many human populations concluded that the entire wide family of Man came from the genes of a single female ancestor. "Mitochondrial Eve" she was named in a cover story of Newsweek on January 11, 1988. A good follow-up article for this is Discover of August, 1990. The eminently readable Stephen Jay Gould has a fine piece in Natural History, February, 1989. The article's sub-title is "The threads of our linguistic history closely match the pattern of our biological development". Gould writes about the "acrimonious rebuttal and dismissal [of] most scholars [who] balk at the very thought of direct evidence for connections among these basic "linguistic phyla". So, try to understand that the strident enemies of Biblical thinking have not come to the Monogenesis of Language thesis willingly, and are not likely to embrace further evidence of the veracity of Genesis 11.
When all the archaeological dust has cleared, remember the fact (stated above), that the oldest SPEAKING humans (with the hyoid bone) were found in Israel – and that until older remains are found elsewhere it must be presumed that the earliest speakers were, at least, proto-Semitic.

More recently, today's leading linguists, Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky, have done much to prove than the human brain is made for language acquisition. This did not result in their understanding that language, the brain, and the mouth and throat were ingeniously and purposefully created to make Man (and only Man) a thinker and speaker. Neuro-linguistic findings logically point to the work of a Creator. Chomsky has even theorized about an alien superintelligence behind the human brain and its innate capacity for language. Well, the Lord IS extraterrestrial, so that's probably the closest Chomsky's generation will come to finding God in the details of linguistics and The Mother Tongue. Our count of 5,000 Earth languages took a major hit from the work of Stanford Professor, Joseph H. Greenberg (who passed away in 2001). First he proved that there were only 8 true African languages, not hundreds, with scores of dialects deriving from the original eight "superlanguages". Similarly, linguists counted hundreds of American Indian languages. Greenberg proved there were only three Amerind superlanguages. The Biblical concept of 70 original spin-offs from Edenic was looking better. Needless to say, Greenberg's work was bitterly opposed for decades, and only now is considered solid.

Going full cycle, most contemporary linguists can accept Monogenesis of Language, thus even envisioning a historical Proto-Earth language behind the "mythical" Tower of Babel in prehistory. Robin Dunbar (his book recommended above) does not even have to add a dozen zeros to the theoretical time line. He writes that, "Babel may not have been so very long ago….The Tower of Babel was no myth: it really did exist…the myth-makers of ancient Israel seem to have been on to something. Linguists now believe that the world's languages do in fact have a common origin. However, the period of this common language long predates the building of the Tower of Babel".

It is remarkable that some authorities have such a sure grasp on prehistory, when astrophysicists, for example adjust their dating by several zeros a few times a year. It's not easy to convince a secular Bible scholar or Semiticist that the Bible doesn't merely follow human chronology, or, in a specific but famous example of such folly, that the Gilgamesh Epic of the Flood was obviously a later, inferior version of the Biblical record – not the reverse. More time and data will be needed until these deep anti-Biblical prejudices can be reduced by facts. But let clear-minded people rejoice that the theory of Monogenesis of Language, a major part of the Genesis 11 scenario, has finally come into acceptance.

There is much to go, however, from the acceptance of a Mother Tongue thesis, to proving that an actual language is that Mother Tongue. It may sound difficult for a Martian, but many Earthlings resist the idea that the language describing the Tower of Babel (Biblical Hebrew) is the closest thing to that Mother Tongue of Eden – which we shall call Edenic. Besides the interaction of Edenic and other languages, the other major part of Edenics exposition involves the unique (even divine) architectonics of Edenic/Biblical Hebrew itself. This includes built-in sound-alike synonyms and antonyms, which a humanly evolved vocabulary would never have. Edenics 101 will both reveal Edenic itself, structurally, as a science, as well as present etymological, historical evidence that Edenic is THE central hub for the variations of Earth languages. With individual words, word families, or specific categories (like animal names) this book shall attempt a first demonstration of the existence of Mankind's Mother Tongue.

When we get to examine the laboratory reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European roots, or other attempts to reconstruct a Mother Tongue like Nostratic or Proto-World, we'll see how much clearer and more versatile (bendable to daughter languages) are the words that are not reconstructions but actually exist in the Bible.

The Myth of the Indo-European Root

As the lexicographers readily admit, there never was a recorded Indo-European word. Proto Indo-European (PIE) is theoretical. The dictionary consultant is asked to rely on imaginative reconstructions rather than provable fact. It's the Great White Hope of academia. The linguists take actual words from Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Old Germanic or Icelandic, etc. Then, in the lab, the linguists fabricate a never spoken proto root that theoretically could have devolved and broken up into the recorded, actual words of vaguely similar sound and sense.

Reading the dictionary of Indo-European Roots (The American Heritage Dictionary, ed. by Calvert Watkins, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1985) can be painful or puzzling. The most incongruous words are grouped together with far less discernible sound or sense than the weakest of Edenic-English links. Reading the dictionary of IE roots, or noting these theoretical "roots" in The Word, can also be humorous. Especially if one knows the Biblical Hebrew word which would have neatly tied together the forced "cognates" of a bizarre entry. The Biblical Hebrew or ancient Semitic root word (etymon) is most often only a slight deviation from their fictional "root".

Chapter I Postscript:

Because this chapter involved both the theory and history of the Edenic thesis, it was largely discursive. Subsequent chapters will involve actual data, and will require more analysis of actual words on the reader's part.

POSTSCRIPT:

There is an interesting article in the Science Times section of The New York Times of March 16, 2004 by Nicholas Wade called "A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language". Here in the Biblical year 5764 since the creation of Man, it is reported that the alleged Proto-European-Root language is around 6,000 years old. Wade's article concerns a new approach for mapping the family tree of human languages besides comparative vocabularies. The new method is archeology-based and called "linguistic paleontology".

This involves noting similar cognates for technical woods that may be dated by the era they were invented. The wheel is only some 5,500 years old, so it is important to use the Sanskrit chakras, meaning wheel or circle, and kuklos, meaning wheel or circle in Greek, in reconstructing a theoretical Indo-European root like "k'ek'los" (wheel, circle). Then, the experts figure a likely time line for the wheel and its name, matching what is known about the early culture and the archaeological record. Should historic linguists try to reinvent the wheel, or should they, G-d forbid, take a cue from Genesis 11? The Hebrew wheel, GaLGahL, uses the GL sub-root from Ayin-Gimel-Vav-Lamed, GHeGOOL (circle I Kings 7:23). More at the e-word entry "CYCLE". The mild letter-sound shifts that turned GHeGOOL into chakras, in the neuro-linguistic Big Bang of Babel-babble, are taken up in a later chapter.

CHAPTER QUESTIONS:

1. The introduction to "The Word" — written in 1988 — describes the prevailing linguistics attitude towards
the Biblical thesis and the Monogenesis of Language concept with what kind of imagery? How might this have been appropriate?

(Answer in an essay of 40 words, minimum)

2. In the Gospels, the book of John opens, "In the beginning was the word". Language, thinking and speaking, appears to be central to the plan of Creation. What are the two crucial Hebrew Bible passages describing the past and future of Edenic language?

(chapter and verse will suffice)

3. What important clues indicate that language and neurology appear to be engineered for each other? What especially makes this evident in the Biblical concepts of Edenics and the Babel phenomenon?

(Answer in an essay of 40 words, minimum)

4. Why did Darwinian, evolutionary thinking, present opposition to the Monogenesis of Language thesis?

(30-word minimum)

5. How and why did linguists come to accept Monogenesis of Language?

(40-word minimum)

6. If contemporary linguists can now accept the concept of one original language,
how do they suppose we got 5,000 different languages or dialects today?
(short answer acceptable)

7. There is a bone in the throat of scholarship which tries to support the possibility of:

1) A Mother Tongue that is not proto-Semitic,

2) The possibility that modern, speaking humans arose in Africa,

3) Or that such humans beyond the Near East had civilizations of equal antiquity.
Explain, using knowledge of the hyoid bone.

(15-word minimum)

8. How were atheist Soviet researchers the allies of a Biblical thesis of language?

(20-word minimum)

9. The words for Mother and Father are identical in nearly every language.
What is wrong with the linguists' old reason for this, and how is a Hebrew origin more logical?

(25-word minimum; you may supplement Chapter One readings with the "ABBOT" and
"MAMA" entries in the dictionary)

10. If language diversity was divine, if Babel was the Lord's design to make us work
towards unity from different perspectives, why is the recent reduction of the number
of actual languages (reclassifying 1000s of languages as merely dialects of superlanguages)
any support of the Biblical language thesis?

(20-word minimum)

Edenics reports, you decide:

Audio CD:

1) 1990 Edenics lecture

2) 230 English-Biblical Hebrew identicals

3) Spanish-from-Hebrew. $10, script booklets $15

Text CD: Edenics CD III with

a) drafts from upcoming book

b) The upgraded Word dictionary (scanned)

c) many Edenics docs – $18.

Website on Edenic (Biblical Hebrew) as the 1st language: http://www.homestead.com/edenics.

The Word dictionary has 320 pages; 22,000-words in index — I'm out of stock.

All Edenics resources inscribed. (please see website)

Shavua Tov from Teaneck, New Jersey,

Mr. Isaac Mozeson [mailto:mozeson@yahoo.com]

Chairman,

Hebrew Language Fellowship

Root & Branch Association, Ltd.
http://www.homestead.com/edenics/

[copyright (c) 2004] by Mr. Isaac Mozeson [mailto:mozeson@yahoo.com]

The Tower of Babel…

by Lambert Dolphin
Revised: April 16, 2000. March 23, 2010.

lambert@ldolphin.org

Web Pages: http://ldolphin.org/