Reflections of the Tower of Babel

Introduction

In the Book of Genesis, in the Jewish Torah and Bible Old Testament, the story of Babel is told. Babel is where a city and a tower were to be built so the people, working in unity, could physically reach the heavens and reach God. God was displeased and confounded the unified language into many, causing the people to no longer be able to work together. The people dispersed to all places of the Earth, abandoning the city and the tower.

In the Kitab-i-Aqdas, Baha’u’llah challenges the parliaments of the world to adopt a single language for use throughout the whole Earth. “This will be a cause of unity, could ye but comprehend it, and the greatest instrument for promoting harmony and civilization.” (Kitab-i-Aqdas, Verse 189)

My reflections will be various thoughts regarding Babel, Baha’u’llah, and the history in between. Some may seem connected, others disconnected. None will be developed fully in this post as the material for some of these could be reserved for large books. However, for the reader, if there is any thought you would like to have developed further in a later writing, do let me know.

Reflections

1. The story of Babel was inserted within the narrative of the descendants of Noah’s sons. This would occur within the generations after the Great Flood. There became 72 descendants of Noah. Had they originally spoke the same language which was later split?
2. Abraham lived not much longer after the Babel period. Some of the most recent historians date Abraham’s life to be in the Early Dynastic period, just before the Akkadian empires of Mesopotamia. The Hebrew language is attributed to Abraham, but Abraham’s father was from Ur, part of Mesopotamia. Hebrew and the Akkadian languages, in the Semitic family, must have been very similar in Abraham’s days.
3. The Semitic language family originated in Mesopotamia, where Babel was. Semitic is classified as being a part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, distinct from the Indo-Eurasian family. However, the oldest forms of Indo-Eurasian also existed in parts of Mesopotamia in the Akkadian period. Indo-Eurasian languages in Mesopotamia at the time included Hittite in the north and Avestan to the northeast.
4. Every Abrahamic prophet spoke a Semitic language.
5. Every documented prophet of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism spoke an Indo-Eurasian language. The Greek, Roman, and Nordic religions can also be described this way, although I tend to avoid discussing beliefs whose focus is polytheistic.
6. King Cyrus, whose native land Persia was of the Indo-Eurasian language family, adopted Aramaic (Semitic) as the language of His empire. He wrote the world’s oldest declaration of human rights and religious freedom. Cyrus was a descendant of Abraham through Keturah.
7. Baha’u’llah, who proposed the adoption of a world language, revealed Scripture in both Semitic language family (Arabic) and Indo-Eurasian (Farsi). No other Semitic speaking prophet revealed Scripture in an Indo-Eurasian language, despite the exposure some Semitic prophets had to Indo-Eurasian languages, such as Daniel and Jesus.
8. The word Babel in Akkadian means “Gate of God” similar to the word Babylon, although Babylon and Babel are not the same word. Babel has also been adopted to be “babble” based on the confusion referenced in Genesis. The Bab’s name also means Gate. His mission was to be the Gate to the Promised One of God. This Promised One, Baha’u’llah, promises unity where language is but one of the signs.
9. What about languages which have no relation to the Mesopotamian language families? There are stories from Toltec history, who are the ancestors of the Aztecs and Mayans, which also tell of a great flood followed by the multiplying of people, the building of a tower, and the splitting of language. Does this make the histories of Mesoamericans somewhat parallel to those of the Mesopotamians? If so, did God also call upon a Mesoamerican Noah for a Mesoamerican flood, a Mesoamerican Babel, and a Mesoamerican Abraham?
10. If there are parallel Divine histories, using Babel as a basis, could the events of the Flood and Babel also exist in the Far East, such as with the Sino-Tibetan language family? The Australasian family? I believe God also revealed Himself to these mostly disconnected people to guide them and develop them. Unfortunately, tropical wet climates were unkind to written records back in 3000-2000 BCE, as were wars.
11. Baha’u’llah, a Persian, was forced to live in Baghdad upon exile from Persia. It is Baghdad where Baha’u’llah declared publicly His Revelation. Baghdad is near the site of Babylon, of Mesopotamia, the land where Abraham originated from. Eventually, Baha’u’llah was imprisoned in Akka, Palestine at the foot of Mt. Carmel, the same Mt. Carmel Galilee rests upon.
12. Language could also mean a spiritual language, instead of the vocal language. Could the history of Babel also relate to a spiritual language. In Genesis, God disapproved of the physical tower to physically reach Him yet throughout the Scriptures, we see God approved of reaching Him spiritually, with spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. These spiritual ears may understand one unified language not subjected to the consequence of Babel. Maybe it is the language of heaven.
13. The various spiritual languages could also represent the many religious traditions and beliefs. After the flood, if taken literally, there should have only been one religion common amongst Noah’s sons. Once the spiritual languages were confounded, maybe there were also multiple spiritual paths to reach God. Hinduism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, and the Toltecs each developed similar paths within similar periods while being mostly disconnected.
14. On May 23, 1844, Samuel Morse conducted the world’s first electronic communication with the message “What hath God wrought?” Since this day, which was also the first day of the Baha’i Revelation, electronic communications have brought the world together. First was the telegraph, then the telephone, then the internet. Via the computerized languages, from the foundation of binary to hexadecimal and onwards through Java and HTML, computers allow people from all over the world communicate and understand each other, without necessarily knowing each other’s languages. What God wrought was the technological reversal of Babel through globalization.
15. For those who believe Jesus or their Promised One has yet to come back, I must ask. What language will He speak and will you believe in Him if He does not speak in your language?
16. What language will end up being the adopted world language as proposed by Baha’u’llah? Over 95% of the world’s population has a belief derived from a Semitic or Indo-Eurasian linguistically based religion, yet, just over half of the world speaks the Semitic or Indo-Eurasian languages. Some have been created recently, like Esperanto, but was never widely adopted.

Summary

Overall, these thoughts are definitely broad in scope. It would be amazing to see a published work which documents the linguistic development of mankind within the scope of the various religious revelations. The Ethnologue developed today was mostly generated to document languages for which Christian missionaries can more effectively spread their religion. Thus, even this research focuses on language only as a mode of communication. Other research avoids religion altogether to focus on a secular history of mankind. I believe excluding religion deprives of a total understanding of the picture. Once it can be documented how the multiple religions and multiple languages emerged and traveled, their influences upon each other, I believe unity can at least be more easily understood. Most people use language as a point of divergence and as a source of individual identity. Instead, language should be seen as an opportunity to explore our similarities and collective experience. Mankind, somehow in someway started as one. As Baha’u’llah promises, the journey back to one is not only possible but it is inevitable.

For any of the 16 reflections I wrote, if there is any interest in any of them, feel free to share. I would be willing to document these thoughts more thoroughly if needed.