It can be hard to judge people in history on ideas. I mean, there is often a misconception that people thousands or hundreds of years or even decades ago were somehow complete simpletons by modern standards- which is general not the case, and often in many respects the opposite can be said if a general or specific group. That said, it’s also true that concepts we take for granted based off a collected history we have, or facts that reflect the evolution of knowledge through history, often didn’t exist. So we can’t assume people were complete idiots “long ago” because of the times, but we also can’t assume they would realize certain concepts from context, as they generally had less to go on. That said:
Pretty silly on a fundamental level, and illustrates a problem often found in those who interpret or try to live by ancient religious texts.
Why would one believe that between the time of Adam and the languages of antiquity that language had remained unchanged- for starters. Let’s use the biblical text: The most popular interpretation of genesis and the subsequent story of the Tower of Babel is that all on earth spoke a single language at the time the Tower of Babel fell. Now, the tower was erected after the flood that supposedly destroyed all humanity except Noah and those on the Ark. many people infer that BEFORE the flood there was only one language. Now, this isn’t necessarily true from what the Bible says. We can take from context that prior to the flood there was one language- most popular is that in Genesis 10:25 Peleg is said to come from a divided time- many take this to imply that the time before Peleg was not divided. This is possible but weak when we compare against the…
.. body of evidence and specifically what reasoning is given for scattering men after the construction of Babel. Basically, it’s said that men aren’t divided and United have too much power to do their will. This often gets ignored as evidence- but why would it suddenly be a problem after the flood that men were United va. Before the flood which was sent because men were wicked? If the problem and solution is to scramble the languages if men to prevent men from uniting to make huge projects- how does it make sense that men were United before and there wasn’t a need to scatter them? The flood is not said to be sent to stop men from uniting, it is the drown the wicked-
Or by some accounts and interpretations to remove the mixed blood of angels from human genealogy after events in the de canonized book of Enoch.
So we can’t say with certainty that BEFORE the flood only one language was spoken, we can only say that if we take the Bible at face value, after the flood one language was spoken. Which would make total sense- given that by the biblical cannon, every human alive at that point came from one of only a few possible parents who happened to be all related and spoke the same language- which means all their children would have learned that language, and so on- up until the point where Babel was toppled and the languages mixed up. Now, if Babel was toppled and the languages mixed up, why would any one group be left to speak the language that Noah and possibly those before Noah spoke? Why create 5,10,20 or however many new and different languages and leave one specific group with the same old language? Why would one more “new” language matter? Why leave just one group the power to understand all human knowledge and history before that point, if the idea is to slow development?
But even if one group was left the language dating at least to Noah, forgetting science and archeology and modern time scales of earth which would place an Adam of Eve at least 90-150,000 years before the modern day- the Bible gives detailed genealogies. 10 generations between Adam and Noah and almost 80 between Noah and Jesus in the New Testament. Anyone with access to language from a single generation past let alone 10 would likely be aware that language changes with time. As many millennials and Gen Y relate to- understanding slang from people born 10 years after you can be a task. So this one is observable. By the time of the New Testament, almost 80 generations passed and countless tribes and offshoots intermingling along with the introduction of new languages by the Babel incident… why would one think any language past Noah was identical to what Ever would speak, even taking the Bible as fact?
But let’s look deeper biblically. Where does it expressly state that Adam or Eve used language at all? Eden was paradise, full of things not recorded to be witnessed on earth at any point after Eden, at least by mortal men where deities weren’t involved directly.
Free from suffering and all manner of natural law was Eden. So the conversations between God and Adam and Eve and each other etc- who says they needed to be spoken? Who says they weren’t thought? One can ask “but thought in what language?” But that sort of ignores cognition and divinity. What language do animals think in? Do the non hearing lack the ability to think until they learn to read or sign? Concepts don’t need words to exist as a thought, words help define and organize concepts. To identify- but what we call a thing isn’t important in the mind so long as we know the concept we are looking for.
The Bible is pretty clear that god can read beyond peoples words. It doesn’t say Adam and Ever were “psychically communicating” but it also doesn’t say they weren’t does it? One can point to something like: “it literally says ‘speak’ or some similar word..” but that has two flaws. Flaw 1. The person writing a thing can only write words they know or have concept of. Most people cannot write a paper on a nuclear reactor or a car or a toaster even that could be used by an engineer. How would you tell a machinist how to make a simple object like a chair of metal? If you don’t know the exact dimensions and what is relevant or the terms for cuts and operations, you’d use words you know and hope they got what you meant. 2. This falls into the trap of “the Bible speaks broadly and in metaphor. Except for where I decide it is totally and completely literal…”
Some will say the “days” of genesis are literal, others will say they are allegorical and a “day” in creation could be an epoch or just a story device for an unspecified time that needs narrated.
Some will say certain speeches or fantastic elements or such aren’t literal, others say they are. Sometimes bread is literally bread, sometimes it is a metaphor… now in fairness- this can often be true of many things. We switch between hyperbole or sarcasm and earnest all the time. It can be said that the Bible, like many stories or chronicles, may leave out details it doesn’t think are important, or that a specific worrier didn’t feel needed extrapolated. Other details may be included because they are important, or because the writer wanted to create a certain mood or image or connection. Tolkien is known for verbosity in mundane details- Bilbos home in the Hobbit gets described in far more detail than a relatively minor location needs-
But other things don’t get quite as hefty a pass with the detail brush for Tolkien. He put the details where he felt they needed to be or where he wanted you to most vividly picture things or relate. Given the Bible attempts to cover the start of creation until the end of days, it’s a pretty short bunch of books. You can find longer texts detailing just the history of a single country or even a single city over centuries or in some cases decades. So obviously with all of time encompassed within, for the run length they’re gonna leave out plenty that maybe doesn’t matter in the big picture they’re trying to tell. The show 24 supposedly covers a day in the life one hour at a time, how many episodes are spent on Jacks lunch break or a phone call to Mom or a really bad dump? How many episodes each season show the man showering and taking care of basic needs or whatever else? Even in a “24 hour period” “in real
Time” there is so much that doesn’t need to be shown to get the message across.
So let’s say Eden didn’t have a language and it was all telepathy or something- is that at all relevant? The big details involve things being awesome, a tempting snake, forbidden fruit, exile, and a couple other points. The existence of telepathy wouldn’t change any of that or add anything. They don’t say how big Eden is, where it is, how long a day is, the temperature, humidity, etc either. They don’t detail how Adam and Eve prepare meals or where they live. None of that gets discussed. They’re not important details to what the story is trying to say.
So who knows if they even spoke a language let alone one we would recognize? Or that it was a verbal language and not one using telepathy or sign language etc?
That’s a big one to consider. Beyond that though- again, if we use the Bible, 10 generations from Adam to Noah, and the flood happens and the Tower of Babel occurs after so many generations of adults come of age. So IF we assume that the “original language” even existed on earth at that point, and IF we assume that it was largely unchanged- we still need to consider the times- at the least, the times given in the Bible even if we ignore external historical evidence. So then, we’d need to trace back using these generations to translate into a calendar year and from there, ask what known languages were in use at that time? That can clue us in a bit- and perhaps it couldn’t be a language that didn’t exist at that time…
.. but we still could t say because we only know what languages we knew existed- we cannot say what languages existed that we do not know about. If the “original language” was in the group of languages who’s existence we weren’t aware of, then we couldn't know what it was. Now, Sumerian is believed to be about 6,000 years old. This puts it as probably the oldest recorded language. Tamil (primarily India) is believed to be about 3,000- 5,000 years old. Egyptian is closer to 4,000 based on evidence. Sanskrit is debated to be between 3,000-6000 years old. There is debate on the age of languages, and we can only record written language, not spoken, which also means that languages that later evolved into old languages may not be recorded accurately. Sumerian is particularly interesting because it isn’t known to be related to any other languages. It isn’t unique in this sense, but it is unique in that it has possibly the oldest record of human language and has no known relatives.
If one were looking for a language which predated the supposed creation of multiple languages at the Tower of Babel. Sumerian could theoretically be a contender, though it wouldn’t be a perfect slam dunk case for many reasons. Now, this assumes some relative knowledge of the earliest dates a language was used. It is possible that long ago people didn’t have the information and merely knew certain languages were older than most history or older than they could conceive. It is also possible people long ago had access to since lost knowledge of what languages were spoken before those languages first recoded used by more modern historians. Regardless- the idea that Adam and or Ever developed language spontaneously isn’t indicated by the Bible. We can see several pieces of evidence to support this.
If they spoke a language at all, that language may have been taught by God, perhaps instantly taught. It may have been given to them on creation. It is worth noting that the Bible gives a very different method of creation for Adam and Eve than any other human being, and they were created in Eden, a place which has rules distinctly different than those of Earth. We glimpse some of the differences in genesis, but many aren’t given as to previous points, the writer either didn’t have the information or didn’t believe it needing to be included. We know simply the rules were different and that is plainly stated in several places. The entire point of exile from Eden was that the rules had now changed for humans and how life would work.
So given the extreme differences in the creation of and conditions of Adam and Eve, even if they were born with language or a predisposition towards language, there is no reason to believe that any other human would be. That’s like assuming that mixing flour, eggs, sugar, etc. and baking in an oven by a master baker will crate the same results as mixing some snot and toe nails in a blender. Different ingredients, processes, conditions, settings, etc. beyond that though- again- we can ignore all this and the billion other tangents we can run down. If one is trying to apply the Bible to the study of man… assuming we don’t immediately say that can’t be done scientifically…
We covered this. Babel. The Bible tells us that anyone born after the Tower of Babel was born to a world of scattered languages. Done with specific intent. How would it make ANY sense at all for a divine power fo scatter all humans across the globe and change our languages fondoffern times specifically to stop us…
.. from teaming up on some stupid idea… if everyone would be born “default set” to the same “original language” of Adam and Eve? That’s like creating a password system that if you press the enter key without putting a password it lets you in. The Bible itself would tell a would be scientist of the Bible that the experiment would fail. Now- obviously if we apply external knowledge and don’t take the Bible at face value as fact- we can point out many more reasons this falls flat. So I don’t think this is a case of someone from long ago lacking the information to make a smarter choice, I think this is just an example of someone outsmarting themselves by being too cloudy to keep up with their own ideas.
TL:Dr version- even if one takes the Bible at face value as fact there are soooo many flaws in the basic concept here, but the very start of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, would tell you why this wouldn’t work. The story of the Tower of Babel makes clear that anyone born after the events of genesis 10 or so wouldn’t defeat to speaking the “same language as Adam and Eve” because that very idea contradicts the entire reasoning to the Tower of Babel. If we apply external facts and don’t take the Bible at its face value, we can, with or without using details from the stories in the Bible, pretty much dispel this idea.
That BS was propaganda by the monk Salimbene of Parma against Frederick II due to Frederick's almost permanent conflict with the popes. There is not a shred of evidence supporting that Friedrich II (often confused with Friedrich II. of Prussia) ever conducted such an experiment. There are tales of Pharao Psamtik who supposedly is the origin this myth.
Hey, given all that was known to humanity at that time, his reasoning (if the story is true) was reasonably sound! It's foolish by todays' knowledge of course.
Why would one believe that between the time of Adam and the languages of antiquity that language had remained unchanged- for starters. Let’s use the biblical text: The most popular interpretation of genesis and the subsequent story of the Tower of Babel is that all on earth spoke a single language at the time the Tower of Babel fell. Now, the tower was erected after the flood that supposedly destroyed all humanity except Noah and those on the Ark. many people infer that BEFORE the flood there was only one language. Now, this isn’t necessarily true from what the Bible says. We can take from context that prior to the flood there was one language- most popular is that in Genesis 10:25 Peleg is said to come from a divided time- many take this to imply that the time before Peleg was not divided. This is possible but weak when we compare against the…
Or by some accounts and interpretations to remove the mixed blood of angels from human genealogy after events in the de canonized book of Enoch.
Free from suffering and all manner of natural law was Eden. So the conversations between God and Adam and Eve and each other etc- who says they needed to be spoken? Who says they weren’t thought? One can ask “but thought in what language?” But that sort of ignores cognition and divinity. What language do animals think in? Do the non hearing lack the ability to think until they learn to read or sign? Concepts don’t need words to exist as a thought, words help define and organize concepts. To identify- but what we call a thing isn’t important in the mind so long as we know the concept we are looking for.
Some will say certain speeches or fantastic elements or such aren’t literal, others say they are. Sometimes bread is literally bread, sometimes it is a metaphor… now in fairness- this can often be true of many things. We switch between hyperbole or sarcasm and earnest all the time. It can be said that the Bible, like many stories or chronicles, may leave out details it doesn’t think are important, or that a specific worrier didn’t feel needed extrapolated. Other details may be included because they are important, or because the writer wanted to create a certain mood or image or connection. Tolkien is known for verbosity in mundane details- Bilbos home in the Hobbit gets described in far more detail than a relatively minor location needs-
Time” there is so much that doesn’t need to be shown to get the message across.
That’s a big one to consider. Beyond that though- again, if we use the Bible, 10 generations from Adam to Noah, and the flood happens and the Tower of Babel occurs after so many generations of adults come of age. So IF we assume that the “original language” even existed on earth at that point, and IF we assume that it was largely unchanged- we still need to consider the times- at the least, the times given in the Bible even if we ignore external historical evidence. So then, we’d need to trace back using these generations to translate into a calendar year and from there, ask what known languages were in use at that time? That can clue us in a bit- and perhaps it couldn’t be a language that didn’t exist at that time…
We covered this. Babel. The Bible tells us that anyone born after the Tower of Babel was born to a world of scattered languages. Done with specific intent. How would it make ANY sense at all for a divine power fo scatter all humans across the globe and change our languages fondoffern times specifically to stop us…