# The Dating of the Tower of Babel and the World's Languages



## Pergamum (Jul 22, 2008)

Thoughts? Help me critique this in detail:

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely_Babel_WTJ.pdf


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## TimV (Jul 22, 2008)

I don't know why a publication like the Westminster Theological Journal would publish something so simple minded. Basically a rambling rant against allowing the Bible to mean what it says. I love the part that says we can date the Tower of Babel to between 2400 and 3500BC. I mean, what's a thousand years or so among friends? And sure, we can be positive that cave in Thailand was inhabited by people who didn't speak Sumerian 7,000 years ago. Well, we can be positive as long as we're playing in the land of middle-brow speculation, and then we can use this "fact" to buttress our argument. And if we add *lots* of footnotes, we'll look even more sophisticated. So you might as well claim that, as they do, Japan had people with their own language 10,000 years ago. Hmmm. We might as well accept evolution as a fact.

If I used that kind of logic and process when putting in irrigation systems, my customer's plants would die and I'd be living under a bridge.


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## Pergamum (Oct 13, 2008)

How long would it take to develop the 600 languages on the island of New Guinea if they were orally passed along and not fixed by writing?


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## TimV (Oct 13, 2008)

> How long would it take to develop the 600 languages on the island of New Guinea if they were orally passed along and not fixed by writing?



When I was in the Key'agana I could walk for a half day and get to the Gimi who's language was so different than the Key'agana that they couldn't understand each other. And walk for a day in the other direction and get to the Fouri, where the same was true.

The Saxons invaded England 1500 years ago, and they became different languages WAY before that. Romanian and Spanish were the same 1500 years ago, and they became mutually unintelligible way before that.

So, what ever the length of time, we don't have to accept the linked article's premise that Scriptural dating was metaphorical.


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## Pergamum (Oct 13, 2008)

I am way beyond that article...I am wondering about this issue of the speed of change in oral languages....and trying to do my own calculations....

If languages can branch every 50 years and there is 600 languages just here, then 3000 years is needed.....


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## TimV (Oct 13, 2008)

> If languages can branch every 50 years and there is 600 languages just here, then 3000 years is needed.....



Languages can't branch in 50 years, and you're not doing your math right. There were several waves of people who settled PNG for one thing, so you can't start with the number one in you calcs.

And for another, you can't assume one just split into two. A tribe could have split up into 10 waring clans. Latin for example has 7 descendants, and it would have been dozens more if European geography was like that of PNG.

For the sake of argument you could start with 5 basic language groups and say they split into 5 languages every 200 years, and get to 6000 in under 800 years.


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## Tim (Oct 14, 2008)

Tim, it sounds like you are you saying that languages can split even faster than Pergamum has suggested?


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## TimV (Oct 14, 2008)

> Tim, it sounds like you are you saying that languages can split even faster than Pergamum has suggested?



No, he assumed 50 years, which is two generation, and that's too soon. 200 (purely a guess based on my experiences and reading) would be the soonest. 200 years is longer than 50 years.

Pergs mistake is starting with the number 1, representing an original language. That can't be the case with PNG which would be obvious to anyone who's been there, with widely different racial types, like the Polynesian people who live on parts of the coast, very short, very Black Buka, Highlanders who are dark brown but have more European facial structure, etc...

So you have to start with several different languages. And then, you can't assume that one language only breaks into two, and as per my example of Latin, that isn't always the case.

So you don't have to concede the presupposition in the original linked article, which is snobbishly dismissive of Biblical time lines. You don't have to concede that only a few thousand years are not enough of time to develop all the worlds languages.


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## charliejunfan (Oct 14, 2008)

Um duh!!! you can't date inanimate objects!!! only living men and women!!!


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## TimV (Oct 14, 2008)

> Um duh!!! you can't date inanimate objects!!! only living men and women!!!



What else besides living men and women construct large buildings?

One wonders who the editors of the WTJ are. On page 17, third paragraph of the linked article we're informed that everyone who's worth listening to agrees that people were building things in the Mideast 10,500 years ago at least. That means there just aren't any scholars anywhere who hold to Biblical time lines. Just a bunch of ignorant yokels.


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## TimV (Oct 14, 2008)

Page 31 tells us that Creation Science has no scientific validity because of Carbon dating, and we have to accept as a scientific fact that the earth was full of people speaking different languages before the Tower of Babel.

I wish one of those authors was in my Presbytery.


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (Oct 14, 2008)

Because you know that Carbon Dating is infallible.


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## TimV (Oct 14, 2008)

> Because you know that Carbon Dating is infallible



Yes, and when you combine this will ALL SCHOLARS agreeing with you, your case becomes unassailable!


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## charliejunfan (Oct 14, 2008)

YOU GUYS!!!! IT WAS A JOKE!!!! I meant like courting/dating not finding the historic dating..........wow lighten up!


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## Pergamum (Oct 14, 2008)

I wrote 50 years just as an example. 

As far as language families, there does seem to be several distinct language families on the island of New Guinea, and so yes they could be developing simultanously. I was fully aware of this. 

I did not really make any mistake because I wasn't pushing forward any hypothesis, I am trying to start conversation to gain facts if anyone has them.


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## bookslover (Oct 15, 2008)

I would never date the Tower of Babel. She talks too darn much...


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## bookslover (Oct 15, 2008)

The Tower of Babel...Didn't they play some concerts with the fabulous Tower of Power horn section...at a Tower Records store?


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## Pergamum (Oct 15, 2008)

Stop your Babbling!







I am looking for info on how quickly languages morph. Given an isolated area with 800 or so languages, and a date of the tower of babel at 3000 bc or so, then this morphing would need to be quick.


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## Pergamum (Oct 15, 2008)

babbling = Babel-ing....[pun intended, no offense]


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## Theognome (Oct 16, 2008)

TimV said:


> What else besides living men and women construct large buildings?



Termites, coral, and of course, wasps.

Theognome


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## Christusregnat (Oct 16, 2008)

Theognome said:


> TimV said:
> 
> 
> > What else besides living men and women construct large buildings?
> ...



Bill,

You forgot space aliens.


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## Theognome (Oct 16, 2008)

Christusregnat said:


> Theognome said:
> 
> 
> > TimV said:
> ...



Sorry 'bout that. I keep forgetting about those Kubrick monoliths and Area 51 artifacts.

Theognome


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## Theognome (Oct 16, 2008)

Pergamum said:


> Thoughts? Help me critique this in detail:
> 
> http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely_Babel_WTJ.pdf



This sounds very odd to me- if not a form of higher criticism.

If the Tower was built between 3500 and 2400 BC, then all the world would have had one language prior to that. However, using the same carbon dating methods, the Egyptian pre-dynastic period began in 5500 BC, and the Sumerian Ubaid period started about 5300 BC- and these two groups had very different languages. So are their dating methods wrong, or is God's word wrong? Which is it?

Theognome


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## MW (Oct 16, 2008)

This is not a field I've done any study in, but common sense tells me that the divine intervention at Babel would have sped up any natural time required for the morphing of language.


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