Genesis 11:1-8

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Hmm. That's funny. Remember Genesis 10:4, just a few paragraphs back? "From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language." And 10:20? "These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations." And 10:31? "These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations."

Well, that's inoperative. Suddenly there is only one language on the earth. But, we know that isn't true, because by this time -- according to the Biblical chronology, sometime around 2,400 BC -- there had already been written languages for almost 2,000 years, and uhh, there were many different ones. If you're interested in this subject, I would just start with the Wikipedia article.*

The history of spoken language is obviously more difficult to reconstruct, but if you're willing to ignore the biblical timing and just want to know whether it is true that there was once a single, original human language, that's actually controversial. Spoken language left no trace until the early 20th Century (thanks to Mr. Edison), except for whatever can be deduced about it from writing systems. Since early systems did not use phonetic alphabets, they are of limited use for reconstructing spoken language. But what is more important is that language pre-dates writing by tens or hundreds of thousands of years.

The proximate ancestors of humans, Homo erectus, persisted for about 2 million years. Their brains were considerably smaller than ours, and their vocal apparatus wouldn't have allowed for the complex, fluid speech we use today, but on the other hand apes communicate with meaningful, non-syntactical sounds, so they might have had a system of communication more complex than that of apes but less complex than ours. In any event, the evidence that it wasn't a real, fully developed language is that their material culture was essentially stagnant for all that time. We find no evidence of representational art, or ritual, and we find the same crude, disorganized kit of stone tools for all those millions of years.

Then, about 200,000 years ago, we find the first fossils of so-called anatomically modern humans. Not long after that, somewhere between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, was the event called cultural take-off. Suddenly stone tools become much more finely made and specific. In various times and places, new toolmaking techniques are invented and tools are made very specifically for specific purposes. They are clearly designed to be hafted as axes or fitted to spears or arrows, there are fine blades and heavy choppers, etc. Just a little later is sufficiently close in time that more perishable materials are preserved, so we find bone tools and traces of fibers. Soon thereafter we also find musical instruments, statuettes, elaborate burials, cave paintings. Something extraordinary happened and it's clear what it must have been. The ape started to speak, and now we could preserve and transmit culture, explain how to do things, discuss ideas, describe what we had seen to others, plan together, share our ideas about why the world was as it was and what it might become, write bibles and build towers.

But did language arise once, and spread from a single time and place, or were our ancestors poised to develop it and it arose at multiple points? We just don't know, although there is strong evidence that humanity passed through a very small population bottleneck in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and that these few people were the ancestors of all humankind, and maybe this one small group was the first to speak and language as well as life is their legacy to all of us. The basis for this belief is too complex to go into here, but if anybody is truly perplexed by all means let me know.

Whatever may have happened in the dark backward and abysm of time, we know that language evolves over time and that the confounding of language on earth arises from a continual process of change which ultimately results in the descendants of people who start with the same language becoming mutually unintelligible. At one time the ancestors of the people who today speak Spanish, French and Italian all spoke Latin. The English spoke a language related to German, but then the French invaded and they wound up speaking what is called a creole, which is my first language today. Pero hablo español también. God didn't do this, history did, and we have a full and clear record of it.

But enough of the profound idiocy of people who believe that the Bible is literally true. What does this story tell us about God? First of all, he's physically up in the sky somewhere. He has to "come down" to see what the people are up to, which means he also is not omniscient. Furthermore, he's highly insecure. He's afraid they can build a tower that will reach up to the heavens. Apparently he's unfamiliar with the facts about the universe he created, because there isn't any sky, it's an illusion caused by the scattering of sunlight from oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. If you try to reach the heavens, you just go up, and up, and up, forever. Before you get very far at all on the cosmic scale of things, you're above the atmosphere and you die, but you still haven't gotten to the place where God lives.

Nevertheless, he's jealous even of that puny tower. He doesn't want the people to accomplish great things, so he does what he can to mess them up. Of course, if he really was all seeing and all powerful he would have foreseen all this and never let it happen in the first place. Anyway, that's just sociopathic. My parents always encouraged me. They wanted me to take chances and create and build and accomplish. If god is our heavenly father, he's a dysfunctional parent and we had better move out and stop paying any attention to him.

Fortunately, God's pathetic scheme has failed. Nowadays, we have built tens of thousands of towers that make the Tower of Babel look like an anthill, and cities that could swallow up Babylon a thousand times over. We fly through the air, send words and pictures from one end of the earth to another in a nanosecond, and we have even walked on the moon and sent our robots beyond the solar system.

So God ---

Na na na na na. You lose, sucker.



*Quite possibly the earliest writing, or at least the earliest true written language that was fully syntactical, did arise in Mesopotamia. I point this out because the Iraq National Library and Archive has recently been occupied by American and Iraqi soldiers, threatening part of the irreplaceable heritage of all humanity. For more on this, see recent posting at Iraq Today.

Genesis 10

Genesis 10
The Table of Nations
1 This is the account of Shem, Ham and Japheth, Noah's sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.
The Japhethites
2 The sons of Japheth:
Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech and Tiras.

3 The sons of Gomer:
Ashkenaz, Riphath and Togarmah.

4 The sons of Javan:
Elishah, Tarshish, the Kittim and the Rodanim. 5 (From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.)
The Hamites
6 The sons of Ham:
Cush, Mizraim, Put and Canaan.

7 The sons of Cush:
Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah and Sabteca.
The sons of Raamah:
Sheba and Dedan.

8 Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, "Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD." 10 The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in Shinar. 11 From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah 12 and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

13 Mizraim was the father of
the Ludites, Anamites, Lehabites, Naphtuhites, 14 Pathrusites, Casluhites (from whom the Philistines came) and Caphtorites.

15 Canaan was the father of
Sidon his firstborn, and of the Hittites, 16 Jebusites, Amorites, Girgashites, 17 Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, 18 Arvadites, Zemarites and Hamathites.
Later the Canaanite clans scattered 19 and the borders of Canaan reached from Sidon toward Gerar as far as Gaza, and then toward Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.

20 These are the sons of Ham by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.
The Semites
21 Sons were also born to Shem, whose older brother was Japheth; Shem was the ancestor of all the sons of Eber.

22 The sons of Shem:
Elam, Asshur, Arphaxad, Lud and Aram.

23 The sons of Aram:
Uz, Hul, Gether and Meshech.

24 Arphaxad was the father of Shelah,
and Shelah the father of Eber.

25 Two sons were born to Eber:
One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided; his brother was named Joktan.

26 Joktan was the father of
Almodad, Sheleph, Hazarmaveth, Jerah, 27 Hadoram, Uzal, Diklah, 28 Obal, Abimael, Sheba, 29 Ophir, Havilah and Jobab. All these were sons of Joktan.

30 The region where they lived stretched from Mesha toward Sephar, in the eastern hill country.

31 These are the sons of Shem by their clans and languages, in their territories and nations.

32 These are the clans of Noah's sons, according to their lines of descent, within their nations. From these the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.

Hmm. What the heck happened to Canaan and his descendants being slaves of his uncles? Never happened after all. Canaan founds an empire and his uncles can go pound sand.

All of these empires, including Nimrods, of course, are impossible. Do the math -- in each generation, the Bible tells us exactly how many males there were. I'm not even going to take the time to count them, but they are in the low double figures by the time we get to the third generation, and it's in the third generation that we have all these cities and empires and clans. So where the hell did all the people come from? Hello! Bible believers! The numbers don't add up, by a factor of millions. Just thought I'd point that out.

Here's something else that's kind of funny: "(From these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language.)" Ahh, apparently whoever wrote the next chapter didn't read this one. And it's the next chapter that I'll really have something to say about, because we're gonna be in my kitchen with that one.

Genesis 9:18-28: A Theistic Response

The broad range of the human condition contained in the Bible is one of the things that makes it personally significant to individuals and allows for a dialogical approach* to reading the Bible. Basically, everything's in there. So Noah was a drunk...

"Now, this is obviously one of the most bizarre stories in the Bible. It makes Noah appear to be insane, and, while it doesn't explicitly endorse Noah's actions, it does make God look bad (not for the first time!) because he singled out Noah as the last righteous man and here he is behaving like a total lunatic."

Sometimes I just don't know what to say here. I could try to come up with a little theodicy** for every passage in the Bible, but in my mind, it seems like I'm repeating myself all of the time. But that's not necessarily bad, I mean, I suppose that indicates some unity of thought...

"Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent, Ham accidentally sees him in this state and tells his brothers, and in response, Noah makes Ham's son Canaan - who apparently had nothing to do with the whole thing - the slave of his brothers. In later years, Christians decided that Ham was the father of the Africans and used this story to justify slavery. Fortunately, I don't have to try to explain this weirdness because Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope has done it for me, in two parts, here, and here."

Cervantes has a highly refined bullshit detector and, atheist though he is, he recognizes bad theology when he sees it. So I want to talk about that, but I want to take it out of the Biblical context for a moment. It is not unusual for a good symbol to be used for bad purpose. Our American flag, for instance, is heavily loaded with symbolic meaning for most Americans. Most of it good; equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom, land of the free, home of the brave. It is also heavily used to sell everything from politicians to cars.

Discernment, then, becomes important. Being able to separate the symbolism and it's associated meanings from the thing using that symbol to sell you a bag of goods.

If someone wants to do something really bad, especially on a really large scale, they will usurp and propagandize every good symbol and association they can to meet their ends.

So, to justify slavery, why not use the Bible? To justify the crusades, why not use the Bible? To justify killing Western infidels, why not use the Quran?

When people begin turning up in mass graves, you can be sure every tool was used to get them there, including God.

This doesn't mean God or the Bible or the Quran are bad things. It means bad people have usurped something good to justify their ends. We would be much poorer if we threw out what was good about culture, society, humanism--simply because they had the potential to be used for bad ends.

For centuries people have tried to use different passages of the Bible as prooftext to justify bad behavior. The best way to reach discernment when it comes to the Bible is to look at the Whole. Of course, three layers of tradition must be acknowledged: oral, written, and edited.

"There are two basic points: This story comes from an earlier oral tradition, and when it got written down, something was left out, perhaps something too embarrassing for the written record such as a sex act; and the later interpretation justifying black slavery was just pure bullshit, like most interpretations of the Bible, which are made to justify foregone conclusions. As I have said many times, there are innumerable ambiguities, self-contradictions, and vague metaphors in the Bible and it's easy to decide that it means whatever you want it to mean. This may be the ultimate proof."

Basically there are points here where we agree and where we disagree. I will hold with this paragraph up to and including the word "bullshit."

I still consider the Bible to be a record of Divine Revelation, no less than other sacred writings, no less than the oral or pagan traditions which preceded it. They are all an attempt to understand the Divine as revealed to human understanding. The fact that humans have been trying to do this for all of recorded history, and arguably pre recorded history, does not mean there is no Divine. On the contrary, it points up an interesting aspect of our evolution that we have yet to explain scientifically--why do we seek the Divine? Why do we believe God exists? Somehow we grasp that there is a perfection, ephemeral though it is, in the human being. These layers of faith tradition are all an attempt to define human culture and best practices in relation to the world. And really, the overwhelming message that comes through when you look at the gestalt of all faiths is this: don't be shitty to one another. This is the ultimate tool of discernment. If your interpretation contradicts this, you must be twisting it or reading it wrong. And if you don't get that, you haven't read enough.

*Link added as post script.
**Okay, for what it's worth, here's my thirty second theodicy of this passage utilizing the dialogical approach. "So, you're an asshole? You're a drunk? You think God couldn't use you? Well, just remember, Noah was a drunk."

Genesis 9:18-28

18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth.

20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.

24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."

26 He also said,
"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.

27 May God extend the territory of Japheth;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his slave."

28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died.

Now, this is obviously one of the most bizarre stories in the Bible. It makes Noah appear to be insane, and, while it doesn't explicitly endorse Noah's actions, it does make God look bad (not for the first time!) because he singled out Noah as the last righteous man and here he is behaving like a total lunatic.

Noah gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent, Ham accidentally sees him in this state and tells his brothers, and in response, Noah makes Ham's son Canaan - who apparently had nothing to do with the whole thing - the slave of his brothers.

In later years, Christians decided that Ham was the father of the Africans and used this story to justify slavery. Fortunately, I don't have to try to explain this weirdness because Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope has done it for me, in two parts, here, and here.

There are two basic points: This story comes from an earlier oral tradition, and when it got written down, something was left out, perhaps something too embarrassing for the written record such as a sex act; and the later interpretation justifying black slavery was just pure bullshit, like most interpretations of the Bible, which are made to justify foregone conclusions. As I have said many times, there are innumerable ambiguities, self-contradictions, and vague metaphors in the Bible and it's easy to decide that it means whatever you want it to mean. This may be the ultimate proof.