Adam and language

by sinis 6 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  sinis

  Here is an interesting excerpt from an article I am reading. I never thought about this before but the writer is correct. How did Adam get his language? Was he preprogrammed to speak Hebrew? If so how could he formulate ideas and feelings without having the experience to do so? Was he made with ideas, thoughts, language and experience? If so is he REALLY to blame for the fall?

  Does anybody believe that God directly taught a language to Adam and Eve, or that he so made them that they, by intuition spoke Hebrew, or some language capable of conveying to each other their thoughts? How did the serpent learn the same language? Did God teach it to him, or did he happen to overhear God, when he was teaching Adam and Eve? We are told in the second chapter of Genesis that God caused all the animals to pass before Adam to see what he would call them. We cannot infer from this that God named the animals and informed Adam what to call them. Adam named them himself. Where did he get his words? We cannot imagine a man just made out of dust, without the experience of a moment, having the power to put his thoughts in language. In the first place, we cannot conceive of his having any thoughts until he has combined, through experience and observation, the impressions that nature had made upon him through the medium of his senses. We cannot imagine of his knowing anything, in the first instance, about different degrees of heat, nor about darkness, if he was made in the day- time, nor about light, if created at night, until the next morning. Before a man can have what we call thoughts, he must have had a little experience. Something must have happened to him before he can have a thought, and before he can express himself in language. Language is a growth, not a gift. We account now for the diversity of language by the fact that tribes and nations have had different experiences, different wants, different surroundings, and, one result of all these differences is, among other things, a difference in language. Nothing can be more absurd than to account for the different languages of the world by saying that the original language was confounded at the tower of Babel.
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  daystar

  It makes perfect sense when one understands that the bible is largely metaphorical and not literal.
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  sinis

  Here is the link to the article and others:

  http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/ing/vol02/i0115.htm
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  drew sagan

  It makes perfect sense when one understands that the bible is largely metaphorical and not literal.

  Especially when discussing Genesis. I really started to notice how deeper the meanings could go when I first learned all the interesting details about comparing the line of Cain to the Line of Able/Seth. They both are a list of 10 individuals of which even the names bounce and have interesting compairisons.
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  TopHat

  It is my contention that if God went to the trouble of creating Adam, it was his responsibility to teach him a lauguage. The account in Genisis tells us that God spoke to Adam and that Adam heard his voice. Genisis doesn't say how long it took for Adam to understand. In turn, through God and Adam, Eve must have been taught to speak. Whatever that language was...
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  stevenyc

  Everyone was speaking the same language up to and beyond Noah. It wasn't until those pesky builders of the Baal tower, that God created all the languages we know today. As we can accurately date the flood to the year 2370 B.C.E, then we know that languages, as we know, have only been around some 4000 years.

  If you don't believe that, then you're probably gonna burn in hell.

  steve

  PS, Oh, and just because you say the pyramids were build before the flood, and inscribed with a different language, that's no excuse. Satan is a great deceiver and MUST have put them their to deceive us. Or, maybe God put them there as a test of our faith.
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  freetosee

  When god confused the languages at Babel it was abrupt, when the donkey saved it master’s life it was able to speak unexpectedly, at Pentecost the disciples were able to speak in different languages all of a sudden to the amazement of onlookers.

  According to the bible it is not unlikely that Adam and Eve could speak once they were created, without having language lessons.

  I always found it interesting that the two occasions where god said, "Come, let US (do something)…" was at the creation of man and the confusing of languages.

  fts