Tower of Babel - /another thing/ God didn't have to do.

by Awakened07 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  BlakeSeeley

  Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion...and that’s just the point, they’re all opinions, interpretations. I can’t even say that I personally hold to all the different interpretations I posted. A lot of it comes from critical scholarship, and I don’t subscribe to it all myself. I tend to more of a traditional interpretation, so I guess I do have some cognitive dissonance in this regard…though I try to be more open minded to other possibilities.

  But calling that interpretation from critical scholarship “torturous” and “dredged up” sounds like you have some dislike for certain of religion’s facets ...cool, I do too!

  However when we start talking about love, whether the it’s someone we love or someone who loves us, I think that goes beyond the realm of empirical data anyway.
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  moshe

  If there is any one common word that has survived from neolithic times it must be , ma- the first word a baby can say to to the most important person in his small world- his mama, mother. The words for one to five, five fingers, seem to be very similar in many languauges. Language might not evolve as much in the modern world due to the stabilizing affect of print, sound recordings and video.
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  The Oracle

  Hi gang!

  I believe that the story of Babel and the creation of all the languages on this occassion is perhaps the most ridiculous story in the bible ( it cracks the top 10 for sure).

  I am thoroughly embarrassed that I once believed this to be true.

  Japanese, Chinese, French, English, Spanish, etc etc. Yup, they all started at the tower of Babel. All the people just happened to look the same with the same physical features and they all moved away together and started life anew with their new languages in different parts of the world.

  DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE HOW FRIGGIN RIDICULOUS THIS IS?

  The Oracle
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  VM44

  It is amazing how little insight the Watchtower has provided about the origin of the scriptures.
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  parakeet

  Don't forget the confusing new language that has emerged in the last 100 years -- dubspeak. They use hundreds of words and phrases that make sense only to themselves. Was that something God didn't have to do?
  
  parakeet, of the what-the-heck-are-blood-fractions? class
• 

  Leolaia

  Within one country of the same initial language, dialects develop.

  The OT itself mentions minor dialectal differences that had developed between the tribes of "Israel": Judges 12:5-6.

  Linguistic shift is a fascinating subject and it occurs entirely naturally from birth onwards, it doesn't need some miracle to confuse the languages and - no - humanity did not all speak Hebrew at one point.

  I know quite a lot about historial linguistics, and I can assure you that is utterly impossible that a single language existed with the shallow time depth of only 2200 BC. Already even in the ANE there were several different languages in the milieu. Proto-Indo-European (the original single language of the Indo-European languages) goes back to about 3500-3000 BC, and even then it had dialectal differentiation in it, the Proto-Afro-Asiatic language (the ancestor of Egyptian, the Semitic languages, Ethiopic Hausa, Berber, etc.) was spoken probably twice as earlier....and of course there were many other language groups (such as the Australian languages, which were probably isolated since the end of the last Ice Age). And even when it comes to the oldest known language of Mesopotamia, Sumerian is known to have been spoken in the area since the Early Dynastic period but there are already loanwords and toponyms that clearly come from an even older language displaced by Sumerian (called "Ubaidian" by some linguists).
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  BlakeSeeley

  Well, Oracle, I wouldn’t say it was “ridiculous” all the way around. Maybe the way the JWs interpret it, definitely. But in the light of your comments it does seem more reasonable to accept the Yahwist approach (that I cited above) that it wasn’t meant to be historical but comical instead.

  However biology does agree that it is not impossible that all current races come from the same genus, and some scientific schools of thought suggest even from the same parents.

  The history of language is not so easy to explain, however. Whatever the actual history, I agree with Oracle that the JW approach neither fits a scholastic approach to Bible exegesis or plain rational thought.
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  WTWizard

  I think it is pretty blatant that God was creating a problem for Himself and mankind where none needed to have existed. This way, God wouldn't have had to see if people would have succeeded if left alone. Without giving them a chance, He has been able to suppress the fact that man is capable of running himself if given the freedom to do so. It's when a few abuse this and suppress the majority's right to remove the abusers from power that we run into trouble.

  For instance, what would happen if all those who abuse the power were promptly impeached? And that goes for local governments as well as national. It is in the constitution. All that needs happen is get a president that is going to do his job and impeach all those regulators that make it so hard for us to move forward. Besides killing off the fodder for threads about medical advances and gas prices, it would make it a lot easier for those who wish to create value to do so, and get it on the market. In turn, that would make it a lot easier for everyone to benefit. Prices would plunge as people dump more value on the market, and the crap would simply be thrown in the garbage. That would put an end to those kick crimes, as well as stupid laws. And, then God would have to act to disperse it again to avoid another round of embarrassment as man is again about to successfully run himself.