by badboy 39 Replies latest jw friends
Jehovah's witnesses say Noah's flood happened c.2000BC.
Interestingly a possible problem arises with the origins of the Indo-European languagues b/c, which linguists have calcaluated(sp?)2 have originated about 8,900 years ago using a cognate database,Hittite being near the root of the IE family followed by Tocharian ,Greek and Armenian.
There4 the IE languagues spread with agriculture in2 Europe arriving in Scotland 5500 YEARS AGO.
QUESTION?
How will they explain this?
By saying the scientists are wrong, & they're right & how dare you question Jehoobers org. etc., etc., like usual.
the problem that I find with Language and the Tower of Babel story is that language can be traced back to common roots. So that most of the languages that we have today evolved from earlier languages and were not created all at once, as the account says. If an all powerfull being was to create many different languages, I would think that they would be completely different and not as similar as they are.
They'll say Satan screwed around with the archaelogical records, or whatever.
The flood was not truly global -- it was local -- there have been quite a few documentaries and books on this subject - so that is part of the language problem
Actually the Bible doesn't say in Gemesis that God created NEW languages.
Gen 11:7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech." NASB
The Hebrew word translated "confuse" or "confound" in other translations comes from the Hebrew word pronounced "balal" meaning to "mix, confuse, mingle". So this could explain why so many language have words similar to each other. The language was "mixed" just enough to prevent certain groups inderstanding each other. Thus preventing communication enough that was needed to carry on the building work of the Tower of Babel.
How do you 'mix' one language?
rem
Well someone did invent a language, Esperanto, which is basically a mix of others and grammar.
Right. Esperanto is a mix of multiple languages.
rem
how do you mix one language?
Consider the following examples: Irish and/vs. Scottich Gaelic; Portuguese and Spanish (the former originally a dialect of the latter); English as spoken by Black Americans, Asian Indians, American Southerners and Californians.
GentlyFeral
