Now Moses, say the objectors, brings his story nearer to reality and makes a distinction between reasoning and unreasoning creatures, so that the unity of language for which he vouches applies to men only. Still even this, they say, is mythical. They point out that the division of speech into a multitude of different kinds of language, which Moses calls “Confusion of tongues,” is in the story brought about as a remedy for sin, to the end that men should no longer through mutual understanding be partners in iniquity, but be deaf in a sense to each other and thus cease to act together to effect the same purposes. But no good result appears to have been attained by it. For all the same after they had been separated into different nations and no longer spoke the same tongue, land and sea were constantly full of innumerable evil deeds. For it is not the utterances of men but the presence of the same cravings for sin in the soul which causes combination in wrongdoing. Indeed men who have lost their tongue by mutilation do by means of nods and glances and the other attitudes and movements of the body indicate their wishes as well as the uttered word can do it. Besides a single nation in which not only language but laws and modes of life are identical often reaches such a pitch of wickedness that its misdeeds can balance the sins of the whole of mankind. Again multitudes through ignorance of other languages have failed to foresee the impending danger, and thus been caught unawares by the attacking force, while on the contrary such a knowledge has enabled them to repel the alarms and dangers which menaced them. The conclusion is that the possession of a common language does more good than harm—a conclusion confirmed by all past experience which shews that in every country, particularly where the population is indigenous, nothing has kept the inhabitants so free from disaster as uniformity of language. Further the acquisition of languages other than his own at once gives a man a high standing with those who know and speak them. They now consider him a friendly person, who brings no small evidence of fellow-feeling in his familiarity with their vocabulary, since that familiarity seems to render them secure against the chance of meeting any disastrous injury at his hands. Why then, they ask, did God wish to deprive mankind of its universal language as though it were a source of evil, when He should rather have established it firmly as a source of the utmost profit?
On the Confusion of Tongues 4
Tap any verse to see what it echoes — and start a chain or echo from it.