![]() ![]() The phrase I have rendered “a single set of words” could also be interpreted as “one words,” “unique words,” “few words.” The leading medieval Jewish exegete Rashi (11 th century, northern France) extrapolates four different meanings (most of which come from Genesis Rabbah 38:6), some by punning:ġ. ![]() Gen 11:1 All the land was one language, and a single set of words. The narrative begins in an unspecified place, not in Babylonia. The people couldn’t speak to each other and therefore couldn’t cooperate. But the Way of the World, represented narratively by the Deity, thwarted the plan, and the building was never completed. In his essay on the Tower of Babel, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), the Jewish French-Algerian philosopher, points out what is perhaps the most obvious outcome of the narrative: the builders had a plan, an ideal, and they began to realize it. We may therefore feel encouraged to seek a different, deeper meaning in the famed tale of the Tower of Babel. When the Tower of Babel narrative begins, we have already been informed that the various peoples, each speaking its own language, were spread across the known world. Gen 10:5 From them separated all nations into their territories, each one according to its language, according to their families among their nations. ![]() In its context in Genesis, the story is unnecessary. The biblical story of Babel is ordinarily viewed as the suppression of human hubris and/or a put-down of Babylonia, and it also functions as an etiological tale to explain how, in illo tempore, language became diverse. ![]()
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