The Tower of Babel and other interesting tidbits

Mark, linguists estimate that thousands of languages become extinct with every passing year. But if this thing works, does global language diversity get forcibly restored?

You do sometimes get the sense that some of our cultural initiatives are especially open and brazen acts of nose-thumbing by the Dragon who knows his time is short.

The shadow of that hyddeous strength sax myle and more it is of length.

Between projects like this and the creation of chimeras, you get the sense of a culture of hubris demanding and begging to be judged. I wonder what it is about human psychology that makes such defiant demands, the closer it edges to the abyss?

By the way, here’s some interesting stuff I’ve picked up in helping to edit various books on Scripture and in working with Scott Hahn.

You know those boring genealogies in Genesis? It turns out they aren’t boring when you know how they are being used by the author. The genealogies are a sort of zoom lens or focusing device that directs the reader so that he knows where the story is going. They point us first to the line of Adam that leads to Noah, then to the line that leads to Shem, and finally from Shem to Abram. Especially interesting is this: out of all the heirs of the covenant promises in the Old Testament, only one firstborn son is ever the recipient: Shem. (A major theme of the Old Testament, again and again, is that mere natural primogeniture is insufficient since it is the grace of God, not mere nature, that is at work in the progress of the covenant. So Isaac is chosen over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his brothers, Moses over Aaron, David over his older brothers.)

Interestingly, in the genealogy after Noah, Shem is placed last, even though he is firstborn. That’s because the genealogy will follow his line, so that we can next zoom in on Abram, the son of Shem and begin the story of the covenant with Abram and Israel that will be the story of the Old Testament.

Another major theme of Genesis (and Exodus) is that of the Name. “Shem” in fact, *means* “Name”. And when we come to the story of Babel we find that it is the sons of Ham (who has already earned a curse in the story of Noah and lost the covenant blessing) who are now living “in the East”. Why does this matter? Because in Genesis “east” is always associated with alienation from God. After the fall, we see cursed humanity living “east of Eden”. So the sons of Ham are shown acting in envy of “Shem” and they express their envy how? “Let us make a *Name* for ourselves” by building this Tower. The sacred writer is mocking the ziggarats of Mesopotamia as expressions of human pride trying to break into heaven by technological power. God has to “go down” to see what the puny humans are doing because the tower is so microscopic. The point, once again, is that no human effort can put God in our debt.

The longer I study Scripture, the more impressed I am by the economy and sophistication of the sacred writers. It’s an incredibly subtle form of catechesis.