Summary
babel /'beib(3)l/ n. & a. Also B-. E16. [Babely the city and tower where the confusion of tongues took place (Gen. 11), = Heb. babel Babylon, f. Akkadian bab ili gate of God.] An. 1A confused medley of sounds; meaningless noise. El6. 2 A scene of confusion; a noisy assembly. El7. 3 (B-) A lofty structure; a visionary project. Ml7…
(definition, in Leslie Brown (ed.), The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993)[E16/17 = early 16th/17th Century; M17 = mid-17th Century]Together yet separate: Is English we speakin'
The Bible is not so widely read as once it was, nor are its stories, laws, admonitions, and prophecies so well known as once they were, but such phrases as Adam and Eve, the Garden ofEden, Noah'sArk, and the Tower of Babel continue to resonate in those languages which have ancient links with Christianity and Judaism. The original account of Babel, which takes up less than half of one brief chapter of the Book of Genesis, opens with the assertion that ‘the whole earth was of one language’, then reports that in the land of Shinar (Sumer, now southern Iraq) humankind undertook a project so vast and arrogant that it brought down upon them the very wrathof God:
4 And they said; Goe to, let vs build vs a city and a tower, whose top may reach vnto heauen, and let vs make vs a name, lest we be scattered abroad vpon the face of the whole earth. 5 And the LORD came downe to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6 And the LORD said; Behold, the people is one, and they haue all one language: and this they begin to doe: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they haue imagined to doe. 7 Goe to, let vs goe downe, and there confound their language, that they may not vnderstand one anothers speech. 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence, vpon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the Citie. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel [marginal note: ‘that is, Confusion’], because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The English Languages , pp. 1 - 29Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998