Excerpted from our soon to be published book The Unfaithful Bride & The Faithful Groom (coauthored by D Rudi Schwartz).
Culture & Language
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| Clava Stones, Inverness |
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart:
Naught be all else to me, save that Thy art,
Thou my best thought, by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light
Be Thou my battle-shield, sword for the fight,
Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight.
Thou my soul’s shelter, Thou my high tower
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power
High King of heaven, after victory won,
May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.153
Language plays a major role in the development of any culture. Indeed, any culture that loses its native language loses its identity! One only has to travel to Scotland or Ireland to find a people suffering from cultural amnesia! Many of the hills, glens, towns and villages have Gaelic names of which many of the natives, because they have lost their native tongue, are unable to relate to placenames. Thus, they are (like those living in Babel at the time when the great Tower was destroyed), linguistically confused and have become somewhat detached from their environment. With the social fabric unravelling, the cultural cohesion thus weakened, and in many ways so too the idea of “belonging to the land” thus destroyed, it makes it easier for a disinherited populace to migrate.
According to the Old Testament historian Alfred Edersheim, using the Biblical chronology, Bishop Ussher dates the year of creation (at least the creation of man) as 4004 BC. Therefore barely 6,000 years have passed since God formed man from the dust of the ground. Ussher’s chronology is the view held by Christian orthodoxy (to which we adhere).154 He dates the great Deluge, when God wiped out all of mankind (bar the eight on the Ark), as 2348-9 BC.
Getting to where we want to go, Ussher dates the Confusion of Tongues at Babel as 2233 BC. Therefore barely 115 years had passed since the earth started to be repopulated by (Noah's three sons) Shem, Ham, and Japheth (and their respective wives). Of course, treating this as factual history tends to cause derision in those who operate under Evolutionary presuppositions. But be that as it may, we are here at the moment talking about the Christian view of history. Therefore, since we are dealing with a real historical event (as recorded in the historically dependable and therefore accurate Bible in Genesis 11), we can presume that the population that gathered to build the Tower of Babel would not have been that great of a multitude.
At this time, according to the Bible, at the time of the building of the Tower, “the whole earth had one language and one speech” (Gen. 11:1). The Hebrew has: “Now had the whole earth one language and words few.” (John Joseph Owens) The Hebrew word for “words” in this passage is of course “dabar-im” (the “im” ending in Hebrew being for the plural). Those at the Tower of Babel literally were men of few words!
Part of the Cultural Mandate given in Genesis 1:26-28 to mankind in Adam, and repeated when Noah et al exited the Ark (Gen. 9:1-7), is the cultivating of language, which necessarily includes the coining of new words. It should be remembered that God Himself in the very beginning, by merely speaking His Word, created things that are (e.g., space, time, and matter) from things that are not (Gen. 1; Heb. 11:3). Thus, when God confused the languages at Babel to spread man over the face of the whole earth, He was ensuring that man would cultivate the new language that each (family group?) had been given. It is at this juncture that we are faced with a problem – if our thesis (that Hebrew was the original or pre-Babel tongue) is to hold up.
We believe that when Moses wrote the Pentateuch (i.e., the first five books of the Bible – Genesis to Deuteronomy) he made use of written records of genealogies and such like that Noah had preserved from the Flood. E.g., pre-Deluge Genesis 5:1 states: “This is the book of the genealogy of Adam.” If Moses was able to read and utilise this book and such like records, then he was familiar with the original language. Since Moses wrote in ancient Hebrew, we believe that the pre-Babel spoken and written language was ancient Hebrew. Of course, all this only accounts for one of Noah’s three sons, i.e., the Hebrew-speaking Shem – from which we get the Semites. A descendant of Shem is, of course, Eber, from whose name we believe we get the title of the people referred to as the Hebrews (Gen. 10:21).
The three main clans then at the time when God confused the original language of the men of few words were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Here is what Alfred Edersheim has to say about this:
"In accordance with the general plan on which Holy Scripture is written, we read after the prophecy of Noah, which fixed the future of his sons, no more of that patriarch than that he “lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years” and that he died at the age of nine hundred and fifty years.
"Regarding the division of earth among his three sons, it may be said generally, that Asia was given to Shem, Africa to Ham, and Europe to Japheth. In the same general manner a modern scholar has traced all existing languages to three original sources, themselves, no doubt, derived from a primeval spring, which may have been lost in the “confusion of tongues,” though its existence is attested by constant and striking points of connection between the three great families of languages. The more we think of the allotment of Europe, Asia, and Africa among the three sons of Noah, the more clearly do we see the fulfilment of prophecy regarding them. As we run our eye down the catalogue of nations in Genesis 10, we have little difficulty in recognising them; and beginning with the youngest, Japheth, we find of those known to the general reader, the Cymry of Wales and Brittany (Gomer), the Scythians (Magog), the Medes (Madai), the Greeks (Ionians, Javan), and the Thracians (Tiras). Among their descendants, the Germans, Celts, and Armenians have been traced to the three sons of Gomer. It is not necessary to follow this table farther, though all will remember Tarshish or Spain, and the Kittim, or “inhabitants of the isles.”
"Passing next to Shem, we notice that he is called “the father of all the children of Eber,” because in Eber the main line is divided into that of Peleg, from whom the race of Abraham sprang, and the descendants of Joktan. The descendants of Shem are exclusively Asiatic nations, among who we only notice Asshur or Assyria, and Uz, as the land which gave birth to Job.
"We have reserved Ham for the last place, because of the connection of his story with the dispersion of all nations. His sons were Cush or Ethiopia, Mizraim or Egypt, Phut or Lybia, and Canaan, which, of course, we know. It will be noticed, that the seats of all these nations were in Africa, except that of Canaan, whose intrusion into the land of Palestine was put an end to by Israel. But yet another of Ham’s descendants had settled in Asia. Nimrod, the founder of the Babylonian empire."155
Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by Thy help I’ve come
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wandering from the fold of God
He to rescue me from danger
Interposed His precious blood.156
Now, we spoke earlier of Ten Lost Tribes. Speculation as to where those tribes or individuals from those tribes disappeared to, should not detract us from the fact that after the Tower of Babel incident people started migrating. Many went westward, such as the “Scythians,” (see e.g., Col. 3:11). Our old friend, the late Rev Prof Dr Francis Nigel Lee, when writing, would hyphenate the word so that it read “Scyt-hians”. Some pronounce that beginning of that word as if it had something to do with a tool with a curved blade, i.e., a scythe. However, when talking about the Scythians Nigel Lee would make a connection between Scyt-hian and Scot-ian, and would make connections between the Celts and their stone monuments dotted all over Britain and Ireland (such as the Standing Stones of Callanish, the Clava Stones, Ballynoe Stone Circle, Drombeg Stone Circle and Stonehenge), and those in the Bible (e.g., Josh. 4), not to mention a connection between tartan and Joseph’s coat of many colours (Gen. 37:3).
Referred to by Edersheim are also, we believe, those who are mentioned as the forefathers of the Scots in the historical discourse in Scotland’s “Declaration of Arbroath” (1320), a letter the Scottish nobles sent to the pope. A portion of which gives a bit of a history of the Scots and reads as follows:
"Most Holy Father, we know and from the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, has been graced with widespread renown. It journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage peoples, but nowhere could it be subdued by any people, however barbarous. Thence it came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to its home in the west where it still lives today. The Britons it first drove out, the Picts it utterly destroyed..."
“Mind your Ps and Qs” could easily be applied to the P and Q Celts. P-Celtic refers to the Brythonic/Brittonic languages of the Welsh, Manx, Cornish, Bretons, et al, and Q-Celtic refers to the Goidelic/Gaelic languages, which include Irish (Gaeilge) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig). Thus, the Declaration of Arbroath is referring to the Q Celts coming from Ireland and driving out the Britons, i.e., the P Celts, from Scotland, and destroying them and the Picts who are believed to have been relatives of the Britons.
We won’t get side-tracked, but who hasn’t heard of the comic hero Astrix the Gaul? It is interesting to note that the Gauls (Latin: Galli; Ancient Greek: Γαλάται, Galátai) were a group of Celtic peoples whose homeland was known as Gaul (Gallia) where France is today. Then there were the Galatians. Says William Hendriksen,
"About the year 278 B.C. a large body of Gauls or Kelts, who had previously invaded and ravaged Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace, crossed over into Asia Minor ... they belonged to three tribes: the Trochmi, Tectosages, and Tulisbogii … All three tribes were Galli, that is, Gauls (“warriors”), also called Galatae, that is, Galatians (“nobles”)."157
But we mustn’t digress.
The stone under the throne upon which British monarchs are now crowned was the stone upon which, firstly, Irish kings at Tara and subsequently the Scottish kings at Scone had been crowned beforehand. It is known as the Stone of Scone, or the Stone of Destiny. This is what the Celtic Gaels call, An Lia Fáil, and what the English call, “the coronation stone.” Another name for this stone is “Jacob’s pillow” (Gen. 28:11). “And this stone which I have set as a pillar shall be God’s house” (Gen. 28:22a). What’s with the Celts and their setting up stone pillars all over the place and carrying stones, even Jacob’s pillow, all across Europe too? Cultural influence!
As people spread across the earth, so do their languages with them, influencing others with their preferred types of clothing, food, drink, and music and dance, and with their customs, such as setting up lasting memorials in stone. We use the word culture to describe how a people live. How they live is that people expressing their religion. Part of the religion of the Celts was to erect monoliths, like those dotted all over the Promised Land. However, there is one single stone that is the most important to have, Jesus Christ, because “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psa. 118:22; Matt. 21:42).
Edersheim (above) says that “a modern scholar” (we do not know who) traces all existing languages to three original sources (Shem, Ham, and Japheth?), “no doubt, derived from a primeval spring.” Thus, according to Edersheim (and other reputable scholars), there is evidence of a linguistic “primeval spring.” We venture that this primeval spring (as we noted above) is ancient Hebrew. Thus, one would expect to find a residue of the ancient Hebrew spoken by those pre-Babel men of few words (dabar-im) even in contemporary languages. Says Nigel Lee:
"From the Ancient-Irish Leabhar Gabhala (alias The Book of Invasions), we glean that at least some of the early inhabitants of Ireland had come from Iberia alias Spain. They called their new habitat ‘New Iberia’ alias ‘Hibernia’ – later abbreviated first to ‘Ierne’ or ‘Erne’ and then to ‘Eire’ and ‘Erin.’ The feasibility of the above claims can to some extent be seen in the ancient languages concerned. Quite apart from the Celtic source of many ‘Later-European’ words, one should also consider the grounds there may be for tracing many Hebrew words to an origin similar to the source also of Celtic. Both Proto-Celtic and Proto-Hebrew can to some extent be seen to derive from common roots – either Pre-Babelic or Early-Postbabelic. Thus Crawford’s Ereuna – subtitled: Investigation of the Etymons of Words and Names, Classical and Scriptural, Through the Medium of Celtic. Moreover, as Crawford further remarks, Japheth shall be found to dwell in the tents of Shem. Genesis 9:26f. In Herodotus, the oldest of historians, it is mentioned that the Celts were the most western people of Europe. They had, in fact, penetrated to the most remote recesses of the British Isles. Colonists from Phoenicia were the founders of States in Greece – and even as far as Britain. Doubtless they brought their customs and language with them. The early language of Phoenicia seems to have been understood by Abraham, who conversed with her inhabitants without an interpreter. Consider the identity or similarity of some of the commonest words in Hebrew (H), in Anglo-Saxon (A), in Irish (I), and in Welsh (W). There is: ab (HI), father; adon (HW), lord; and ain (HI), eye. Ish (H) is comparable to aesc (A) & eis (I), man. Asaf (H) and osap (I) both mean: gather. Arur (H) and airire (I) mean: curse. Ben (H) and bin (I) mean: son. Then there is berith (H) and breith (I), meaning: covenant. Dag (HI) means: fish. Dad (H) and did (I) mean: breast. Gever (H) and gwr (W) mean: strong man. Tan (HA) means: basket. Malal (H) and maelan (A) mean: speak. Phar (H) and fear (A) means: bull. rosh (H) and reswa (A) mean: chief. And ur (HI) means: fire."158
At the heart of all languages, one would also expect to find revelation of Christ the Word (Hebrew Dabar) Himself, for it is He that gives all words (dabar-im) their true meaning (John 1:1; Col. 1:17). “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The Spirit of Christ goes with us. Abraham Kuyper could, perhaps, be called a Theologian of Culture. He poetically writes:
"The word is the material with which poetry is created, yet the word itself is not spiritual, but it is the material garment of the spiritual thought."159
