So
@Brad Watson_Miami if the big G wanted English to be the language of the land why didn't they make it so after they smoked the Tower of Babel and not wait till the 15th century to get the ball rolling on Modern English?
"Now the whole world had one language and one purpose." - Genasis 11:1
If you google
Genesis 11:1, you'll find slightly different wording for this very important Bible verse:
"one language and a common speech", "one language and of one speech", "one language and the same words". Yet these are redundant. In a Torah* that I have at home (Platt?),
Gn 11:1 reads
"Now the whole world had one language and one purpose." Now that's HUGE! When has the whole world** had one purpose?! This amazing unity can only be achieved through having one common language for all peoples.
The historic validity of their being a
Tower of Babel aka
Ziggurat of Babylon is definite. Every Sumerian/Mesopotamian city had a tower and a city deity...
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel
http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat
But does anyone really think that in c. 2100 BC, everyone around the world was speaking just one language?! It's ridiculous to everyone except Jewish-Christian-Muslim fundamentalists. But one of the points of this story is how important one common language for all humanity is!
"I. The advantages which befriended their design of keeping together, 1. They were all of
one language,
Gen. 11:1. If there were any different languages before the flood, yet Noah’s only, which it is likely was the same with Adam’s, was preserved through the flood, and continued after it. Now, while they all understood one another, they would be the more likely to love one another, and the more capable of helping one another, and the less inclinable to separate one from another." - Matthew Henry's commentary
Genesis 11:1-9 King James Version (KJV)
11:1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down 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 have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
*
Synchronism: 08:06 "It's you're rebirth". - GMA, ABC. **08:10 "Hello world, there's a song that I'm singing, come on get happy" -
Partridge Family song used in ad on ABC. 8:53
Clampetts Play The Rams, Beverly Hillbillies (
S4/Ep7, 1965) on MeTV