The Tower of Babel and Language Corruption

This paper analyzes a set of ideas about language attested by late antique Christian writers—namely, their speculations on what kind of transformation languages undergo over time and their ethical, theological, and historical assessments of linguistic change and linguistic diversity. The incident that triggered the diversification of languages was normally associated with the biblical story about the Tower of Babel (Gen 11.1–9), the single dramatic event that once and for all changed the linguistic makeup of humanity and could be considered a disaster par excellence. And yet, the attitudes of late antique writers to the event and the subsequent linguistic diversification ranged from overtly negative (divine punishment and revenge) to reservedly positive (a minor inconvenience that prevented further wrongdoing) to a wholeheartedly optimistic reaction. Similarly, the gradual process of language change that always happens over time was often described in terms of “corruption” and “decline.” Observations of ancient writers that languages “get corrupted” due to multiple factors presuppose the slippery slope of a slow, empirically unimpressive, but steady and sure catastrophe. Its consequences are more threatening the less attention people pay to it. Comparing the two conceptual frames late antique writers employed to approach linguistic transformations—the sudden dramatic confusion of tongues at Babel and the everyday “slow catastrophe” of language corruption—this study challenges our own scholarly views on what constituted a disaster for intellectuals in Late Antiquity.