Re: OT: babel and english

John Cowan wrote:

> Thomas R. Wier scripsit:
>
> > > Like most secular humanist explanations for myth origins, this one is
> > > highly unsatisfactory.
> >
> > I should first off probably clarify that I do not consider myself a
> > secular humanist, and therefore it should not be assumed that I give
> > full credence to this belief.
>
> Well, I do so consider myself, and I find the explanation utterly unconvincing.
> Trying to find an explanation of the Babel story in the domain of history
> rather than poetry (broadly conceived) is like trying to figure out just
> what astronomical object might have been the Star of Bethlehem: a good
> party game, but not sober history.
I disagree somewhat.  Historians cannot simply discount such mythical stories
because all too often a grain of truth is contained in them. Also, methodologically
speaking,  if one *starts out* by discounting the story simply because one doesn't
want to believe it, you are prima facie throwing away possible evidence. In
mythical stories of great length, such as the Iliad or the Mahabharata, which
make reference to place names, it is actually possible sometimes, as Heinrich
Schliemann showed, to make historical sense out of an otherwise literary
document. The difference between the Iliad and the Babel Story is one not of
quality but of quantity:  there are simply not enough salient indicators in the
handful of lines in the Babel story to make any historical sense out of it. You
have "Shinar" and "Babel", that's it.  That's why I said in my last post on this
subject that the problem is basically pinning the story down, not in whether we
believe it or not, which is irrelevent.

===================================
Thomas Wier | AIM: trwier

"Aspidi men Saiôn tis agalletai, hên para thamnôi
  entos amômêton kallipon ouk ethelôn;
autos d' exephugon thanatou telos: aspis ekeinê
  erretô; exautês ktêsomai ou kakiô" - Arkhilokhos

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