Re: Babel in the east or not?

taliesin the storyteller wrote:

> Which is right? Going towards the east or going away from
> the east?
I asked myself the same question when I translated it into Ge'arthnuns.
Mark Shoulson's Verbatim English translation from the Hebrew uses
"from":

http://members.aol.com/JAHenning/babel/englvrbm.htm

When looking at how other languages, nat and con, dealt with it for a
little moral backing, I found a split slightly favoring the "from"
interpretation:

TO                              FROM
--                              ----

English (ASV)                   English (everything else I found)
Mandarin                        Vulgate Latin
Dutch                           French
Icelandic                       Spanish
German                          German (another translation)
Norwegian                       Italian
Swedish                         Brithenig
Danish                          Drasle'q
Portuguese                      Dunia
Almaquerin                      Dzalze
Elet Anta                       Eklektu
Eurolang                        Esperanto
Quenya                          Kelen~
                                Loglan (95, at least)
                                Rokbeigalmki

However, the Easton Bible Dictionary explains:

"Their object in building this tower was probably that it
might be seen as a rallying-point in the extensive plain of Shinar, to
which they had emigrated from
the uplands of Armenia, and so prevent their being scattered abroad."

in which emigration from Armenia seems to imply eastward movement.

So much fuss over one little preposition...

*Fortunately*, the locative case in Ge'arthnuns can also be used in
ablative and allative senses when context is clear. Of course, in this
case, context *isn't* clear, so in the Ge'arthnuns passage Genesis XI:2:

Zc,eshtano" sauk i'alo"rsaup le' orha che i'evethsev odro"be'naz sho,

"che i'evethsev" is in the locative which means they could be migrating
from the east, to the east, or even in the east. I find it delightfully
ambiguous. One online Bible commentary said that the Hebrew could be
read as either "from the east" or "eastward", so until I learn Biblical
Hebrew, ancient history, demography, and geography and am able to make a
determination for myself, the ambiguity stands.

Kou