Tower of Babel

Why is Archaeological Evidence Important?

 

Archaeological evidence is important in a very similar way as Non-Biblical Sources are important. They are both looking at ancient historical items that help us corroborate what the bible says. Although they could be categorized in the same topic, we felt they deserved seperate categories since when people think of archaelology they tend to think of digging for precious clay or rock inscriptions or large physical items; that attest to past events we've passed down over generations. Usually people aren't thinking of documents outside of the bible that attest to Jesus, his followers, and the Bible. 

 

We should find archaelogical evidence important because it can show us how different historical people in the bible, did in fact exist, among other things. It attests to the historical reliabilty of everything that is in the bible. This is especially useful for people when people deny the events in the bible as real historical events. 

 

Tower of Babel

 

The Bible has often been accused by some scholars in biblical studies throughout time as being innacurate and unreliable. However, time and time again, we have seen more evidence come over time proving that the Bible is in fact trustworthy. This is why we think it is an important practice in biblical studies to not adhere to ungodly views of the bible or christianity, and instead wait and see, and have faith that God will eventually reveal the evidence we were needing to find in a certain area that caused us doubts. 

 

Here is why the story of the Tower of Babel did in fact happen:

 

According to scripture “The whole earth was of one language and one speech” Genesis 11:1 and in Genesis 11:9, God split languages up to confuse the people.

 

Many modern-day philologists attest to the likelihood of one singular language origin called “monogenesis” some of them being, Alfredo Trombetti, Max Mueller, and Otto Jespersen.

 

The twenty or so language families have been found to have similarities across them as well as genetic similarities between the groups that speak those languages. Many linguistics argue that the original language that gave roots to the twenty other families no longer exists. Very few linguistics argue this point.

 

Although it has been deemed impossible to prove whether or not their was a “proto/first” language, due to 19.5% of all vocabulary changing every 10,000 years, it is likely that scripture is correct in their being one original language that changed in Genesis 11:9

 

This view of orgin of language is called Monogenesis. It is the view that there is one singular origin language. The opposite view is called Polygenesis, which is the view that there was multiple languages of origin for the languages we have today. This is a niche subject not worth grounding your faith in because both a polygenesis view of langauges and a monogenesis view of languages are compatible with scripture. 

 

If you interpret langauge origin as polygensis in scripture as long as it is after the Babel event in history, it is perfectly reasonable to believe language could have been polygenesis. However, langauge had to have been a monogenesis origin before the Babel event in history. We think that this way of looking at it makes the most sense for how modern languages have derrived themselves too.

 

Source: Josh McDowell