Have you ever pondered just what a task it was for God to change one language at the tower of Babel into the varied languages of the world?

Languages are complex. It takes a long time to learn one well. And He meted out multiple languages in just one day!

I'm not sure it was a big task for God. But I understand what you mean.

pk

HEY PKRAUSE

YES I agree with you about not being a big task for GOD


dgrimm60

Perhaps a re-creation process in the brain or simply rewiring.

I wonder just how many languages it was at the first count.
You know some languages have evolved in recent history.

It's like how many actual animals went into the ark and how many have divided off since that time.

There would be the latin language, the asian languages, the slavic type language.

Right, and the Germanic and Scandinavian, etc.

It would be easier for us if some of them were phonetic, like Esperanto, but I think that Esperanto is a human creation. God really meant business when he divided up the languages!

It's amazing that the combined intellect of multiple highly talented human beings is what it takes for us to accomplish even minor tasks (in God's eyes) and how He effortlessly matches and surpasses those talents by infinite times. All He did was have a multitude of angels touch a few individuals and their language was changed! Amazing. :)

For Him who created the tongue, and Who brought forth plants and aminals with but Words?

Seems to me a simple Word would have been enough for Him to create the incredible complexities of the different language groups we see today.

The languages likely caused the people to break into the various people groups that went out and inhabited the world. These groups would have migrated to various geographical locations. I think of groups like Egyptians (Africa), Mesopotamians (Middle East), Indus (India/Pakistan), Pre-Minoans (Europe), Carales (America), Longshan (China), Aborigines (Australia).

The Tower of Babel happened about 100 years after the Flood. That was well into the ice age. The sea level was lower which allowed for people groups to move out and inhabit the continents much easier than they could have done post-ice-age.

If God were to change your language today, like He did to people at the Tower, you would not be immediatly aware of the change. Unless God left some sort of memory of your former language; But I dont think He would do that. God never reprograms our mind without us knowing and agreeing to any change. It's always a cooperative effort. For God to do otherwise would be changing our identity, killing one person to create another. Ofcourse, God would never do that. An intelligent being is so important, sacred, precious, (I cant come up with the best word here)that He died so that you and I could stay in existance. The Creator doesnt create frivilously.
At the Tower of Babel everyone had the same language. Did the original language survive? If so,maybe Abraham spoke it and if so, Hebrew would be close to what Adam himself spoke and would not that be the language of Heaven?

Perhaps the story in scripture encapsulates an event that took some years to transpire; it only reads to us today as happening instantaneously. And perhaps the story got written in mythic terms to illustrate important principles rather than tell a literal account. Sort of like the parables Jesus told.

Just food for thought.

HEY MAGDALENA

well I that is and interesting thought

also I am sure it had to take some time as
the people were building a large tower


dgrimm60

That is the way I see it too, Magdalena.

dab

I do not believe that the change of languages was a gradual process. A decision was made to go down to earth and see first hand the progress that man had made. God pulled the contractor's permit.

One people, one language became many groups and amd many speech patterns. While the 'ancient tongue' may have remained intact and used frequently, it is not important.

ChildofChrist, really? One people, one language and all with the same DNA became all of the races? Ok, but science will disagree with you on this.

What if God created all of the races in the creation found in Gen. 1 and then created Adam in the creation found after verse 2 of Gen. 2? When reading the Septuagent it sure appears as though this is what really happend, and then God again separated the races at the Tower of Babel. (This is only a theory--I was not there and neither were you.)

I did not say they had the same DNA but they were of one family. Noah was their daddy.Do you believe in the Biblical account of the Great Flood and Noah's ark.

You are correct, neither of us were there at that time.

some of the same things that were happening before the flood, were also happening afterward. Remember the giants in the land? There were giants in the land after the flood also. The sons of God took the daughters of men for wives again. So the DNA of the fallen angels/sons of God were possibly in the mix at the tower of Babel.

Ok, can anyone tell me who the 'giants' were and were they came from and how did they escape the flood?

I am assuming the flood story has been read.

Sons of God were attracted to daughters of men and their union produced giants. I didn't say any of these giants survived the flood. They didn't. But the fallen angels, sons of God, certainly did. And so did daughters of man. The same thing that occurred before the flood, happened again. The first set of giants didn't escape the flood, and the post flood giants didn't escape the sword of David. But the sons of God are still around, and we can expect them to revisit their sins with modern women before the return of Jesus, and again there will be giants in the land. For as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be before the end. Again I am assuming this is not an unfamiliar text.

I find it *highly* unlikely that "sons of God" is referring to fallen angels. It is more likely referring to godly men, just as that term can be found in numerous places in the Bible referring to godly men. No need to add a bizarre twist to the term.

The Bible does not say that these unions produced giants. It says that the giants were around at the same time when these unions happened.

The "as in the days of Noah" quotation has nothing to do with giants. It is talking about people going about their business as if nothing is going to happen.

HEY CAROLAA

yes have to agree with you that the sons of GOD were
godly men not angels


dgrimm60

HEY DR. RICH

IN GEN chap 6 ver 1 this was before the
flood so the giants did not make it out of the
flood

the flood happened in GEN Chap 7 and Chap 8

IN GEN chap 4 ver 17---18---19---20---21---22---23---24

these were Cain's lineage so the daughters of men
came from them

the sons of GOD came form ADAM lineage


dgrimm60

But there were giants after the Flood, so how did that happen?

HEY CAROLAA

WELL GOLIATH had 4 brothers that were as
tall as he was and GOLIATH WAS 9 feet tall

dgrimm60

I think it would be interesting to read a Jewish Bible that was translated to english directly from the Hebrew and get there prospective on the Flood!

pk

Who cares when it was written---what do the words say? Come on now--they were before and after the flood. (I give up)

Do you know anything about Anaki--or the 'sons of Anak? And tell me, just who were the 'gods' mentioned in the ten commandments? (Ohhh, I'm getting too old for this-I think I will give up atempting to teach when no one seems to want to learn--?)

Arrogance has little ability to teach.

Yep, Oh well--

Book of Enoch, ch 6 & 7, says they were fallen angels.

Thanks Oldsailor, the people of Sumar also called the 'watcher' the fallen ones and Satan was called the Lord of the Flies, or the King of the ones who fly.

HEY DR. RICH AND OLDSALOIR29

IF you are applying the the giants were angel

and the these were control by the devil

that would make them bad and yet the daughters
were of men meaning control by the devil

because the SONS OF GOD have to be of GOD AND JESUS

so I am not sure were you are going with this


dgrimm60

I'm not sure what you are saying here dgrimm60, but I will try to explain my point.


I'm not sure what you mean. Dr. Rich and I are clearly not on the same page here. However, I don't think either one of us said that the giants were angels. That is clearly a misunderstanding. "Sons of God" refers to divine beings, which means direct creations of God.

A question was brought up about the post flood DNA at the time of the tower, and someone said it was all from Noah's family. I merely pointed out that the Sons of God, i.e. fallen angels who raped and impregnated women before the flood, were still around to add their DNA to the mix before they were building the tower of Babel.

Then carolaa said she didn't believe that was true.

Then I said the book of Enoch chs. 6 & 7 says they were the fallen angels. And Dr. Rich said something about Sumerian text, with which I am not familiar. Maybe that is where the book of Enoch came from, I don't know.

What happens sometimes in the Bible is, some things are just a little too rough for the sensitivities of people, so the editors would substitute less offensive words or in this case a less offensive interpretation. One well known substitution is the word "feet," in place of a word for genitals, like in a description of angels with 3 pairs of wings, one pair of which covered their "feet."

Most people would probably say that the sons of God were righteous men, and daughters of men were unrighteous women. This would seem to make sense, except the text says the "sons of God" took the ones they wanted, without regard for what the women wanted. It just seems to me that righteous men wouldn't force the women against their will. And it just makes more sense, that the "sons of God" spoken of there were fallen angels.

This fits so well when I remember the context. It was not a peaceful time on earth. People were committing all kinds of sins. Some things they did were so evil that even some descendants of Cain refused to participate.

Anyway dgrimm60, I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to say, but I hope this clears up any misunderstanding of my post for you.

Edited by Tom Wetmore (40 minutes 14 seconds ago)
Edit Reason: quote box removed - see the one rule that rings them all here in Middle Earth Forum

AHA!!!!

So that's what happened to my quote boxes. Now I am wondering what in the world I did wrong here. Can somebody help me out here?

HEY OLD SALIOR29


WHEN you said that the sons of GOD took the women
with out regard IN GEN chap 6 ver 2 it says they(meaning
the sons of GOD) took wife's for themselves of all whom
the chose it sounds like they chose many wife's

then in GEN Chap 6 ver 4 yes it does say that
in those days and afterward but like I told CAROLAA
that Goliath had 4 brothers and they were all
the same size and Goliath was 9 feet tall

also when the spies check out the land of ISRAEL
10 said there were giants in the land

now I HAVE not read the book of Enoch so I don't
what it is talking about but I DO NOT see how these
verse can be talking about the devil angels


dgrimm60

I guess we're not allowed to use quote boxes, or quotes of any kinds, in this forum.

What is the basis for believing that Enoch wrote this book?

I was at what we think was Noah's wife's grave a few years ago.
It was for a person about nine feet tall.

So are you saying Noah's wife was one of the Nephilim, or that she was descended from them?

No worries about the enforcement of the one rule of this forum. ( It is at the top of the menu.) Take some time and read through the locked topic at the top of the topic menu for the Original Thoughts Forum. That will give you the reasons behind this forum. The idea is to think and express only ones own ideas in our own words.

Tom

oldsailor29... I want to thank you for your... interesting... point of view on the "Sons of God" and "Daughters of Men". I am wonder is: why are you in this forum?? Adventist do not acknowledge the book of Enoch as a valid book of the Bible. Shoot.. Most Protestants don't either.

If he is an Adventist, and he does, then I guess some Adventists DO recognize that book as inspired.

I doubt its inspiration, but I'm open about it. It's worth considering even as a source of possibly-true Jewish tradition.

TWNolan - My main reference is the book of Genesis. I was only using the book of Enoch as helpful for interpretation. Yes the fallen angels were created by God, and were therefore "Sons of God."

I was raised in the SDA church. We belong together. Just because my beliefs differ some from standard SDA beliefs does not mean I want to give up on trying to change that which is wrong. EGW said that our church is feeble and defective. To correct this I want all SDAs to start reading the quotations of Jesus.

I think the best way to do this is to go to the Bible on line and copy and paste the first 5 books of the NT and the first 3 chapters of Revelation to your word processor. Then go through and group all His quotes into categories. It doesn't matter which categories. Make up your own. Let the Holy Spirit lead you. The first time I did this, I used the seven elements of the ancient Suzerainty covenants as categories. I have started doing it again, and this time I am adding another category, "conversion," to my list of chapters.

And another reason I read and post on this forum is that I find a lot of misinformation distributed here. I add my little bits to help SDAs with our faith. it is very discouraging at times, but the Lord refreshes me, and i stay.

Just as a tag on, we knew these men a few years back, they were from the middle east, and I sure wish I could remember which country, but I can't. Anyways, they told us that in there country there was an ancient cemetary and the graves were all 10 to 11 feet long, because the people were all that tall. Wasn't Adam himself supposed to be 18 feet tall? So if he was that tall his descendants wouldn't be getting shorter over night, that would take generations too. Then after the flood you would have some that would be tall they would marry tall women and have tall kids, and some shorties doing the same thing.

Just like today, you have some really tall people, like the Zulu warriours and then you have the pygmies.

The size of normal people from Adam through pre-history has nothing to do with the giants which were the children produced from the union of the sons of God and the daughters of man.

One is not allowed to go to references on this forum. Only 'original thoughts' are allowed. If one gets their thoughts from another source ... then the thoughts are not original.

I know I have read that before, so it could not be original.

MODERATOR POST -

Just to clarify, absolutely original ideas are not required, although strongly encouraged. (In fact, I am most delighted to hear something new and thought provoking...) However, the expression of any idea, even if from another source or even an old familiar topic, must be in your own words, expressed as your own original thoughts on the topic.

As a retired English professor, Alex could educate us on the fine art of using other sources without plagiarizing them. It requires some creative thought and writing. That is what I am after.

Tom

Thanks Tom. That helps.

the book of enoch is part truth and part legend.

since we are told by Jesus that the angels neither marry nor are given in marriage-that was pretty much a quote :( - then we cant believe that the fallen angels mated with humans.

doing a search on "son(s)of God" tends to bear out that those who follow God are considered His children.

besides that believing extraterrestrials intermated with man tends to do away with the "great controversy" theme to a large degree it seems to me.

Hi Tom et al,

I heard my name being bandied about. Not sure I can help you here. Discussions of religious ideas are always going to be precarious. The stumbling block for most Adventists in expressing their own ideas is the very strong omnipresence of the SOP. Even if they don't quote directly, their minds have been infused with EGW comments over the years.

To abide by Tom's one important rule, we can say things like, "I believe based on my Biblical studies that -________" or we can paraphrase important ideas/statements/quotes by simply putting them into our own words.

The antediluvian period has always been a fascination to me. When I asked Dr. Lawrence Geraty, a world renowned Adventist Biblical archeologist whether there was any archeological evidence that was clearly antediluvian in nature, his response was a simple "No."

I think the question should be asked if the Bible should be used for more than a moral code for living but rather as a scientific text? As for language, the very etymology of our word "babble" probably comes from "Babel" - a confusion of words. As for giants, I defer to anthropologists.

Alex

I don't think it's necessarily true that angels could not mate with humans. They can take the form of humans. Why could they not *keep* that form and mate with human women?

That, up there, in that post a few posts before mine, makes more sense to me now. I thought it was a forum for original thought! Now I get it. It's a forum for original wording. Got it! Thanks for the clarification.

well, rudywoofs, that would be a good question for the adventist spiritualists among us, since they believe angels to be "spirits" or immaterial. so does an immaterial being take on a material body?

as for me i choose to believe what i believe the bible/sop say. that the angels are material beings, that they are sexless as we will be. paraphrasing, they will neither marry nor have sex.

i cant believe God to be so cruel as to leave us sexual beings with no outlet for eternity.

i believe the angels to be in the same form as we are with detachable wings, but not of "flesh and blood". if they appeared in human form, and im sure their glory was "veiled", as was Jesus when He appeared to abraham, then it makes sense to me that they took off their wings.

the bible says in one place that flesh and blood can not inherit heaven, and in another that we will be "changed"...

who was it in the Bible who entertained angels unawares? The angels ate food. That seems to indicate a form of flesh and blood. But I could be wrong.

There are 6700 languages in the world along with possibly thousands of languages that have become extinct. This idea that these were created at the tower of babel is simply ridiculous. We can trace language trees geographically and see that there are separate hubs for language development all over the planet.

If there was a central source of separate language you would see a far different pattern of development and far more blended languages.

This is iron age reasoning to explain the world with the lack of scientific systems of inquiry.

But only if you discount the possibility of a Original Language Maker that determined an effective way to get people to disperse and inhabit the whole earth would be to create multiple languages...

Once wide dispersion of the Tower builders according to common languages was accomplished then you would see the sub-language development from the hubs of which you speak. I don't think it a reasonable conclusion that the thousands of languages we see today were created at Babel. To break up that party it would only have needed a few separate languages.

I do suspect there were some details left out. What was it a two sentence comment?

in reply to pam, i agree. the bible says flesh and blood cant inherit heaven, yet we know we will not be immaterial beings, i hope. im not sure how many adventists have more of the protestant understanding than what was the adventist view.

david either knew, or was inspired to record, the fact that angels do eat: Psa 78:24, 25.

so angels do have bodies, the same kind of bodies we will be transformed into, but we dont know what kind of bodies they have, but we do know we will eat.

paul points out the differences in flesh in man, birds, cows, fish, so that should help us understand maybe. 1Co 15:39 any meat eater could understand the point i think.

These hubs of language are too far apart to have come from a single source. We are talking about different continents, not regional migration. There are too many problems to take the tower of Babel seriously.

if one language is instantly changed into a few different ones then why would people not unite with those who spoke the same language they did and go off in different directions?

your statement would imply the different languages "evolved" from one common one over time instead of being instantly changed, at least the way i understood it.

Let's say people united under their individual languages and separated. If the tower of Babel was somewhere in Iraq then how did language hubs get to Austrailia, South America, and even Africa. These distances would be highly unlikely. If this happened language wouldn't prevent people from trading and eventually learning each other's language and establishing adjacent cities and towns.

If you look at migration maps based on DNA you will see that migration went north from Africa. In the Bible it states that migration came to Babylon from the East.

This is most likely a myth.

ok, if thats how you see it. :)

I think this is an important distinction.

It's not how I see it, but where the evidence points.

Those are two different things.