A Reality Check on Restoring Language: Restoring a pure language – that’s not today and we’re not going to do that on our own.
Genesis 11:1 Trying to do this ourselves is likely prohibited. We know that when mankind tries to act like YHVH, He is not pleased. The verse from Isaiah about rebuilding Jerusalem better. Isaiah 9:8-11 when Ephraim and the Samarians say in their heart ehy will rebuild Israel better, it is considered from pride and self-will, thus YHVH sends adversaries to smite them more. By extension, we should realize that until He wants language restored, it will not happen.
That doesn’t mean we don’t try to learn what the ancients were communicating, but we need to be cognizant of pride, our motivations, and the reality of our present state. While we can learn a lot from studying, we need to realize they were in a state of flux as well. It’s Genesis 11 where mankind had a unified language. That means Moses did not.
Entropy is a word that means chaos or disorder always increases. This is often illustrated by dropping a perfect pile of marbles on the ground to see how the marbles that travel the furthest have the largest deviation from the original pile. Our present state of language is an enormous illustration of this. I recently found a fun YouTube channel called RobWords. This gentleman traces the history of languages throughout history. What I learned, and should have already known, is that our English alphabet isn’t the English alphabet at all. It’s the Latin alphabet. The English alphabet is a set of characters called runes. I know English is a mutt of a language, but I found the extent of this to be astonishing. I have put a link to one of Rob’s videos in the comments and hope you find time to watch. I’ve watched a number of his presentations and am floored each time. But it reminds me that for us in our present state of perpetual confusion to think we have some miniscule chance at restoring the pure language ourselves is absolute folly.
Rob Words video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4npuVmGxXuk
The other remarkable illustration of this is rooted in the restoration of the nation of Judah which is called Israel today. A member of our group sent this video to me about two years ago. When the Jews from all over the world returned to Israel, they set about recording how those who had kept Hebrew alive pronounced the language. Not surprising at all, but the different regions spoke the language significantly different from each other. This video illustrates some of the differences, which even persist to this day. Of course, we all know that languages are not static from English. The Australians and British have distinctly different accents and inside of the US, we have widely varying accents ourselves. Somehow, though, we get it into our minds that Hebrew is immune from change when it certainly is not.
Hebrew spoken from Jews who returned to the land. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1ofUZB-76w
I hope you all find some time to watch these videos. A couple takeaways from today’s message are that we should really be aware of our present state and set realistic goals for our studies. The expectation that we get the pronunciations perfect today simply is not true. We also need to be wary of shunning legitimate scholars and history in our studies. We have a tendency to do this because of how skewed Christianity has become by academia and clergy, but let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Good and edifying information is out there, even if it takes a bit of work to find it.
Have a blessed week as we begin or continue our preparations for this year’s Passover season. May Yahweh bless you and keep you in the Name of His Son, Yeshua.