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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2025
Theodore Hiebert’s interpretation of Genesis 11:1-9 as a story of the origins of cultural difference resulted in several responses which critiqued his reading and reasserted the traditional reading of the passage as a story of human pride and divine punishment. In the following article, I combine two threads of Hiebert’s interpretation and his respondents: language and background understanding. Specifically, I compare two views of language on offer in the modern world, illustrate how they may shape the interpretation of Genesis 11:1-9 and argue that the minority view provides a framework which better makes sense of the passage.
1 Theodore Hiebert, ‘The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World’s Cultures’, Journal of Biblical Literature 126 (2007), pp. 29–58. Hiebert’s interpretation is also presented in his book, The Beginning of Difference: Discovering Identity in God’s Diverse World (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2019).
2 Hiebert, ‘The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World’s Cultures’, p. 31.
3 Ibid., p. 33. Hiebert interprets the second half of the phrase, דברים אחדים, as emphatic of the uniform language.
4 All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
5 Hiebert, ‘The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World’s Cultures’, p. 36.
6 Ibid., p. 37.
7 Ibid., p. 41.
8 Ibid., p. 45.
9 Ibid., p. 49.
10 Ibid., p. 47.
11 Ibid., p. 53.
12 Ibid., pp. 53–4.
13 John T. Strong, ‘Shattering the Image of God: A Response to Theodore Hiebert’s Interpretation of the Story of the Tower of Babel’, Journal of Biblical Literature 127 (2008), pp. 625–34.
14 Ibid., pp. 628–9.
15 Ibid., p. 632.
16 André Lacocque, ‘Whatever Happened in the Valley of Shinar? A Response to Theodore Hiebert’, Journal of Biblical Literature 128 (2009), pp. 29–41.
17 Ibid., p. 30.
18 Ibid., p. 31.
19 For example, on the translation of verse 7, Hiebert writes, ‘With no linguistic evidence to support these meanings, such translations of בלל in Genesis 11 can only be seen as theological, as the consequence of understanding the people’s project as an act of pride and defiance that demanded retribution from God.’ Hiebert, ‘The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World’s Cultures’, p. 48.
20 Charles Taylor, ‘Theories of Meaning’, in Philosophical Papers 1: Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: CUP, 1985), p. 257.
21 Ibid., p. 260.
22 Ibid., p. 262.
23 Cf. Gen. 27:44, 29:20; Dan. 11:20. In each of these other contexts, אחדים is best glossed ‘few’.
24 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1990), p. 351.
25 Hiebert, ‘The Tower of Babel’, p. 30.
26 Charles Taylor, The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), p. 21.
27 Charles Taylor, ‘The Importance of Herder’, in Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 97.
28 Of course, this portrait is not in the text. But it is one way of articulating the connection between the confusion of language and scattering which sit side by side in the text without an explanation of how they relate.
29 Hamilton, Genesis 1-17, p. 356.
30 Taylor, The Language Animal, p. 328.
31 Ibid., p. 327.
32 Taylor, ‘Theories of Meaning’, pp. 275–6.
33 One benefit of this view is that it re-incarnates human knowing as grounded ineluctably in embodied existence. There is no understanding apart from embodiment. By contrast, the designative view as articulated by Taylor furthers the Cartesian trend toward disembodiment.
34 While these differences could be overcome, doing so would require a costly openness to the other; ‘If understanding the other is to be construed as a fusion of horizons and not as possessing a science of the object, then the slogan might be: no understanding the other without a changed understanding of self.’ Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor, Retrieving Realism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 125.
35 Hiebert, The Beginning of Difference, p. 33.
36 Ibid. In light of this reading, Hiebert does not interpret Gen. 12:1-3 as establishing any privilege or normative value to the call of Abram and his descendants. The purpose of Genesis 1-11, according to Hiebert, is to establish cultural difference as a norm in the world: ‘people desire uniformity and God desires diversity’. Hiebert, ‘The Tower of Babel’, p. 57.
37 Taylor, The Language Animal, p. 328.
38 There are implications here for a cruciform reading of the call of Abram in Genesis 12, one whereby a set of people will pay the price of such an exemplary, if not missional, way of life.
39 J.A. Loubser, ‘Apartheid Theology: A “Contextual” Theology Gone Wrong?’, Journal of Church and State (1996), p. 328.
40 See Taylor, ‘Language and Human Nature,’ in Philosophical Papers 1: Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1985), pp. 215–47.