Annotatio LXXXVII

”And the earth was of one lip [language].” — Genesis 11:1

Chrysostom, in homily 30 on Genesis, narrating this, says that before the building of the tower of Babel there was one natural language of all men, and that all mortals used the same speech.¹ Which opinion — the author’s name being omitted, however — Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia, in the Catalogue of Heresies, chapter 106, reprobates as heretical,² asserting that it must be firmly believed that even many ages before the building of Babel there were several varieties of speech and of languages, the knowledge of which all men had from God’s gift up to the construction of the tower and the confusion of tongues; but that Moses says the earth was “of one lip,” he thinks was said because, although there were several kinds of languages, yet all understood one another — and there was to all one language and the same speech, not according to the same use of words, but according to the same understanding of meanings. Alphonsus [de Castro] of Zamora, in book 9 Against Heresies, is so far from this censure of Philastrius that he judges it [Philastrius’s view] to be heretical: because Moses most openly teaches that, before the times of Babel, there was only one language of all — when he says, “And the earth was of one lip, and of the same words”; and when, a little after, he adds that in the building of Babel the lip of the whole earth was then first confounded — that is, then first began to be divided, and various, and manifold, which before had been simple, undivided, and one. It must be held, therefore, according to the true explanation of Chrysostom, that there was only one speech of all mortals before the building of the tower; and Philastrius is, on this point, to be rejected — who, it appears, was deceived by a light consideration of the words of Moses: who, before he began, in chapter 11, to describe the building of the tower, had first, in chapter 10, narrated how the seven sons of Japheth divided the islands of the nations in their regions, each according to their languages and their kindreds. Which words, not noticing that they were said by anticipation [prolepsis], Philastrius thought that there were already then several languages before Babel was built. For it is, according to the rule of Tyconius, the custom of divine Scripture to narrate some things by anticipation — namely, that before they are done they should be somehow, and cursorily, narrated, so that afterward each thing done should be described more fully in its own order. And that this is the true interpretation of this passage, Augustine teaches, in book 16 On the City of God, chapter 4, writing thus: “When, therefore, those nations are reported to have been in their own languages, the narrator nevertheless returns to that time when there was one Language of all, and thence now expounds what happened, so that a diversity of languages should arise. ‘And,’ he says, ‘all the earth was one lip, and one voice to all.’”