biblical theories of linguistics

  There are at least two accounts in the bible that seem to have inspired popularly-held and incorrect notions about language.
  The first is the theory of language as a nomenclature. georges mounin in Les problèmes theoretiques de la traduction cites this passage from genesis chapter 2 in illustrating the difference between the traditional theory and contemporary theory:
  "God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. . . . God called the dry ground land, and the gathered waters he called seas."
  Mounin claims that this passage supports the theory of language as a repertory of words, each corresponding to a preexisting idea. But if ideas were formed before words named them, we could expect each word in a language to be linked to a concept having equivalents in every other language, which of course is not true.
  The second is concerned with the present distribution of languages across the world. The journalist Irena Lozano wrote the following in her essay Lenguas en Guerra:
  "All linguistic diversity is caused, in part, by several minor linguistical factors of voluntary change, (for example, the changes that each new generation introduces into the language it inherits) and, above all, by extralinguistic factors such as migrations of people across the earth and the relative isolation in which people remained when communications were not so easy as they are now. Thus, the people who split up are those who create linguistic diversity.
  However, many of us have stuck in our minds the myth of Babel, which tells us exactly the opposite: God separated mens' languages, thus separating groups of people. As we know, linguistic investigation leads us to the contrary, that the diversity of languages that exists today is to a great extent the product of chance and circumstance."
  Lozano goes on to describe what she believes to be a harmful consequence of the acceptance of this myth: The belief that a community should be defined by its language.