Genesis 11:1-9 (NEB) –
Once upon a time all the world spoke a single language and used the same words. As men journeyed in the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them hard’; they used bricks for stone and bitumen for mortar. ‘Come,’ they said, ‘let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and make a name for ourselves; or we shall be dispersed all over the earth.’
Then the LORD came down to see the city and tower which mortal men had built, and he said, ‘Here they are, one people with a single language, and now they have started to do this; henceforward nothing they have a mind to do will be beyond their reach. Come, let us go down there and confuse their speech, so that they will not understand what they say to one another.’ So the LORD dispersed them from there all over the earth, and they left off building the city. That is why it is called Babel¹, because the LORD there made a babble of the language of all the world; from that place the LORD scattered men all over the face of the earth.
¹That is Babylon.
I’ve been reading Peter Lopez’s blog, beautyofthebible.com, lately, especially his post, “Genesis 1:1 and God’s Great Ambiguity“. Peter has spent one whole year (!) studying the inherent ambiguity of this verse and how various translations have treated it. In his post, Peter offers a number of different styles of translation, all built on the ambiguity of the underlying Hebrew text. The one that caught my attention was a translation he called “The Narrative”:
1 The beginning: God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the abyss. God breathed on the surface of the waters and they started to vibrate. 3 And God said to light “you will exist,” and light existed.
He describes this as “the ultimate campfire story”, narrated to Moses by God, and comments that it “fits with the Toledoth (Hebrew for “generations,” translated “the generations of…”) structure of Genesis, and has that ‘Once upon a time’ feel.” Speaking of which, here’s my “Bulwer-Lytton” narrative translation:
Once upon a time God created the heavens and the earth. It was a dark and stormy night and the earth was a formless abyss. [okay, okay, maybe that's a bit much...]
Ironically, I was skimming through Genesis in the NEB this morning and happened on the story of Babel - and what should I see but “Once upon a time…” (I seem to recall another translation that used this idiom, possibly even for Genesis 1:1, but it’s escaping me at the moment.) Now granted, this phrase has perhaps been corrupted by overuse in childrens’ fairy tales, but isn’t it still equally ambiguous as an English idiom: laced with the mists of ancient history, perhaps fable or myth, while still introducing a story with roots in observable human behavior.
I think this is a marvelous way to introduce the story of Babel, otherwise wedged into the genealogies that span the years from Noah to Abram. It’s as if the author inserted this “fairy tale” as a break in the action, echoing a campfire story told to Moses in the shadows of Sinai. “Did I tell you about the time…”
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P.S. Why don’t more translations use “babble” as a translation for the Hebrew verb balal, “to confuse”, in verse 9? This seems a perfect way to capture some of the literary flavor with an equivalent English pun.
7 Comments
The problem with “Once upon a time” is that it has become a marker that the story that follows is fictional - in a particular fairy tale genre which is presumed not to be literally true. Perhaps that is what the NEB translators thought about the Babel story, but it is not going to be acceptable to evangelicals. In Hebrew there is probably an equivalent marker to “Once upon a time”, perhaps the interesting infinitive absolute construction found at the start of Judges 9:8 which is a Hebrew fairy tale, or, more controversially, ‘ish haya in Job 1:1. In these places, at least the former, “Once upon a time” would probably fit. They contrast with the normal introductions to stories presented as historical e.g. Ruth which start with a time marker. I wonder if John Hobbins or Iyov (who has Job 1:1 in Hebrew in his blog header) has anything to say about this one?
Thanks for the great thoughts and insight, Peter. I agree that “Once upon a time” has become a fictional indicator - I wonder if there are any markers from the King Arthur stories that would be a more suitable mix of Anglican literature and historical legend.
Interestingly, the NEB *does* use “Once upon a time…” to start the Judges 9:8-15 passage, while Job 1:1 starts, “There lived in the land of Uz…”, which also seems a literary idiom.
You guys are taking me back to school on Genesis. Good stuff, I say.
Peter Kirk, you’re correct about “Once upon a time” becoming a marker for a fiction to follow, and I certainly never intended it that way (I should have been more careful about that, actually). But, I also think our idea of God dictating to Moses is somewhat askew (stormy night, thunder and lightning, a horrified Moses, etc.). I suspect God sat Moses down and said, “Okay, here goes…” And, I can just hear Moses saying, “Whoa! Really? Cool!
Wow, great post on the NEB. I haven’t spent nearly enough time with it, but I love the renderings in it and almost prefer it over the REB. They are fabulous translations and this just gives another example why. ElSh, keep it up with the refreshing posts.
Thanks, Nathan. I agree about the NEB - it’s been fun to “rediscover” it as part of a new generation. I think that the REB is equally worthwhile, if still not more so, but am coming to understand why the translation revision team regarded it as almost a new translation from the NEB.
A very correct observation in your post script, it is also very similar to what happens in Hebrew in many places - God uses similarly spelled words or words with the same roots in connection with similar or opposing concepts, a heavenly alliteration of sorts.
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[...] Koinonia has an interesting posting on Hebrews word and the fact that we are still learning about some of them, the plural ‘you’ in 1st Corinthians 3.16-17. Speaking of biblical translation things, Bobby V. has an excellent post on the KJV…translators. BBB actually has a post up about other posts on Bible Translations from various ‘young’ bloggers. El-Shaddai has a post up on the ‘campfire’ stories in the bible. [...]