Linguistic Eschatology: Babel and Pentecost in Seventeenth-Century Linguistic Thought. (1st May 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cram, David
• Is Part Of: Language & history. Volume 56:Number 1(2013:May)
• Page Start: 44
• Page End: 56
• Publication Date: 2013-05-01
• Subjects: Linguistics -- History -- Periodicals; 410.9
• DOI: 10.1179/1759753613Z.00000000016
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1759-7536

Abstract

<abstract> <title> <x xml:space="preserve">Abstract</x> </title> <p>The aim of this paper is to position the seventeenth-century quest for a philosophical language within an eschatological framework of first and last things. Modern accounts of these projects often focus exclusively on theological first things: namely the Adamic language and its fragmentation at the destruction of the Tower of Babel. But Babel had its equally important anti-type in the biblical account of speaking in tongues at Pentecost. The primary focus of the paper will be to explore seventeenth-century interpretations of Pentecost, which, rather unexpectedly from a modern point of view, turn out to involve not <italic>glossolalia</italic>, in the narrow sense of speaking in the tongues of angels rather than the tongues of men, but <italic>xenololia</italic>, in the equally narrow sense of speaking in a human language that one has never learned.</p> </abstract>