The story of the tower of Babel occupies just a few verses in chapter 11 of Genesis; which is pretty short when compared to the Noah saga we just finished with or the story of Joseph which is practically a novella. However when people think back about the Hebrew Scriptures I would be surprised if this story wasn't on most people's lists. There is something cinematic about the whole thing, and that visual component helps it stay in our memories. In this DMing the Bible we'll take a look at this puzzling story, talk some about PC's, NPC's and languages known, and make a few suggestions on using language as a plot device.
The Text:
For years, Christian scholars working with this text were content with the same interpretation you would find in children's Sunday School material. In this interpretation, the people of the world get together to make a tower to reach into heaven. God, looking on, becomes threatened by humanity's creativity and ensures that people will have trouble speaking with each other. The conclusions drawn from the story suggest that the people's sin was hubris.
This surface reading presents some problems, however. If, as I asserted earlier, God created humanity as creative, striking people done for being what they are, what they were created to be, is monstrous. This is not the only interpretation available so let's for a moment consider one that was offered in part by Josephus, a first century Jewish apologist. It suggest that humanity was created for diversity and that the sin of Babel (if there was one) was the stifling of diversity. This would mean that the scattering of the people was not punishment as much it was the opening of new opportunity for growth.
Chapter 11 opens with all of humanity living in the same place sharing one language and one vocabulary. The repeats of the word "one" emphasizes the homogeneity present in the human community. Fearing being spread all over the earth, the people get together and build a city with a tower. The tower is not the emphasis of the project -- the phrase city and tower was used in the Hebrew Scriptures to describe a certain kind of settlement. In verse 5 God arrives and sees what's going on. Verse 6 contains what can only described as an aside. But how should it be translated -- if the people are not in open rebellion against God and God is not threatened by humanity's creative abilities, is not the typical translation ("And the Lord said, 'Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.'") lacking? A better reading is, "And Yahweh said, 'From what they have accomplished already, it looks like their plans to remain one people with one language in one place will succeed." (Hiebert, T. JBL 126 no 1, p 45) This translation has an almost regretful note and suggests that humanity being all the same is less that what we were intended to be.
Now God takes action. God mixes up their language so that people have lots of differences. The people form little groups of different people speaking different languages and living in different places all over the face of the earth. God's commandment to be fruitful and multiply can be carried out; as Azeem answered the little girl in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves "Because Allah loves wondrous variety."
The Game:
In D&D language is based in a character's intelligence as much as it is based in the culture from whence the character came. "All characters know how to speak Common. A dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, or halfling also speaks a racial language, as appropriate. A smart character (one who had an Intelligence bonus at 1st level) speaks other languages as well, one extra language per point of Intelligence bonus as a starting character." (PHB p12). The existence of Common is super handy for players and DM. The party never needs to worry about walking into a village where absolutely nobody understands them. The DM never need fear not landing an important message or plot point for want of a translator. Many PCs have at least one bonus point in INT (probably for no other reason than because it influences skill points); for non-human PC's this means at least three languages. Languages known, I think, is one of the most "min/maxed" aspects of character creation. Rather than referring to their back-stories players try and consolidate power in the party trying to cover common monster language groups and provide a language that the party can converse in other than common.
It all makes me think of that song by the Refreshments, "Banditos." In the refrain one of the characters tells the border guard that he is Jean Luc Picard of the United Federation of Planets. I had thought for years that the next line was "they speak English everywhere" rather than "he won't speak English anyway." Sure the universal translator was nice, but some of my favorite episodes were the ones when, for what ever reason, the translator wasn't working. So here are some suggestions for using language in play:
- Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra: Why not use some of the interesting ways that language barriers form for people on Star Trek? In this episode though the words are being translated they make almost no sense to people unfamilar with a dense set of local metaphor and idiom. Let characters mourn their lack of Knowledge: Local (obscure village)
- Oh no! I think he understood that: Don't skimp on NPC's languages known. Taking an extra ten seconds during planning to prevent characters from keeping their powwow secret from the bad guys might just make your night even if it doesn't make theirs
- La préservation de diversité: In our world where English is increasingly making the world's population a people with one language and one vocabulary there are places where linguistic diversity is being preserved. Could perhaps your players enter the struggle to preserve or demolish a language group? Adding divine or arcane overtones to such a mission might make for some interesting low-level encounters.
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