3 ms·

Tower of Babel and babble.

• ogogmad 5y ago
  I think there are limits to what anyone can know about ancient history. I think the ToB story was written so long ago that no one can know the origin of the word "Babel". "Babel" (בָּבֶל‎) could mean babbling, or it could mean Babylon (בָּבֶל), but how can anyone know either way? It's intriguing though how the spellings בָּבֶל‎ and בָּבֶל are completely identical, including which beths are beths, which veths are veths, and even their vowel marks! So chances for Babylon:babbling are 95:5 for me. I'm not good at Hebrew though, so I don't know how to accurately assess the probabilities. Thanks for that!