Ancestral Origins

The Sumerian language was spoken in southern Mesopotamia (Iraq) and was the first language to be written in the cuneiform script. It is an isolate language meaning we know of no other languages that relate to it ancestrally. The language was spoken in a region where Semitic languages were also known to be spoken, particularly Akkadian, and it eventually fell out of use by the time of 2000 BC. However literary forms of the language continued to be written for another 2000 years. It also had notable influences on all other Semitic languages of the region including Hebrew, the language of the Israelites. I believe, if understood correctly the proto-Sumerian language was the original language referred to prior to the tower of Babel in Genesis 11. It may not have been Sumerian per se but it was certainly close to that language.

Genesis 10:6-10 The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan. The sons of Cush: Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah and Sabteka. The sons of Raamah: Sheba and Dedan. Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.” The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar.

Little is known about when Sumerian-speaking people arrived in southern Mesopotamia, assuming they did not originate there. Either way, from a very early period a multilingual environment existed in southern Mesopotamia, which included languages like Sumerian, an early form of Akkadian, other Semitic languages, and Hurrian. Some scholars have posited the possibility of an otherwise unknown substrate, or influencing language of the area, due to the presence of words of unknown origin in Sumerian writings.

Genesis 11:1, 5-9 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there (Babylon)…..But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So, the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

A substrate or single underlying language lost to history. It has been demonstrated linguistically that later Semitic words, as a majority are compounds in Sumerian, or words of no clear origin. The preponderance of these words are, in-fact mostly administrative texts, arithmetic and some are wordlists used for scribal education. Like a people building a tower perhaps? Our knowledge of earliest known Sumerian literature comes to the fore during the Early Dynastic Period III (EDIII) >2500 BC or prior to Abraham in Chapter 12 of Genesis approximately 2000BC. So, if we adhere to a superficial timeline, we could assume that the base Sumerian language is at least a few hundred to a thousand years prior to Abraham. That means the time gap between Genesis 11 and 12 could be at least a millennium or more. The Semitic language from which all others arose or diverged therefore came prior to the time of Abraham between Genesis 11 and 12…right within the time of the Tower of Babel narrative.