Language Armageddon

Our thought life is a function of our vocabulary. Think about that ... assuming you are able.

Anthropologist and author Christopher Hallpike has observed that it is remarkably difficult, perhaps impossible, to communicate effectively or even think lucidly about something for which one’s language has no words. Societies do not generally have words for concepts they don’t use, items they have never seen or beliefs they haven’t developed.

A higher vocabulary generally reflects higher intelligence, and a shriveled vocabulary limits one’s ability to think and understand beyond the most basic level.

One, Two, Three

The Tauade of Papua New Guinea do not count. Their society is sufficiently primitive that they have no need for math, and therefore their language has no way to express innumerable concepts perfectly natural to an English speaker. “Two plus two” would mean nothing to the Tauade in the literal sense, let alone as a metaphor for something perfectly obvious. The word “innumerable” itself would be meaningless. An English speaker trying to explain the concept in their language wouldn’t have the slightest idea where to start.

Modern English is a hodgepodge of words, expressions and ideas borrowed from other languages and cultures. Almost every word we use on a daily basis to communicate with one another has been blithely nicked from somewhere else across the centuries. Estimates vary as to which languages have had the most influence on us, but Wikipedia currently goes with 28% French, 28% Latin, 25% Germanic and at least 5% Greek. Words original to English are a rarity.

Individual Units and Compound Units

If Greek words that made it to English are only one in twenty, English words of Hebrew origin are much, much rarer. Copacetic, chutzpah, jubilee and Pharisee come to mind, but the overall influence of Hebrew on the individual units of the English language is almost non-existent and that of Greek minimal.

That is not true of figures of speech. Not at all. If any cultures have influenced the compound units of modern English more than Hebrew and Greek, I can’t think what they might be. We owe a huge debt to the Jews for our ability to think in abstractions. Here are fourteen quick examples just off the top of my head:

A bird in the hand (Proverbs 6:5)
A cross to bear (Luke 14:27)
A drop in the bucket (Isaiah 40:15)
Escaping by the skin of your teeth (Job 19:20)
A fly in the ointment (Ecclesiastes 10:1)
A house divided against itself (Matthew 12:25)
Labor of love (1 Thessalonians 1:3)
Letter of the law (2 Corinthians 3:6)
Salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13)
Scapegoat (Leviticus 16:10)
Sign of the times (Matthew 16:3)
A thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7)
Voice crying in the wilderness (John 1:23)
Writing on the wall (Daniel 5)

This is the merest tip of the proverbial iceberg. (At least that one’s not coined by a Jew.) Bible expressions, metaphors and other figures of speech populate the English language by the thousands, and since thought life is a function of vocabulary, it is impossible to overstate the Bible’s impact on Western thinking — by which I mean not merely Western theological rumination but the cranial processes of the secular chump in the street who has never cracked the spine of a Bible in his entire life. To the extent that Joe Public has a life of the mind, he owes much of it to the word of God.

The Genesis of Language

If the Genesis account is true, then God handed language to the first man and woman as a complete package. It didn’t develop on its own, with Adam and Eve grunting incomprehensibly at first, pointing at various objects in their environment and eventually coining word after word in a state of increasing frustration. No, Eve could carry on a sophisticated conversation with a spirit being in animal form that consisted of abstract concepts like the knowledge of good and evil. Cain could ask God rhetorical questions and instantly grasp figures of speech like personification. Nothing primitive about that.

God designed language to develop over time and its vocabulary to proliferate as required by his creatures. Our modern vocabulary reflects the accrued understanding of generations. But language can also degrade over time. If language had its genesis, it can also have the equivalent of an Armageddon. Words and concepts that go unused by most of the population are eventually lost to us and have to be rediscovered or reformulated from scratch.

Bible Literacy and Evangelism

As Bible literacy decreases around us decade after decade, it is not just the knowledge of God as revealed in scripture that is disappearing from the minds of the general population, it is also the ability to think about God in any coherent way at all. Many of the concepts, expressions and metaphors derived from Hebrew and Greek writers will continue in English for a few generations, perhaps, but they will be used mindlessly, in ignorance of their origin and to no spiritual benefit by most who parrot them.

If the Lord does not return shortly, the inevitable and ever-increasing communication gap between the devout and the unsaved may constitute the greatest barrier to evangelism for coming generations.

The gospel spread most rapidly when Old Testament literacy was at an all-time high. That was no accident.