Tristan Major, Undoing Babel. The Tower of Babel in Anglo-Saxon. Toronto Anglo-Saxon Series, 25. Toronto, Buffalo and London: Toronto University Press, 2018, xiii, 289pp.

Abstract

This is an interesting and important study both in its broader implications and on a specific level as a series of case studies (thus p. 237) of Anglo-Saxon texts. The principal title is significant: the narrative of Babel in the early part of Genesis resulted in the division of languages. On the face of it, this is a negative result, and the instigator of the building of the fateful tower, usually taken to be Nimrod, himself sometimes seen as a giant and indeed an idolater, is condemned. Against the Genesis tale, however, is set typologically the positive account in Acts 2: 1–13 of the gift of tongues, with the underlying notion of the unifying role of the Church in bringing together the new diversity in mankind. Luke 10: 1 and also Numbers 11:16–25 are also relevant to the number of languages. The chapters of Genesis which contain the brief story of the tower also contain what is known as the table of nations, the dispersal of Noah’s descendants, which becomes of great significance in the context of myths of national origin. Major presents the reflection in Anglo-Saxon texts – and it is a notably varied one – of the way the linguistic diversity is presented, with the emphasis on the unification through Christianity of the separated nations and tongues, and of the perceived position and role of English. Some traditions, incidentally, make a distinction between pagan and Christian languages; Jans Enikel’s later rhymed German chronicle, for example, lists one of the languages after Babel as “heathen.”