For Philippe: Sharing questions of unintelligibility, security and diversity — from Babel to Pentecost

• Author: De Courcelles, D.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a11
• Published date: 05 September 2022
• Date: 05 September 2022
• Citation: 2022 Acta Juridica 246
• Pages: 246-256

246

https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a11

For Philippe: Sharing questions of

unintelligibility, security and diversity —

from Babel to Pentecost

DOMINIQU E DE COURCELLES*

And the whole ear th was of one language, and of one speech. And

it came to pass, as they journeyed east, that they fou nd a plain in the

land of Shin är; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another,

Go to, let us make br ick, and burn t hem thoroughly. And they had

brick for stone, and sl ime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to,

let us build us a c ity and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven;

and let us make us a name, lest we be scat tered abroad upon the face

of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the cit y and

the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said,

Behold, the people is one, a nd they have all one language; and this

they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them,

which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there

confound their l anguage that they may not understand one another’s

language. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon

the face of the earth: and they lef t o to build the city. Therefore is

the name of it called Babel; becau se the LORD did there confound

the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter

them abroad upon the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11, 1–9 ).

This account, written more than two millennia ago, is doubtless

part of a wider epic saga, clearly set ting out the narrative of hum an

experience, and has always imprinted on the collective human

memory the liv ing image of a tower as a vague and st range symbol

of excess, immoderation and general unintelligibilit y. Why did

God sow disorder in the only language to survive the Flood,

which, perhaps, was the rst language God gave to humans?

The myth is obviously astonishing, but is it not also unsettling?

The objective of the project is to build a city and a tower reaching

up to heaven to merge the whole of humanity under a sing le

name, with a unied conception of itself and of the world. If God

is missing from this project, is it not because humans, who

* P rofessor, Director of Research a t the Paris Sc iences Lett res Universit y

(École norm ale supérieure/Nat ional Centre for Scient ic Research– CNRS).

2022 Acta Juridica 246

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