Re: OT: babel and english

Colin Halverson wrote:

>Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Choctaw story developed after
>English colonialism.  Maybe it has older roots, but I think it was probably
>influenced much by the Christian missionaries.
The Choctaw story was certainly influenced by Christian missionaries, but
the extent of that influence is unknown (at least to me or the few sources
I've read). There are too many discrepencies between the Choctaw and
English versions for me to believe that the myth originated after contact
with Christianity. Why is there no explicit mention of God? (The Choctaw
converted rather early.) Why did the mound of stones get knocked down three
times before languages became confused? The motivation for building the
mound in the Choctaw story is curiosity about the nature of the sky and
clouds, not a desire to reach Heaven.

The Choctaw story is a myth about the tribe's origin as well as why there
are other tribes and languages. I find it unlikely that a people would
abandon such a fundamental myth and adopt a more Christian one unless they
themselves had converted to Christianity. Buth then they probably would
have adopted a much more similar story.
I find it more likely that there was an older myth, and that a few parts of
it were changed to be more similar to Babel, either because only part of
the tribe had converted, or that the Babel story was more appealing in some
aspects, or a younger generation had heard the Babel story all its life as
well as the original one and mixed them out of confusion.



Marcus Smith

Unfortunately, or luckily,
no language is tyrannically consistent.
All grammars leak.
                -- Edward Sapir