duende14.deviantart.com/art/Yggdrasil-The-World-Tree-59953621

(Creative Commons license for non-commercial use)

Tales from Genesis Retold in the Mother of European Languages

I composed Before Babel to fill a hole that persists after two centuries of dry academic work on Proto-Indo-European.  It seems a shame that nobody has composed a sample of reconstructed text with any literary merit.  Schleicher’s fable is clever, but his outdated theories of the proto-language were comically Indo-centric, and his little fable does not do justice to the poetic power of the language. 

I looked no further than Genesis and Psalms to find suitable texts.  I hope you find my light-hearted “translations” of the tales more substantial than Schleicher’s fablet, and more authentic than Dṇghū’s shameless calques on Latin models.  They prove the point that the proto-language, though poor in abstraction, lent itself to narration and poetry. 

I also take the opportunity to promote the theory that the tale of the Flood alludes to a conflict between ethnic groups that worshiped different gods, and that the name Noaḥ (נוח) derives from Indo-European *Nah²u.  Might Cain (קין), Abel (הבל), and Eve (חוה) also have Indo-European origins? 

The tales themselves use symbols that are not uniquely Semitic.  Sacred trees and malevolent serpents are staples of Indo-European myth.  Could the tales be Hebrew retellings of Indo-European fables?  If so, turnabout is fair play.

In fond tribute to the web site Early Indo-European Online, created by the Linguistics Research Center of the University of Texas, I have structured my materials in similar fashion.  Besides the annotated tales, the reader will find a précis of my grammatical conventions and a downloadable mini-lexicon, confined to  well-attested roots.

Before the reader has a chance to sniff out my distaste for the too-fashionable and over-developed theory of laryngeals, I will freely confess it.  Too many different phenomena have been explained by resort to laryngeals, and these theoretical explanations defy rigorous statistical validation via inter-branch correlations.  I minimize the use of obscure notation, and will further vent my opinions in the notes on orthographic conventions.

The reader will find the syntax somewhat unorthodox.  I was obliged to reinvent complex constructions by imitating models from recorded languages, and to violate canonical SOV word order at every turn.  I invite you to do better, in the knowledge that some of you will succeed.

The material below is a brief sample of the annotated tales.  For a less academic but better illustrated version, please visit  https://beforebabel.tripod.com/genesis . 

The annotated tales are too long to display on this page, so please take advantage of the following complete downloads:  

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.

protemō qʷoret Deivós nebhesa dheĝhom(m)-qʷe

The Earth was unformed and void,

dheĝhōm ne-dhiçtá vana-au bhevet

and upon the depths was darkness,

bhudhnoisu-qʷe temos bhevet

and the spirit was passing over the waters.

ut’ anǝmós udéni upéri peret 

And now God said, "Let there be light," and there was light,

nūn-qʷe voqʷet Deivós:  bhevoit leuks ute bhuvet leuks

and he saw that the light was good.

videt-qʷe qʷod kalya

They shall love and they shall stick.

lubhyōntoi  leipōntoi-qʷe

The tale of Noah apparently alludes to the catastrophic Black Sea Flood of 5600 BCE.  The legendary history was not scientifically confirmed until the 1980s, when geologists got permission from the Soviet regime to take sediment samples.  The evidence remains controversial, but I take Ryan & Pitman’s theory as fact.  

After the end of last ice age, around 5800 BCE, the sea level rose until the Mediterranean spilled over the thin strip of land separating it from the Pontine -- until then a landlocked freshwater lake -- cutting a narrow channel and filling it with saltwater.  By the best estimates of geologists, the water level would have risen 80 meters in two years, and the shoreline would have receded very slowly, allowing the inhabitants to walk to safety with their animals, although boats might have been lifesavers for those who attempted to wait out the flood on high ground and soon found themselves surrounded by rising water.

The preamble tells of a rivalry between “sons of the gods” and “sons of the ground”.  Lest you have any doubt that gods means sky-gods, read the tale of Babel closely.  The gods descend to punish the uppity builders of a tower, most likely a fortified burg on high ground.  I read this as an an allusion to ethnic warfare between the Proto-Aryans and their neighbors around the Black Sea, so I have reimagined the Nephelim as Proto-Aryans who fancied themselves nepotes of the sky-god.

The Semitic authors of Genesis saw themselves as the survivors, and took literary revenge by having both sides drown, but they named the legendary boatman Noaḥ -- which makes no sense as a Hebrew word, but perfect sense as the P.I.E. word Nahus. 

May my spirit bless Him-who-is, the Sky-father, the Earth-Master

bhlaĝhoit menos anǝlos tom Sontṃ Dyeu-paterṃ Dĝhems-potim