The book’s concluding chapter summarizes its content and contextualizes the ideas in a broader historical and cultural perspective. It is the story about the transformation of the ways in which the increasingly Christianized elites of the late antique Mediterranean experienced and conceptualized linguistic differences. Confessional and linguistic identities of the time overlapped in ways that produced an astonishing variety of dynamic combinations, hybrid loyalties, and local peculiarities. The chapter raises the question of what we do with language when we speak and how references to a linguistic code through which communication happens can be no less informative than the content of communication itself. It problematizes the concept of “other languages” and different ways in which different cultures, including early Christianity, imagine their principal alloglottic Other. We introduce the concept of “communities of linguistic sensitivities” – a group that share similar language-related socio-cultural stereotypes and subscribe to approximately the same views and ideas about linguistic history and linguistic diversity. The history of Christianity in Late Antiquity could be described in terms of the formation of several such related communities around the Mediterranean – communities that developed dynamically, constantly readjusted, and mutually influenced each other.

The chapter begins with the discussion of the story about the tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues (Gen 11.1–9), the event which was usually but not always understood as the start of linguistic diversification. The chapter explores early Christian ideas about the primordial language, usually identified with Hebrew. The history of Hebrew and the attempts of late antique Christians to define their relations to this would-be original tongue occupy the larger part of the chapter. Fourth- and fifth-century writers discussed whether the original tongue ceased or continued to exist after Babel, and who – Heber or Abraham – was instrumental in preserving the original tongue. These biblical figures and various scenarios of language history they represented were claimed by competing Christian and Jewish historical discourses. These linguistic discussions contributed to consolidating their corresponding religious identities. The alternatives to the idea of Hebrew’s primordiality were also attested; they bear witness to the continuous debates about originality, ontological power, and the relative prestige of languages in Late Antiquity. The chapter attempts to reconstruct Christian attitudes to the linguistic diversity, their views on the history and evolution of other (non-Hebrew) languages, and to contextualize ideas about the language of God in Jewish–Christian polemics.

The Introduction explains the purpose and scope of the book, and the research questions it addresses, as well as its place within recent scholarship – both in relation to works focusing on languages in Late Antiquity and to more theoretical studies of various forms of group identity and its attributes. We open with a discussion on changes in the linguistic views of the increasingly Christianized elites in the late antique Mediterranean and the ways they experienced and conceptualized linguistic differences. The chapter defines such important concepts as “metalinguistic comments,” “the alloglottic Other,” “communities of linguistic sensitivities,” “objectification of language,” “linguistic awareness,” and “a different language”; clarifies the linguistic and religious terminology to be used; outlines the geographical scope, chronological limits, and the range of primary sources analyzed; and describes the book structure. The Introduction also explicates possible methodological problems in research like this and suggests the ways in which one could overcome them –avenues this book further explores.

Early explorers and excavators knew only biblical and classical accounts, some of them garbled and confusing. They were unaware that Babylon had an advanced literate culture. Mud-brick ruins contrasted unfavourably with marble, and the sprawling site of Babylon had many separate mounds, with the Tower of Babel indistinguishable amid the rubble. As Babylon’s power grew, quarters of the citadel were named after more ancient cities, and branches of temples to deities in other cities became established there. Early travellers from the twelfth century onwards brought back to the west their accounts of what they saw. In the seventeenth century, cuneiform writing on stone was identified at Persepolis. In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia increasingly arrived in Europe and a few national museums were soon built to house the items discovered by travellers, dilettante collectors, and informal excavators. Decipherment then began to excite public interest, but literal understanding gave way only slowly to appreciation of symbolism and rhetoric. Official excavations in Babylon took place under German leadership between 1899 and 1917. A chronological sequence for the history still has a few unsolved problems. Cuneiform writing unexpectedly lasted into Roman times.