790
TOHU
TONGUES, COXFUSIOX OF
inscriptions which is associated with the Minni by Esarhaddon, we shall have to look for Togarmah to the east of Assyria. In 1881 Fr. Delitzsch suggested that it might be Til-garimmu, a fortress of Kummukh or Comaggn6 ; but it iiuist have been a country, since horses and raulos wore ex- ported from it (Ezk 27"), and not a mere fortress. Most modem authorities decide for Western Armenia. A. H. Sayce.
TOHU.— See Nahath.
TOI.— See Tou.
TOKHATH.— See TlKVAH.
TOLA (I'S'iB 'crimson worm,' •cochineal'; Qa\d, Jg lO'-'). — A minor judge, following Abimelech. His name is that of one of the chief clans of Issacliar ; see Gn 46■^ Nu 26=" ('y^inn, 6 TwXoel), 1 Ch 7"-, and art. PUAH. His home and burial-place were at Shamir, the seat of the clan, probably in the N. of the higlilands of Ephraim : the site is unknown.
G. A. Cooke.
TOLAD (iViB 'birth,' 'generation'; B eou\ai/i, Aeai\d5; Tholnd). — A town of Simeon mentioned xnih Ezem, Bethuel, Homiali, and Zikla"(l Ch 4-^). It is the same place as El-tolad in the Negeb (Jos IS*" 19*). The site has not been recovered.
C. W. Wilson.
TOLBANES (To\3i.-,s), I Es9=»=Telem, Ezr 10« — One of the porters in the time of Ezra.
TOLL, PLACE OF (reXcino^ Mt 9», Mk 2", Lk
'r", in AV ' receipt of custom '). — The place where the tax collector sat to receive Iiis dues. In Wyclifs translation it is rendered tolbothe. In the case of Matthew or Levi, the toll collected was the custom exacted by and paid into the treasury of Herod Antipas, the Idumasan prince who then ruled over Galilee. The t(\wihov at Capernaum was of importance, as a large traffic passed on the highway between Damascus and Ptoleniais. See Publican. J. Macphekson.
TOMB.— See BtmiAL and Sepulchre.
TONGUES, CONFUSION OF.— The narrative of Gn 11'"* is too familiarly known to need detailed re- petition here ; and it will be sufficient to recall briefly its leading features. Mankind, at the time to which it refers, all had one speech, and lived together. They journeyed, it seems to be implied, nomadically from spot to spot ; and on one of their journeys they found a plain in the land of Shin'ar (Babylonia), where they settled, and where also they determined to build a city, and a lofty tower, which should both gain them lasting re- nown, and also serve as a centre, or rallj'ing-point, to prevent their being dispersed over tlie surface of the earth. J", however, ' came down ' to view the building, and [supplj'ing here, with Stade, ZA W, 1895, p. 158, and others, words which v.' seems to show have been omitted] having returned to His lofty abode, signified to His heavenly counsellors or associates there (cf. 3^-) His disapproval of it : if this. He said, is the beginning of their ambition, what will be the end of it ? nothing will soon be too hard for them. So He ' came down' a second time, and 'confounded' (Ilcb. bdlal) their language ; and from this occurrence the narrator (J) explains the diversity of exist- ing languages, the dispersion of mankind, and the name of the city of Babylon (in Heb. Babel).
1. From a critical point of view, the narrative presents considerable difficulties ; for, though it belongs to J, it is difficult to harmonize with
otlier representations of tlie same source. Tlia distribution of mankind into dillcrent nations haa been already described by J in (parts of) ch. 10, and represented there, not as a pvinishment for misdirected ambition, but as the result of natural processes and movements ; and Babylon, the build- ing of which is here interrupted, is in 10'° repre- sented as already built. The narrative connects also very imperfectly with the close of J's narrative of the Flood ; for, though the incident which it describes is placed shortly after the Flood, the terms of v.' ('the whole earth'), and the general tenor of the following account, imply a consider- ably larger population than the 'eight souls' of Noah's famijy. In all probability (Dillm.) the story originally grew up without reference to the Flood, or the usual derivation of mankind from the three sons of Noah, and it has been imperfectly accommodated to the narratives in clis. 9 and 10 , perhaps, indeed, Wellh. and others (cf. the Oxf. Hex. ad loc.) are right in conjecturing that origin- ally it belonged to the same cycle of tradition of which fragments are preserved in 4""", and formed part of the sequel to 4-".
It is ditBcuIt to avoid the conclusion nVellh., Dillm., and others ; ct. the Oxf. Uex. ii. 6 f.) that i"-^* (describing the beginnings of existing civilization) belongs to a cycle of tradi- tion, in which the continuity of buuian history was not inter- rupted by a Flood ; and if the conjecture, just mentioned, respecting ll'-^ be correct, the same assumption must of course be made with regard to that.
2. That the narrative can contain no scientific or historically true account of the origin of language, is evident from many indications. In the first place, if it is in its right place, it can be demon- strated to rest upon unhistorical assumptions : for the biblical date of the Flood (Usslier's artificial treatment of Gn 11" and Ex l'^"" being disregarded) is B.C. 2501 (or, ace. to the LXX of Gen. and Ex., 3066) ; and, so far from the whole earth being at either B.C. 2501 or B.C. 3066 ' of one language and one speech,' we possess inscriptions dating from periods much earlier than either of these dates \vritten in three distinct languages — Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian. But, even if Wellh.'s supposition, that the narrative belongs really to an earlier stage in the history of mankind, be accepted, it wotild still be impossible to regard it as historical. For (1) it could not, even then, be placed in a dif- ferent category from the other narratives in Gn 1-11, which (lor reasons which cannot be stated fully here ; cf. FALL, Flood, etc.) must relate to the prehistoric period. And (2) the narrative, while explaining ostensibly the diversity of lan- guages, offers no explanation of the diversity of races. And yet diversity of language — meaning here by the expression not the relatively subordi- nate differences whicli are always characteristic of languages developed from a common pareni- tongue, but those more radical difl'erences relating alike to structure, grammar, and roots, which show that the languages exhibiting them cannot be re- ferred to a common origin — is dependent upon diversity of race. Of course, cases occur in which a people li\'ing near a people of another race, or sub-race, have adopted tlieir language [a.s,e.g., the Celts in Cornwall have adopted English) ; but, sj)eaking generally, radically different languages are characteristic of difierent races, or (if the word be used in its widest sense) of subdivisions ol races, or sub-races, which, in virtue of thefacxilty of creating language distinctive of man, have created them for purposes of intercommunication and to satisfy their social instincts. Difl'erences of race, in other words, are more primary in man than differences of language * and have first to be accounted for. It is, now, a disputed ethnological