Is English A Pure Language?

Many people in the world – at least, in the English speaking world – believe that English is a pure language. That we’ll be speaking English after the return of Christ, when Zechariah says “Yea, at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord.” (Zechariah 3:9, RSV)

But what is this language going to be like? Is it English, as some think? Hebrew, as many others believe? Or some one of the thousands of other dialects spoken today?

If you’ve read my paper on the “Origin of Modern Languages”, you’ll remember that all languages we know today, English, Spanish, Czechoslavakian, Wolof, Quechua, Magyar, Malayan, Hebrew, etc, all descended from a common root language at the time of the Tower of Babel. God divided this original language which He gave to Adam into the ancestors of all the language families we know today.

Hebrew was definitely not the original language spoken by Adam; it, like all the others, was just one of the many divisions of “tongues” mentioned in Genesis 10:5, 32, etc. And it’s not a pure language either, as I will show.

The original language no longer exists today – it was pieced out among the various sons and grandsons of Noah and scattered over the Earth. Historical linguists have been trying to piece together this original language for the last century or two, with reasonable success. This language that God gave Adam is very likely the “pure language” we will be given again after the return of Christ.

But the main point I want to make in this article is to show you the idolatrous pagan words that issue from your lips a thousand times a day. You don’t know it I’m sure, but English is far from a pure language. Neither is Hebrew, Spanish, or Quechua. Let’s look at a few examples…

Take the word Museum. An innocent, innocuous word, right? But when you consider it’s history, you will realize that the ancient Greeks believed that all artistic inspiration came from nine female spirits known as the “Muses”. Each of the nine was responsible for inspiring a given area of knowledge, and without them nothing artistic could be made.

And so it was only natural that the place where the arts were stored and displayed became dedicated to them – a MUSEum. The place where one saw the works of the Muses. As time progressed and the legend grew to affect other parts of the language, new concepts were added; when you were absent in thought, you were considered to be “Musing”, or receiving inspiration from the spirits. Something would “aMUSE” someone if it was funny. Even in modern English, writers refer to loved ones or inspiring figures as their “Muse”. Among the number of words they inspired are found even the innocuous word “MUSic”.

It is a simple matter to see that “fortune” is derived from the Roman Goddess “Fortuna”; hence use of the words “fortunate”, referring to making ones “fortune”, or various references to good or ill fortune; the goddess Fortuna also had a wheel on which were marked good and bad blessings, which she spun to determine the course of your life; not surprisingly this became known as the “wheel of fortune”.

The Greek version of the goddess Fortuna was known as “Tyche”, from the Greek teuchein “to cause”, which very likely morphed into our modern word “to touch”, meaning “to affect, or cause”. Back in the Latin mythology, among Fortuna’s retinue was a goddess named Copia, goddess of plenty, which inspired the word “copious”. Her symbol was the horn of plenty – called a “Cornucopia”.

The “Charites”, or “three Graces” were a trio of goddesses responsible for mirth, beauty and happiness; they inspired words like “charisma”, “charity”, “charm”; it should be noted in passing that “charis” is the original Greek word translated “grace” in the New Testament.

Then there are the words inspired by Mercury the Roman god of trade; his legends inspired the Latin word merx from which we get mercantile, commerce, merchant, merchandise, etc. Or Nemesis, goddess of divine retribution and now a term for ones archenemy. Or Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep inspired the word hypnosis, and his son Morpheus god of dreams inspired “morph”, to change, metamorphic, anthropomorphic, and several other words; another son of Hypnos, Phantasos controlled the strange aspects of dreams and inspired words like “Phantasm”, “Fantasy”, and “Fantastic”; yet another of Hypnos’ sons, Phobetor, was responsible for frightening dreams and nightmares; hence terms like “Phobia”.

This list could go on and fill many books, but you get the point; and while the Greek and Roman pantheon of gods have inspired a major percentage of English words, Astrology which is ultimately a Babylonian device has influenced a good many others. Obviously, I am not the first person to write on this subject; Carl Sagan commented on it in his book “Cosmos” and said…

“We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as “disaster” which is Greek for “bad star”. “Influenza”, which is Italian for (Astral) “influence”, “Mazeltov,” Hebrew – and, ultimately, Babylonian – for “good constellation”, or the Yiddish word “shlamazel”, applied to someone plagued by relentless ill-fortune, which again traces to the Babylonian astronomical lexicon. (Carl Sagan, Cosmos)

Even such words as “consider”, which we would never suspect of being of heathen origin can be directly tied back to astrology; con from the Latin “with”, and sider meaning “planets”; so before you take a serious action you should consult your astrologer to see if your intentions are “with the planets” – the original meaning of “considering” something.

Obviously, none of the names of the days of the week, the months, or the planets or constellations can survive when we are “turned to a pure language”. Nor can many scientific terms and elements – Helium, from the Greek helios, the Sun; Cerium, named for Ceres, an asteroid and ultimately a Roman goddess (you may recognize her name when you eat cereal); Mercury; Plutonium; Uranium; and many others.

Many place names will have to go as well – Olympia, Virginia, San Antonio, Helena, Santa Fe, Athens, to name a few; and really we haven’t yet scratched the surface; it seems almost every word you can imagine can be traced back to paganism in some way; “to babble”, hearkens back to the tower of “Babel”, when languages were confused. That little “icon” you click on your computer screen? “Icon” is Greek for image – specifically, for the images that they worshiped of their gods. That doll your daughter has? Doll is a corruption of the word “Idol” (I-doll…), which were representations of gods the pagans gave their children to play with to familiarize them with the pantheon of deities they served.

But here are two of my favorites; Father and Mother. Two nouns used perhaps as much as any other; and each of colorful origin. Father was inherited by the modern English from the old German “fader”. Germanic was one of the 5 main post-Babel European language groups along with Slavic, Greek, Latin and the Semitic (middle eastern) languages. The Latin word for Father was “Pater”, from which through a different linguistic evolution we received “Papa” and “Pa”. This word is applied to the Pope, the “holy father”.

At the same time the Greek word was “Pieter”. The Sanskrit (early east Indian) word was “Pitar”. The Old Irish word was “athir”, which seems to have dropped the “p” or “f” and focused on the last half of the word, which Armenian did to a greater extent by using “hayr”. Obviously, all these languages are connected at their origin by the tower of Babel.

And in each of these languages for which records survive, the word is inextricably connected to their supreme deity. The supreme deity in Greece was “Zeus”, whose full name was “Zeus Pieter”, Father God. The Romans slightly changed the spelling to the more familiar “Iupiter”, from “pater” and “Iu”, a corruption of “Deus”, meaning God. The English has it “Jupiter”, since English J’s are I’s in Latin. The Sanskrit name for the same entity was “Dyauspita”, where you can easily see a similarity to “Jupiter”, which translates as “Bright Father”.

So each time you say “Father”, “Pa”, “Papa”, “Pop”, you are reverencing the name of Jupiter, as “father of us all”. Cute, huh? But my favorite is Mother, for here we can tie it back to the original person who invented the word…

The word Mother comes from the old English “Modor”, and ultimately from the hypothetical ancient Germanic “mothaer”. This word was spread from Denmark to India as you can see by comparing ancient Sanskrit “Matar” to the modern German “Mutter”. The Latin “Mater”, and the Greek “Meter”, and the ancient Egyptian “Mut”.

Now let’s tie those together. We know from several sources that Egypt was one of the first cultures built by Nimrod and his mother/wife Semiramis after the destruction of Babel. The earliest mythology of Egypt is some of the most clearly preserved examples of the religion that Semiramis and Nimrod began, which cast themselves as gods. Nimrod being the creator father, identified with the Sun, Semiramis being the fertile mother, identified with the Earth, and after the death of Nimrod their son Tammuz being the resurrected savior god, the reincarnation of Nimrod.

“Mut” was the name of the original Egyptian mother-goddess, who later became known best as Isis, and had many other titles such as, to quote Wikipedia “World-Mother, Eye of Ra, Queen of the Goddesses, Lady of Heaven, Mother of the Gods, and She Who Gives Birth, But Was Herself Not Born of Any.”

The same character appears in Babylonian mythology under the name Ashtoreth, and later Ishtar, which ultimately became the English word “Easter”. The Bible calls her the Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18, 44:17-25), as well as by the more common Babylonian name Ashtaroth, as in Judges 10:6, 1 Samuel 7:3-4, etc. Modern Catholicism calls her Mary, though they borrowed practically all the ideology about her from Egypt and Bablyon, as the pictures below indicate.

Mary And Isis

At the top, you see Isis cradling Horus, the resurrected Osiris the Sun God. At the bottom you see Mary cradling a “Jesus”. Notice the nearly identical positioning – as if one were copied from the other. Behind the head of Mary and baby Jesus is a halo, representing the Sun as the father figure. The similarity between the two is so remarkable that even Wikipedia has these pictures side by side for comparison.

So when you use the term “mother” you are invoking the name of the mother of all Goddesses, the queen of Heaven mentioned in the Bible. Cute, isn’t it? But to avoid “mother” and use the term “mama” doesn’t help you any, for it is just as bad;

The word “mama” is one of the most recognizeable words in any language, and often the first word that babies learn to use. You can see the similarity, worldwide, when you compare mama in Polish and Slovak, m?ma in Mandarin Chinese, máma in Czech, maman in French, mamma in Italian, or mãe in Portuguese. Mama, borrowed from the English, is in common use in Japan. In Hebrew the word is eema, and in many south Asian cultures and the Middle East the mother is known as amma or oma or ammi or “ummi”, or variations thereof. In Africa, they use oma.

So we see that every culture that was separated from Babel at the flood around the world retained this word above all others; why? We could say that it was simply because it was the earliest word they spoke, but consider this explanation; mama, came from from ama, then from ammi in some of the earliest recorded uses of it; and consider that the Mother Goddess, who passed herself off as the Queen of Heaven and is loved by all from Peking to Timbuktu, was born with the name “SemirAMIS

And so when God divided the nations at the flood, He changed their languages, but NOT THEIR NAMES! He confused their speech, but they would still have called themselves by their own names! And He made it impossible for them to understand one another, but they still loved their mother Goddess, SemirAMIS! And as they scattered throughout the world, they retained her name as they retained her religion, and as she was a symbol of fertility and motherhood, it was only natural that they called their birth mothers “ami”, and later “mama”, in loving memory of their goddess.

And so I hope you can see now that English is not only not a pure language – but that if you removed all the paganism from it, there would hardly be a language left! Not that English is alone in this – the same is true of Spanish; or Urdu. Or Hebrew. Or any other language men have touched, and inevitably defiled.

Hosea 2:16-17 And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali. For I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.

Baal in Hebrew means “lord”, or “master”, which is most commonly used to refer to a pagan god which represented Satan. Baalim is the Hebrew plural of Baal, and referred to the whole array of gods worshipped by the nations round about – Chemosh, Ashtoreth, Dagon, Moloch, Mut, etc.

Even the name Baali – Lord – will not be used “in that day”, when Christ returns. Instead we will use the word “Ishi”, which though Hebrew kept it’s true meaning “Man” (or “husband”), the word was not originally Hebrew; it was given to Adam by God and therefore is a “pure” word, one which evidently survived the Tower of Babel incident.

And as this paper has demonstrated, these names of Baalim are an unavoidable part of our language; in our very thoughts we use the names of Baalim to refer to our parents, days of the week, towns, verbs, nouns, and everything else; and so when God returns us to a “pure language”, He will be returning us to one where the words do not constantly remind us of heathen gods.

Exodus 23:13 And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth.

And in that day we will be able to fully obey this command; for the time being we obey it by not saying “by Jove”, or “gee whiz” or “by golly”; for those represent a heart that is willingly remembering and invoking the blessings or cursings of Jove (Jupiter) or that other Jesus “gee-whiz”, or his father “Golly”. But those are not parts of our language, per se, but addendums to it which we can and should avoid. To use them is to voluntarily honor the gods of the heathen.

On the other hand, as I’ve shown, to not make mention of the names of “Baalim” would mean we would have to “leave the world”, as Paul put it, or take a vow of silence; or else not talk of our “mother”, or “mama”, or “papa”, or “consider” anything, or be “amused”, or talk of luck or touching or of the planets, or of Selenium or Helium, of merchandise or Luna; and for that matter, could never talk to anyone named “Diana”, “Fred”, “Thalia” or “Helen”. Obviously God did not intend this, or he would not have himself used “baal”, “charis”, “tartarus” and “apollyon” in the inspired original languages of the Bible.

But back to the other hand again; don’t pretend that your language is a pure language just because you happen to speak it; the languages will be pure when God removes the names of Baalim from them and gives us the pure language that He gave Adam to begin with; and not before.

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