THE DICTIONARY CAME FIRST: What the Tower of Babel Teaches Us About Learning, Literacy, and Wisdom
By Alicea Peyton, PhD
By Alicea Peyton, PhD
For most of human history, people learned by listening. Knowledge lived in the mouth, not on the page. Stories, names, and meaning passed from one generation to the next through memory and community. Oral history was the world’s first library.
But then came the Tower of Babel — the moment when shared language fractured. Suddenly, people could no longer rely on oral tradition alone. Meaning splintered. Words no longer carried the same weight across communities. Understanding became unstable.
And from that moment forward, humanity needed something new:
a way to stabilize language, preserve meaning, and rebuild shared understanding.
That “something” was the dictionary.
Before the Bible.
Before books.
Before schools.
Before academia.
There was naming — the first dictionary.
Why the Dictionary Had to Come Before the Bible
This is the part we rarely say out loud:
You cannot write a sacred text until you have a shared language.
You cannot have scripture without vocabulary.
You cannot have meaning without categories.
You cannot have interpretation without structure.
Adam’s naming of the animals is more than a spiritual moment — it is the first recorded act of human information organization. It is classification. It is taxonomy. It is metadata creation. It is the beginning of human understanding.
The Bible comes later because the dictionary must come first.
Babel: The Turning Point Where Reading Became Necessary
Before Babel, oral history worked because everyone spoke the same language. But once language fractured, oral tradition could no longer carry the weight of human knowledge.
After Babel, humanity needed:
written language to preserve meaning
dictionaries to standardize definitions
texts to stabilize interpretation
systems to rebuild shared understanding
In other words:
Babel made literacy necessary.
And yet — here is the crisis we face today:
763 million adults worldwide still lack basic literacy skills.
(UNESCO, 2023)
130 million adults in the U.S. struggle to read.
(ProLiteracy, 2022)
54% of U.S. adults read below a sixth‑grade level.
This means that even in a world built on written knowledge, millions of people still rely on the same learning method Adam used:
environmental noticing, naming, and meaning-making.
This is exactly what Kirsty Williamson’s Ecological Theory of Human Information Behavior describes — humans learn from their environment long before they learn from text.
Academia vs. Spiritual Wisdom: A False Divide
Somewhere along the way, academia decided that only written, structured, text‑based knowledge counts as “real” knowledge. Meanwhile, spiritual communities often treat academic language as cold, elitist, or disconnected from lived experience.
But this divide is artificial.
Human knowing has always required both:
The dictionary gives structure.
The Bible gives meaning.
Technology gives access.
To “study to show yourself approved” is not simply to read scripture.
It is to integrate:
structured knowledge
spiritual wisdom
environmental learning
and modern tools
This is what a complete learner looks like.
Technology: The Modern Dictionary
Today, technology plays the role that naming once did. It helps people:
access information
overcome literacy barriers
translate meaning across languages
learn through audio, video, and interaction
build understanding through experience
Assistive technology — screen readers, speech‑to‑text, audiobooks — is the new Tower of Babel antidote. It reconnects people to meaning even when reading is difficult.
Technology is the modern dictionary
.
Rebuilding What Babel Broke
The Tower of Babel teaches us that language can divide, but it also teaches us that humans adapt. We create tools to rebuild understanding. We create dictionaries to stabilize meaning. We create scripture to interpret life. We create technology to bridge gaps.
The real work — the work of a “workman approved” — is learning to use all of it.
Not just the academic.
Not just the spiritual.
Not just the technological.
But the integration of all three.
Because human understanding is strongest when structure and meaning walk together.