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All parents remember when their child spoke his or her first word, but no one knows when the human race first did the same. Paleontologists can tell from the fossil record roughly when our hominid ancestors had sufficient cranial capacity and vocal equipment to carry on a conversation. But the exact “when” and “how” remain a mystery. Archeologists have found nothing to shed any light on the issue. Written records are similarly unavailing, since presumably people were gabbing away long before anyone thought to write anything down.
With the notable exception of linguist Noam Chomsky, who insists language arose from a single genetic mutation, scholars generally believe it evolved gradually, like most other human traits. Darwin himself suggested as much. He wrote, “I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries.” Darwin left plenty of room for further conjecture, and numerous linguists, archaeologists, psychologists and anthropologists have risen to the challenge. Given the lack of empirical evidence one way or another, the Linguistic Society of Paris once banned further debate on the subject, since the issue could never be satisfactorily resolved.
Among the various theories on the origins of language, Darwin’s “signs and gestures” reference deserves special mention, because it is most in accord with the actual development of language in children. Somewhere around the age of one, babies begin to point, either to something they want or something they want to call attention to. This shared moment with another person, which psychologists all “joint attention,” is a milestone in a child’s cognitive development and the foundation of subsequent language acquisition as words are applied to whatever the child points to.
Language’s origin in the objects of joint attention may explain its limitations when its subject cannot easily be pointed to. I can point to the sun and moon and give them names. But how do I point to a supernatural entity, like God? Some early cultures solved the problem by identifying the sun and moon and other natural phenomena as gods. It then became possible to fashion representations of these gods and to worship them as idols. These artifacts have enabled archeologists to pinpoint the origin of religions in a way that is not possible when scholars seek to determine the origin of language itself.
Among ancient religions, Judaism stands out, because its God could not be pointed to. The temple in Jerusalem housed the Ark of the Covenant containing the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai. But there were no representations of the Hebrew God Yahweh, nor have archeologists unearthed any images of the Yahweh anywhere in Israel. This should not be too surprising, since the stone tablets brought down from Sinai included a commandment against bowing down to any graven image. The prohibition explicitly included not just gods but anything in creation; in other words, anything that could be pointed to.
Having nothing tangible you can point to as your supreme being has obvious drawbacks when you are surrounded by neighbors who have idols they can bow down to. Even as Yahweh was laying down the law atop Mt. Sinai, the Hebrew people down below were worshipping the golden calf. The prophets who came later were forever lambasting the nation of Israel for “whoring after other gods.” Christians worship the same God and are bound by the same strictures against idolatry. But some branches of Christianity have a decidedly relaxed attitude about genuflecting before crosses and lighting candles to icons.
Under the circumstances it is nothing short of astonishing that a tribal people was able to arrive at such a sophisticated understanding of God in the first place, even allowing for their occasional back-sliding into idolatry. They had stumbled upon a truth that continues to elude many, even today. God is nonobjectifiable, meaning that He cannot be pointed to and must not be bowed down to. Even to address him or refer to him by name is to objectify him in a way that can mislead. The 20th-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein warned of the bewitchment of our intelligence by language, and that would certainly apply in this case. Wittgenstein famously said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
If God cannot be pointed to or even named, spiritual adepts are often left struggling for words to express themselves. The medieval Christian theologian Meister Eckhart referred to the “nothingness of the godhead.” Jewish mystics uses the term ayin, meaning nothingness or no-thingness. By this they do not mean God has no existence but rather that God is the nothing out of which everything comes into being. The 20th-century Trappist contemplative, Thomas Merton, sums it up this way: “God is not an object, thing, external reality, or Gran Dame, but being itself—one with the ground of each us.”
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