I suggest that the presence of the tower and the tower story are Mosiah2’s interpretive additions to the Jaredite history. (See commentary accompanying Ether 1:3–5.) Nevertheless, Mosiah presented that story as accurate history, as does the Bible (Gen. 11:1–9). The scriptural record presents as history a story that history and linguistics do not accept in the same way. I suggest that we read the biblical text similar to the way Nibley has, as a remembrance of an event of ancient temple-building, but not as the true origin of multiple languages. Historical linguistics cannot trace languages with absolute precision, but there are tools for reconstructing language families and tracing their history by their development. None of the known history of languages can account for a single language splitting into the multitudes of world languages around 2000 B.C. or even 3000 B.C., or at all. (See Excursus: “The Confusion of Tongues in Light of Historical Linguistics,” following Ether 1.) Nibley suggests that we need to be cautious of such simplistic reading of scriptural text:
The book of Ether, depicting the uprooting and scattering from the tower of a numerous population, shows them going forth not individually but in groups, and not merely family groups but groups of friends and associates: “thy friends and their families, and the friends of Jared and their families” (Ether 1:41). There was no point in having Jared’s language unconfounded if there was to be no one he could talk to, and his brother cried to the Lord that his friends might also retain the language. The same, however, would apply to any other language: If every individual were to speak a tongue all of his own and so go off entirely by himself, the races would have been not merely scattered but quite annihilated. We must not fall into the old vice of reading into the scripture things that are not there. There is nothing said in our text about every man suddenly speaking a new language. We are told in the book of Ether that languages were confounded with and by the “confounding” of the people: “Cry unto the Lord,” says Jared (Ether 1:34), “that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words” (italics added). The statement is significant for more than one thing. How can it possibly be said that “we may not understand our words”? Words we cannot understand may be nonsense syllables or may be in some foreign language, but in either case they are not our words. The only way we can fail to understand our own words is to have words that are actually ours change their meaning among us. That is exactly what happens when people, and hence languages, are either “confounded,” that is, mixed up, or scattered. In Ether’s account, the confounding of people is not to be separated from the confounding of their languages; they are, and have always been, one and the same process: the Lord, we are told (Ether 1:35–37), “did not confound the language of Jared; and Jared and his brother were not confounded… and the Lord had compassion upon their friends and their families also, that they were not confounded.” That “confound” as used in the book of Ether is meant to have its true and proper meaning of “to pour together,” “to mix up together,” is clear from the prophecy in Ether 13:8, that “the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built upon this land;… and they shall no more be confounded,” the word here meaning mixed up with other people, culturally, linguistically, or otherwise.
In this reading of the text, the confounding of languages is related to the mixing (confounding) of different peoples in creating this great tower in Babylon. From such a mixing of people who were attempting to build a temple to the heavens, Yahweh removed some of his believers for his own purposes.
A more scientific understanding of the linguistic history requires the reconsideration of some popular assumptions made about the Jaredite language. For instance, Thomas R. Valletta, an Institute instructor, asserts: “In the opening scenes of the book of Ether, the reader is presented with a people being driven out of a land, but promised that the Adamic language would not be taken from them.” Ascribing the Adamic language to the Jaredites is based on assumptions that cannot be demonstrated conclusively even with the most generous readings. First, the idea that the Jaredites spoke Adamic is predicated on the idea that there was only a single language in the entire world until about 2000 B.C. That assumption is contradicted by all of the best evidence of historical linguistics. (See Excursus: “The Confusion of Tongues in Light of Historical Linguistics,” following Ether 1.) Second, seeing the Jaredite language as Adamic depends, not only on assuming that the Jaredites originally spoke Adamic but that, after Yahweh did not confound their language (Ether 1:35), they continued to speak Adamic. The text supports only the conclusion that Jared and his group spoke a language they continued to understand. Since any group whose language changed would continue to understand themselves, how would they know that it was their own language that had changed? As long as the Jaredites spoke any language that they could all understand, they would not be confounded.
Third, for the reasons discussed above, the points of resemblance between this story and the Bible’s account are not an independent confirmation of the Bible, since our account is Moroni’s abridgment from Mosiah’s translation, not a quotation from Ether’s record (Ether 1:5; see commentary accompanying Ether 1:3–5). Moroni noted the similarity to the brass-plate text (v. 3) on the history from Adam and declined to include it because it was so similar (v. 4). By the time Moroni adapted Mosiah’s adaptation, we have the story as given in Genesis because of Genesis, not as an independent confirmation.