nally, before the pride that constructed that tower after the flood divided human
Book IX 387
// wasfor a prophetic or symbolic reason that the animals were brought to Adam to be named, and that thus the need arose to make him a helper like him
12, 20. But we have now investigated sufficiently, in my opinion, what kind of help it was that the woman was made to provide for the man. What we should now see is why it was done after all the beasts of the field and all the flying things of heaven had been brought to Adam for him to put names to them, and that it was in this way that the necessity, as it were, arose for creating him a woman from his side, when among those animals a help like him had not been found. Well, it seems to me that it was done on account of some prophetic signifi cance—but still it was actually done, so that once the historical fact has been established, the field is left free for its figurative interpretation.
What then is the meaning of this, that Adam put names to flying things and terrestrial living things, but not to fishes and all swimming things? After all, if one consults human languages, one finds that all these things are called by names which people have given them by speech: not only these things to be found in the waters and on land, but also the land or earth itselfand the water and the sky or heaven, and things which can be seen in the sky and things which cannot be seen but which are believed to exist; they are all called by a diversity of names according to the diversity of national languages.
21. We have been taught, to be sure, that there was but one language origi nally, before the pride that constructed that tower after the flood divided human society with sounds of diverging significance;20 whatever that language may have been, is there any point in trying to find out? It was certainly the language Adam used to speak, and it is in that language, if it continues to this day, that the words were articulated with which the first man put names to the land animals and the flying things. Is it in the least credible, therefore, that in the same language the names for fishes were fixed by God, not by the man, and that later on the man learned them at God's dictation? Well, even if it had happened like that, there would undoubtedly be a mystical significance to be found in why it had happened like that. But no, we must assume that names were put to the different species of fish as little by little they came to be known.
Then, however, when the cattle and the wild beasts and the flying things were in fact brought to the man, for him to put names to them, assembled before him in their distinct species (and he could also have given them names little by little, if this had not been done, and much sooner than the fishes), what could the reason for this have been, if not to signify something that would serve to foretell future events? lt is above all the very order and style of this narrative that points to this conclusion.
20. See Gn 1 1 : 1 -8, the story of the tower of Babel.