It is better to talk about evolution for biologists. I am a philologist, and I would like to draw attention to another issue that is described very differently in the Bible and in modern textbooks: the development of languages.

It is obvious to everyone that languages change over time. It is difficult for us to analyze the Old Russian chronicles, and when we try to read Shakespeare in the original language, we are convinced: Hamlet did not speak in the way they speak today in London or New York. There was a time when these changes were described as a "corruption" of the originally pure language: Italian, Spanish, French, and other Romance languages were corrupted vernacular Latin. It is true that these languages are based on vernaculars, but now that a great literature has been created in each of them, no one would call the language of Dante or Cervantes "spoiled Latin." Although Ukrainian, for example, can still be heard today that it is a "Little Russian dialect", spoiled by Polish borrowings. And some Ukrainians insist that, on the contrary, the Russian language is the language of Kievan Rus, spoiled by Turkic and Finno-Ugric borrowings.

Of course, this is not a serious approach. It is obvious that languages develop, that different new languages can come from the same root, that they can influence each other, change beyond recognition and die. But if this is happening in the present time, it must have been the case in those times from which no written sources have come down to us? Comparative-historical linguistics is engaged in the reconstruction of such changes. It tells us, for example, that the Russian words beginning and end originated from the same root with an alternating vowel: ken/kon. In the word beginning there was a prefix na-, the suffix was lo (cf. shilo, soap), and the root changed unrecognizably. But linguists can give exact parallels to all the changes in other words, these were regular processes.

Moreover, the Greek word kainos meaning "new" and the Latin recens meaning "recent" are derived from the same word. Naturally, this is no longer a Russian or Slavic root, but an Indo-European one. Once upon a time, the ancestors of the Slavs and many other peoples of Eurasia understood each other, because they spoke close Indo-European dialects, and linguists can reconstruct their main features based on the data of modern languages. When in the 19th century the linguist A. Schleicher reconstructed the grammar and vocabulary of the Indo-European language, he even wrote a fable in it — he was so sure that his reconstruction was reliable. But time passed, serious changes were made to its reconstruction, the very possibility of writing in Indo-European was called into question... Modern linguistics draws more modest, but also more reliable conclusions.

On the other hand, linguists now compare completely separate languages: it turned out that the Indo-European languages have common roots with the Turkic, Semitic and many other languages. This macrofamily is commonly called "Nostratic" today, and our ancestors probably spoke the corresponding language about 15 thousand years ago. The brilliant Russian linguist S. Starostin suggested that 40-50 thousand years ago, mankind used one language, from which all the languages of antiquity and modernity originated. However, we cannot reconstruct it.

Does this statement remind us of something already known from the Bible? Of course, the story of the 11th chapter of Genesis about the construction of the Tower of Babel and about the confusion of languages. Only there it says that linguistic unity was lost in an instant. And scientists claim that languages moved away from each other gradually, over thousands of years, and we see proof of this in the very structure of languages... What to do here?

In the Middle Ages, before the birth of modern linguistics, there was a popular theory that the original language of mankind was Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament (often identified with Aramaic or Syriac). Adam spoke in it with God in Paradise, and with the confusion of languages, only it remained intact, and the rest of the languages moved away from it more or less.

I was told that in Israel, religious schools describe the origin of languages in this way to this day. And so a graduate of such a school enters the university, begins to study linguistics, and is told that in fact Hebrew is just one of the Semitic languages, which has changed greatly in comparison with the proto-language, and that many archaic features have been preserved not in Hebrew, but in... Arabic! And the linguistic material really confirms this thesis.

For example, in the ancient Hebrew language there is a word yom, which is translated as "day". In Semitic languages, the root of a word usually (though not always) consists of three consonant sounds, but here there are only two: й-м. But in Arabic, the same word sounds like yaum. Probably, in the middle of this word there was another root consonant, a non-syllabic u (like the English w), just in the Hebrew yaum was compressed into yom.

Or an example from grammar: in classical Arabic there are cases: ardu — land (nominative), ardi — land (genitive), arda — earth (accusative). In Hebrew, all case meanings are conveyed by prepositions, but the word "earth" does not change and sounds like eretz. But there is a strange adverbial form of arts "on the ground". Very similar to the accusative case... It can be assumed that once in Hebrew there were forms artsu, artsi, artsa, of which only the last one has been preserved, the rest have lost their endings, after which the unpronounceable arts turned into erets.

If we look not only at Arabic, but also at other Semitic languages, our guess will be confirmed: in many of them, the word "day" has three root consonants, and three cases with corresponding endings are also found everywhere. It turns out that the ancient Hebrew language has lost these common Semitic features. And even if we assume that the original language of mankind was not Hebrew, but a proto-Semitic or even Nostratic language, what to do with the gradual changes?

And here the student has a choice: either to accept linguistics as a science, and try to read the text of the Book of Genesis with different eyes, interpreting it not so literally, or completely abandon linguistics. He can say: yes, God created Hebrew on purpose, as if this language had already passed a certain stage in its development, but in fact there was no development, and linguistic diversity arose in one moment, in an inexplicable way. And linguistics is heresy.

In no way would I draw direct parallels between the development of languages and the question of biological evolution: these are too different processes. But I would like to point out just one detail: three thousand years ago, there was no modern linguistics or modern biology, and so it is absurd to expect the Bible to use the appropriate terminology or to expound the scientific theories of the twenty-first century (why not the thirty-first, by the way?).

In fact, no science is omnipotent. Scientists can say absolutely nothing about the origin of language: at the most ancient stage, among the most primitive tribe, it already exists as a complex system. Linguistics can explain how languages develop, but it cannot tell us why humans possess language at all and how it began.