"Why does the Bible say people spoke other languages BEFORE the Tower of Babel incident?"

“I’m confused. Three times in Genesis (10:5, 20, 31) we are told that people were divided according to the languages they spoke; however, the next chapter (Genesis 11:1) says that the whole earth spoke one language. Please explain this contradiction.” We all enjoy a good movie or story, but what is the one element that keeps us engaged? It is the creative story telling. We are never given all the information up front! Sherlock Holmes would never have existed if Doyle gave us the details of the crime in telling the story! It is true that the people were divided into their nations according to their languages--but how did those different languages come to be? While Chapter 10 gives us a “table of nations,” Chapter 11 explains the language detail of Chapter 10. The whole earth spoke one language before the Tower of Babel! It makes sense in our culture to have all the information presented in a chronological order; however, we are not the original audience, so good students will be culturally sensitive not to impose modern methods of reading on an ancient text. The original audience understood the order in which the information was presented.