Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Genesis

[Super Hero]

How can the Tower of Babel story be true in a world with skyscrapers? The Tower of Babel story has a few essential elements;

1.God didn't like that people worked together.

2.God didn't like that people built a tall tower. (Guess he felt threatened that they'd pop up in his backyard in the sky?)

3.God made everyone speak different languages as punishment.

Point by point, none of these make sense.

1.People work together across continents through mass communication. Why does a single building draw God's ire and not the internet?

2.Unlike what ancient people thought, Heaven is not up above the clouds of earth, so why would God even feel the need to destroy the tower? It can't hurt him. Besides, why doesn't God spend all his time knocking down skyscrapers nowadays? Surely they must be taller than the Tower of Babel, unless the ancient people had secret knowledge of buildings that was lost to time.

3.We can trace where many languages come from, and they didn't all start in one place.

Lastly, where are the ruins of the tower? The story doesn't say it was destroyed. How can the Tower of Babel story be read as anything other than the mythology of people who didn't know what we know now?

[jimwalton]

> 1.God didn't like that people worked together.

This is incorrect. The text never says that God has any objection to them working together. God objected to what they were doing and the objective they had in mind, not to their working together.

> 2.God didn't like that people built a tall tower.

This is mistaken. It was not the height of the tower that was the problem. Ziggurats in the ancient world were built to support the stairway that was believed to be used by the gods to travel down to their temple and into the town and bring blessing. It was a convenience, so to speak, that the people provided for their gods.

But you can read in verse 6 that their intent was less than noble. They wanted to make a name for themselves instead of making a name for God. Their motivation was not to honor God but to bring prosperity and honor to themselves.

> 3.God made everyone speak different languages as punishment.

Yay, you got something right. Why not simply topple the tower? Well, that wouldn't solve anything: they would just build another one, or something equally presumptuous.

What most likely happened here is that "the united cultures of the Sumerians are invaded by the Babylonians (Semitic language segment) and dispersed, heightening an existing clash of languages, creating a disintegration and mixing of language as the Sumerian civilization collapsed and people groups were mixed by the permeation of foreign languages" (Paul Penley). By doing so, God shut the project down. Cooperation and progress were impossible. It's not a story describing the origin of all languages, but a localized confusion of a major language in Mesopotamia.

Their offense is the ziggurat, representing the religious system in which the gods were recast with human natures. People were no longer trying to be like God, but more insidiously, were trying to bring God down to the level of fallen humanity. The fall of Sumer was a fall of the religious system there.

The date of this event is somewhere in about 3000-2000 BC. According to Sumerian chronology, the Sumerian dynasty at Ur III in about 2110-2000 BC (±50) saw its demise and transition to the first Babylonian dynasty right in this exact time frame. The Ur III period was one of great prosperity, with a booming economy allowing great construction programs. Archaeologically speaking, the most significant feature of the Ur III period is the magnificent monumental architecture.

"Where are the ruins of the tower?" Multiple ziggurat structures have been found in the region of Iraq (Sumer). We have no clue which one it was, if any of them.

[Freddy Johns]

So what is your bottom line- do you think the story of the Tower of Babel actually happened?

[jimwalton]

Yes, but not the caricatured version most people believe. As I said, there are historical accounts that corroborate such a possibility in about 2110-2000 BC, which accords well with the biblical account. Numerous ziggurats have been found, and there is plenty of other reliable cultural and historical information in the biblical text (thoroughly-baked bricks, tar for mortar, temple complex in the city, tower to connect heaven and earth, etc.). We don't need to take the story as the origins of all human languages, but an invading army that dispersed them to various nations so that they began to speak different languages. It's also a religious theme consistent with the agenda of Genesis, though it's embedded in a thoroughly historical event. The strength of the evidence in Gn. 11.1-9 is a historical narrative in a particular time frame, interpreted theologically.

Walton, Matthews & Chavalas say, "Many of the features of this account point to the end of the 4th millennium to the end of the 3rd as the setting of the narrative. This is the period when receding water allowed settlement of the southern Tigris-Euphrates basin. Many settlements on native soil show that the occupants brought the northern Mesopotamian culture with them. It is likewise in the period known as the Late Uruk phase (toward the end of the 4th millennium) that the culture and technology known from these settlements in southern Mesopotamia suddenly starts showing up in settlements throughout the ANE. Thus both the migration referred to in v. 2 and the dispersion of v. 9 find points of contact in the settlement pattern identified by archaeologists for the end of the 4th millennium. Urbanization, ziggurat prototypes and experimentation with kiln-baked brick also fit this time period."

This actually happened, but we have to understand it as grown-ups, not as children listening to a story.

[Irish Eyes]

Do you actually believe that's how different languages arose?

[jimwalton]

Hm. Did you read what I wrote? What I said above is, "What most likely happened here is that "the united cultures of the Sumerians are invaded by the Babylonians (Semitic language segment) and dispersed, heightening an existing clash of languages, creating a disintegration and mixing of language as the Sumerian civilization collapsed and people groups were mixed by the permeation of foreign languages" (Paul Penley). By doing so, God shut the project down. Cooperation and progress were impossible. It's not a story describing the origin of all languages, but a localized confusion of a major language in Mesopotamia."

In other words, this is not a story of where languages came from, but the disruption of a harmful project by dispersing people among other language groups.

In the first verse (Gen. 11.1), the common language represented the united cultures of the Sumerians. Genesis 10.5, 20, and 31 tell us there were already various languages around. The "one language" was the cultural context of Sumer. Walton, Matthews and Chavalas tell us, "The account of a time when all mankind spoke a single language is preserved in Sumerian in the epic entitled 'Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.' It speaks of a time when there were no wild beasts and only harmony among people: 'The whole universe in unison spoke to Enlil in one tongue.' It then reports that speech was changed and 'contention' was brought into it. There is nothing else in this account that parallels the Tower of Babel, but confusion of language by deity can be seen as an ancient theme." The confusion of language was brought about by dispersal at the hands of an invading army, not by God creating languages at this point.

Linguists sill debate whether all languages came from a simple original language or whether languages emerged independently among several groups of early peoples.

[Sure Breeze]

> They wanted to make a name for themselves instead of making a name for God.

This happens now where people build towers to make a name for themselves. Still not stopped.

> Their motivation was not to honor God but to bring prosperity and honor to themselves.

Yep - no consequences today. Why is that?

> What most likely happened here is that "the united cultures of the Sumerians are invaded by the Babylonians (Semitic language segment) and dispersed

No no no, it's right there in the Bible. Genesis 11:1: "Now the whole world had one language and a common speech."

The. Whole. World. Now I agree with you, the Bible was written by ignorant people who likely thought "the whole world" means "100 square miles away from me" so I can pardon their stupidity in using such language but then what else did they get wrong? Noah? Where, once again, the whole world was flooded? Just like in Genesis 7:19-23 had a literally fictional account where all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered with water, how every other living thing died, etc.

Why are these factually incorrect things in the Bible written as if they're literal facts?

[jimwalton]

> This happens now where people build towers to make a name for themselves. Still not stopped.

Right. The objective was to stop this particular effort, not all such efforts. By stopping one and telling about it, we all get the point (or are supposed to). The telling of the story here fits the agenda of Genesis well and sets up the Abraham story of Genesis 12.

> Yep - no consequences today. Why is that?

The objective was to stop this particular effort, not all such efforts. By stopping one and telling about it, we all get the point (or are supposed to). The telling of the story here fits the agenda of Genesis well and sets up the Abraham story of Genesis 12.

> The. Whole. World.

First of all, Genesis 10.4, 10, and 31 tell us that other languages already existed, so we have to interpret the Bible correctly and in its context. You have to read more than 1" deep.

What does "all" mean? In Gn. 41.57 (same book, same author), we read that "all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph because the famine was severe in all the world." Was Brazil experiencing famine? Did the Australians come to Joseph? No. "All" means the countries of the immediate vicinity in the ancient Near East.

Also, Deut. 2.25 (same author): "I will put the...fear of you on all the nations under heaven." Did that include the Mayans? The people of Madagascar? I don't think anyone would argue that this refers to more than the nations of Canaan, and perhaps a few others.

There are plenty of other references like this throughout the Bible (Acts 17.6; 19.35; 24.5; Rom. 1.8). We have to give serious consideration that quite possibly "all" doesn't mean "global".

So we can reasonably interpret that "The.Whole.World." is a reference to the then known world of Mesopotamia. And remember that the Hebrew word translated "world" (eretz) also often means "land," which is more narrowly defined.

> Why are these factually incorrect things in the Bible written as if they're literal facts?

They're not factually incorrect. You're just not thinking any more than 1" deep in your interpretive framework.

[Sure Breeze]

> Right. The objective was to stop this particular effort, not all such efforts.

Convenient? God does something because of a reason. Same situation happens (worse, even) with no response. Other than invention of cameras and the scientific method - why not? Well, because we all get the point - all except the majority of our global population who never heard of this story.

> "All" means the countries of the immediate vicinity in the ancient Near East.

You then agree with me that Noah is false as literally written. The language to indicate things like "world" and "all" is factually wrong. Noah was a local flood. What about Adam/Eve - same thing right. First people on Earth are just from this one tribe. All these Christians claiming this as literal as factually incorrect. Don't get me wrong - I agree with you - but you have way too many Christians beliefing in these fictional accounts as literal.

[jimwalton]

> Convenient? God does something because of a reason. Same situation happens (worse, even) with no response.

The Bible is full of "first event" stories. The first time something happens, God deals with it directly as a kind of case law example to show us what he thinks of it. After that, it's up to us to follow his example (sort of like a precedent) and take it from there. The Tower of Babel is that kind of story. So are many others in the Bible.

> You then agree with me that Noah is false as literally written.

Well, first I would say that "literally" is a poor choice of term and is inadequate for any conversation about the Bible. It doesn't really take us anywhere. The story of Noah is written as if it's historiography and not mythography. It is written within its cultural context where "all" and "world" reference their immediate environs in the Middle East. Mesopotamian geographers had no way of knowing that Babylonia and Assyria were part of the Eurasian landmass that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to Indian Oceans. The ancient geographers imagined that the continent they lived on was much smaller. On the World Map (found by archaeologists in ancient Babylon), the cosmic ocean *marratu* is drawn just beyond Assyria, Urartu (Akkadia—in the northern part of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley), and the mountains where the Euphrates rises [the Ararat chain].

This is where "literally" is just a lousy word. As far as Noah was concerned, he was writing the dead-on truth. He had no other words to express what he saw was happening. We have to understand the writing from the point of view and intent of the author.

> What about Adam/Eve - same thing right.

No, that's a completely different matter. But the text doesn't insist Adam & Eve were the first hominids. They may have been two that were chosen out from the rest and put into the garden (Gn. 2.15).

> Don't get me wrong - I agree with you - but you have way too many Christians beliefing in these fictional accounts as literal.

I am often disappointed in the knowledge level of Christians about their own Scriptures.