![]() The story relates how, at the time when all men still spoke one language, there was a migration from the East to the plain of *Shinar (Babylonia). The story of Babel thus explains how the descendants of this one man came to be so widely scattered and divided into separate nations speaking so many different languages. According to the preceding narrative, mankind after the flood was descended from one common ancestor, *Noah. The second, more subtle but more far-reaching reason is found in Genesis 11:4, "otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth." The people of Babel wanted to stay where they were in Shinar, which was in direct contradiction to God's order (in Genesis 9:1) to Noah and his descendants to "fill the Earth." As much as Babel's builders were reaching beyond their limits, they had also disobeyed God.Table of Contents| Pekod| Travelers and ExplorersīABEL, TOWER OF, the edifice whose building is portrayed in Genesis 11:1–9 as the direct cause of the diversity of languages in the world and the dispersion of mankind over all the earth. Even the potential of hubris is enough to get the ball rolling while God was certainly angered by Adam and Eve eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Genesis 3:22-23 states he was far more concerned that his now self-aware creations would become like gods themselves if they ate of the Tree of Life, and threw them out of Eden accordingly. From Bellerophon and Arachne of the Greeks to Gilgamesh of the Sumerians, the concept of hubris - of mortals ascribing towards or trying to attain godly status - is a common theme in stories involving divine punishment. Gods, in general, do not like the overly-ambitious mortal. The word Babel, used to describe the city and applied only after all hell broke loose, comes from the ancient Hebrew verb balal, meaning "to mix, confuse." Babylon, clearly stated as already in existence before the whole Tower of Babel fiasco, is the Greek name for the city of Babilim. This set off a cycle of misinformation going back centuries, particularly the assumption that the admittedly similar-sounding Babel and Babylon are synonymous, which they are not. In " Patriarchal Palestine," researcher Henry Archibald Sayce notes that it is a cognate to the well-documented land of Sumer, and that the region would eventually go by a more famous name: Babylonia.Īnd maddeningly, Genesis 10 and 11, while mentioning Shinar and the settlements therein, never name the city where the Tower of Babel was built. Modern-day scholars agree that Shinar was a real place the Jewish Encyclopedia states the name referred to a region in modern-day Iraq encompassing southern Mesopotamia (where Uruk and Akkad are) as well as a bit of its north (where Babylon is). Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth." Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.' So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. ![]() And the LORD said, 'Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. ![]() And they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.' But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. Then they said to one another, 'Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.' They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. "Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.
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