fbpx
Wikipedia

Tower of Babel

November 17, 2023

This article is about the biblical myth. For other uses, see Tower of Babel (disambiguation).

The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל‎, Mīgdal Bāḇel) narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth and parable meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages.[1][2][3][4]

Tower of Babel
מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל
General information
TypeTower
LocationBabylon
HeightSee § Height

According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar (שִׁנְעָר‎). There they agree to build a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Yahweh, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.

Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in Babylon. While the archaeological record is incompatible with this identification, many scholars believe that the biblical story was inspired by Etemenanki. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.[5]

Narrative

 
German Late Medieval depiction of the tower's construction from a manuscript of Rudolf von Ems' Weltchronik, cgm 5 fol. 29r (c. 1370s)

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east,[a] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 5 The LORD[b] came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused (balal) the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

— Genesis 11:1–9 NRSVUE[7]

Etymology

The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" (אֶת-הָעִיר וְאֶת-הַמִּגְדָּל‎) or just "the city" (הָעִיר‎). The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for Babylon) is uncertain. The native, Akkadian name of the city was Bāb-ilim, meaning "gate of God". However, that form and interpretation itself are now usually thought to be the result of an Akkadian folk etymology applied to an earlier form of the name, Babilla, of unknown meaning and probably non-Semitic origin.[8][9] According to the Bible, the city received the name "Babel" from the Hebrew verb בָּלַל (bālal), meaning to jumble or to confuse.[10]

Composition

Genre

The narrative of the tower of Babel[11] is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon. Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon.[12]: 426  The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages. God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood so God brought into existence multiple languages.[12]: 51  Thus, humans were divided into linguistic groups, unable to understand one another.

Themes

The story's theme of competition between God and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.[13] The 1st-century Jewish interpretation found in Flavius Josephus explains the construction of the tower as a hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant Nimrod. There have, however, been some contemporary challenges to this classical interpretation, with emphasis placed on the explicit motive of cultural and linguistic homogeneity mentioned in the narrative (v. 1, 4, 6).[14] This reading of the text sees God's actions not as a punishment for pride, but as an etiology of cultural differences, presenting Babel as the cradle of civilization.

Authorship and source criticism

Jewish and Christian tradition attributes the composition of the whole Pentateuch, which includes the story of the Tower of Babel, to Moses. Modern biblical scholarship rejects Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, but is divided on the question of its authorship. Many scholars subscribe to some form of the documentary hypothesis, which argues that the Pentateuch is composed of multiple "sources" that were later merged. Scholars who favor this hypothesis, such as Richard Elliot Friedman, tend to see the Genesis 11:1–9 as being composed by the J or Jahwist/Yahwist source.[15] Michael Coogan suggests the intentional word play regarding the city of Babel, and the noise of the people's "babbling" is found in the Hebrew words as easily as in English, is considered typical of the Yahwist source.[12]: 51  John Van Seters, who has put forth substantial modifications to the hypothesis, suggests that these verses are part of what he calls a "Pre-Yahwistic stage".[16] Other scholars reject the documentary hypothesis all together. The "minimalist" scholars tend to see the books of Genesis through 2 Kings as written by a single, anonymous author during the Hellenistic period.

Comparable myths

See also: Comparative mythology and Mythical origins of language

Sumerian and Assyrian parallel

There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,[5] where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat in Eridu and demands a tribute of precious materials from Aratta for its construction, at one point reciting an incantation imploring the god Enki to restore (or in Kramer's translation, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions—named as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land, "the whole universe, the well-guarded people—may they all address Enlil together in a single language."[17]

In addition, a further Assyrian myth, dating from the 8th century BC during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), bears a number of similarities to the later written biblical story.[citation needed]

Greco-Roman parallel

 
Building of Babel

In Greek mythology, much of which was adopted by the Romans, there is a myth referred to as the Gigantomachy, the battle fought between the Giants and the Olympian gods for supremacy of the cosmos. In Ovid's telling of the myth, the Giants attempt to reach the gods in heaven by stacking mountains, but are repelled by Jupiter's thunderbolts. A.S. Kline translates Ovid's Metamorphoses 1.151–155 as:

"Rendering the heights of heaven no safer than the earth, they say the giants attempted to take the Celestial kingdom, piling mountains up to the distant stars. Then the all-powerful father of the gods hurled his bolt of lightning, fractured Olympus and threw Mount Pelion down from Ossa below."[18]

Mexico

Various traditions similar to that of the tower of Babel are found in Central America. Some writers[who?] connected the Great Pyramid of Cholula to the Tower of Babel. The Dominican friar Diego Durán (1537–1588) reported hearing an account about the pyramid from a hundred-year-old priest at Cholula, shortly after the conquest of the Aztec Empire. He wrote that he was told when the light of the Sun first appeared upon the land, giants appeared and set off in search of the Sun. Not finding it, they built a tower to reach the sky. An angered God of the Heavens called upon the inhabitants of the sky, who destroyed the tower and scattered its inhabitants. The story was not related to either a flood or the confusion of languages, although Frazer connects its construction and the scattering of the giants with the Tower of Babel.[19]

Another story, attributed by the native historian Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl (c. 1565–1648) to the ancient Toltecs, states that after men had multiplied following a great deluge, they erected a tall zacuali or tower, to preserve themselves in the event of a second deluge. However, their languages were confounded and they went to separate parts of the Earth.[20]

Arizona

Still another story, attributed to the Tohono O'odham people, holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood, then became wicked and attempted to build a house reaching to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts.[21][22]

Nepal

Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been reported among the Tharu of Nepal and northern India.[23][further explanation needed]

Botswana

According to David Livingstone, the people he met living near Lake Ngami in 1849 had such a tradition, but with the builders' heads getting "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding".[24]

Other traditions

In his 1918 book, Folklore in the Old Testament, Scottish social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer documented similarities between Old Testament stories, such as the Flood, and indigenous legends around the world. He identified Livingston's account with a tale found in Lozi mythology, wherein the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the Creator-God, Nyambe, who has fled to Heaven on a spider-web, but the men perish when the masts collapse. He further relates similar tales of the Ashanti that substitute a pile of porridge pestles for the masts. Frazer moreover cites such legends found among the Kongo people, as well as in Tanzania, where the men stack poles or trees in a failed attempt to reach the Moon.[19] He further cited the Karbi and Kuki people of Assam as having a similar story. The traditions of the Karen people of Myanmar, which Frazer considered to show clear 'Abrahamic' influence, also relate that their ancestors migrated there following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam, when the languages were confused and the Karen separated from the Karenni. He notes yet another version current in the Admiralty Islands, where mankind's languages are confused following a failed attempt to build houses reaching to heaven.

Mythological context

 
Hanging Gardens of Babylon (19th-century illustration), depicts the Tower of Babel in the background.

Biblical scholars see the Book of Genesis as mythological and not as a historical account of events.[25] Genesis is described as beginning with historicized myth and ending with mythicized history.[26] Nevertheless, the story of Babel can be interpreted in terms of its context.

Genesis 10:10[27] states that Babel (LXX: Βαβυλών) formed part of Nimrod's kingdom. The Bible does not specifically mention that Nimrod ordered the building of the tower, but many other sources have associated its construction with Nimrod.[28]

Genesis 11:9[29] attributes the Hebrew version of the name, Babel, to the verb balal, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew. The first century Roman-Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel (בבל), meaning "confusion".[30]

Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon

Main article: Etemenanki
 
Reconstruction of the Etemenanki

Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by the 6th-century-BCE Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II, but had fallen into disrepair by the time of Alexander's conquests. He managed to move the tiles of the tower to another location, but his death stopped the reconstruction, and it was demolished during the reign of his successor Antiochus Soter. The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) wrote an account of the ziggurat in his Histories, which he called the "Temple of Zeus Belus".[31]

According to modern scholars, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki. Stephen L. Harris proposed this occurred during the Babylonian captivity.[32] Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of Genesis 11:1–9[33] were inspired by the existence of an apparently incomplete ziggurat at Babylon, and by the phonological similarity between Babylonian Bab-ilu, meaning "gate of God", and the Hebrew word balal, meaning "mixed", "confused", or "confounded".[34]

Later literature

Book of Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower.

And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar. And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height [of a brick] was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms, and [the extent of one wall was] thirteen stades [and of the other thirty stades]. (Jubilees 10:20–21, Charles' 1913 translation)

Pseudo-Philo

In Pseudo-Philo, the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of the Hamites, but also to Joktan, as prince of the Semites, and to Phenech son of Dodanim, as prince of the Japhetites. Twelve men are arrested for refusing to bring bricks, including Abraham, Lot, Nahor, and several sons of Joktan. However, Joktan finally saves the twelve from the wrath of the other two princes.[35]

Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews

 
Tower of Babel, by Lucas van Valckenborch, 1594, Louvre Museum

The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE), recounted history as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God. In this account, God confused the people rather than destroying them because annihilation with a Flood had not taught them to be godly.

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power... Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus:—"When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone a peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon."

Greek Apocalypse of Baruch

Third Apocalypse of Baruch (or 3 Baruch, c. 2nd century), one of the pseudepigrapha, describes the just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife.[13] Among the sinners are those who instigated the Tower of Babel. In the account, Baruch is first taken (in a vision) to see the resting place of the souls of "those who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them." Next he is shown another place, and there, occupying the form of dogs,

Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest. (Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 3:5–8)

Midrash

Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel, and of the intentions of its builders. According to one midrash the builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in the Jewish sources, said: "God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God" (Gen. R. xxxviii. 7; Tan., ed. Buber, Noah, xxvii. et seq.).

The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted the builders to reverence. The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God, saying that once every 1,656 years, heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the earth, therefore they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge (Gen. R. l.c.; Tan. l.c.; similarly Josephus, "Ant." i. 4, § 2).

Some among that generation even wanted to war against God in heaven (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a). They were encouraged in this undertaking by the notion that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back dripping with blood, so that the people really believed that they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens (Sefer ha-Yashar, Chapter 9:12–36). According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower, while other rabbinical sources assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from the builders.[28]

According to another midrashic account, one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants.[36]

Islamic tradition

 
Turris Babel from Athanasius Kircher

Although not mentioned by name, the Quran has a story with similarities to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, although set in the Egypt of Moses: Pharaoh asks Haman to build him a stone (or clay) tower so that he can mount up to heaven and confront the God of Moses.[37]

Another story in Sura 2:102 mentions the name of Babil, but tells of when the two angels Harut and Marut taught magic to some people in Babylon and warned them that magic is a sin and that their teaching them magic is a test of faith.[38] A tale about Babil appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut (i, 448 f.) and the Lisān al-ʿArab [ar] (xiii. 72), but without the tower: mankind were swept together by winds into the plain that was afterward called "Babil", where they were assigned their separate languages by God, and were then scattered again in the same way. In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th-century Muslim theologian al-Tabari, a fuller version is given: Nimrod has the tower built in Babil, God destroys it, and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac, is then confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida relates the same story, adding that the patriarch Eber (an ancestor of Abraham) was allowed to keep the original tongue, Hebrew in this case, because he would not partake in the building.[28]

Although variations similar to the biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel exist within Islamic tradition, the central theme of God separating humankind on the basis of language is alien to Islam according to the author Yahiya Emerick. In Islamic belief, he argues, God created nations to know each other and not to be separated.[39]

Book of Mormon

In the Book of Mormon, a man named Jared and his family ask God that their language not be confounded at the time of the "great tower". Because of their prayers, God preserves their language and leads them to the Valley of Nimrod. From there, they travel across the sea to the Americas.[40]

Despite no mention of the Tower of Babel in the original text of the Book of Mormon, some leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) assert that the "great tower" was indeed the Tower of Babel – as in the 1981 introduction to the Book of Mormon – despite the chronology of the Book of Ether aligning more closely with the 21st century BC Sumerian tower temple myth of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta to the goddess Innana.[41] Church apologists have also supported this connection and argue the reality of the Tower of Babel: "Although there are many in our day who consider the accounts of the Flood and tower of Babel to be fiction, Latter-day Saints affirm their reality."[42] In either case, the church firmly believes in the factual nature of at least one "great tower" built in the region of ancient Sumer/Assyria/Babylonia.

Gnosticism

In Gnostic tradition recorded in the Paraphrase of Shem, a tower, interpreted as the Tower of Babel, is brought by demons along with the great flood:

And he caused the flood, and he destroyed your (Shem's) race, to take the light and to take away from faith. But I proclaimed quickly by the mouth of the demon that a tower come up to be up to the particle of light, which was left in the demons and their race - which was water - that the demon might be protected from the turbulent chaos. And the womb planned these things according to my will, that she might pour forth completely. A tower came to be through the demons. The darkness was disturbed by his loss. He loosened the muscles of the womb. And the demon who was going to enter the tower was protected so that the races might continue to acquire coherence through him.[43]

Confusion of tongues

This article is about the origin myth. For the film, see The Confusion of Tongues.
 
The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Doré, a woodcut depicting the Tower of Babel

The confusion of tongues (confusio linguarum) is the origin myth for the fragmentation of human languages described in Genesis 11:1-9,[44] as a result of the construction of the Tower of Babel. Prior to this event, humanity was stated to speak a single language. The preceding Genesis 10:5[45] states that the descendants of Japheth, Gomer, and Javan dispersed "with their own tongues." Augustine explained this apparent contradiction by arguing that the story 'without mentioning it, goes back to tell how it came about that the one language common to all men was broken up into many tongues'.[46] Modern scholarship has traditionally held that the two chapters were written by different sources, the former by the Priestly source and the latter by the Jahwist. However, that theory has been debated among scholars in recent years.[47]

During the Middle Ages, the Hebrew language was widely considered the language used by God to address Adam in Paradise, and by Adam as lawgiver (the Adamic language) by various Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholastics.

Dante Alighieri addresses the topic in his De vulgari eloquentia (1302–1305). He argues that the Adamic language is of divine origin and therefore unchangeable.[48]

In his Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1320), however, Dante changes his view to another that treats the Adamic language as the product of Adam.[48] This had the consequence that it could no longer be regarded as immutable, and hence Hebrew could not be regarded as identical with the language of Paradise. Dante concludes (Paradiso XXVI) that Hebrew is a derivative of the language of Adam. In particular, the chief Hebrew name for God in scholastic tradition, El, must be derived of a different Adamic name for God, which Dante gives as I.[48]

Before the acceptance of the Indo-European language family, these languages were considered to be "Japhetite" by some authors (e.g., Rasmus Rask in 1815; see Indo-European studies). Beginning in Renaissance Europe, priority over Hebrew was claimed for the alleged Japhetic languages, which were supposedly never corrupted because their speakers had not participated in the construction of the Tower of Babel. Among the candidates for a living descendant of the Adamic language were: Gaelic (see Auraicept na n-Éces); Tuscan (Giovanni Battista Gelli, 1542, Piero Francesco Giambullari, 1564); Dutch (Goropius Becanus, 1569, Abraham Mylius, 1612); Swedish (Olaus Rudbeck, 1675); German (Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, 1641, Schottel, 1641). The Swedish physician Andreas Kempe wrote a satirical tract in 1688, where he made fun of the contest between the European nationalists to claim their native tongue as the Adamic language. Caricaturing the attempts by the Swede Olaus Rudbeck to pronounce Swedish the original language of mankind, Kempe wrote a scathing parody where Adam spoke Danish, God spoke Swedish, and the serpent French.[49]

The primacy of Hebrew was still defended by some authors until the emergence of modern linguistics in the second half of the 18th century, e.g. by Pierre Besnier [fr] (1648–1705) in A philosophicall essay for the reunion of the languages, or, the art of knowing all by the mastery of one (1675) and by Gottfried Hensel (1687–1767) in his Synopsis Universae Philologiae (1741).

Linguistics

Further information: Origin of language and Mythical origins of language

For a long time, historical linguistics wrestled with the idea of a single original language. In the Middle Ages and down to the 17th century, attempts were made to identify a living descendant of the Adamic language.

Multiplication of languages

 
Tower of Babel by Endre Rozsda (1958)

The literal belief that the world's linguistic variety originated with the tower of Babel is pseudolinguistics, and is contrary to the known facts about the origin and history of languages.[50]

In the biblical introduction of the Tower of Babel account, in Genesis 11:1,[51] it is said that everyone on Earth spoke the same language, but this is inconsistent with the biblical description of the post-Noahic world described in Genesis 10:5,[52] where it is said that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth gave rise to different nations, each with their own language.[2]: 26 

There have also been a number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several, albeit without any tower. Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that Hermes confused the languages, causing Zeus to give his throne to Phoroneus, Frazer specifically mentions such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya, the Kacha Naga people of Assam, the inhabitants of Encounter Bay in Australia, the Maidu of California, the Tlingit of Alaska, and the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala.[53]

The Estonian myth of "the Cooking of Languages"[54] has also been compared.

Enumeration of scattered languages

There are several mediaeval historiographic accounts that attempt to make an enumeration of the languages scattered at the Tower of Babel. Because a count of all the descendants of Noah listed by name in chapter 10 of Genesis (LXX) provides 15 names for Japheth's descendants, 30 for Ham's, and 27 for Shem's, these figures became established as the 72 languages resulting from the confusion at Babel—although the exact listing of these languages changed over time. (The LXX Bible has two additional names, Elisa and Cainan, not found in the Masoretic text of this chapter, so early rabbinic traditions, such as the Mishna, speak instead of "70 languages".) Some of the earliest sources for 72 (sometimes 73) languages are the 2nd-century Christian writers Clement of Alexandria (Stromata I, 21) and Hippolytus of Rome (On the Psalms 9); it is repeated in the Syriac book Cave of Treasures (c. 350 CE), Epiphanius of Salamis' Panarion (c. 375) and St. Augustine's The City of God 16.6 (c. 410). The chronicles attributed to Hippolytus (c. 234) contain one of the first attempts to list each of the 72 peoples who were believed to have spoken these languages.

Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae (c. 600) mentions the number of 72; however, his list of names from the Bible drops the sons of Joktan and substitutes the sons of Abraham and Lot, resulting in only about 56 names total; he then appends a list of some of the nations known in his own day, such as the Longobards and the Franks. This listing was to prove quite influential on later accounts that made the Lombards and Franks themselves into descendants of eponymous grandsons of Japheth, e.g. the Historia Brittonum (c. 833), The Meadows of Gold by al Masudi (c. 947) and Book of Roads and Kingdoms by al-Bakri (1068), the 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn, and the midrashic compilations Yosippon (c. 950), Chronicles of Jerahmeel, and Sefer haYashar.

Other sources that mention 72 (or 70) languages scattered from Babel are the Old Irish poem Cu cen mathair by Luccreth moccu Chiara (c. 600); the Irish monastic work Auraicept na n-Éces; History of the Prophets and Kings by the Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915); the Anglo-Saxon dialogue Solomon and Saturn; the Russian Primary Chronicle (c. 1113); the Jewish Kabbalistic work Bahir (1174); the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (c. 1200); the Syriac Book of the Bee (c. 1221); the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum (c. 1284; mentions 22 for Shem, 31 for Ham and 17 for Japheth for a total of 70); Villani's 1300 account; and the rabbinic Midrash ha-Gadol (14th century). Villani adds that it "was begun 700 years after the Flood, and there were 2,354 years from the beginning of the world to the confusion of the Tower of Babel. And we find that they were 107 years working at it; and men lived long in those times". According to the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum, however, the project was begun only 200 years following the Deluge.

The tradition of 72 languages persisted into later times. Both José de Acosta in his 1576 treatise De procuranda indorum salute, and António Vieira a century later in his Sermão da Epifania, expressed amazement at how much this 'number of tongues' could be surpassed, there being hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages indigenous only to Peru and Brazil.

Height

The Book of Genesis does not mention how tall the tower was. The phrase used to describe the tower, "its top in the sky" (v.4), was an idiom for impressive height; rather than implying arrogance, this was simply a cliché for height.[14]: 37 

The Book of Jubilees mentions the tower's height as being 5,433 cubits and 2 palms, or 2,484 m (8,150 ft), about three times the height of Burj Khalifa, or roughly 1.6 miles high. The Third Apocalypse of Baruch mentions that the 'tower of strife' reached a height of 463 cubits, or 211.8 m (695 ft), taller than any structure built in human history until the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, which is 324 m (1,063 ft) in height.

Gregory of Tours writing c. 594, quotes the earlier historian Orosius (c. 417) as saying the tower was "laid out foursquare on a very level plain. Its wall, made of baked brick cemented with pitch, is fifty cubits (23 m or 75 ft) wide, two hundred (91.5 m or 300 ft) high, and four hundred and seventy stades (82.72 km or 51.4 miles) in circumference. A stade was an ancient Greek unit of length, based on the circumference of a typical sports stadium of the time which was about 176 metres (577 ft).[55] Twenty-five gates are situated on each side, which make in all one hundred. The doors of these gates, which are of wonderful size, are cast in bronze. The same historian tells many other tales of this city, and says: 'Although such was the glory of its building still it was conquered and destroyed.'"[56]

A typical medieval account is given by Giovanni Villani (1300): He relates that "it measured eighty miles [130 km] round, and it was already 4,000 paces high, or 5.92 km (3.68 mi) and 1,000 paces thick, and each pace is three of our feet."[57] The 14th-century traveler John Mandeville also included an account of the tower and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs, or 13 km (8 mi), according to the local inhabitants.

The 17th-century historian Verstegan provides yet another figure – quoting Isidore, he says that the tower was 5,164 paces high, or 7.6 km (4.7 mi), and quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it was high, more like a mountain than a tower. He also quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals, and other authors who claim that the path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain for the animals used in the construction.

In his book, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down (Pelican 1978–1984), Professor J.E. Gordon considers the height of the Tower of Babel. He wrote, "brick and stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot (2,000 kg per cubic metre) and the crushing strength of these materials is generally rather better than 6,000 lbs per square inch or 40 mega-pascals. Elementary arithmetic shows that a tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 2.1 km (1.3 mi) before the bricks at the bottom were crushed. However, by making the walls taper towards the top they ... could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinnar would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight."

In popular culture

  • Pieter Brueghel's influential portrayal is based on the Colosseum in Rome, while later conical depictions of the tower (as depicted in Doré's illustration) resemble much later Muslim towers observed by 19th-century explorers in the area, notably the Minaret of Samarra. M.C. Escher depicts a more stylized geometrical structure in his woodcut representing the story.
  • The composer Anton Rubinstein wrote an opera based on the story Der Thurm zu Babel.
  • American choreographer Adam Darius staged a multilingual theatrical interpretation of The Tower of Babel in 1993 at the ICA in London.
  • Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, in a flashback, plays upon themes of lack of communication between the designers of the tower and the workers who are constructing it. The short scene states how the words used to glorify the tower's construction by its designers took on totally different, oppressive meanings to the workers. This led to its destruction as they rose up against the designers because of the insufferable working conditions. The appearance of the tower was modeled after Brueghel's 1563 painting.[58]
  • The political philosopher Michael Oakeshott surveyed historic variations of the Tower of Babel in different cultures[59] and produced a modern retelling of his own in his 1983 book, On History.[60] In his retelling, Oakeshott expresses disdain for human willingness to sacrifice individuality, culture, and quality of life for grand collective projects. He attributes this behavior to fascination with novelty, persistent dissatisfaction, greed, and lack of self-reflection.[61]
  • A. S. Byatt's novel Babel Tower (1996) is about the question "whether language can be shared, or, if that turns out to be illusory, how individuals, in talking to each other, fail to understand each other".[62]
  • The progressive band Soul Secret wrote a concept album called BABEL, based on a modernized version of the myth.
  • Science fiction writer Ted Chiang wrote a story called "Tower of Babylon" that imagined a miner's climbing the tower all the way to the top where he meets the vault of heaven.[63]
  • Fantasy novelist Josiah Bancroft has a series The Books of Babel, which concluded with book IV in 2021.
  • The Tower of Babel appears in the 47th episode of the anime series Arabian Nights: Sinbad's Adventures.
  • This biblical episode is dramatized in the Indian television series Bible Ki Kahaniyan, which aired on DD National from 1992.[64]
  • Chris Huelsbeck, the composer for the music appearing in several parts of the Turrican game series, has created an orchestral piece titled "Tower of Babel" which appears in Turrican II: The Final Fight.
  • In the 1990 Japanese television anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, the Tower of Babel is used by the Atlanteans as an interstellar communication device.[65] Later in the series, the Neo Atlanteans rebuild the Tower of Babel and use its communication beam as a weapon of mass destruction. Both the original and the rebuilt tower resembles the painting Tower of Babel by artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
  • In the video game Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones the last stages of the game and the final boss fight occur in the tower.
  • In the web-based game Forge of Empires the Tower of Babel is an available "Great Building".
  • Argentinian novelist Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story called "The Library of Babel".
  • The Tower of Babel appears as an important location in the Babylonian story arc of the Japanese shōjo manga Crest of the Royal Family.
  • In the video game series Doom, the Tower of Babel appears multiple times. In the original 1993 Doom, the level "E2M8" is named and takes place at the "Tower of Babel". In Doom Eternal the campaign level "Nekravol" contains the Tower of Babel, but instead of its biblical purpose, it functions as a processing line for the suffering of human souls. In-game it is referred to as "The Citadel", but the concept art for Doom Eternal (The Art of Doom Eternal artbook, and the Steam Trading Card) refers to it as the "Tower Babel".
  • 2017 comic book La tour de Bab-El-Oued (The tower of Bab-El-Oued) from Sfar's The Rabbi's Cat series refers to the Tower of Babel in a context of intercultural conflict and cooperation (Jews and Muslims during the French colonization in Algeria).[66]
  • The fragmentation of modern society, in part due to social media, has been likened to a modern Tower of Babel.[67]
  • In the video game Doshin the Giant, the final monument the island inhabitants can create is called the Tower of Babel,[68] which begins to sink the island. The titular Doshin the Giant then sacrifices himself to save the island.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Or migrated eastward
  2. ^ Hebrew: YHWH. As with other verses where "Lord" is fully capitalised.[6]

References

  1. ^ Metzger, Bruce Manning; Coogan, Michael D (2004). The Oxford Guide To People And Places of the Bible. Oxford University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-19-517610-0. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  2. ^ a b Levenson, Jon D. (2004). "Genesis: Introduction and Annotations". In Berlin, Adele; Brettler, Marc Zvi (eds.). The Jewish Study Bible. Oxford University Press. p. 29. ISBN 9780195297515. The Jewish study Bible.
  3. ^ Graves, Robert; Patai, Raphael (1986). Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis. Random House. p. 315. ISBN 9780795337154.
  4. ^ Schwartz, Howard; Loebel-Fried, Caren; Ginsburg, Elliot K. (2007). Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. Oxford University Press. p. 704. ISBN 9780195358704.
  5. ^ a b Kramer, Samuel Noah (1968). "The 'Babel of Tongues': A Sumerian Version". Journal of the American Oriental Society. Vol. 88, no. 1. pp. 108–111.
  6. ^ "Genesis 2 Notes". NRSVUE Bible. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  7. ^ "Genesis 11". NRSVUE Bible. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  8. ^ Day, John (2014). From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 179–180. ISBN 978-0-567-37030-3.
  9. ^ Dietz Otto Edzard: Geschichte Mesopotamiens. Von den Sumerern bis zu Alexander dem Großen, Beck, München 2004, p. 121.
  10. ^ John L. Mckenzie (1995). The Dictionary of the Bible. Simon and Schuster. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-684-81913-6.
  11. ^ Genesis 11:1–9
  12. ^ a b c Coogan, Michael D. (2009). A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament: the Hebrew Bible in its Context. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195332728.
  13. ^ a b Harris, Stephen L. (1985). Understanding the Bible: A Reader's Introduction. Palo Alto: Mayfield. ISBN 9780874846966.
  14. ^ a b Hiebert, Theodore (2007). "The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World's Cultures". Journal of Biblical Literature. 126 (1): 29–58. doi:10.2307/27638419. JSTOR 27638419.
  15. ^ Friedman, Richard Elliot (1997). Who Wrote the Bible?. Simon & Schuster. p. 247. ISBN 0-06-063035-3.
  16. ^ Van Seters, John (1975). Abraham in History and Tradition. Echo Point Books & Media. p. 313. ISBN 978-1-62654-006-4.
  17. ^ "Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta: composite text." Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Line 145f.: an-ki ningin2-na ung3 sang sig10-ga den-lil2-ra eme 1-am3 he2-en-na-da-ab-dug4.
  18. ^ "Metamorphoses (Kline) 1, the Ovid Collection, Univ. Of Virginia E-Text Center".
  19. ^ a b Frazer, James George (1919). Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. London: Macmillan. pp. 362–387.
  20. ^ "Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl". letras-uruguay.espaciolatino.com. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  21. ^ Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 76.
  22. ^ Farish, Thomas Edwin (1918). History of Arizona, Volume VII. Phoenix. pp. 309–310. Retrieved 5 March 2014.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  23. ^ Beverley, H. (1872). Report on the Census of Bengal. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press. p. 160.
  24. ^ David Livingstone (1858). Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. Harper & Brothers. p. 567.
  25. ^ Levenson 2004, p. 11 "How much history lies behind the story of Genesis? Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology, it is very far-fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all."
  26. ^ Moye, Richard H. (1990). "In the Beginning: Myth and History in Genesis and Exodus". Journal of Biblical Literature. 109 (4): 580. doi:10.2307/3267364. JSTOR 3267364.
  27. ^ Genesis 10:10
  28. ^ a b c Jastrow, Morris; Price, Ira Maurice; Jastrow, Marcus; Ginzberg, Louis; MacDonald, Duncan B. (1906). "Babel, Tower of". Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. pp. 395–398.
  29. ^ Genesis 11:9
  30. ^ Josephus, Antiquities, 1.4.3
  31. ^ "Herodotus, the Histories, Book 1, chapter 179".
  32. ^ Harris, Stephen L. (2002). Understanding the Bible. McGraw-Hill. pp. 50–51. ISBN 978-0-7674-2916-0.
  33. ^ Genesis 11:1–9
  34. ^ Asimov, Isaac (1971). Asimov's Guide to the Bible, vol.1: The Old Testament. Avon Books. pp. 54–55. ISBN 978-0-380-01032-5.
  35. ^ The Biblical Antiquities of Philo. Translated by James, M. R. London: SPCK. 1917. pp. 90–94.
  36. ^ Ginzberg, Louis (1909). . New York. Archived from the original on 1 October 2015.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  37. ^ Pickthal, M. "Quran" (in English), Suras 28:36 and 40:36–37. Amana Publishers, UK 1996
  38. ^ "Surat Al-Baqarah [2:102] – The Noble Qur'an – القرآن الكريم". Quran.com. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
  39. ^ Emerick, Yahiya (2002). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Islam. Indianapolis: Alpha. p. 108. ISBN 9780028642338.
  40. ^ Ether 1:33–38
  41. ^ Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon p. 117, quoted in Church Educational System (1996, rev. ed.). Book of Mormon Student Manual (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), ch. 6.
  42. ^ Parry, Donald W. (January 1998), "The Flood and the Tower of Babel", Ensign
  43. ^ Marvin Meyer; Willis Barnstone (30 June 2009). "The Paraphrase of Shem". The Gnostic Bible. Shambhala. ISBN 9781590306314. Retrieved 14 February 2022.
  44. ^ Genesis 11:1–9
  45. ^ Genesis 10:5
  46. ^ Louth, Andrew; Oden, Thomas C.; Conti, Marco (2001). Genesis 1-11; Volume 1. Taylor & Francis. p. 164. ISBN 1579582206.
  47. ^ Hiebert, Theodore (Spring 2007). "The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World's Cultures" (PDF). Journal of Biblical Literature. 126 (1): 31–32. doi:10.2307/27638419. JSTOR 27638419 – via JSTOR.
  48. ^ a b c Mazzocco, Angelo (1993). Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists. BRILL. pp. 159–181. ISBN 978-90-04-09702-5.
  49. ^ Olender, Maurice (1992). The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-51052-6.
  50. ^ Pennock, Robert T. (2000). Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism. Bradford Books. ISBN 9780262661652.
  51. ^ Genesis 11:1
  52. ^ Genesis 10:5
  53. ^ Frazer, James George (1919). Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. London: Macmillan. p. 384.
  54. ^ Kohl, Reisen in die 'Ostseeprovinzen, ii. 251–255
  55. ^ Donald Engels (1985). The Length of Eratosthenes' Stade. American Journal of Philology 106 (3): 298–311. doi:10.2307/295030 (subscription required).
  56. ^ Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, from the 1916 translation by Earnest Brehaut, Book I, chapter 6. Available online in abridged form.
  57. ^ Selections from Giovanni's Chronicle in English.
  58. ^ Bukatman, Scott (1997). Blade Runner. London: British Film Institute. pp. 62–63. ISBN 0-85170-623-1.
  59. ^ Worthington, G. (2016). Religious and Poetic Experience in the Thought of Michael Oakeshott. British Idealist Studies 1: Oakeshott. Andrews UK Limited. p. 121f. ISBN 978-1-84540-594-6.
  60. ^ Reprinted as Oakeshott, Michael (1989). "The tower of Babel". In Clarke, S.G.; Simpson, E. (eds.). Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism. SUNY Series in Ethical Theory. State University of New York Press. p. 185ff. ISBN 978-0-88706-912-3. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
  61. ^ Corey, E. C. (2006). Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics. Eric Voegelin Institute series in political philosophy. University of Missouri Press. pp. 129–131. ISBN 978-0-8262-6517-3.
  62. ^ Dorschel, Andreas (25 November 2004). "Ach, Sie waren nicht in Oxford? Antonia S. Byatts Roman "Der Turm zu Babel"". Süddeutsche Zeitung 274 (in German). p. 16.
  63. ^ Joshua Rothman, "Ted Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction", The New Yorker, 2017
  64. ^ Menon, Ramesh (15 November 1989). "Bible ki Kahaniyan: Another religious saga on the small screen". India Today.
  65. ^ "NADIA & REALITY". Tamaro Forever presents The Secret of Blue Water. 13 June 2019. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
  66. ^ Debarnot, Eric (15 December 2017). "Le chat du rabbin Tome 7 : La tour de Bab-El-Oued – Joann Sfar". Benzine (in French).
  67. ^ Haidt, Jonathan (11 April 2022). "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid". The Atlantic.
  68. ^ Kyojin no Doshin 1: Koushiki Gaidobukku (Doshin the Giant 1: Official Guide book) for 64DD version. Nintendo Co., Ltd. 20 February 2000. ISBN 4-575-16201-9.

Further reading

  • Sayce, Archibald Henry (1878), "Babel" , in Baynes, T. S. (ed.), Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 3 (9th ed.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 178
  • Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Babel" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 91.
  • Maas, Anthony John (1912). "Tower of Babel" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  • Knecht, Friedrich Justus (1910). "The Tower of Babel" . A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture. B. Herder.
  • Pr. Diego Duran, Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana (Madrid, 1585).
  • Ixtilxochitl, Don Ferdinand d'Alva, Historia Chichimeca, 1658
  • Lord Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. 9
  • H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (New York, 1874)
  • Klaus Seybold, "Der Turmbau zu Babel: Zur Entstehung von Genesis XI 1–9," Vetus Testamentum (1976).
  • Samuel Noah Kramer, The "Babel of Tongues": A Sumerian Version, Journal of the American Oriental Society (1968).
  • Kyle Dugdale: Babel's Present. Ed. by Reto Geiser and Tilo Richter, Standpunkte, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-9523540-8-7 (Standpunkte Dokumente No. 5).

External links

  • "Tower of Babel." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
  • Babel In Biblia: The Tower in Ancient Literature by Jim Rovira
  • Our People: A History of the Jews – The Tower of Babel
  • Book of Genesis, Chapter 11
  • "The Tower of Babel and the Birth of Nationhood" by Daniel Gordis at Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation
  • SkyscraperPage – Tower of Babel, Tower of Babel – Baruch
  • The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE), James Orr, M.A., D.D., General Editor – 1915 ()
  • Easton's Bible Dictionary, M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., published by Thomas Nelson, 1897. ()
  • Nave Topical Bible, Orville J. Nave, AM., D.D., LL.D. ()
  • Smith's Bible Dictionary (1896) ()

November 17, 2023
tower, babel, this, article, about, biblical, myth, other, uses, disambiguation, hebrew, mīgdal, bāḇel, narrative, genesis, origin, myth, parable, meant, explain, world, peoples, speak, different, languages, לthe, pieter, bruegel, elder, 1563, general, informa. This article is about the biblical myth For other uses see Tower of Babel disambiguation The Tower of Babel Hebrew מ ג ד ל ב ב ל Migdal Baḇel narrative in Genesis 11 1 9 is an origin myth and parable meant to explain why the world s peoples speak different languages 1 2 3 4 Tower of Babelמ ג ד ל ב ב לThe Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder 1563 General informationTypeTowerLocationBabylonHeightSee HeightAccording to the story a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward comes to the land of Shinar ש נ ע ר There they agree to build a city and a tower with its top in the sky Yahweh observing their city and tower confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around the world Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures notably Etemenanki a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in Babylon While the archaeological record is incompatible with this identification many scholars believe that the biblical story was inspired by Etemenanki A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 5 Contents 1 Narrative 2 Etymology 3 Composition 3 1 Genre 3 2 Themes 3 3 Authorship and source criticism 4 Comparable myths 4 1 Sumerian and Assyrian parallel 4 2 Greco Roman parallel 4 3 Mexico 4 4 Arizona 4 5 Nepal 4 6 Botswana 4 7 Other traditions 5 Mythological context 6 Etemenanki the ziggurat at Babylon 7 Later literature 7 1 Book of Jubilees 7 2 Pseudo Philo 7 3 Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 7 4 Greek Apocalypse of Baruch 7 5 Midrash 7 6 Islamic tradition 7 7 Book of Mormon 7 8 Gnosticism 8 Confusion of tongues 9 Linguistics 9 1 Multiplication of languages 9 2 Enumeration of scattered languages 10 Height 11 In popular culture 12 See also 13 Notes 14 References 15 Further reading 16 External linksNarrative nbsp German Late Medieval depiction of the tower s construction from a manuscript of Rudolf von Ems Weltchronik cgm 5 fol 29r c 1370s 1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words 2 And as they migrated from the east a they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there 3 And they said to one another Come let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar 4 Then they said Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens and let us make a name for ourselves otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth 5 The LORD b came down to see the city and the tower which mortals had built 6 And the LORD said Look they are one people and they have all one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them 7 Come let us go down and confuse their language there so that they will not understand one another s speech 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth and they left off building the city 9 Therefore it was called Babel because there the LORD confused balal the language of all the earth and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth Genesis 11 1 9 NRSVUE 7 EtymologyThe phrase Tower of Babel does not appear in the Bible it is always the city and the tower א ת ה ע יר ו א ת ה מ ג ד ל or just the city ה ע יר The original derivation of the name Babel also the Hebrew name for Babylon is uncertain The native Akkadian name of the city was Bab ilim meaning gate of God However that form and interpretation itself are now usually thought to be the result of an Akkadian folk etymology applied to an earlier form of the name Babilla of unknown meaning and probably non Semitic origin 8 9 According to the Bible the city received the name Babel from the Hebrew verb ב ל ל balal meaning to jumble or to confuse 10 CompositionGenre The narrative of the tower of Babel 11 is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom ritual geographical feature name or other phenomenon 12 426 The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood so God brought into existence multiple languages 12 51 Thus humans were divided into linguistic groups unable to understand one another Themes The story s theme of competition between God and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 13 The 1st century Jewish interpretation found in Flavius Josephus explains the construction of the tower as a hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant Nimrod There have however been some contemporary challenges to this classical interpretation with emphasis placed on the explicit motive of cultural and linguistic homogeneity mentioned in the narrative v 1 4 6 14 This reading of the text sees God s actions not as a punishment for pride but as an etiology of cultural differences presenting Babel as the cradle of civilization Authorship and source criticism Jewish and Christian tradition attributes the composition of the whole Pentateuch which includes the story of the Tower of Babel to Moses Modern biblical scholarship rejects Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch but is divided on the question of its authorship Many scholars subscribe to some form of the documentary hypothesis which argues that the Pentateuch is composed of multiple sources that were later merged Scholars who favor this hypothesis such as Richard Elliot Friedman tend to see the Genesis 11 1 9 as being composed by the J or Jahwist Yahwist source 15 Michael Coogan suggests the intentional word play regarding the city of Babel and the noise of the people s babbling is found in the Hebrew words as easily as in English is considered typical of the Yahwist source 12 51 John Van Seters who has put forth substantial modifications to the hypothesis suggests that these verses are part of what he calls a Pre Yahwistic stage 16 Other scholars reject the documentary hypothesis all together The minimalist scholars tend to see the books of Genesis through 2 Kings as written by a single anonymous author during the Hellenistic period Comparable mythsSee also Comparative mythology and Mythical origins of language Sumerian and Assyrian parallel There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 5 where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat in Eridu and demands a tribute of precious materials from Aratta for its construction at one point reciting an incantation imploring the god Enki to restore or in Kramer s translation to disrupt the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions named as Shubur Hamazi Sumer Uri ki Akkad and the Martu land the whole universe the well guarded people may they all address Enlil together in a single language 17 In addition a further Assyrian myth dating from the 8th century BC during the Neo Assyrian Empire 911 605 BC bears a number of similarities to the later written biblical story citation needed Greco Roman parallel nbsp Building of BabelIn Greek mythology much of which was adopted by the Romans there is a myth referred to as the Gigantomachy the battle fought between the Giants and the Olympian gods for supremacy of the cosmos In Ovid s telling of the myth the Giants attempt to reach the gods in heaven by stacking mountains but are repelled by Jupiter s thunderbolts A S Kline translates Ovid s Metamorphoses 1 151 155 as Rendering the heights of heaven no safer than the earth they say the giants attempted to take the Celestial kingdom piling mountains up to the distant stars Then the all powerful father of the gods hurled his bolt of lightning fractured Olympus and threw Mount Pelion down from Ossa below 18 Mexico Various traditions similar to that of the tower of Babel are found in Central America Some writers who connected the Great Pyramid of Cholula to the Tower of Babel The Dominican friar Diego Duran 1537 1588 reported hearing an account about the pyramid from a hundred year old priest at Cholula shortly after the conquest of the Aztec Empire He wrote that he was told when the light of the Sun first appeared upon the land giants appeared and set off in search of the Sun Not finding it they built a tower to reach the sky An angered God of the Heavens called upon the inhabitants of the sky who destroyed the tower and scattered its inhabitants The story was not related to either a flood or the confusion of languages although Frazer connects its construction and the scattering of the giants with the Tower of Babel 19 Another story attributed by the native historian Fernando de Alva Cortes Ixtlilxochitl c 1565 1648 to the ancient Toltecs states that after men had multiplied following a great deluge they erected a tall zacuali or tower to preserve themselves in the event of a second deluge However their languages were confounded and they went to separate parts of the Earth 20 Arizona Still another story attributed to the Tohono O odham people holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood then became wicked and attempted to build a house reaching to heaven but the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts 21 22 Nepal Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been reported among the Tharu of Nepal and northern India 23 further explanation needed Botswana According to David Livingstone the people he met living near Lake Ngami in 1849 had such a tradition but with the builders heads getting cracked by the fall of the scaffolding 24 Other traditions In his 1918 book Folklore in the Old Testament Scottish social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer documented similarities between Old Testament stories such as the Flood and indigenous legends around the world He identified Livingston s account with a tale found in Lozi mythology wherein the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the Creator God Nyambe who has fled to Heaven on a spider web but the men perish when the masts collapse He further relates similar tales of the Ashanti that substitute a pile of porridge pestles for the masts Frazer moreover cites such legends found among the Kongo people as well as in Tanzania where the men stack poles or trees in a failed attempt to reach the Moon 19 He further cited the Karbi and Kuki people of Assam as having a similar story The traditions of the Karen people of Myanmar which Frazer considered to show clear Abrahamic influence also relate that their ancestors migrated there following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam when the languages were confused and the Karen separated from the Karenni He notes yet another version current in the Admiralty Islands where mankind s languages are confused following a failed attempt to build houses reaching to heaven Mythological context nbsp Hanging Gardens of Babylon 19th century illustration depicts the Tower of Babel in the background Biblical scholars see the Book of Genesis as mythological and not as a historical account of events 25 Genesis is described as beginning with historicized myth and ending with mythicized history 26 Nevertheless the story of Babel can be interpreted in terms of its context Genesis 10 10 27 states that Babel LXX Babylwn formed part of Nimrod s kingdom The Bible does not specifically mention that Nimrod ordered the building of the tower but many other sources have associated its construction with Nimrod 28 Genesis 11 9 29 attributes the Hebrew version of the name Babel to the verb balal which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew The first century Roman Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel בבל meaning confusion 30 Etemenanki the ziggurat at BabylonMain article Etemenanki nbsp Reconstruction of the EtemenankiEtemenanki Sumerian temple of the foundation of heaven and earth was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon It was famously rebuilt by the 6th century BCE Neo Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II but had fallen into disrepair by the time of Alexander s conquests He managed to move the tiles of the tower to another location but his death stopped the reconstruction and it was demolished during the reign of his successor Antiochus Soter The Greek historian Herodotus c 484 c 425 BC wrote an account of the ziggurat in his Histories which he called the Temple of Zeus Belus 31 According to modern scholars the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki Stephen L Harris proposed this occurred during the Babylonian captivity 32 Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of Genesis 11 1 9 33 were inspired by the existence of an apparently incomplete ziggurat at Babylon and by the phonological similarity between Babylonian Bab ilu meaning gate of God and the Hebrew word balal meaning mixed confused or confounded 34 Later literatureBook of Jubilees The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower And they began to build and in the fourth week they made brick with fire and the bricks served them for stone and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar And they built it forty and three years were they building it its breadth was 203 bricks and the height of a brick was the third of one its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms and the extent of one wall was thirteen stades and of the other thirty stades Jubilees 10 20 21 Charles 1913 translation Pseudo Philo In Pseudo Philo the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod who is made prince of the Hamites but also to Joktan as prince of the Semites and to Phenech son of Dodanim as prince of the Japhetites Twelve men are arrested for refusing to bring bricks including Abraham Lot Nahor and several sons of Joktan However Joktan finally saves the twelve from the wrath of the other two princes 35 Josephus Antiquities of the Jews nbsp Tower of Babel by Lucas van Valckenborch 1594 Louvre MuseumThe Jewish Roman historian Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews c 94 CE recounted history as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God In this account God confused the people rather than destroying them because annihilation with a Flood had not taught them to be godly Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God He was the grandson of Ham the son of Noah a bold man and of great strength of hand He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if it were through his means they were happy but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness He also gradually changed the government into tyranny seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God and they built a tower neither sparing any pains nor being in any degree negligent about the work and by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it it grew very high sooner than any one could expect but the thickness of it was so great and it was so strongly built that thereby its great height seemed upon the view to be less than it really was It was built of burnt brick cemented together with mortar made of bitumen that it might not be liable to admit water When God saw that they acted so madly he did not resolve to destroy them utterly since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners in the Flood but he caused a tumult among them by producing in them diverse languages and causing that through the multitude of those languages they should not be able to understand one another The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel confusion The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower and of the confusion of the language when she says thus When all men were of one language some of them built a high tower as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower and gave everyone a peculiar language and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon Greek Apocalypse of Baruch Third Apocalypse of Baruch or 3 Baruch c 2nd century one of the pseudepigrapha describes the just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife 13 Among the sinners are those who instigated the Tower of Babel In the account Baruch is first taken in a vision to see the resting place of the souls of those who built the tower of strife against God and the Lord banished them Next he is shown another place and there occupying the form of dogs Those who gave counsel to build the tower for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women to make bricks among whom a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child birth but brought forth while she was making bricks and carried her child in her apron and continued to make bricks And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty three cubits And they took a gimlet and sought to pierce the heavens saying Let us see whether the heaven is made of clay or of brass or of iron When God saw this He did not permit them but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech and rendered them as thou seest Greek Apocalypse of Baruch 3 5 8 Midrash Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel and of the intentions of its builders According to one midrash the builders of the Tower called the generation of secession in the Jewish sources said God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself and to leave the lower world to us therefore we will build us a tower with an idol on the top holding a sword so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God Gen R xxxviii 7 Tan ed Buber Noah xxvii et seq The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God but also to Abraham who exhorted the builders to reverence The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God saying that once every 1 656 years heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the earth therefore they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge Gen R l c Tan l c similarly Josephus Ant i 4 2 Some among that generation even wanted to war against God in heaven Talmud Sanhedrin 109a They were encouraged in this undertaking by the notion that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back dripping with blood so that the people really believed that they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens Sefer ha Yashar Chapter 9 12 36 According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R El xxiv it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower while other rabbinical sources assert on the contrary that Nimrod separated from the builders 28 According to another midrashic account one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions inhabited now by their descendants 36 Islamic tradition nbsp Turris Babel from Athanasius KircherAlthough not mentioned by name the Quran has a story with similarities to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel although set in the Egypt of Moses Pharaoh asks Haman to build him a stone or clay tower so that he can mount up to heaven and confront the God of Moses 37 Another story in Sura 2 102 mentions the name of Babil but tells of when the two angels Harut and Marut taught magic to some people in Babylon and warned them that magic is a sin and that their teaching them magic is a test of faith 38 A tale about Babil appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut i 448 f and the Lisan al ʿArab ar xiii 72 but without the tower mankind were swept together by winds into the plain that was afterward called Babil where they were assigned their separate languages by God and were then scattered again in the same way In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th century Muslim theologian al Tabari a fuller version is given Nimrod has the tower built in Babil God destroys it and the language of mankind formerly Syriac is then confused into 72 languages Another Muslim historian of the 13th century Abu al Fida relates the same story adding that the patriarch Eber an ancestor of Abraham was allowed to keep the original tongue Hebrew in this case because he would not partake in the building 28 Although variations similar to the biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel exist within Islamic tradition the central theme of God separating humankind on the basis of language is alien to Islam according to the author Yahiya Emerick In Islamic belief he argues God created nations to know each other and not to be separated 39 Book of Mormon In the Book of Mormon a man named Jared and his family ask God that their language not be confounded at the time of the great tower Because of their prayers God preserves their language and leads them to the Valley of Nimrod From there they travel across the sea to the Americas 40 Despite no mention of the Tower of Babel in the original text of the Book of Mormon some leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints LDS Church assert that the great tower was indeed the Tower of Babel as in the 1981 introduction to the Book of Mormon despite the chronology of the Book of Ether aligning more closely with the 21st century BC Sumerian tower temple myth of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta to the goddess Innana 41 Church apologists have also supported this connection and argue the reality of the Tower of Babel Although there are many in our day who consider the accounts of the Flood and tower of Babel to be fiction Latter day Saints affirm their reality 42 In either case the church firmly believes in the factual nature of at least one great tower built in the region of ancient Sumer Assyria Babylonia Gnosticism In Gnostic tradition recorded in the Paraphrase of Shem a tower interpreted as the Tower of Babel is brought by demons along with the great flood And he caused the flood and he destroyed your Shem s race to take the light and to take away from faith But I proclaimed quickly by the mouth of the demon that a tower come up to be up to the particle of light which was left in the demons and their race which was water that the demon might be protected from the turbulent chaos And the womb planned these things according to my will that she might pour forth completely A tower came to be through the demons The darkness was disturbed by his loss He loosened the muscles of the womb And the demon who was going to enter the tower was protected so that the races might continue to acquire coherence through him 43 Confusion of tonguesThis article is about the origin myth For the film see The Confusion of Tongues nbsp The Confusion of Tongues by Gustave Dore a woodcut depicting the Tower of BabelThe confusion of tongues confusio linguarum is the origin myth for the fragmentation of human languages described in Genesis 11 1 9 44 as a result of the construction of the Tower of Babel Prior to this event humanity was stated to speak a single language The preceding Genesis 10 5 45 states that the descendants of Japheth Gomer and Javan dispersed with their own tongues Augustine explained this apparent contradiction by arguing that the story without mentioning it goes back to tell how it came about that the one language common to all men was broken up into many tongues 46 Modern scholarship has traditionally held that the two chapters were written by different sources the former by the Priestly source and the latter by the Jahwist However that theory has been debated among scholars in recent years 47 During the Middle Ages the Hebrew language was widely considered the language used by God to address Adam in Paradise and by Adam as lawgiver the Adamic language by various Jewish Christian and Muslim scholastics Dante Alighieri addresses the topic in his De vulgari eloquentia 1302 1305 He argues that the Adamic language is of divine origin and therefore unchangeable 48 In his Divine Comedy c 1308 1320 however Dante changes his view to another that treats the Adamic language as the product of Adam 48 This had the consequence that it could no longer be regarded as immutable and hence Hebrew could not be regarded as identical with the language of Paradise Dante concludes Paradiso XXVI that Hebrew is a derivative of the language of Adam In particular the chief Hebrew name for God in scholastic tradition El must be derived of a different Adamic name for God which Dante gives as I 48 Before the acceptance of the Indo European language family these languages were considered to be Japhetite by some authors e g Rasmus Rask in 1815 see Indo European studies Beginning in Renaissance Europe priority over Hebrew was claimed for the alleged Japhetic languages which were supposedly never corrupted because their speakers had not participated in the construction of the Tower of Babel Among the candidates for a living descendant of the Adamic language were Gaelic see Auraicept na n Eces Tuscan Giovanni Battista Gelli 1542 Piero Francesco Giambullari 1564 Dutch Goropius Becanus 1569 Abraham Mylius 1612 Swedish Olaus Rudbeck 1675 German Georg Philipp Harsdorffer 1641 Schottel 1641 The Swedish physician Andreas Kempe wrote a satirical tract in 1688 where he made fun of the contest between the European nationalists to claim their native tongue as the Adamic language Caricaturing the attempts by the Swede Olaus Rudbeck to pronounce Swedish the original language of mankind Kempe wrote a scathing parody where Adam spoke Danish God spoke Swedish and the serpent French 49 The primacy of Hebrew was still defended by some authors until the emergence of modern linguistics in the second half of the 18th century e g by Pierre Besnier fr 1648 1705 in A philosophicall essay for the reunion of the languages or the art of knowing all by the mastery of one 1675 and by Gottfried Hensel 1687 1767 in his Synopsis Universae Philologiae 1741 LinguisticsFurther information Origin of language and Mythical origins of language For a long time historical linguistics wrestled with the idea of a single original language In the Middle Ages and down to the 17th century attempts were made to identify a living descendant of the Adamic language Multiplication of languages nbsp Tower of Babel by Endre Rozsda 1958 The literal belief that the world s linguistic variety originated with the tower of Babel is pseudolinguistics and is contrary to the known facts about the origin and history of languages 50 In the biblical introduction of the Tower of Babel account in Genesis 11 1 51 it is said that everyone on Earth spoke the same language but this is inconsistent with the biblical description of the post Noahic world described in Genesis 10 5 52 where it is said that the descendants of Shem Ham and Japheth gave rise to different nations each with their own language 2 26 There have also been a number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several albeit without any tower Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that Hermes confused the languages causing Zeus to give his throne to Phoroneus Frazer specifically mentions such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya the Kacha Naga people of Assam the inhabitants of Encounter Bay in Australia the Maidu of California the Tlingit of Alaska and the K iche Maya of Guatemala 53 The Estonian myth of the Cooking of Languages 54 has also been compared Enumeration of scattered languages There are several mediaeval historiographic accounts that attempt to make an enumeration of the languages scattered at the Tower of Babel Because a count of all the descendants of Noah listed by name in chapter 10 of Genesis LXX provides 15 names for Japheth s descendants 30 for Ham s and 27 for Shem s these figures became established as the 72 languages resulting from the confusion at Babel although the exact listing of these languages changed over time The LXX Bible has two additional names Elisa and Cainan not found in the Masoretic text of this chapter so early rabbinic traditions such as the Mishna speak instead of 70 languages Some of the earliest sources for 72 sometimes 73 languages are the 2nd century Christian writers Clement of Alexandria Stromata I 21 and Hippolytus of Rome On the Psalms 9 it is repeated in the Syriac book Cave of Treasures c 350 CE Epiphanius of Salamis Panarion c 375 and St Augustine s The City of God 16 6 c 410 The chronicles attributed to Hippolytus c 234 contain one of the first attempts to list each of the 72 peoples who were believed to have spoken these languages Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae c 600 mentions the number of 72 however his list of names from the Bible drops the sons of Joktan and substitutes the sons of Abraham and Lot resulting in only about 56 names total he then appends a list of some of the nations known in his own day such as the Longobards and the Franks This listing was to prove quite influential on later accounts that made the Lombards and Franks themselves into descendants of eponymous grandsons of Japheth e g the Historia Brittonum c 833 The Meadows of Gold by al Masudi c 947 and Book of Roads and Kingdoms by al Bakri 1068 the 11th century Lebor Gabala Erenn and the midrashic compilations Yosippon c 950 Chronicles of Jerahmeel and Sefer haYashar Other sources that mention 72 or 70 languages scattered from Babel are the Old Irish poem Cu cen mathair by Luccreth moccu Chiara c 600 the Irish monastic work Auraicept na n Eces History of the Prophets and Kings by the Persian historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al Tabari c 915 the Anglo Saxon dialogue Solomon and Saturn the Russian Primary Chronicle c 1113 the Jewish Kabbalistic work Bahir 1174 the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson c 1200 the Syriac Book of the Bee c 1221 the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum c 1284 mentions 22 for Shem 31 for Ham and 17 for Japheth for a total of 70 Villani s 1300 account and the rabbinic Midrash ha Gadol 14th century Villani adds that it was begun 700 years after the Flood and there were 2 354 years from the beginning of the world to the confusion of the Tower of Babel And we find that they were 107 years working at it and men lived long in those times According to the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum however the project was begun only 200 years following the Deluge The tradition of 72 languages persisted into later times Both Jose de Acosta in his 1576 treatise De procuranda indorum salute and Antonio Vieira a century later in his Sermao da Epifania expressed amazement at how much this number of tongues could be surpassed there being hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages indigenous only to Peru and Brazil HeightThe Book of Genesis does not mention how tall the tower was The phrase used to describe the tower its top in the sky v 4 was an idiom for impressive height rather than implying arrogance this was simply a cliche for height 14 37 The Book of Jubilees mentions the tower s height as being 5 433 cubits and 2 palms or 2 484 m 8 150 ft about three times the height of Burj Khalifa or roughly 1 6 miles high The Third Apocalypse of Baruch mentions that the tower of strife reached a height of 463 cubits or 211 8 m 695 ft taller than any structure built in human history until the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 which is 324 m 1 063 ft in height Gregory of Tours writing c 594 quotes the earlier historian Orosius c 417 as saying the tower was laid out foursquare on a very level plain Its wall made of baked brick cemented with pitch is fifty cubits 23 m or 75 ft wide two hundred 91 5 m or 300 ft high and four hundred and seventy stades 82 72 km or 51 4 miles in circumference A stade was an ancient Greek unit of length based on the circumference of a typical sports stadium of the time which was about 176 metres 577 ft 55 Twenty five gates are situated on each side which make in all one hundred The doors of these gates which are of wonderful size are cast in bronze The same historian tells many other tales of this city and says Although such was the glory of its building still it was conquered and destroyed 56 A typical medieval account is given by Giovanni Villani 1300 He relates that it measured eighty miles 130 km round and it was already 4 000 paces high or 5 92 km 3 68 mi and 1 000 paces thick and each pace is three of our feet 57 The 14th century traveler John Mandeville also included an account of the tower and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs or 13 km 8 mi according to the local inhabitants The 17th century historian Verstegan provides yet another figure quoting Isidore he says that the tower was 5 164 paces high or 7 6 km 4 7 mi and quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it was high more like a mountain than a tower He also quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals and other authors who claim that the path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain for the animals used in the construction In his book Structures Or Why Things Don t Fall Down Pelican 1978 1984 Professor J E Gordon considers the height of the Tower of Babel He wrote brick and stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot 2 000 kg per cubic metre and the crushing strength of these materials is generally rather better than 6 000 lbs per square inch or 40 mega pascals Elementary arithmetic shows that a tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 2 1 km 1 3 mi before the bricks at the bottom were crushed However by making the walls taper towards the top they could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinnar would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight In popular culturePieter Brueghel s influential portrayal is based on the Colosseum in Rome while later conical depictions of the tower as depicted in Dore s illustration resemble much later Muslim towers observed by 19th century explorers in the area notably the Minaret of Samarra M C Escher depicts a more stylized geometrical structure in his woodcut representing the story The composer Anton Rubinstein wrote an opera based on the story Der Thurm zu Babel American choreographer Adam Darius staged a multilingual theatrical interpretation of The Tower of Babel in 1993 at the ICA in London Fritz Lang s 1927 film Metropolis in a flashback plays upon themes of lack of communication between the designers of the tower and the workers who are constructing it The short scene states how the words used to glorify the tower s construction by its designers took on totally different oppressive meanings to the workers This led to its destruction as they rose up against the designers because of the insufferable working conditions The appearance of the tower was modeled after Brueghel s 1563 painting 58 The political philosopher Michael Oakeshott surveyed historic variations of the Tower of Babel in different cultures 59 and produced a modern retelling of his own in his 1983 book On History 60 In his retelling Oakeshott expresses disdain for human willingness to sacrifice individuality culture and quality of life for grand collective projects He attributes this behavior to fascination with novelty persistent dissatisfaction greed and lack of self reflection 61 A S Byatt s novel Babel Tower 1996 is about the question whether language can be shared or if that turns out to be illusory how individuals in talking to each other fail to understand each other 62 The progressive band Soul Secret wrote a concept album called BABEL based on a modernized version of the myth Science fiction writer Ted Chiang wrote a story called Tower of Babylon that imagined a miner s climbing the tower all the way to the top where he meets the vault of heaven 63 Fantasy novelist Josiah Bancroft has a series The Books of Babel which concluded with book IV in 2021 The Tower of Babel appears in the 47th episode of the anime series Arabian Nights Sinbad s Adventures This biblical episode is dramatized in the Indian television series Bible Ki Kahaniyan which aired on DD National from 1992 64 Chris Huelsbeck the composer for the music appearing in several parts of the Turrican game series has created an orchestral piece titled Tower of Babel which appears in Turrican II The Final Fight In the 1990 Japanese television anime Nadia The Secret of Blue Water the Tower of Babel is used by the Atlanteans as an interstellar communication device 65 Later in the series the Neo Atlanteans rebuild the Tower of Babel and use its communication beam as a weapon of mass destruction Both the original and the rebuilt tower resembles the painting Tower of Babel by artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder In the video game Prince of Persia The Two Thrones the last stages of the game and the final boss fight occur in the tower In the web based game Forge of Empires the Tower of Babel is an available Great Building Argentinian novelist Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story called The Library of Babel The Tower of Babel appears as an important location in the Babylonian story arc of the Japanese shōjo manga Crest of the Royal Family In the video game series Doom the Tower of Babel appears multiple times In the original 1993 Doom the level E2M8 is named and takes place at the Tower of Babel In Doom Eternal the campaign level Nekravol contains the Tower of Babel but instead of its biblical purpose it functions as a processing line for the suffering of human souls In game it is referred to as The Citadel but the concept art for Doom Eternal The Art of Doom Eternal artbook and the Steam Trading Card refers to it as the Tower Babel 2017 comic book La tour de Bab El Oued The tower of Bab El Oued from Sfar s The Rabbi s Cat series refers to the Tower of Babel in a context of intercultural conflict and cooperation Jews and Muslims during the French colonization in Algeria 66 The fragmentation of modern society in part due to social media has been likened to a modern Tower of Babel 67 In the video game Doshin the Giant the final monument the island inhabitants can create is called the Tower of Babel 68 which begins to sink the island The titular Doshin the Giant then sacrifices himself to save the island See also nbsp Bible portal nbsp Judaism portal nbsp Islam portalBabylonian astronomy Borsippa Enuma Anu Enlil Eridu Evolutionary linguistics List of world s tallest structures Minar Firuzabad Origin of speech Sons of NoahNotes Or migrated eastward Hebrew YHWH As with other verses where Lord is fully capitalised 6 References Metzger Bruce Manning Coogan Michael D 2004 The Oxford Guide To People And Places of the Bible Oxford University Press p 28 ISBN 978 0 19 517610 0 Retrieved 22 December 2012 a b Levenson Jon D 2004 Genesis Introduction and Annotations In Berlin Adele Brettler Marc Zvi eds The Jewish Study Bible Oxford University Press p 29 ISBN 9780195297515 The Jewish study Bible Graves Robert Patai Raphael 1986 Hebrew Myths The Book of Genesis Random House p 315 ISBN 9780795337154 Schwartz Howard Loebel Fried Caren Ginsburg Elliot K 2007 Tree of Souls The Mythology of Judaism Oxford University Press p 704 ISBN 9780195358704 a b Kramer Samuel Noah 1968 The Babel of Tongues A Sumerian Version Journal of the American Oriental Society Vol 88 no 1 pp 108 111 Genesis 2 Notes NRSVUE Bible Retrieved 2 June 2022 Genesis 11 NRSVUE Bible Retrieved 2 June 2022 Day John 2014 From Creation to Babel Studies in Genesis 1 11 Bloomsbury Publishing pp 179 180 ISBN 978 0 567 37030 3 Dietz Otto Edzard Geschichte Mesopotamiens Von den Sumerern bis zu Alexander dem Grossen Beck Munchen 2004 p 121 John L Mckenzie 1995 The Dictionary of the Bible Simon and Schuster p 73 ISBN 978 0 684 81913 6 Genesis 11 1 9 a b c Coogan Michael D 2009 A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament the Hebrew Bible in its Context Oxford University Press ISBN 9780195332728 a b Harris Stephen L 1985 Understanding the Bible A Reader s Introduction Palo Alto Mayfield ISBN 9780874846966 a b Hiebert Theodore 2007 The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World s Cultures Journal of Biblical Literature 126 1 29 58 doi 10 2307 27638419 JSTOR 27638419 Friedman Richard Elliot 1997 Who Wrote the Bible Simon amp Schuster p 247 ISBN 0 06 063035 3 Van Seters John 1975 Abraham in History and Tradition Echo Point Books amp Media p 313 ISBN 978 1 62654 006 4 Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta composite text Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Line 145f an ki ningin2 na ung3 sang sig10 ga den lil2 ra eme 1 am3 he2 en na da ab dug4 Metamorphoses Kline 1 the Ovid Collection Univ Of Virginia E Text Center a b Frazer James George 1919 Folk lore in the Old Testament Studies in Comparative Religion Legend and Law London Macmillan pp 362 387 Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl letras uruguay espaciolatino com Retrieved 24 October 2018 Bancroft vol 3 p 76 Farish Thomas Edwin 1918 History of Arizona Volume VII Phoenix pp 309 310 Retrieved 5 March 2014 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Beverley H 1872 Report on the Census of Bengal Calcutta Bengal Secretariat Press p 160 David Livingstone 1858 Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa Harper amp Brothers p 567 Levenson 2004 p 11 How much history lies behind the story of Genesis Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology it is very far fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all Moye Richard H 1990 In the Beginning Myth and History in Genesis and Exodus Journal of Biblical Literature 109 4 580 doi 10 2307 3267364 JSTOR 3267364 Genesis 10 10 a b c Jastrow Morris Price Ira Maurice Jastrow Marcus Ginzberg Louis MacDonald Duncan B 1906 Babel Tower of Jewish Encyclopedia New York Funk amp Wagnalls pp 395 398 Genesis 11 9 Josephus Antiquities 1 4 3 Herodotus the Histories Book 1 chapter 179 Harris Stephen L 2002 Understanding the Bible McGraw Hill pp 50 51 ISBN 978 0 7674 2916 0 Genesis 11 1 9 Asimov Isaac 1971 Asimov s Guide to the Bible vol 1 The Old Testament Avon Books pp 54 55 ISBN 978 0 380 01032 5 The Biblical Antiquities of Philo Translated by James M R London SPCK 1917 pp 90 94 Ginzberg Louis 1909 Legends of the Jews Volume 1 New York Archived from the original on 1 October 2015 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Pickthal M Quran in English Suras 28 36 and 40 36 37 Amana Publishers UK 1996 Surat Al Baqarah 2 102 The Noble Qur an القرآن الكريم Quran com Retrieved 7 November 2013 Emerick Yahiya 2002 The Complete Idiot s Guide to Understanding Islam Indianapolis Alpha p 108 ISBN 9780028642338 Ether 1 33 38 Daniel H Ludlow A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon p 117 quoted in Church Educational System 1996 rev ed Book of Mormon Student Manual Salt Lake City Utah The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints ch 6 Parry Donald W January 1998 The Flood and the Tower of Babel Ensign Marvin Meyer Willis Barnstone 30 June 2009 The Paraphrase of Shem The Gnostic Bible Shambhala ISBN 9781590306314 Retrieved 14 February 2022 Genesis 11 1 9 Genesis 10 5 Louth Andrew Oden Thomas C Conti Marco 2001 Genesis 1 11 Volume 1 Taylor amp Francis p 164 ISBN 1579582206 Hiebert Theodore Spring 2007 The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World s Cultures PDF Journal of Biblical Literature 126 1 31 32 doi 10 2307 27638419 JSTOR 27638419 via JSTOR a b c Mazzocco Angelo 1993 Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists BRILL pp 159 181 ISBN 978 90 04 09702 5 Olender Maurice 1992 The Languages of Paradise Race Religion and Philology in the Nineteenth Century Trans Arthur Goldhammer Cambridge Massachusetts and London Harvard University Press ISBN 0 674 51052 6 Pennock Robert T 2000 Tower of Babel The Evidence against the New Creationism Bradford Books ISBN 9780262661652 Genesis 11 1 Genesis 10 5 Frazer James George 1919 Folk lore in the Old Testament Studies in Comparative Religion Legend and Law London Macmillan p 384 Kohl Reisen in die Ostseeprovinzen ii 251 255 Donald Engels 1985 The Length of Eratosthenes Stade American Journal of Philology 106 3 298 311 doi 10 2307 295030 subscription required Gregory of Tours History of the Franks from the 1916 translation by Earnest Brehaut Book I chapter 6 Available online in abridged form Selections from Giovanni s Chronicle in English Bukatman Scott 1997 Blade Runner London British Film Institute pp 62 63 ISBN 0 85170 623 1 Worthington G 2016 Religious and Poetic Experience in the Thought of Michael Oakeshott British Idealist Studies 1 Oakeshott Andrews UK Limited p 121f ISBN 978 1 84540 594 6 Reprinted as Oakeshott Michael 1989 The tower of Babel In Clarke S G Simpson E eds Anti Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism SUNY Series in Ethical Theory State University of New York Press p 185ff ISBN 978 0 88706 912 3 Retrieved 25 May 2018 Corey E C 2006 Michael Oakeshott on Religion Aesthetics and Politics Eric Voegelin Institute series in political philosophy University of Missouri Press pp 129 131 ISBN 978 0 8262 6517 3 Dorschel Andreas 25 November 2004 Ach Sie waren nicht in Oxford Antonia S Byatts Roman Der Turm zu Babel Suddeutsche Zeitung 274 in German p 16 Joshua Rothman Ted Chiang s Soulful Science Fiction The New Yorker 2017 Menon Ramesh 15 November 1989 Bible ki Kahaniyan Another religious saga on the small screen India Today NADIA amp REALITY Tamaro Forever presents The Secret of Blue Water 13 June 2019 Retrieved 13 June 2019 Debarnot Eric 15 December 2017 Le chat du rabbin Tome 7 La tour de Bab El Oued Joann Sfar Benzine in French Haidt Jonathan 11 April 2022 Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid The Atlantic Kyojin no Doshin 1 Koushiki Gaidobukku Doshin the Giant 1 Official Guide book for 64DD version Nintendo Co Ltd 20 February 2000 ISBN 4 575 16201 9 Further readingSayce Archibald Henry 1878 Babel in Baynes T S ed Encyclopaedia Britannica vol 3 9th ed New York Charles Scribner s Sons p 178 Chisholm Hugh ed 1911 Babel Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 3 11th ed Cambridge University Press p 91 Maas Anthony John 1912 Tower of Babel In Herbermann Charles ed Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 15 New York Robert Appleton Company Knecht Friedrich Justus 1910 The Tower of Babel A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture B Herder Pr Diego Duran Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana Madrid 1585 Ixtilxochitl Don Ferdinand d Alva Historia Chichimeca 1658 Lord Kingsborough Antiquities of Mexico vol 9 H H Bancroft Native Races of the Pacific States New York 1874 Klaus Seybold Der Turmbau zu Babel Zur Entstehung von Genesis XI 1 9 Vetus Testamentum 1976 Samuel Noah Kramer The Babel of Tongues A Sumerian Version Journal of the American Oriental Society 1968 Kyle Dugdale Babel s Present Ed by Reto Geiser and Tilo Richter Standpunkte Basel 2016 ISBN 978 3 9523540 8 7 Standpunkte Dokumente No 5 External linksTower of Babel at Wikipedia s sister projects nbsp Definitions from Wiktionary nbsp Media from Commons nbsp Quotations from Wikiquote Tower of Babel Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Babel In Biblia The Tower in Ancient Literature by Jim Rovira Our People A History of the Jews The Tower of Babel Book of Genesis Chapter 11 The Tower of Babel and the Birth of Nationhood by Daniel Gordis at Azure Ideas for the Jewish Nation SkyscraperPage Tower of Babel Tower of Babel Baruch HERBARIUM Art Project Anatomy of the Tower of Babel 2010 The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia ISBE James Orr M A D D General Editor 1915 online Easton s Bible Dictionary M G Easton M A D D published by Thomas Nelson 1897 online Nave Topical Bible Orville J Nave AM D D LL D online Smith s Bible Dictionary 1896 online Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Tower of Babel amp oldid 1183459561 Confusion of tongues, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.