PROOFS THE TOWER OF BABEL ACCOUNT IS TRUE
Gen. 11:1-9
INTRODUCTION
A. HUMOR: Husbands & Wives don’t speak same language!
1. Peter was reading an article out loud to his wife. “Did you know that women use about 30,000 words a day, whereas men only use 15,000 words?”
2. Victoria replied, “The reason has to be because a woman has to say everything twice.” Peter turned to Victoria and asked, "What?"
3. Wife : Do you want dinner? Husband : Sure, what are my choices? Wife : Yes and no.
4. That’s the topic of tonight’s message – the confusion in the world by us not all speaking the same language!
B. TEXT
“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.” Gen. 11:1,4,6-9.
C. THESIS
1. Tonight we’re continuing our series on “Proof the Bible is True.” Last week we covered the reality of Adam and Eve.
2. Skeptics have openly scoffed at the account of the Tower of Babel. The Wikipedia article on it starts out, “The Tower of Babel as told in Genesis 11:1-9 is an ORIGIN MYTH…”
2. Another skeptic classified this narrative as a “nonsensical legend.” So is this Bible story a bunch of made-up nonsense or does history, archeology, and science prove it to be true?
3. Tonight our study is entitled: “Proofs the Tower of Babel Account is True.”
I. THE FINDINGS OF PHILOLOGY
A. SKEPTICS DENY THERE WAS EVER A UNIFIED LANGUAGE
The skeptic (Allen 1990; 43-44) who said this narrative as a “nonsensical” legend, also declared: “It’s highly unlikely that the human inhabitants of the whole earth have ever spoken only one language.”
B. COMMON ORIGINAL LANGUAGE VERIFIED
Language studies have led many scholars to the conclusion that the varied human tongues ultimately can be traced to a common source.
1. Max F. Muller (Oxford Univ.) in Science of Language writes: “We have examined all the possible forms which language can assume, and we now ask, can we reconcile…one common origin of human speech? I answer decidedly, Yes” (Muller 46-47).
2. Sir William Jones compared Sanskrit, Greek & Latin and found the roots and syntax so similar … “that no philologer could examine all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source which no longer exists” (Quoted in A. T. Roberston, A Grammar of the Greek N.T.).
3. G. C. Aalders discovered clear connections between some languages in Central and South America, Egyptian, and ancient Sumerian [the oldest known language]. “This scholar, who formerly had considered the account in Genesis 11:1-9 to be no more than a myth, came to the conclusion that the biblical narrative is more credible than had been supposed” (1981, 254).
4. Dr. Harold Stigers likewise observed such similarities of syntax and vocabulary that he said they “indicate that one must posit a common ancestor” (1976, 130).
5. Secular journalists discussing the work of certain linguistic scientists using computers to compare languages, speculate a mother tongue existed, which they call “proto-World.” One writer went so far as to say: “Maybe the Bible is right, and there really was a Tower of Babel. Or at least, maybe there really was once a single human language, before we were all cursed with a confusion of tongues” (Dyer).
II. HISTORICAL CONFIRMATION
1. Abydenus (a Greek historian of the mid-fourth century B.C.), as quoted by Eusebius, spoke of a great tower at Babylon which was destroyed. The record notes: “[U]ntil this time all men had used the same speech, but now there was sent upon them a confusion of many and divers tongues” (quoted in Rawlinson 1873, 28).
2. Plato in one of his works, tells of a golden age when men spoke the same language, but an act of the gods caused them to be confounded in their speech (see M’Clintock and Strong 1968, 590).
3. In his book, Chaldean Account of Genesis (1880:29) George Smith of the British Museum—the scholar who translated the Gilgamesh Epic—published another fragment telling of an ancient ziggurat. “The building of this temple offended the gods. In a night they threw down what had been built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange their speech. The progress they impeded.”
4. The Sibylline Oracles; “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.” [Antiquities of the Jews, Book I]
5. It’s unlikely that any of these ancient sources had ever heard of Moses’ Genesis account: they were recounting ancient accounts passed down to them.
III. ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONFIRMATION
A. ITS LOCATION FOUND
1. Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was an ancient structure in Babylon famously rebuilt by the 6th-century BC Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II.
2. The city of Babylon was built around the ruins of the ancient tower of Babel. It was considered a religious
landmark and its enclosure a “sacred precinct.”
B. THOSE WHO RESTORED AND CLIMBED IT
1. Nebuchadnezzar II (King of Babylon, 620-539 B.C.) wrote that the original tower (Etemenanki) had been built in antiquity: "A former king (42 ages before) built the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not complete its head.” He said it was made of “sun-dried and burned clay bricks.”
2. Herodotus, in his Histories, went to Babylon and saw, climbed, and described the great tower/ ziggurat there in ca. 400 B.C.: “In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length [220 yards or 2½ football fields at its base] and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. When one is about half-way up, one finds a resting-place and seats, where persons are wont to sit some time on their way to the summit. On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple…” (I:181.)
3. In 2011 scholars discovered, in the Schoyen Collection, the oldest known representation of the Etemenanki. Carved on a black stone, “The Tower of Babel Stele” which dates from 604–562 BC, the time of Nebuchadnezzar II.
4. The already decayed Great Ziggurat of Babylon was finally destroyed by Alexander the Great in an attempt to rebuild it. He managed to move the tiles of the tower to another location, but his death stopped the reconstruction.
5. These references leave little doubt that the Tower of Babel was the ancient Great Ziggurat of Babylon, rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar II in 600 B.C. and destroyed by Alexander the Great – called “Etemenanki” – meaning “Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth.”
IV. WORLDWIDE LEGEND CONFIRMATION
The widespread account of the attempt to build a tower to heaven upsetting the deity who scattered them, frequently by confusing their language, is too odd to be accidental.
1. SUMERIAN. Enmerkar of Uruk built a massive ziggurat to get the god Enki to restore the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions.
2. MEXICO. Dominican friar Diego Durán (1537–1588) reported an indigenous legend of how giants once started to build a tower to reach the sky. But the Lord of the Heavens called upon the inhabitants of the sky, who destroyed the tower and scattered its inhabitants. [ Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament(1918): p. 5.]
3. MEXICO. Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl (c. 1565–1648) recounted an ancient Toltec story that after the great deluge, they erected a tall 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.
4. ARIZONA, American Indian people Tohono O'odham told how 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 (Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 76).
5. SIMILAR STORIES WERE TOLD AMONG the Tharu of NEPAL and northern INDIA; and the Africans near Lake Ngami (Livingston, 1849, Missionary Travels, ch.26). In his 1918 book, Folklore in the Old Testament, Sir James Frazer documented Lozi (ZAMBIA) mythology, wherein the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the Creator-God, Nyambe; the Ashanti (GHANA); the Kongo people (CONGO, Angola), as well as in TANZANIA. He cited the Karbi and Kuki people of Assam (N.E. INDIA) as having a similar story. The Karen people of MYANMAR relate that their ancestors migrated there following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam. Natives of PAPAU NEW GUINEA record that “mankind's languages were confused following a failed attempt to build houses reaching to heaven.”
CONCLUSION
A. ILLUSTRATION: LAW PUT IN OUR HEARTS
1. Talking about a friend of his, Paul Newsham related the following story: The Holy Spirit keeps a testimony in different cultures.
2. One missionary went to an African tribe that had had little contact with white people. When he arrived, they were in the middle of a ceremony which was remarkably like our Communion.
3. Because he was a linguist, he was able to understand a lot of what was said. When they got to the end they said, "We do this in memory of Him whose name we cannot remember."
4. He stood up and said, "I want to tell you His name. His name is Jesus."
B. THE CALL
1. God has already written His Word on people’s hearts. They’ve heard little bits from the Holy Spirit.
2. Now the Lord is depending on us to give them the fuller knowledge that God has made available to us.
3. Who can you think of who’s possibly open to hearing the Gospel? Maybe tonight’s handout will help them shift gears to a more direct relationship with God. Let’s pray.
[Wikipedia and many other sources, many cited within this message, were used in this piece.]
