The Tower Of Babel Series

The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563) NOTE: ILLUSTRATIONS DID NOT COPY

General information

Type Tower

Location Babylon

Height See § Height

The Tower of Babel narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an original myth explaining why people speak different languages.

According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward comes to the land of Shinar. 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 the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian God Marduk in Babylon. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.

German depiction of the construction of the Tower

1 Now the whole Earth had one language and the exact 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." Moreover, 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 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 so 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 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

Etymology

The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" or just "the city." 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 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. According to the Bible, the city received the name "Babel" from the Hebrew verb (balal), meaning to jumble or to confuse.

Composition

Genre

The narrative of the Tower of Babel is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon. Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or another phenomenon. ? The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages. God was concerned that humans had been blasphemed by building the Tower to avoid a second flood, so God brought into existence multiple languages. 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. 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). 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 Genesis 11:1–9 as composed by the J or Jahwist/Yahwist source. Michael Coogan suggests intentional wordplay regarding the city of Babel. The people's "babbling" noise is found in the Hebrew words as quickly as in English, which is considered typical of the Yahwist source. ? John Van Seters, who has substantially modified the hypothesis, suggests that these verses are part of what he calls a "Pre-Yahwistic stage.” Other scholars reject the documentary hypothesis altogether. The "minimalist" scholars tend to see the books of Genesis through 2 Kings as written by a single, anonymous author during the Hellenistic period.