![]() ![]() 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. 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. Thus, humans were divided into linguistic groups, unable to understand one another. God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood so God brought into existence multiple languages. The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages. Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon. The narrative of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11.1–9) is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon. The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for Babylon) is uncertain, but it may come from bab-ilum, meaning "gate of God." According to the Bible, the city received the name " Babel" from the Hebrew word balal, meaning to jumble or to confuse. 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). ![]() Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.ĩ. ![]() Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”Ĩ. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.ħ. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.Ħ. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.ĥ. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.Ĥ. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And it happened that as they moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.ģ. And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.Ģ. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. ![]() Alexander the Great ordered it to be demolished circa 331 BCE in preparation for a reconstruction that his death forestalled. The Great Ziggurat of Babylon was 91 metres (300 ft) in height. Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk by Nabopolassar, the king of Babylonia circa 610 BCE. God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world. There they agree to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. Īccording to the story, a united humanity in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar ( Hebrew: שנער). It is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. The Tower of Babel ( Syriac: ܡܓܕܠܐ ܕܒܒܠ, Maḡdlā d-Bāḇēl Hebrew: מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל, Migdal Bāḇēl) is a Near Eastern account recorded in the Book of Genesis. For other uses, see Tower of Babel (disambiguation). This article is about the Biblical story. The Great Ziggurat of Babylon was 91 metres (300 ft) in height. It is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages.Īccording to the story, a united humanity in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar (Hebrew: שנער). The Tower of Babel (Syriac: ܡܓܕܠܐ ܕܒܒܠ, Maḡdlā d-Bāḇēl Hebrew: מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל, Migdal Bāḇēl) is a Near Eastern account recorded in the Book of Genesis. ![]()
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