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Writer's picturestephenstrent7

The Tower of Babel


The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder  (1526/1530–1569); from the collection of Emperor Rudolf II; now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna, Austria


Where Science Meets the Book of Mormon: Come Follow Me Lesson: November 11-17; Ether 1-5


We are told in Ether 1:33, “…Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families, from the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth; and according to the word of the Lord the people were scattered.”

Unlike the bulk of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Ether has no dates after the chapter headings. According to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Institute of Religion Student Study Manuel, “The Jaredite record begins approximately 2200 B.C.”1


What evidence is there, if any, of the so-called Tower of Babel? Some Biblical scholars believe that the Tower of Babel was a ziggurat, a large, tiered, stepped temple tower that was built in ancient Mesopotamia. “The ziggurat was an artificial mountain raised for the worship of the gods to elevate the priests toward heaven.” Ziggurats are some of the world's oldest religious structures, and were built by the Sumerians and other civilizations in Mesopotamia. The first ziggurats in Mesopotamia are thought to have appeared during the Ubaid Period, around 5000–4100 BC. The last ziggurats were built around 500 BC.2 If the Jaredite story began around 2200 BC, that would put that story about in the middle of the ziggurat-building period.


We read in Genesis 11:1-9, “And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they [‘the families of the sons of Noah,’ Genesis 10:31] journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 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. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”


I have taken the following from my blog “Where is Heaven?” for the Come Follow Me lesson February 7–13, 2022; Genesis 12–17; Abraham 1-2.


“As depicted in the painting, The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the people who built the tower apparently thought that Heaven was somewhere in the air, up above the clouds, and if they built a high enough tower, they could reach Heaven…All the scriptures about heaven “…seem to make it clear that Heaven is somewhere up above the clouds. That was all well and good for thousands of years. Humans were ground-dwelling creatures and no one had ever seen above the clouds – that is, not until December 1, 1783, when Jacques Alexandre Charles, of France, rose to 8,900 ft in a hydrogen balloon, well above the lowest clouds. Then on June 27, 1931, the Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer, Auguste Piccard, along with Paul Kipfer, rose to 51,770 ft in their hydrogen balloon. That is well above the highest clouds. Now, many people have flown above 30,000 ft in commercial airlines. There are clear blue skies up there, with no signs of the Pearly Gates.”


It appears, from Genesis 11:1-9 that the people of the time believed: 1. “the whole earth was of one language,” and 2. “…let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven…” If this tower was built around 2200 BC (or even 5000 to 500 BC, during the ziggurat-building era), we are dealing with people who were both vertically and horizontally challenged. If they thought they could build a tower to heaven, heaven must not have been all that far away — perhaps just above the clouds — and maybe the clouds didn’t look all that far away. The ziggurat of Tchogha zanbil was 105.2 meters (345 ft) on each side and about 53 meters (174 ft) in height, in five levels, and was crowned with a temple.

 


Panoramic view of Dur Untash Napirisha, the elamite ziggurat of Tchogha zanbil, Khuzestan province, Iran. Image made with the combination of 4 pictures. Pentocelo, April 2008


By contrast, the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was contemporary with several ziggurats, is 230 meters (755 feet) on each side. It was originally 147 meters (482 feet) tall, but is now 137 meters (449 feet) due to erosion and the removal of its outer casing stones. The Great Pyramid of Giza held the title of the tallest man-made structure for over 3,800 years, until it was surpassed by the construction of England’s Lincoln Cathedral in about 1311 AD.


The Great Pyramid existed long before the children of Israel spent their 400 years in Egypt, so Moses, or whoever wrote Genesis 11, may have had that tall of a structure in mind when writing about the Tower of Babel. None-the less, 53 meters (174 ft) is still very impressive — especially when the Israelites knew such a tower could be built even higher. Prophets tended to seek out high mountains to commune with God. During periods of low barometric pressure, the clouds can even engulf to the tops of mountains. It is little wonder that ancient people thought they could build artificial mountains to reach Heaven and God.


How about the first issue, “the whole earth was of one language”? When we think of the “whole earth” we think of a big blue marble spinning through space. When the people of 2000 BC thought about the “whole earth” they, first of all, had no idea of the Western Hemisphere. It is likely that the “world” in 2200 BC consisted of the Egyptian, Hittite, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires, as well as Mesopotamia and the upper Arabian Peninsula: from the Great Western desert in Africa, around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, to the Black and Caspian Seas and the Persian Gulf.


The three earliest written languages were Egyptian, Sumerian, and Akkadian. Sumerian influenced Akkadian in a number of ways, such as vocabulary, syntax, and phonology. Sumerian was spoken in southern Mesopotamia around 3100 BC, and was the first written language. Akkadian, a Semitic language, replaced Sumerian as the spoken language around 2000 BC. Both languages were written in cuneiform. The concept of writing may have come to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia, and the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs may have been derived from Sumerian.  Akkadian was the diplomatic language between major powers in the Late Bronze Age, and Akkadian texts have been found that originated in Egypt.

 

Many Biblical scholars believe that the story of the Tower of Babel was a myth to explain the origin of language. If the Old Testament was the only source of the story, one might conclude that such is the case. There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, where Enmerkar of Uruk , an ancient city in Mesopotamia, located on an ancient channel of the Euphrates River; was building a massive ziggurat in Eridu, perhaps the world’s oldest city, in Sumeria, in Lower Mesopotamia. To finance the construction, Enmerkar demanded a tribute of precious materials from Aratta, perhaps part of Sumeria. He recited an incantation imploring the god Enki to restore, or prevent the disruption of the linguistic unity of the region of ShuburHamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land; in other words, “the whole universe, the well-guarded people — may they all address Enlil together in a single language.”3 


Of course, the Old Testament story and the Enmerkar legend may have had a common origin. Then there is the account in Ether, which suggests that something very real happened around 2000 BC.


We are told in Ether 1: 33, “…Jared came forth with his brother and their families, with some others and their families, from the great tower, at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people, and swore in his wrath that they should be scattered upon all the face of the earth; and according to the word of the Lord the people were scattered. And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did cry unto the Lord, and the Lord had compassion upon Jared; therefore he did not confound the language of Jared; and Jared and his brother were not confounded.”


It is unclear what, apparently catastrophic, event had caused the people to be “scattered upon all the face of the earth” and the Jaredites to “came forth…from the great tower…” Often, such great catastrophes are war or famine, or both. If we read on in Ether, it sounds to me that the Jaredites were trying to escape a great famine and find a more suitable, “choice” land.

   

We read in Ether 1:36-43, “Then Jared said unto his brother: Cry again unto the Lord, and it may be that he will turn away his anger from them who are our friends, that he confound not their language. And it came to pass that the brother of Jared did cry unto the Lord, and the Lord had compassion upon their friends and their families also, that they were not confounded. And it came to pass that Jared spake again unto his brother, saying: Go and inquire of the Lord whether he will drive us out of the land, and if he will drive us out of the land, cry unto him whither we shall go. And who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth? And if it so be, let us be faithful unto the Lord, that we may receive it for our inheritance…And it came to pass that the Lord did hear the brother of Jared, and had compassion upon him, and said unto him: Go to and gather together thy flocks, both male and female, of every kind; and also of the seed of the earth of every kind; and thy families; and also Jared thy brother and his family; and also thy friends and their families, and the friends of Jared and their families. And when thou hast done this thou shalt go at the head of them down into the valley which is northward. And there will I meet thee, and I will go before thee into a land which is choice above all the lands of the earth. And there will I bless thee and thy seed, and raise up unto me of thy seed, and of the seed of thy brother, and they who shall go with thee, a great nation. And there shall be none greater than the nation which I will raise up unto me of thy seed, upon all the face of the earth. And thus I will do unto thee because this long time ye have cried unto me.”


Perhaps the great language change that the Jaredites were trying to avoid was the replacement of Sumerian by Akkadian as the spoken language, around 2000 BC — about the same time as the famine that caused the dispersal. The story may not be that of one common language being replaced by a whole bunch of languages, but rather, a dichotomy of language wherein, perhaps younger, members of a single family, who had adopted a new language, say the modern Akkadian for the older Sumerian, could no longer be understood by the older members of the family. Maybe the “generation gap” that the Jaredites were trying to avoid, with the advent of Akkadian, was similar to the “language gap” resulting from the SMS (Short Message Service), or “textese,” arising from cell-phone use in the late 1990s and early 2000s, or the later Gen Z slang.

 

It may have been that the language change and the famine, or whatever catastrophe scattered the people who were building the Tower, happened very close to the same time, so that the later recorders of history linked the two events. This may have been particularly important if there was some religious significance, which the Enmerkar legend implies, but which the account in Genesis or Ether does not appear to address. However, Ether 1:38 says, “…let us be faithful unto the Lord…” which may suggest that the people building the Tower were not being faithful.


We are told in Genesis 11:6-7, “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”


Those verses, to me, are very strange. Why would God be angry that His children were able to do great things? Unless by doing great things, they were turned away from God — which is clearly not stated in the scripture, but may be vaguely implied.

 

  

Trent Dee Stephens, PhD

 

References

3.     Kramer, Samuel Noah, The ‘Babel of Tongues:’ A Sumerian Version, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 88:108–111, 1968

 

 

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