What I currently like most about The Tower of Babel, God had to stop them from building the tower to heaven because they were “about to accomplish the thing that they had set out to do, and nothing could be restrained from them”. Meaning, there are other ways to salvation (liberation, enlightenment, heaven) besides Yahweh. We can’t have anyone knowing that.
They didn’t destroy Babel and confuse the language because it was a false temple, but because it was true. The evidence is right there from the words of god. And confuse the language they did. Not by changing everyone’s dialect but by introducing confusion through word play of monotheism, by restricting the power of the individual to chart his own path.
The tower was likely a center of spiritual enlightenment, a non-denominational meditative center. An intolerable thought to monotheistic ideology. “Don’t let them see they don’t need us!”
The churches provide nothing you can’t get with a campfire and a drum—or a good stretch of solitude. That’s why you must “meet together oft” to keep the charade in play.
TheCommonAtheist 
I cannot seem to « like » this post and have it register. But I thought it was quite brilliant!
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It’s really obvious once you see it, isn’t it? The story has other good allegory as well. If we were to all come together nothing could stop us. But, we’ll, you know.
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I like the last two sentences the best. 😊
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Interesting thoughts, these.
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These verses pretty much give the whole game away. I can’t believe I never noticed it like this before.
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The gods were probably parked in a large ship just above where the tower was being built, having broken down after the bussard ramjet ( or whatever equivalent gods us) went on the blink.
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The tower was somewhere over district9. It was “The Fluid”, not the Bussard. Get your theoreticals right mate
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And Babylon is happening again- everyone communicates with everyone and everyone disagrees with everyone. In a society of individuals it’s clear there’s one god: Me!
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So if Babylon is happening again, where is the unity? I see you attempt to parallel this with today but we are not of a single motive. I can read the text. They were about to accomplish what they had set out to do and that is offensive to the ruling class. We’d get the same backlash today.
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The similarity is that unity’s futile without God so he’s confusing us again and we’re splitting into factions: Christian, religious, political, you name it.
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What do you mean “again”? Statistically this is the best time on earth to be alive. Since we don’t yet have any immunity to social media it “seems” like everything is bad when it’s not. Extreme poverty, hunger, infant mortality, crime, murder, across every metric the world is safer than ever before. This is uncharted territory where we’re hell bent on destroying the world when everything is the best it’s ever been.
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Again per Babel.
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I find it quite telling that you again, ignore the premise of the post and choose an ambiguous option of conjecture. The fact they were about to accomplish what they had set out to do is certainly not favorable to monotheism.
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I think we’re all guessing about. To me, whether it’s fact or fiction the story represents humanity’s prideful independence and God’s subsequent intervention.
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Of course it represents that. That is what we were taught it represented. Put a fresh set of eyes on it without the precursor and it’s right there. No guessing about.
It’s interesting where we find meaning though. I agree it is much older than the Hebrews who only possess a tiny fraction of the technology that preserved them.
Put another way, prideful independence is the word faith without evidence.
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And it’s easy to see the reason we disagree. I have an old set of eyes that see Jesus Christ behind it all.
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If there is such a thing as omnipotence you’re all that too. No way around that.
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Okay. Do you have a post that explains your view of omnipotence?
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Arnold, you do know (I hope) that the word ‘omnipotence” is not found in the bible and is merely a word that someone somewhere at some time decided was a good word to use to describe something they didn’t understand.
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Yes Nan, I agree. Thanks.
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It is implied in the Bible and expounded on in the explanations. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all major monotheistic religions. In these religions, God is said to be omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.
Scripture shares that all things are created by Jesus (John 1:3–4) and held together by Him. Is this not omnipotence, omnipresent, and omniscient?
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I don’t think Jesus was any of those 3 here on Earth. I’m not a theology-type because to me some of those terms de-personalize the Christ. (I do like “redemption.”)
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I am. I am the way, before Abraham was, I am. The creator in the flesh. Jesus as Jehovah, Yahweh. You’re at odds with the only evidence you have. The word made flesh, in the beginning he created heaven and earth? But not for the 33 years?
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That’s how I see it- on earth he was God-man not Super-man. Philippians 2 says, ‘He emptied himself.’
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So no miracles, just a guy. If he “emptied himself” that assumes he could refill it at any time which means what? Hmm
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No miracles, no refills- just a guy doing his Father’s will. Doing the things that crossed his path- until he was ‘received up into glory.’ That’s my take.
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Actually the temple at the top of the “tower” (actually a ziggurat) was to the Babylonian god Marduk. Which, when the Persians conquered Babylon, they took exception to, so they stove in a large hole in the side of the “tower.” When Alexander the great conquered the Persians, he proceeded to have the tower dismantled with the intention of rebuilding it, but he didn’t live long enough to complete that task. The Iraqis, being practical, helped themselves to the pile of useful building materials and so the Tower of Babylon became parts of local roads and houses, etc. There was no confusion of tongues, no “great wind” that destroyed the tower.
There were quite a few Israelites in Babylon when the tower was built, being captives from the Babylonian conquest, and so they had access to the details of the towers construction and used those to weave a take, a false tale, of the potency of their god, probably because their feelings got hurt by the Babylonians. This is also why the Israelites/Hebrews/Jews refer to the Whore of Babylon because they weren’t Yahweh worshippers, so they had to be evil, nasty people.
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Thanks Steve. My assertion is based on the biblical narrative being true, and if true, how does the Christian reconcile the fact they were going to accomplish the thing they had set out to do?
Obviously a brick and mortar is not going to be miles high, but a place to practice their techniques which was another way to salvation, imo.
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Actually, that tower could have been no more than 300 ft tall (as a consequence of building with mud brick). If that was close enough to the Heavens to get under Yahweh’s skin, what about all of the nearby mountains that are thousands of feet tall. If that were a path to Heaven, there were already hundreds of Yahweh-made mountains there to do the job. As usual these tale are full of absolute nonsense.
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Actually the motivation for building the tower was to make a monumental structure that would reflect greatness upon the King who built it and the god, whose temple is at its apex. It wasn’t to reach the Heavens. Imaging what the clouds look like in the desiccated Iraq. They are really high. Trying to build a tower to reach those heights was a silly idea. But the enslaved Israeli’s took every opportunity to belittle their captors and to show how they weren’t so mighty after all. Silly Hebrews!
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I think 2 stories are getting combined here- the Genesis 11 tower apparently preceded the Hebrews.
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Curious — where did you get all this information? I haven’t read “The Book” for quite some time, but memory doesn’t serve related to all these details … ??
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I posted upon this recently “The Tower of Babylon and Biblical Sucking Up”
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I am pretty sure the Whore of Babylon comes from Revelations. So I imagine it would be better to say this is Greco-Roman Christian reference rather than an Israelite/Hebrew/Jewish one. I also imagine being conquered and enslaved by another group of people (the Babylonians), which certainly involves violence, death of friends and loved ones, and destruction probably stirs emotions a little stronger than “hurt feelings.”
While it’s relatively common agreement that the story is based on Babylonian Ziggurats, ultimately it is a story and should be read that way rather than a fake inaccurate account of a real event.
As a story, it is an etiological myth that offers a mythical explanation for the existence of multiple different languages. It also seems to offer an explanation of the existence of different groups of people who speak different languages (when these people are scattered across the earth). While this isn’t plausible as the real explanation for linguistic diversity based on modern linguistics, it does explain one of the thematic purposes of the myth in its own context. We shouldn’t lose sight that this is still meant to be a story and not necessarily an accurate nonfiction account of historical events.
A deeper insight is hidden in this theme in the implied acknowledgment that languages are what separate different groups of people and prevent them from working together. The only thing stopping us from working together is language barriers and being scattered across the earth.
Another theme is a variation of a thematic conflict found throughout Genesis of the boundaries between the divine and humanity and humanity overreaching. In this story, humans want to reach the heavens (the domain of God or gods) by building (notice the parallel with creating) with the implied idea to be like God or the gods. At the same time, Genesis also makes clear we are made in the image of God so naturally we want to be like Him, which creates a back-and-forth paradox throughout Genesis. We are made in the image of God so naturally we want to imitate Him according to the story, but when do we cross the boundary lines? Likewise, related to this theme and slightly more pious note is the idea that they are building this tower in the story to glorify themselves rather than to honor God (note this is a comment on the story as written and has nothing to do with the idea that the story may have been based on actual temple to Marduk).
The use of clever irony is the hallmark of J (the ascribed writer of the tale according to the documentary hypothesis), which is another feature of its literary qualities. The people claim to want to build the tower in order to make a name for themselves and so they will not be scattered across the world, but the very act of building the tower is exactly what leads God to scatter them across the earth, hence the irony.
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You are missing the point, literally (sorry, I am addicted to puns). This is a poke in the eye of the Biblical literalists who take every story in the Bible as being literally true.
With regard to “A deeper insight is hidden in this theme in the implied acknowledgment that languages are what separate different groups of people and prevent them from working together. The only thing stopping us from working together is language barriers and being scattered across the earth.” The Jahwists who wrote this story are claiming that the source of the confusion is not human inventiveness at languages when we live in separated groups but by the will of their god. So, it is not a moralistic story encouraging us to communicate and work together, it is a “look at how powerful our god is” story with the implied moral of “you don’t want to mess with us.”
The stories come from an unending line of disasters suffered by the writers even though they supposedly have “on their side” an all-powerful god who can defeat any enemy, so they wove into their stories that it is only unfaithfulness which is causing their defeats.
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