The Tower of Babel (Biblical Stories Explained)

it is in genesis 11 that we learn about what is considered to be the very first skyscraper ever built or at least attempted to be built this tower was intended to reach the heavens so that one may ascend and commune directly with god himself but it was more than just a bridge to connect man with his creator but a staple of man to determine where they each belonged to a hub if you will so that each man could find his way back so as to avoid being scattered across the earth it would become known as the tower of babel and unfortunately for those constructing the tower scattered is exactly what they would become it was the descendants of noah who were living in the ancient area of mesopotamia in babylon whereby they came to settle in a land known as shinna the bible tells us that these men or the whole earth for that matter spoke with one language understood by all and that they would come to dwell in sinnah after traveling far from the east the bible tells us now the whole earth had one language and one speech and it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plane in the land of shinar and they dwelt there but these men who settled in china were not content to just settle there in the barren lands their population was growing and the people wished to establish a symbol for how great their nation was and what better symbol could a nation have than a tower that could reach the heavens but obviously the heavens were not intended for man unless of course god decreed it the babylonians therefore appear to take matters into their own hands and decided to build this tower anyway they said come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly come let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth [Music] based on the text alone it's hard to see the babylonians here as defying god god didn't tell them that they couldn't build the tower to visit their heavens nor does this necessarily seem to be their intention primarily their objective was to build themselves a symbol to be proud of a structure that demonstrated their ability to build their creativity and resourcefulness it was to be a home base somewhere that the babylonians could gaze upon to remind themselves of where they were and to prevent them from wandering off and getting lost the intentions of the babylonians here appears to be benign though it is argued that their desire to reach heaven was a sin in itself for they demonstrate hubris and arrogance and that they believe they can reach heaven at all without god's permission evidently the bible is in accordance with this for we are told the lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built 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 they propose to do will be withheld from them come let us go down there and confuse their language that they may not understand another speech god here recognizes that the babylonians are one people with one language he understands that the people are a close-knit bunch but that this will in turn work against him or cause some obstacle in the grand scheme of things he comes to realize that nothing they dream of will be impossible implying that their desire to build a temple to reach the heavens is indeed well and truly possible and that this would be the first of many constructions that would upset him his statement that nothing they propose to do will be withheld from them gives us the idea that god recognizes man's ability to overcome any problem and that man has the ingenuity to build or create anything that he wishes for nothing can be withheld from them here you might say that god fears the ambition of man and that it will lead him to become arrogant perhaps arrogant enough that he will believe he can ascend to heaven whenever he fancies so god sets upon the babylonians the very same fate that they had sought to avoid he scatters them the bible tells us so the lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth and they ceased building the city therefore its name is called babel because there the lord confused the language of all of the earth and from there the lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth we begin to see here that the story aims to explain why it is that the world and all its people speak different languages as mentioned it was the united human race those that came after the great flood who migrated westward to the land of shinar and that these great number of people all spoke the same language in order to prevent them from completing their mission of building the tower god confuses the language of the earth causing these migrants to become unable to communicate with one another without being able to understand each other the tower is never actually completed and they begin to venture away from each other alienated by their inability to communicate and segregated by their loss of purpose the bible then tells us that the tower would become to be known as babel which is thought to have derived from the hebraic term balan meaning to jumble or confuse however the exact origin of the term babel has not been entirely confirmed there's a mainstay theme in this story and as the often unspoken competition between man and creator or at least the ambition of man man's ambition is truly highlighted in this story given that they desire to stand toe-to-toe with god quite literally by building to reach his level we've seen how much god hates this sort of thinking most notably in lucifer who tries to take god's throne and establish himself as the most high you might say that this incident was eerily reminiscent to god who would have seen the humans building the structure so that they could be at least in the physical sense just as high as him the ambition of man is seen elsewhere in the bible too like in the story of adam and eve where it can be argued that adam and eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil for they believed it would make them like god this is the same for those who were building the tower for their desire to be on god's level is not something that he could tolerate through this though we also get a glimpse of god's mercy after all he recognized that those who were building the temple were not necessarily bad people they simply wanted to achieve something to not only represent their nation but also to be so glorious that it had its place in heaven they might have overestimated their jurisdiction in a sense but they were not doing this in spite of god or despite anyone else it is why god doesn't just destroy the tower but instead spreads this confusion by altering their languages it is perhaps one of the most benign ways god could have dissuaded the people although he probably could have just asked them to stop however in doing this i suppose there may have been some people from amongst the group who would defy him which would in then turn leave him no choice but to respond with more aggression by changing languages he removes all possibility of them working together and renders them powerless without shedding any blood another idea is that this was not actually a punishment or a warning at all but instead god's way of protecting the people from building too high where they would not be able to breathe and also his way of ensuring a vast range of culture by getting mankind to speak differently and to explore more regions the first century jewish interpretation of the tower of babel states that the tyrant nimrod the king of the land of shinar was the man who commissioned the construction of the tower and that it was indeed done as an act of defiance against god this idea was most notably recognized by the historian flavius josephus in his antiquities of the jews where he states that it was nimrod who built the tower so as to turn people away from god he also goes on to say that the reason why god did not destroy the people for their defiance was because he'd already sent the flood and if that hadn't been enough to make man see the error of his ways then nothing of the sword would therefore god sought to confuse man instead by changing his language but interestingly the tower of babel is not a story unique to the bible it has been told in a variety of different ways from ancient sumerian stories to various other ancient traditions from around the world the central idea is the same in that one group of people appear to build a tower or some form of construction only for their language to become disrupted or altered so that they cannot communicate with each other effectively enough to finish what they started in a sumerian myth the legendary king and murker of udduk built what is known as a ziggurat a sort of massive structure known in ancient mesopotamia proud of his creation enmerka demands tributes in the form of precious metals from the people of arata he is also seen praying to the god enki to disrupt the linguistics of certain regions another story involving a ziggurat and possibly the inspiration for the story of the tower of babel is a particular ziggurat known as etomonenki the temple of the foundation of heaven and earth which was dedicated to marduk in the city of babylon mardoch of course being the babylonians page from god the structure was destroyed in 689 bc by the neo-syrian empire but later rulers most notably nebuchadnezzar ii would try to rebuild it supposedly the original was never completed and that it was missing a roof it would become an abandoned project and became victim to the elements compromising its structural integrity but nebuchadnezzar ii's project was also ill-fated for it was reduced to ruins by alexander the great in 331 bc because he wanted to rebuild it from scratch when he died however these plans were also forsaken there were several attempts by various leaders to rebuild eternanki but the building appeared to be cursed because no one ever seemed to be able to achieve this feat antiochus the first the hellenistic king of the seleucid empire was the last person to try he went to visit the site but after stumbling on rubble he became annoyed at the place and ordered the riders of his elephant cavalry to destroy what was left instead another story similar to the tower of babel comes from an old folk tale in mexico associated with the great pyramid of cholula and the idea here is that the giants who want to roam the land set off in search of the sun and built a tower to reach it but this act angered the inhabitants of the sky those that were presumed to be the gods who destroyed the tower and disseminated the giants across the world as punishment of course in this story the tower is left in ruins and the gods unleash their anger on those who dare to reach them this is unlike the god in genesis who as we know spares the tower and is quite subtle in his reaction by comparison in the book of jubilees an ancient jewish religious work a detailed account of the tower is given where we are told the exact materials used in this construction how long it took and also how tall it was though this is often disputed the text reads and they began to build and in the fourth week they made brick with fire and the bricks served them for stone and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea and out of the fountains of water in the land of shinar and they built it forty and three years were they building it its breadth was 203 bricks and the height of a brick was the third of one its height amounted to 5 433 cubits and 2 palms and the extent of one wall was 13 states and of the other 30 states meanwhile in the greek apocalypse of barrack a pseudopographical book otherwise known as the third apocalypse of barrack barrick ben naraya the scribe of the prophet jeremiah tells us that in one of his visions he sees the state of both the sinners and the righteous in the afterlife amongst the sinners however are those who first began the construction of the tower of babel there are also men who have been transformed into dogs and these are the men who once encouraged the building of the tower or gave specific engineering advice on how to achieve it barrack also tells us that those building the temple were not building for their own sense of achievement nor to be closer to god but to see for themselves what heaven looked like this in turn angered god that they would assume they had the right to see the glory that they had not earned and so sent upon them confusion by delivering upon them the barrier of language in judaism there are several midrash which detail the tower of babel but one particularly vivid one is known as the generation of succession and we are told that the people building the temple were displeased with god and believed it to be unfair that he ruled the upper world whilst they were deemed to rule the lower one to spite god and to show him the dissatisfaction they built the tower with the intention of placing a statue at the very top one who was holding a sword towards the heavens as you might imagine this was to show that they were not afraid of god and meant to war with him if need be the tower of babel meanwhile does not seem to appear in the quran in islam but there are some similarities with other stories one in particular is when a pharaoh asks the harmon which was the high priest to build a tower so that he might confront allah this comes about because allah had commanded moses to go and visit the pharaoh in egypt and invite him to monotheism and to abandon his old gods moses also sought to stop the pharaoh from his tormenting of the israelites but the pharaoh would hear none of it and determined moses and his god to be sorcerers and shamans outraged by moses's request he commanded the harmon to build him a tower so that he could condemn allah to his face but he never actually got this far given that both the haman and the pharaoh were drowned in the red sea ibn menzer an arab lexicographer of the 13th century wrote the lesson al arab in 1290 which is one of the most comprehensive arabic dictionaries it features a tale about a plane known as babel now whilst this area of babel is never specified as being in shinar that isn't the only significant omission there is also no tower to speak of either instead mankind seems to congregate in this particular area and they are given individual languages by god though not because of punishment but perhaps to ensure that they would separate and go their own way but in the history of the prophets and kings a historical arabic chronicle written by the theologian altabari he tells us that there was indeed a tower present upon this land and that nimrod again was responsible for its creation in this version though allah destroys the structure first before proceeding to split mankind up by bestowing upon them 72 different languages another idea presented by the 13th century historian abu alfida tells us that ebba the grandson of noah was allowed to keep the original tongue of the people for he was the only one who did not partake in the building of the tower whilst there are many variations of the tower of babel or a tower in general that also seems to coincide with the establishment of language all of them seem to end up telling near enough the same story the premise is featured across all three major religions and also has its roots in ancient religion and culture too as we've seen with the sumerian texts and also from folkloric tales too but perhaps there's something i might have missed about the tower of babel or something you'd like to add perhaps let me know in the comments below and as always don't forget to give this video a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe until the next time guys [Music]

Channel: The Legends of History

Views: 751,040

Keywords: Tower of Babel, Babel, Babylon, Tower of Babylon, Legends of History, Legends, History, Biblical stories, Bible, Bible study

Id: ULKAieLf0oY

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020