The Tower of Babel PART 1

by John Thomas Lowe
(Woodruff, S.C.)

The Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

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 Bāb-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 (bālal), 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.
Comparable myths
See also: Comparative mythology and Mythical origins of language
Sumerian and Assyrian parallel
There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat in Eridu demands a tribute of precious materials from Aratta for its construction. At one point, reciting an incantation imploring the God Enki to restore (or in Kramer's translation, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions—named as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land, "the whole universe, the well-guarded people—may they all address Enlil together in a single language."
In addition, another Assyrian myth, dating from the 8th century BC during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), bears several similarities to the later written biblical story.
Greco-Roman parallel

Building of Babel
In Greek mythology, much of which was adopted by the Romans, there is a myth referred to as the Gigantomachy, the battle fought between the Giants and the Olympian gods for supremacy of the cosmos. In Ovid's telling of the myth, the Giants attempt to reach the gods in Heaven by stacking mountains but are repelled by Jupiter's thunderbolts. A.S. Kline translates Ovid's Metamorphoses 1.151-155 as:
"Rendering the heights of Heaven no safer than the Earth, they say the giants attempted to take the Celestial kingdom, piling mountains up to the distant stars. Then the all-powerful father of the gods hurled his bolt of lightning, fractured Olympus, and threw Mount Pelion down from Ossa below."
Mexico
Various traditions similar to that of the Tower of Babel are found in Central America. Some writerswho? connected the Great Pyramid of Cholula to the Tower of Babel. The Dominican friar Diego Durán (1537–1588) reported hearing an account about the pyramid from a hundred-year-old priest at Cholula shortly after the conquest of Mexico. He wrote that he was told that when the sun's light first appeared upon the land, giants appeared and set off in search of the sun. Not finding it, they built a tower to reach the sky. An angered God of the Heavens called upon the inhabitants of the sky, who destroyed the Tower and scattered its inhabitants. The story was not related to a flood or the confusion of languages, although Frazer connects its construction and the scattering of the giants with the Tower of Babel.
Another story, attributed by the native historian Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl (c. 1565–1648) to the ancient Toltecs, states that after men had multiplied following a great deluge, they erected a tall actual or Tower to preserve themselves in the event of a second deluge. However, their languages were confounded, and they went to separate parts of the Earth.
Arizona
Still another story, attributed to the Tohono O'odham people, holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood, became wicked, and attempted to build a house reaching Heaven. However, the Great Spirit destroyed it with thunderbolts.
Nepal
Traces of a similar story have also been reported among the Tharu of Nepal and northern India.
Botswana
According to David Livingstone, the people he met living near Lake Ngami in 1849 had such a tradition, with the builders' heads getting "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding.”
Other traditions
In his 1918 book, Folklore in the Old Testament, Scottish social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer documented similarities between Old Testament stories, such as the Flood, and indigenous legends worldwide. He identified Livingston's account with a tale found in Lozi mythology, wherein the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the Creator-God, Nyambe, who has fled to Heaven on a spider-web. However, the men perish when the masts collapse. He further relates similar tales of the Ashanti that substitute a pile of porridge pestles for the masts. Frazer cites such legends among the Kongo people, as well as in Tanzania, where the men stack poles or trees in a failed attempt to reach the moon. He further cited Assam's Karbi and Kuki people of Assam have similar stories. The traditions of the Karen people of Myanmar, which Frazer considered to show apparent 'Abrahamic' influence, also relate that their ancestors migrated there following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam when the languages were confused, and the Karen separated from the Karenni. He notes yet another version current in the Admiralty Islands, where humanity's languages are confused following a failed attempt to build houses reaching Heaven.