THE TOWER OF BABLE PART 2

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

PART 2
Mythological context

Hanging Gardens of Babylon (19th-century illustration) depicts the Tower of Babel in the background.
Biblical scholars see the Book of Genesis as mythological and not as a historical account of events. Genesis is described as beginning with historicized myth and ending with mythicized history. Nevertheless, the story of Babel can be interpreted in terms of its context.
Genesis 10:10 states that Babel (LXX: Βαβυλών) formed part of Nimrod's kingdom. The Bible does not explicitly mention that Nimrod ordered the building of the Tower, but many other sources have associated its construction with Nimrod.
Genesis 11:9 attributes the Hebrew version of the name Babel to the verb ball, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew. The first-century Roman-Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel, meaning "confusion."
Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon

Reconstruction of the Etemenanki.
Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by the 6th-century BCE Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II but had fallen into disrepair by the time of Alexander's conquests. He managed to move the tiles of the Tower to another location, but his death stopped the reconstruction, and it was demolished during the reign of his successor Antiochus Soter. The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) wrote an account of the ziggurat in his History, which he called the "Temple of Zeus Belus."
According to modern scholars, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki. Stephen L. Harris proposed that this occurred during the Babylonian captivity. Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of Genesis 11:1-9 were inspired by the existence of an incomplete ziggurat at Babylon and by the phonological similarity between Babylonian Bab-ilu, meaning "gate of God," and the Hebrew word ball, meaning "mixed," "confused," or "confounded."
Later literature
Book of Jubilees
The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most detailed accounts of the Tower.
Moreover, 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. Moreover, 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 5433 cubits and two palms, and the extent of one wall was thirteen stades and of the other thirty stades. (Jubilees 10:20–21, Charles' 1913 translation)
Pseudo-Philo
In Pseudo-Philo, the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of the Hamites, but also to Joktan, prince of the Semites, and Fenech son of Dodanim, as prince of the Japhetites. Twelve men are arrested for refusing to bring bricks, including Abraham, Lot, Nahor, and several sons of Joktan. However, Joktan finally saves the twelve from the wrath of the other two princes.
Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews

Tower of Babel, by Lucas van Valckenborch, 1594, Louvre Museum
His Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE) recounted history as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the Tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God. In this account, God confused the people rather than destroying them because annihilation with a Flood had not taught them to be godly.
Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was Ham’s grandson, the son of Noah, a bold man with great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if through his means they were happy but to believe that their courage procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. Now the multitude was very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod. To esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God. They built a tower, neither sparing any pains nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, because of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than anyone could expect. However, the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great Height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented with mortar, made of bitumen that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners in the Flood. However, he caused a tumult among them by producing in them diverse languages and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place where they built the Tower is now called Babylon because of the confusion of that language they readily understood before, for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this Tower and the confusion of the language when she says thus:—"When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower as if they would thereby ascend to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone a peculiar language, and for this reason, it was that the city was called Babylon."
Greek Apocalypse of Baruch
The third Apocalypse of Baruch (or 3 Baruch, c. 2nd century), one of the pseudepigrapha, describes the just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife. Among the sinners are those who instigated the Tower of Babel. In the account, Baruch is first taken (in a vision) to see the resting place of the souls of "those who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them." Next, he is shown another place, and there, occupying the form of dogs,
Those who gave counsel to build the Tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. Moreover, the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech when they had built the Tower to the Height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. Furthermore, they took a gimlet and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, Let us see (whether) the Heaven is made of clay, brass, or iron. When God saw this, He did not permit them but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech and rendered them as thou seest.
Midrash
Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel and the intentions of its builders. According to one midrash, the builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in the Jewish sources, said: "God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God.
The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God but also to Abraham, who exhorted the builders to reverence. The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God, saying that once every 1,656 years, Heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the Earth; therefore, they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge.
Some among that generation even wanted to go to war against God in Heaven. They were encouraged in this undertaking by the notion that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back, dripping with blood, consequently that the people believed they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens. According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower. At the same time, other rabbinical sources assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from the builders.
According to another midrashic account, one-third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants.