The Tower of Babel

[pevaquark (Matthew Pevarnik)]

Here are some various threads from the past of the forum:

Questions of the Tower of Babel for EC

So, I have a question for the community at large to see where everyone stands on the event that takes place in Genesis 11. My questions are this. Was the Tower of Babel a real historical event or is it a allegory. If it is an allegory then what is the theme or meaning behind it? When and possibly where did this event take place? At what extant was the confusion of languages? Was it global or was it local? [tower-of-babel]

Is the Tower of Babel a polemic?

Some observations I’ve made: Genesis 11:1-10 is set in Mesopotamia (Shinar) In Mesopotamia there were indeed giant towers (Ziggurats) Ziggurats were seen as a bridge between heaven and earth, and a place were the gods would descend to dwell in their temple. The Tower of Babel likewise serves these functions. However, when God descends from heaven to the city he destroys the tower. With all these facts together, the story of the Tower of Babel seems like a polemic against Pagan religious pract…

Is the tower of babel real?

In my studies I have been reading the book A History of the Ancient Near East, by Marc Van De Mieroop. What is interesting is his chapter on the Uruk period, where he mentions the rapid and vast expansion of Uruk culture across the ancient near East, for apparently unknown reasons. Interestingly, John Walton claims that this influence quickly died out, so it is a sudden, rapid, mysterious single vast expansion, coming from Mesopotamia. Could this be the Babel event?

Is a local Mesopotamian scale of the Tower of Babel possible?

I’ve always said that the Tower of Babel is one of the harder parts of the Genesis to reconcile with real history. Paul H. Seely (you may know him) has wrote an article in 2001, 2001 The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications, Westminster Theological Journal 63:15–38. where he basically argued that the narrative cannot be reconciled with real history and is instead a nonscientific relic of accommodation. But I find such a conclusion to be unsatisfactory, for why would it be…

The "Non-Sensibility" of the Tower of Babble

It is rare when so few lines of text from Genesis can sound so ridiculous: Gen 11:4-8: And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven…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…

Lots to skim through, what do you think @Steelewires?