The Tower of Babel
Posted by Osman on April 10, 2007
The Tower of Babel
After the Deluge, Noah’s descendants settled in the lowlands of Sinear, not far from the Euphrates. The spoke a common language and formed a single community. Genesis 11 tells their story: ‘And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’ In addition, the tower had to serve as a landmark to keep people together, despite the fact that God had commanded Noah and his sons to ‘replenish’ the earth (Genesis 9:1). Also, the tower could be used as a safe haven in case of a new flood.
God looked down upon these industrious souls, and judged that in their ambition they were trying to equal him. So he decided to punish them with the Confusion of Tongues. Since people could no longer understand each other, they were scattered over the earth at last. The site of the event would from that day on be known as Babel, apparently meaning ‘confusion’.
The ‘big tower’
The ’small tower’Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted the Tower three times, but one of the versions was lost. The two surviving canvasses (from 1563) show intricate detail and are definitely worth viewing in the original. The larger painting measures 114 x 155 cm and can be admired in Vienna’s Art History Museum. The smaller measures 60 x 74.5 cm and forms part of the collection of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In the foreground of the larger Babylonian Tower stands a figure of authority – some sources suggest that this Nimrod was overseeing the Tower’s construction.
It is not unlikely that Bruegel used the Coliseum as an inspiration for his impression of the Tower as the Coliseum was a building that Christians of his day would certainly consider an expression of faithless pride. At first sight Bruegel’s towers look sturdy and well-constructed, but on closer inspection it strikes the viewer that the design contains flaws, probably inserted to indicate how bold and presumptuous the whole project was.
The countless tiny figures emphasize the tower’s gigantic proportions and the insignificance of mankind.
There is evidence that the Tower of Babel actually existed. But in all fairness it was not built as Bruegel thought. Ancient clay tables tell of a ziggurat – a temple tower in the form of a terraced pyramid of successively receding stories. The Marduk ziggurat or Etemenanki was 91 meters in height and set on a 91 x 91 meters base and is believed to have had 7 tiers. Marduk was the main Babylonian god. From cuneiform writings it appears that this tower was built to reach the heavens. So it is possible that our Biblical story finds its origin in Mesopotamia, as does the story of the Flood. Destroyed by the Assyrian King Sanherib in 689 BC, the Marduk ziggurat was reconstructed and perfected by the likes of Nebukadnezar II. In 478 BC the ziggurat was demolished again, this time by the Xerxes Persians. The Babylonians named their tower Bab-Iloe, Port of God.
Ira Ferguson said
I do not have a website, but I thought you might be interested in this short paper.
The TOWER of BABEL, The CITY of ENOCH,The GULF of MEXICO
(And other related structures and stories in religious histories)
A Gospel Study Topic by I.O.F.
This document created 29 Aug 2004
Rev 6, 1 July 2007
Collected Discourses, Vol.1, Orson F. Whitney, September 22d, 1889,
But the people of the world, when they saw that Zion had fled (this phrase means that the City of Enoch had been taken up, and was no longer upon the face of the Earth), felt forsaken. They were not all wicked in the same degree. Indeed there were some who were good, or partially good, but it was the will of the Lord that they should remain. And the people united themselves and conceived the vain project of lifting themselves up in some other way than that which God had appointed. They were not humble enough to accept the means of exaltation which He had provided, but imagined that the arm of flesh was strong enough to raise them to the summit of their desires. They gathered together with their mighty enginery and cunning skill, and sought to build a great tower, hoping thereby to reach Zion (The City of Enoch), which had been taken into the heavens. It has been taught that it was the object of the people who built the Tower of Babel to reach heaven, to attain to one of the starry planets, one of the heavenly bodies. This sounds, indeed, like a fairy tale; and for one, I cannot conceive now–although I once believed it–how a race of people, out of whose midst a Zion had arisen, a generation so intelligent as to have produced such a city, intelligent enough to build a great tower of which the world has not since seen the counterpart, that we are aware of, could cherish the idea that they could actually reach the sun, moon, or one of the stars, simply by piling brick upon brick and stone upon stone.
But the Prophet Joseph Smith, whose mission it was to shed light upon the darkness of this generation, is said to have declared that it was not their intention to reach heaven, but to reach Zion, which was then suspended in mid-air, between heaven and earth, or at such a height as to render the project feasible.
This certainly is more reasonable. And such was the unity of that people that they had power to do what they contemplated, and it was necessary, in the economy of God, that they should be thwarted in the carrying out of their scheme. So what did the Almighty do? He employed, in righteousness, means which effected the same end that wicked men fain would effect now, by unholy methods, in relation to this community. He divided and distracted them. The Lord divided the people who were building the Tower of Babel, by confounding their language; and with their great project towering into the heavens, half finished perhaps, they were forced to abandon the enterprise; and the great Tower of Babel stood there as a monument of human folly, of the vanity of those who seek, in any age, to accomplish by human methods, by earthly means, what God has decreed shall only be accomplished by heavenly means. They were divided, paralyzed, weakened by disunion, and they separated into bands and tribes, and went forth to colonize the uninhabited portions of the world. Among them was the colony of the Jaredites, a people highly favored of the Lord. The brother of Jared was a mighty man of God; he found favor with the Almighty, and he and his brother and their colony crossed the great ocean and became the first known colonizers of this hemisphere; they settled the whole land of North America, and built it up with their cities, and became glorious, and were richly blessed of the Lord, until they departed from Him and became corrupt, when the sun of their civilization went down in a sea of blood. But the Lord had brought to pass the great purpose which He had planned.
Delbert L. Stapley, BYU Speeches, January 10, 1962, p.10
When the people several generations following the flood attempted to build a tower that would reach to heaven, God considered the attempt foolish. The Tower of Babel, as we know it, because the Lord confused the tongues of the people, was only built according to the best knowledge available to a height of approximately 300 feet.
Herodotus
The Greek historian Herodotus, gave his estimation of the size of the Tower of Babel to be 630 feet tall, divided into 8 stories, and a quarter of a mile square at its base.
Times and Seasons, Vol.5, p.409
This then was the thing that the ancient saints had in view; it was to obtain this glory that they sought; it was for this they suffered and endured. Eternal life with them, was the only thing desirable; it was for this they lived; for this they died. And what to men with minds unenlightened, would be folly and nonsense; to them was the greatest height of wisdom, even the teachings of Jehovah, pertaining to their eternal welfare. And as man’s everlasting tabernacle was designed to be on this earth; by faith they sought, and by faith they obtained promises.’ Abraham obtained a promise of the land of Canaan for himself and his posterity. The land of the Gentiles was allotted to their several owners. Joseph had a promise of a land at the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills. Jared, at the destruction of the ‘Tower of Babel’ had the promise of an inheritance in this land The twelve tribes of Israel had their inheritance divided unto them by lot, and unto various heads of families, God gave similar promises. Yet we are told that though Abraham had the land of Canaan promised to him, for an everlasting inheritance, ‘God gave him none inheritance in it,’ (in his life time) ‘no not so much as to set his foot.’ — Yet according to the scriptures he will do and inherit it eternally.
Joseph Young, Organization of the Seventies, p.12
Joseph Smith said, on another occasion, in the hearing of some of the saints still surviving, that the City of Enoch would again take its place in the identical spot from which it had been detached, now forming that chasm of the earth, filled with water, called the Gulf of Mexico.
The amazing story of the Temple of Cholulua:
A race of giants who build a structure high enough to survive the Great Flood and then tried to build higher to the clouds.
On the way between Vera Cruz and the capital not far from the modern city of Puebla (SE of Mexico City), stands the venerable relic, with which the reader has become familiar in the course of this narrative–called the temple of Cholulua. It is, as he will remember, a pyramidal mound, built, or rather cased, with unburnt brick, rising to the height of nearly one hundred and eighty (180) feet.
The popular tradition of the natives is that it was erected by a family of giants, who had escaped the great inundation, and designed to raise the building to the clouds; but the gods, offended with their presumption, sent fires from heaven on the pyramid, and compelled them to abandon the attempt. The partial coincidence of this legend with the Hebrew account of the Tower of Babel, re-received also by other nations of the east, cannot be denied.
B. H. Roberts, New Witnesses for God, Vol.2, p.479
Conquest of Mexico, vol. II, pp. 386, 387 Prescott
Comments: There must have been a rational and compelling reason for these giants to build their pyramid “to the clouds” after they had survived the high water of the flood. Why build to the clouds. I firmly believe that these giants had a tangible target in sight, or at least in “mind”, because their location was close enough to the City of Enoch
(as large as the Gulf of Mexico) taken up into the sky before the flood.
A brief chronology of a few related events
2348 B.C. The Great Flood
2245 BC The People (except one group) leave the Tower of Babel with (70) confused languages
ca. 2244 B.C. Nimrod and those of his tongue stay and form the city of Babylon. Some Bible Scholars believe that the Tower of Babel became the Temple of Jupiter Belus in Babylon (later despoiled by Xerxes in 478 BC
The single, large land mass of the Earth is divided in the days of a man named Peleg.
Peleg was born 2247 B.C. and died 2008 B.C. having a life span of 239 years. So we see that the Earth had only one land mass before and during the flood. The land divided into continents sometime at least 101 years after the flood.
It is interesting to note that the City of Enoch is larger than many countries of our modern times.
MrNirom said
Here is a page that speaks about 3 planets that use to be above the earth.. and it was so close to the earth.. that it seemed as if one could build a tower to reach it.
Just some food for thought.
MrNirom said
Whoops.. try this:
MrNirom said
http://ldsanarchy.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/the-hollow-earth-theory-the-plasma-model-and-mormon-theology/