The Tower of Babel... What's up with that?

by LtCmd.Lore 24 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  LtCmd.Lore

  Seriously,,, what was gods problem? The story of Babel bothered me for quite a while.

  After all, Satan made a few challenges right? He said that humans would only serve god for what they can get out of it. (That one is obviously true. Would anyone serve god if they didn't get some kind of benifit, like heaven or a immortality?)

  And he also said that they were capable of ruling themselves. (When that challenge was made god prompty cursed humans with imperfection, therefore cheating right off the bat. But aside from that cowardly action on gods part the rules were made.)

  So, according to the Bible, humans were doing a pretty darned good job of it, they even got together to build a city with a huge tower as a sign of their independance from god. So god messed up their languages. How the heck were they supposed to be good rulers when their subjects can't understand them all of a sudden?

  Why would he do that? God himself says: "Why, now there is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them." ...... ....... So, Satan was right and god knew it! Just like Satan had said, humans joined together as one big family to build a future for themselves, without any help from god. They were totally free.

  Unless he was afraid of losing the challenge, there was no other reason for god to interfere. Right?

  In summary, Satan says that humans can rule themselves just fine. So to prove Satan wrong god first totally reinvents the humans and all the animals around them before he allows them to start. Then when they succeed dispite gods obvious attempts at rigging the challenge, god intervenes and makes the humans incapable of communicating.

  Sounds like the five year old who insists that everyone plays the game the way he wants because it's his house and he makes the rules, only throw a tantrum and redefine the rules again when he starts losing.

  Let me put it this way: A teenager tell his father that he thinks he can move out and live on his own. The father doesn't want that, he wants his child to live at home for his entire life. So he says: "OK smarty pants, you can move out." He then proceeds to take the childs licence, and car, and computer, and all his money away, then he throws him outside without any food and says: "You're on your own ingrate!" ___ A couple years later the father realises that the son has managed to build a life for himself without his help... does he congratulate him? No, he gets a torch, burns down the kids house, takes his money, car, food and other stuff away AGAIN, but this time he breaks the boys legs on top of it all. So now the boy is worse off than he started, and has an injury that will interfere with his life for years to come.

  LtCmd.Lore
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  Marcel

  thats one of the most blasphemic topics i ever read =)
  nice thoughts. ill think about that later.
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  Narkissos

  I'd just point out that your (very valid and insightful) criticism is aimed, not at the Bible texts themselves, but at the WT "paratext", i.e. the "big narrative" which is nowhere in the Bible although made up as a patchwork of isolated prooftexts, and serves as a "Bible summary" to the average JW.

  The idea of "Satan's wager" is extrapolated from a late misinterpretation of Job's prologue (a misinterpretation because in Job "the satan" is not -- yet -- the enemy of Yahweh, but his servant in the role of "witness for the prosecution"). It is completely foreign to Genesis where no "satan" at all appears (the snake doesn't count, it was never identified to the "devil" until the last two centuries BC). And if somebody holds a diabolical role in the Babel story, in the etymological sense of diabolos (vs. sumbolos), i.e. dividing and ruining harmony, it is certainly Yahweh himself.

  The key to understanding both stories, imo, is to realise that in the ancient perspective the gods are neither "good" nor "benevolent" to mankind by definition. They can be just as hostile and harmful as they can prove friendly and helpful. The role of religion is to find a modus vivendi with them, keeping them pleased and appeasing them when they are not, thus allowing human society to exist in the optimal, i.e. the best possible conditions, at a safe distance from the sacred realm. Imo, in their own mythological form the ("J") stories in Genesis are much more respectful of the bittersweet flavour of reality as experienced by mankind than the black and white script of monotheism (actually, dualism) and its two antagonistic characters, "God" and "Satan".
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  funkyderek

  LtCmd.Lore:

  Don't forget how it's supposed to end. After 6,000 years of letting humans look after themselves (while sabotaging them at every turn) who actually wins the bet, Jehovah or Satan? Well, count up the numbers - 6 million JWs, 6 billion "Satanists". The devil wins by a factor of a thousand to one! 99.9 percent of the world's population, having been given the choice, chose Satan over Jehovah. So what will the loser do? Bow out gracefully and go off to f&*k up some othe planet? No, he's going to destroy all those that didn't choose his side and then declare himself the winner. What a guy!
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  LtCmd.Lore

  I'd just point out that your (very valid and insightful) criticism is aimed, not at the Bible texts themselves, but at the WT "paratext", i.e. the "big narrative" which is nowhere in the Bible although made up as a patchwork of isolated prooftexts, and serves as a "Bible summary" to the average JW.

  Yeah, sorry, I meant to specify that. I realise that would only be meaningfull to witnesses.

  LtCmd.Lore
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  Terry

  The primitive understanding of the "location" of heaven is in order here. The ancients visualized the earth as a flat disc with a half-bubble dome (firmament) of crystal in which the luminaries were fixed. To build a tower to the "heavens" was a physical possibility in this. The God(s) of the Tower of Babel episode are actually fearful that man can INVADE PHYSICALLY the domain of heaven by building such a structure.

  In Jacob's vision of the "ladder" that reached to heaven this idea appears again. Heaven is in such proximity and contains such access points that angels descend by a physical means!

  A further problem with the Tower of Babel is that mankind's FREEWILL is interrupted and wiped out. This destroys the Watchtower theology which states Jehovah allows men to rule themselves until such a time as he demonstrates his kingdom is better.

  The intervention of God or gods was a primitive idea which has been replaced by a remote control God who is never glimpsed or heard from again. In the Watchtower Society there is presumably a wireless set with a channel marked "J" where instruction is given for Watchtower articles.
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  LongHairGal

  Lt.Cmd.Lore:

  Very good post and upsetting to contemplate that god would be so spiteful. Although, years ago I was in a discussion about this topic of Babel, etc. and I wondered if maybe Jehovah thought they were up to no good and that's why he confused their language.

  Who knows, maybe they would have polluted or destroyed the world sooner or invented nukes before Jesus came on the scene???

  LHG
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  Borgia

  If you ever get talking to elders, ms, family, just bring this up in connection to the WT's understanding about the 2 universal issues since Eden...Just ask: Is God unjust? No, then rop the bomb: how does that reflect on our .....theology then?

  See them running........though the best of them may say: well let's find out in the publications of the FDS (nothing significant published on this) or maybe suggest to write (nothing will come from this for they will inist oon looking at the abdundance of spiritual food(although very hard to grasp))

  I already tried, and had some good laughs........

  Cheers

  Borgia
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  greendawn

  The tower of Babel was a rebellion against God instigated by the king of that city who was the ambitious Nimrod a man fiercely opposed to God and his worship and who was in fact aiming at enslaving mankind to his rule. God never approved of humans removing him from their lives and totally ignoring him. That tower (zigurat) was to be the centre of a system of worship in opposition to that handed down by Noah and that's its real meaning. That's where mankind abandoned God and has been paying the price to this day. Very soon the world became full of conflict, war, poverty, slavery, tyrrany and all injustice. Babylon came to be known as the archetypal enemy of God and his worshippers as clearly seen in Revelation.
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  RichieRich

  Now remember... the language devisions that were made there and then are what's responsible for the all the different races we see today.

  And since evolution doesn't work, that means that God either changed their race too, or there already were different races, and that's how he assigned the languages.

  Something tells me that if a government tried to pull something similar today, it wouldn't work well.