Well, maybe it is just me - but I really don't see the mortal sin in cooperatively making some sun-dried bricks.
I would consider that drowning everybody on earth except for eight people would be worse...
The Tower of Babel - Languages: Isn't this story unhinged?
by james_woods 88 Replies latest watchtower bible
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botchtowersociety
I think you're being deliberately obtuse.
Now here's how you detail a Ferrari.
http://www.autoblog.com/2012/04/23/high-end-video-of-high-end-detail-job-on-high-end-ferrari/
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N.drew
but I really don't see the mortal sin in cooperatively making some sun-dried bricks.
Big bad things (like The Watchtower Society) had small beginnings.
Mortal sin is an exaggeration
A sin , such as murder or blasphemy, that is so heinous it deprives the soul of sanctifying grace and causes damnation if unpardoned at the time of death. (Google)
The people did not become damned the building did. LOL
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N.drew
I would consider that drowning everybody on earth except for eight people would be worse...
Does no one else wonder if Noah is a metaphor of what will happen if people insist on trusting in man? To me it looks like the future of man. I think I'm trying to change it. :)
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james_woods
I think you're being deliberately obtuse.
I can be obtuse without being all that deliberate. It comes pretty naturally, sometimes even quite casually.
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mP
wtwizard
satan is never mentioned in the first five books. in fact he hardly appears anywhere in the ot. perhaps his most famous appearamce is in job and less than a few and i literaaly mean a few as in less than ten other places. basicaflly there was no satan in the old religion of the jews, they were too busy visiting and screwing tge temple virgins or levite priests, just ask hosea and his prostitute sorry sacred prostitute wife.
i recall somewhere the tower of babel was actually a astrological obsercatory of seven levels. the story of course makes no sense because surely there were hills or mountins that were higher. babylon is not flat. astrology was about predicting the seasons or a calendar, so commenrs about man seeking knowledge are prolly fair. perhaps the preistly class are saying stay out of our domain we exclusively want the knowtledge as it keeps us in power as advisers etc. if everyone can see tge shadows on our gnomen then they wont pay us in sacrifices and there goes our gold and free food. everything is about money or powrr its just a matter of finding the angle.
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Leolaia
Of course, as an etiological myth, it does not actually have any historical merit in explaining language origins, despite what the Society claims. The Society is fond of quoting Sir Henry Rawlinson who said: "If we were to be thus guided by the mere intersection of linguistic paths, and independently of all reference to the scriptural record, we should still be led to fix on the plains of Shinar, as the focus from which the various lines had radiated" (The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britian and Ireland, 1855, Vol. 15, p. 232). Notice how old that quote is -- 1855! The Society concludes on the basis of this quote: "Aside from Hebrew, all these language groups or families can be traced back to the cradle of the new languages of the world in the plains of Shinar" (1 September 1977 Watchtower, p. 526). The Society also says that Rawlinson's opinion is based on "modern science" (Liberation, 1980, p. 25) and "available non-Biblical evidence" (22 February 1971 Awake!, p. 9). But looking at the quote in context, we can see that Rawlinson was only talking about the Scythians of the first millennium BC (a nomadic Indo-Iranian ethnic group), and it was only his speculation to trace all African, European, and Semitic cultures to a "common Scythic" ancestry, a connection that Rawlinson admitted had no real basis in linguistic or historical evidence:
"It is well known to ethnographers, that the passage of the Scyths is to be traced along all these lines [into India from Persia, into Egypt and Ethiopia from Arabia, into Asia Minor from Syria, and from thence into Greece and Italy, and into Europe from the Caucasus], either by direct historical tradition, or by the cognate dialects spoken by their descendants at the present day; and it is further pleasing to remark that, if we were to be thus guided by the mere intersection of linguistic paths, and independently of all reference to the scriptural record, we should still be led to fix on the plains of Shinar, as the focus from which the various lines had radiated. When I propose to class the multitude of nations here indicated in a common Scythic category, I do not pretend that a connexion can be established between them, either by direct historical evidence or by any positive test of philology. All that I maintain is, that certain special ethnic names have everywhere prevaield amongst them, and that, either from ancient monuments, or from tradition, or from the dialects now spoken by their descendents, we are authorised to infer that, at some very remote period, before the rise of the Semitic or Arian nations, a great Scythic population must have overspread Europe, Asia, and Africa, speaking languages all more or less dissimilar in their vocabulary, but possessing in common, certain organic characteristics of grammar and construction" (pp. 232-233).
Anyway, Rawlinson's speculation is baseless; the Scythians were not the founders of the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa in remote antiquity. As for the biblical story in Genesis 11, it claims that "all the earth was of one language" as recent as the founding of the city of Babylon, i.e. in the late third millennium BC (the Society suggests a date arouund 2200 BC). The languages of the world cannot be traced to a single ancestor but this is obviously due to the fact that human migrations have been going on for a time scale far exceeding our ability to detect linguistic relatedness; the settling of Australia occurred before 40,000 BC and the Americas about 13,000 BC. Because basic vocabulary is replaced gradually over the millennia, genetic kinship is only demonstrable at a time depth of about 10,000 years at the most (grammatical constructions change at an even faster rate). Beyond this, it is not possible to distinguish genetic relatedness from chance similarity.
It is clear that there were a multiplicity of languages throughout the earth in the third millennium BC and earlier. In the case of the Semitic languages, we know from inscriptions that Akkadian existed before 2500 BC and Eblaite existed as early as 2250 BC. These East Semitic languages branched off from an older ancestor, as they are cognate to West Semitic and South Semitic branches of the family which clearly did not descend from East Semitic. This pushes back the origin of Proto-Semitic to about 3500-3000 BC. But Proto-Semitic, in turn, is but a daughter language of a far older ancestor called Proto-Afro-Asiatic. A sister language to Proto-Semitic was Egyptian, documentation of which goes back to at least 3200 BC. Other branches of Afro-Asiatic include Berber, East Cushitic, and West Chadic. Most experts agree that the date of Proto-Afro-Asiatic is between 8000 and 5000 BC. Beyond this it is really hard to say. Some linguists reconstruct a Proto-Nostratic protolanguage that is the ancestor of Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Altaic, Proto-Kartvelian, and Proto-Afro-Asiatic, which would have to go back to the Upper Paleolithic, e.g. 15,000-12,000 BC, but most historical linguists are skeptical of the existence of Proto-Nostratic and the evidence cited to demonstrate it (which imo is not strong enough to demonstrate genetic relatedness of the superfamily).
In the case of the Indo-European languages, we have the earliest attestation of Hittite in 2000 BC which points to the existence of Proto-Anatolian about 2500 BC or earlier. The Mitanni records attests the existence of an Indo-Iranian language in 1500 BC which also corresponds to the date of Vedic Sanskrit in India, indicating that Proto-Indo-Iranian goes further back to c. 2500-2000 BC. Similarly, Mycenaean Greek documented in the Linear B tablets dates to about 1300 BC, indicating again that the original source of Proto-Greek goes back to before 2000 BC. The two Tocharian languages spoken in China were written down in the first millennium AD, but the people was known to the ancient Greeks and archaeological evidence shows that the Tocharians settled the Tarim Basin before 1800 BC. The Tocharians thus probably split off from the rest of the Indo-European family before 2000 BC. The ancestor of all these languages (including Proto-Celtic, Proto-Germantic, Proto-Balto-Slavic, Proto-Illyrian, etc.) is generally dated to about 3500-3000 BC.
As for Chinese, it was first attested in the Shang Dynasty at c. 1500 BC, and Proto-Sinitic probably goes back to 2000 BC (the Xia Dynasty). Proto-Sinitic was affiliated with Proto-Tibeto-Burman and archaeological evidence of the origin of the Sino-Tibetan people point to a date of c. 4000 BC for Proto-Sino-Tibetan. The role of archaeology is particular prominent in the dating of the origin of the Austronesian languages, as the spread westward of the Austronesian peoples into unpopulated areas yields pretty solid dates for the divergence of sub-branches of the family. The breakup of Proto-Central-Eastern-Polynesian (the ancestor of Marquesan, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Maori, etc.) occurred about AD 300, the breakup of Proto-Eastern-Polynesian (the ancestor of Proto-Central-Eastern-Polynesian and the language of Easter Island) occured by about 200 BC, the breakup of Proto-Nuclear-Polynesian (the ancestor of Proto-Eastern-Polynesian and the languages of Samoa and the Outliers) occurred by about 500 BC, the breakup of Proto-Polynesian (the ancestor of Proto-Nuclear-Polynesian and Tongan) occurred by about 800 BC, the breakup of Proto-Central-Pacific (ancestor of Proto-Polynesian, Rotuman, and Fijian) occurred by about 1000 BC, and the breakup of Proto-Eastern-Oceanic (ancestor of Proto-Central-Pacific, Proto-Nuclear-Micronesian, Proto-South-Vanuatu, Proto-Southeast-Solomonic, and Proto-New-Caledonian) occurred by about 1200 BC. Archaeological evidence of the settlement of Western Melanesia show that Proto-Oceanic (ancestor of Proto-Eastern-Oceanic, Proto-Admiralty, and Proto-Western-Oceanic) broke up by 1600 BC. The breakup of Proto-Eastern-Malayo-Polynesian (ancestor of Proto-Oceanic and Proto-South-Halmahera) dates to about 2000 BC and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (ancestor of Proto-South-Halmahera and all the Indonesian and Philippine languages) dates to between 3000-2500 BC. Finally, Proto-Austronesian (ancestor of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian and Proto-Formosan) was spoken in Taiwan about 4000-3500 BC. The earliest archaeological dates are 4300 BC for Taiwan, 3500 BC for Philippines, 2500 BC for Indonesia, and 1900 BC for Melanesia. The cultural complex at Taiwan, the homeland of the Austronesian people, morever can be traced back to the Chinese coastal mainland in Fukien Province, and still earlier to the Yangtse near the homeland of the Tai-Kadai languages at about 6000 BC. What is interesting about this is that there are clear correspondences between words in Tai-Kadai and Austronesian, suggesting either that they descend from a common ancestor or that Proto-Tai-Kadai received many loanwords from the ancestor of Proto-Austronesian prior to the spread of the Austronesian people into the Pacific. Beyond this it is not possible to trace the languages further back.
In the case of Mesopotamia, it should also be recalled that Akkadian was preceded by the Sumerian language, inscriptions of which go back to 3100 BC. And Sumerian itself was preceded by a still-earlier lost language, as attested in the non-Sumerian technical terms and names of cities and other toponyms (compare the toponyms derived from extinct native American languages still in use in the United States and elsewhere); these are similar to Elamite names, so one theory is that the pre-Sumerian language of Mesopotamia was genetically related to Elamite. Sumerian texts also refer to the existence of far-off civilizations in places like Aratta (possibly the Jiroft civilization in eastern Iran), Meluhha and Makan (possibly the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley and possibly involving speakers of Proto-Dravidian), and Dilmun (probably the island of Bahrain). The Sumerian story Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, concerning the king Enmerkar from the first dynasty of Uruk (c. 2800 BC), describes the Sumerian king using an interpreter to translate to make the lord of Aratta understand.
The city of Babylon was first mentioned by Sargon of Akkad (2270–2215 BC) and one semi-legendary text (the Weidner Chronicle) refers to him as its founder. Akkad is also not known to have existed before the time of Sargon. In Genesis 10:9-10, Nimrod is referred to as the founder of Babel and Akkad, but it also mentions Erech (= Uruk) which actually pre-dates the Sumerian civilization, going back to the Uruk Period starting around 4000 BC. The biblical Babel narrative draws on several originally independent Mesopotamian myths and traditons. The story of the confusion of the tongues is quite close to the Sumerian Spell of Nudimmud, which was itself recited in later works such as the tale of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (written in the twenty-first century BC).
Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, lines 135-155: "In those days, there being no snakes, there being no scorpions, there being no hyenas, there being no lions, there being no dogs or wolves, there being nothing fearful or frightening, mankind had no opponents ... in the whole compass of heaven and earth the people entrusted to him could address Enlil verily in a single tongue. In those days, having lordly bouts, princely bouts, and royal bouts, did Enki ... lord of abundance, lord of effective comand, did the lord of intelligence, the country's clever one, did the leader of the gods, did the sagacious omen-revealed lord of Eridu estrange the tongues in their mouths as many as were put there, the tongues of men which were one".
Notice that in this story there is nothing about a city or tower. The divine confusing of the tongues was situated by J in the context of a city-building activity; the latter is a common theme in other primeval myths such as the Eridu Genesis and the Tale of Etana which relates that the Igigi (= the Annuna-gods) "designed a city, they laid its foundation, they designated the city of Kish, they laid its foundation, the Igigi made its brickwork firm". In none of these primeval city-building stories is there anything about a divine confusion of language. The material in J's story concerning the tower (limited to just v. 3-5, the tower disappears from view after v. 5) draws on much later Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian traditions concerning the temples of Esagila and Etemenanki, both substantially expanded by Nebuchadnezzar II in the Neo-Babylonian period. Verse 3-4 is very close to the Enuma Elish, practically verbatim in relating an alliteration that works equally well in both Akkadian and Hebrew:
Enuma Elish, VI 47-65: "The Anunnaki opened their mouths and said to Marduk, their lord: ''O Nannar, lord, who has established our freedom, what grace do you have before you? Come, let us make a shrine, whose name shall be proclaimed (afar), an abode in which we may have our rest at night. Come, let us make for ourselves a room, on the day that we accomplish this, let us rest therein.' When Marduk heard this, like the day his face became exceedingly bright. 'Build Babylon, whose construction you have desired, let its brickwork be fashioned (libittashu iltabnu)' .... The Anunnaki applied the implement; for one whole year they molded bricks (ilbinu libittu). When the second year arrived, they raised high the head of Esagila equaling Apsu (i.e. the firmament). Having built a stage-tower as high as Apsu, they set up in it an abode for Marduk, Enlil, and Ea; in their presence he was seated in grandeur".
Genesis 11:3-4: "They said to each other, 'Come, let us make bricks (l e benim nilb e nah) and bake them thoroughly'. They used brick instead of stone (l e 'aben hall e benah) and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, 'Come, let us build for ourselves (nibnellanu) a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves".
The similarities include (1) the workers saying something concerning (2) building something at Babylon that (3) would make a name for itself or themselves, to which (4) it is uttered "Let's make bricks" // "Let its bricks be made", with the prospect that (5) the building would be raised to the heavens. The alliteration in the Hebrew version (involving the letters B, L, and N) is very clever and poetic: l e benim nilb e nah "let us make bricks" (v. 3), l e 'aben hall e benah "brick for stone" (v. 3), nibnellanu "let us build for us" (v. 4), b e ne banu "the sons [of men] built" (v. 5), nab e lah "let us confuse" (v. 7), libnot "building" (v. 8), and babel ... balal "Babel [where he] confused" (v. 9). We here have a quite contrived, but artistic, piece of literature. The reference to the building of Esagila in the Enuma Elish, in turn, rests on older traditions about the temple. The Weidner Chronicle, written in the 19th century BC, states:
Weidner Chronicle, lines 5-20: "You shall set a place in the underground water, in the ocean beneath the earth, and you shall raise the top to the distant sky....May Esagila, the majestic shrine, be raised to the limits of heaven and earth! May the lord of lords, who dwells in the shrine, be from east to west. May he shepherd human beings like sheep! May the city be famous! .... May the great gods of heaven and earth tremble before his shrine. Raise up to the sky the top of Esagila, of Ekua, the palace of heaven and earth .... May its foundation be fixed like sky and earth forever!"
In addition to the Enuma Elish's reference to the building of Esagila, there were also Neo-Babylonian dedication inscriptions of the repaired temple of Etemenanki (adjacent to Esagila in Babylon):
Building Inscription of Nabopolassar: "As for Etemenanki, the ziggurat of Babylon, which before my time had become weakened and partially collapsed, the lord Marduk commanded me to lay its foundations firm in the breast of the underworld, and make its top equal to heaven. Using baskets, spades, and instruments I made out of ivory and mismakanna wood, I ordered the many workmen assembled in my land to carry them. I set to work and I made bricks, I fabricated burnt bricks, like the downpour of heaven, which cannot be measured, like the massive flood, I caused the Arahtu to carry bitumen and pitch....I built the temple in front of Esharra with joy and rejoicing, and like a mountain I raised its tower aloft; to Marduk, my lord, as in days of old, I dedicated it for a sight to be gazed at....Like the bricks of Etemenanki, which are to remain fixed forever, may you establish the foundation of my throne for all time".
Building Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar: "The temples of Babylon I rebuilt and restored. As for Etemenanki (the house of the foundation of heaven and earth) with burnt brick and bright ugnu-stone I raised on high its top. To the rebuilding of Esagila my heart incited me; I held it constantly in mind".
Notice that in none of these references to the building of Esagila and Etemenanki is there any motif of linguistic confusion. In the Enuma Elish, the building of Esagila and Etemenanki are seen as entirely positive events to the glory of Marduk and Babylon. The attitude is the opposite in J's narrative. A very interesting reading results if the story is viewed as exilic in origin. The theme of pride prominent in the story appears in Ezekiel 31 applied to Egypt; the pharoah is compared to a cedar with "its top piercing the clouds" and Yahweh takes action to cut it down to Sheol. The metaphor of the cloud-piercing tree as a symbol of pride is also utilized in Daniel 4, where it is applied to the pride of Nebuchadnezzar II as he was looking at the glory of Babylon. Since Nebuchadnezzar was indeed the king partly responsible for the glory of the rebuilt Etemenanki, the dream vision has a prescient connection with the Babel narrative. The metaphor is also suggested by the descriptions of Esagila and Etemenanki in the Enuma Elish and building dedication inscriptions, the former having its head raised up to the heavenly Apsu and the latter being the bond bridging heaven and earth. If the story is exilic, it has an interesting setting in life. Babylon was the supreme power in the region and exiles from the nations were all gathered together in Babylon. And there was a danger of acculturation, with Jews giving up their Hebrew identity and children born in Babylon adopting Akkadian instead of Hebrew as their native language. The story might then involve the desire for Yahweh to bring judgment on Babylon, making the city account for its pride and disperse the exiled nations from Babylon (J's story of Abram leaving Ur of the Chaldeans for the promised land in Canaan reflects the same wish for the exiles to depart Mesopotamia for the land of Judah). Jeremiah had a similar attitude, warning the exiles not to set long-lasting roots in Babylon (ch. 25, 29), and delivering oracles of judgment against Babylon (ch. 50-51), with her sentence "reaching to the sky, rising to the very clouds" (Jeremiah 51:9).
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Twitch
Initial thoughts on the OP, I believed the story to be a metaphor for challenging the authority of god vis a vis the tower and a proud king. The message seemed to be "don't be so proud or else". And the spinoff is a explanation of the emergence of diverse languages which is another packaged mystical explanation typical in Genesis. Language is evolving as we speak.
Now for the thread...
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kepler
Does anyone on this thread ever give any consideration to the J, E, D and P source notion of Old Testament interpretation? Both my Jewish and Catholic annotated texts describe chapters and verses by that means frequently. In the latter, chapter 10 is allocated to the Priestly (P) source with some verse exceptions and gives the reader a view of the inhabited world as would be available to Israel in the 7th or 8th centuries. E.g., Mizraim = Egypt; Kittim = from Cypress; Kush = Sudan or very upper Egypt; Dananites, the people of the Aegean. You could expect something close to that for the Philistines - who are the Sea Peoples in Egyptian history. Chapter 11 is attributed to the Y or Yahwistic text with its differing explanation for origin of language. E the editor combines the texts and quite often we can spot the seams. D stands for the Deuteronomical tradition. During the reign of Josiah there was the discovery in the temple of unknown texts hitherto unknown. But that would be a subject of a separate topic.
If there were not been both Yahwistic and Priestly traditions, then the NWT would not have been faced with the problem of adding the Lord's name, or else would not have been able to address the problem at all. The Gen 1 creation story does not use the name Yahweh, but Genesis 2 does and gives a very brief account that conflicts significantly with the Gen 1 account and uses different language about the creation process altogether. It starts after Gen 2:4.
Which brings up another matter. The chapters and verses were not always there. Editor E did not provide them. In fact they were introduced during the era of what 2nd Adventists consider the apostasy church, or if one is so inclined, "religionists". On Genesis 1 and 2, it looks like the early verse and chapter editors almost missed the runway. But after chapter 5, something even more curious happens: chapter 6 humanity successively gets docked with reduced lifetimes of 120 years max ( Daniel admirers take note), the Nephilim, and in short order, preparations for a huge flood.
According to the Y narrator, Gen 6:7, "Yahweh regretted having made human beings on earth and was grieved at heart."
From the Jewish guide to the OT which I have, the explanation for chapters 1-11 was to lead to an introduction of Abraham. The stories tied together are mythical, but deal with crime and punishment, failure to obtain an obedient mankind: "the Eden generation disobeys, the flood generation disobeys, and finally the tower of Babel generation disobeys. These failures justify the choosing of Abraham in chapter 12."
In other words, you could say that E, with their collection of scrolls relating traditions of Israel and Judah, plus perhaps the "discovery" of Deuteronomy and related texts, were faced with the problem, whether divinely guided or not, to tie all the loose ends together.
As to tower of Babel, at the very least Mesopotamian peoples had ziggurats, but there is nothing that remains that measures up to a Great Pyramid, the highest man-made structure in the world for millenia - and nothing is recorded of it in the Bible, despite what tie-ins C. T. Russell attempted. But the Egyptians themselves recorded the building of the structure and a statue of its architect (Hemiunu) resides in a Hildesheim, Germany museum, a relative of the 4th dynasty circa 2500 BC pharaoh for which it was intended.
The earliest Egyptian writing is dated to ~150 years before Narmer, founder of the first dynasty, perhaps around 3000 BC, but Mesopotamia was developing writing at this time as well. In fact, it is suggested by Toby Wilkinson, author of "The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt" (Random House, 201) that the IDEA of writing might have been imported from Mesopotamia, if not the structure of the writing itself. For once writing appeared in these two regions the hieroglyphic systems were quite advanced. Later,during the 2nd millenium, Egypt, states in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia used Akkadian for diplomatic correspondence.
Strange. In retrospect, it does not seem so much that different languages originated in the time suggested by the Genesis chronology, but the concept of RECORDING the thoughts of language.
A remaining observation about dispersions of peoples and chapters 11 and 12. When the Spanish explorers finally concluded that they had discovered a "new world", one of the things that disturbed them was that they had no inkling either from classical writings or the Bible that such a domain existed. But a few decades earlier and a little ways to the north of where C. T. Russell was working on the problem of mankind's final days, a gentleman named Joseph Smith was walking in the New York forests and had an experience that appears to have taken care of this historical and literary discrepancy. If you need a book, just order.