What are we to make of the Bible's story of the tower of Babel and the confusion of languages which there took place shortly after the flood? I believe that in order to correctly answer this question we must first deal with another confusion of tongues, the translation of ancient Hebrew into modern English.
Genesis 11:1 tells us that when the Tower of Babel was being built, "The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech."
As has often been pointed out in discussions of Noah's flood, the Hebrew word "erets," which is often translated in Genesis as "earth," giving readers the idea that its writer was referring to our entire planet, is much more often translated in the Old Testament as "land." In fact, we find this to be the case in the very next verse (Gen. 11:2) which refers to the "land" of Shinar. I believe that Bible translators who chose to translate the Hebrew word "erets" as "earth" rather than as "land" in the Bible's historical accounts of Noah's flood and the tower of Babel are mainly to blame for many people's misunderstandings of both the Bible and the history of mankind.
The traditional interpretation of the flood and the dispersion at Babel has been that the total population of the entire world was confined to the land of Shinar in the post-flood era. It is said that these people, who supposedly amounted to all people living on earth, all spoke the same language and were all involved in building a tower. Then it is said that God confounded them, and off they went in all directions muttering Aztec, Mandarin, Swahili, and the like. They crossed oceans and reached far distant continents and changed their skin colors along the way.
This interpretation of Genesis has continued in spite of much extrabiblical evidence that has long been available which proves that it cannot be correct. To see that the JW and Christian "fundamentalist" interpretations of the events which transpired at the Tower of Babel must be incorrect, all their advocates have to do is count the mud brick ziggurats in Mesopotamia. Any number that exceeds one kills their interpretation. And the remains of over thirty such "towers" have been found all over the region, in twenty-seven different cities, hundreds of miles apart. Had the entire earth been devoid of humanity except for Noah's descendants who all lived in the land of Shinar where the tower of Babel was built, what would explain all the additional towers?
All those other ziggurats at all those other widely scattered sites could not have all been built at the exact same time as the tower of Babel. Thus they had to have been constructed either before or after the tower of Babel. If they were constructed before Babel, it would mean that Noah's descendants (if everyone then alive were Noah's descendants) had already begun to spread out and settle in widely separated communities, precluding them from all being at one place, which was the case according to Genesis 11:1,2. On the other hand, if the many other ziggurats were constructed after Babel, it would mean that after the Lord made clear to Noah's descendents that He didn't like them building such towers and after He prevented them from completing such a building project, they soon banded together again for the same purpose and successfully completed the building of many other such towers with no opposition from God. This makes no sense.
What does make sense is to understand that building ziggurats was very much the thing to do in those days. The tower of Babel was simply one of many Mesopotamian worship centers. Clearly, the building of the tower of Babel and the confusion of the participants' languages which then occurred seemed like a gigantic event to those who were there and passed the story down to their descendants. But the fact of the matter is that the tower of Babel was only one such tower among many which then existed. It was probably not even the biggest. And it was almost certainly neither the first nor the last.
So then, what did happen at Babel? Apparently some of Noah's descendants saw some of the fantastic places of worship built by their Sumerian neighbors, which were devoted to pagan gods. They then decided to follow suit and build just such a tower in an effort to reach their God. Due to their ignorance, the God of Noah's descendants tolerated the actions of the worshippers of false gods when they erected such structures in their foolish efforts to reach nonexistent pagan deities. However, God expected His chosen people to exercise better judgment. He was not pleased with their pagan copycat building project. So He put an end to it by confusing their speech. This action on God's part successfully brought an end to the spiritually misguided building project which Noah's descendants had begun and His doing so resulted in their being dispersed throughout their land.
As a final note, judging from the writings of Noah's descendants, some of which predate the time of Babel, the confusion of speech which took place at Babel does not appear to have been a permanent one.
