Nimrod: Fact or fiction

dugout

Nimrod and the tower of babel-Is this history or biblical myth. God confused their lauguges?. Sounds quite comical when you think about it. Why dont we ever sh@%* like this in our day. If God wanted to stop so called "apostacy" why dont he confuse our lauguages. Seems like our lauguage is instead getting more clearer. What ur thoughts

Comatose

Nimrod was one of the accounts that made me doubt a literal view of the bible like WT espouses.

Nimrod and company supposedly built this tower as an affront to god about 100 years after the flood. There would have still been mass destruction and debris everywhere. Still bones of people and animals scattered around. Noah and his sons would have been alive during the time that Nimrod was born and raised. I guess Noah and company were the worlds worst preachers and pathetic followers of god if they didn't even teach their offspring about the flood. (still evidence of flood everywhere) While people were heading to Egypt, China, and Australia to start or restart their civilizations, a small group of people built a tower that was so impressive that god had to confuse their languages... yeah makes sense.

OneEyedJoe

It wouldn't surprise me if there was some great building project that was started but eventually failed, but the confused languages bit is just an explanation for something they didn't understand (i.e. we all came from adam, so why don't we all speak the same language?). Of course, today, we have observed the evolution of language and understand how different groups end up speaking completely different languages. If god really confused the languages, he didn't do a very good job since english/spanish/latin/etc all share a lot of words, as well as many gramatical constructs.

Just in the relatively short period of time that the US and UK have been seperate cultures, it's clear that we're developing our own disprate languages. In the US if you ask for a lift, you're asking for a ride home, in the UK you'll be directed to the nearest elevator. Clearly god is not required to cause this "confusion."

What's more, is if god observed a group of people trying to build a tower that would rise into the heavens in order to be impervious to any future flood, I can't imagine why he would've done anything more than laugh. If the flood waters covered the top of Mt. Everest, they couldn't have had the slightest chance of building a tower higher than that, especially not starting in the region where they're supposed to have begun building, as it is barely above sea level. With all our technology (and vastly greater world population) we would be hard pressed to build such a tower today. So why would god confuse the languages to stop them from attempting something that was beyond their means anyway? Just to be a dick? I think it would've been a greater "witness" to the superiority of god if he'd just let them fail on their own, instead of acting as if he were afraid that they might succeed.

Jeffro

The placement of the Nimrod character in the obviously mythical Genesis clearly designates Nimrod as another mythical character. The tale of 'God confusing languages' is also obviously a myth intended to 'explain' the variety of human languages at the time of writing.

DesirousOfChange

Also adds to the confusion of the issue of soverignty issue.

[As the story goes], God decided to let man have a hand at governing himself to prove that he would be unsuccessful, but then just as soon as man gets to the point of really being able to accomplish something grand ("he could accomplish anything his heart desired") he meddles with them such as confusing the language to thwart their efforts.

That seems fair and just.

Doc

OneEyedJoe

Also adds to the confusion of the issue of soverignty issue.

[As the story goes], God decided to let man have a hand at governing himself to prove that he would be unsuccessful, but then just as soon as man gets to the point of really being able to accomplish something grand ("he could accomplish anything his heart desired") he meddles with them such as confusing the language to thwart their efforts.

That seems fair and just.

Doc

That's a really great point. It's like god said "Oh, shit, they're better at this than I thought they'd be!"

WingCommander

Yeah, I never bought that whole, "God confused their languages" bit of this story. I think Nimrod was real, and even the tower. Babylon became a great city, etc. But if God really confused their languages, shame on him. It's kind of like that whole story with the Ark of the Covenant. It started to fall, and one of the men carrying it by the poles reached out to steady it and God's active force (inside the Ark) discharged and killed the guy. Well gee, the guy was just trying to do his job, and you struck him dead for it? God sounds like a real sport. I think it much more likely that due to the Ark's construction (a giant electrical capacitor) that when the man reached out to steady the Ark, he connected with ground and the Ark (capacitor) discharged right thru him to the ground. Boom. End of story.

Many stories in the Bible are just that - STORIES. Many are influenced by true events, people, places, and even natural disasters. There is some truth that had been distorted and added on to as the story was told and written from one generation to the next. One has to be able to use DISCERSION when reading thru it all. You know, common sense. So many people lack this.

It's like the end of the last Mad Max movie.....the girl sitting around telling the tale of Mad Max, and asking them to r'members dis story, an dont furgets, cus we needs to pass dis on an members.

- Wing Commander

Separation of Powers

One thing that bothers me is the fact that no where in the Bible is Nimrod mentioned in conjunction with the Tower of Babel's confusion of languages. If you are mentioning the two as if they occured in conjunction, then you are still under the control of the skewed Jehovah's Witness theology. Read the account, tell me there is credible evidence that they even remotely occured at the same time in biblical history.

The book of Genesis is notorious for jumping hundreds, if not thousands of years in a single verse....Nimrod had absolutely nothing to do with the Tower of Babel, cause it aint there.

The Tower of Babel story is proof of several things,

1) The capability of man to achieve whatever his imagination moves him to do.

2) That God is not singular...He is dualistic in his persona. (he expresses his concern with other members of the godhead)

3) God is petty and worried about big building programs, unless they are undertaken by the Watchtower organization.

Still Totally ADD

If this did happen after only 100 years after the flood how many people was around anyway? Also how did these confused people get to Australia, South America or North America, Japan, All the Islands in the south pacific? What tools did they use? If a flood did happen it would have had to set mankind back 1000 years in knowledge. Then god confused their language which set them back another 4000 years. I remember the Wt. saying if god had not confused their languages they would have come up with the Atom Bomb. Yeah Right. Still Totally ADD

Crazyguy

This story comes from an old Sumerian story, about a god cunfusing their languages because he's pissed. Also of note the languages were not confused as all near east languages can be traced back to the summerian for speach and akkadian for writing. These languages just changed over time much like English has.

Nimrod: Fact or fiction

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