If it is true, it could be that God wanted the people to spread out and fill
the earth and not congregate in the middle east.
Confusing the languages would facilitate that.
Nimrod: Fact or fiction
by dugout 35 Replies latest jw friends
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OneEyedJoe
If it is true, it could be that God wanted the people to spread out and fill
the earth and not congregate in the middle east.
Confusing the languages would facilitate that.
If that's the case, why does the bible misrepresent god's reason for doing it? The bible is pretty clear that god confused the languages in order to limit their capabilities.
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James Brown
One eyed Joe.
It alludes to in Genesis 11:3 that they do not want to be scattered throught the earth.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
It is true confusing the language limited their capabilities and caused them to spread.
That is what God wanted.
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Simon
The notion that the creator of the universe was afraid that man was building a tower and what? It was going to reach them and invade? It's fanciful.
Back then without modern building materials it could only have been a few stories high at most.
Throwing in the notion that god then created language and national identity / division simply doesn't fit well with the narative that it's some big court case to decide if man can really rule himself of not.
Erm ... interfering with the witness?! Case dismissed ...
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OneEyedJoe
It seems to me that you have to read that with the pre-concieved notion that god had a just reason for confusing the languages to arrive at that conclusion. God said these guys can do whatever they set their mind to, we need to confuse their languages. Unless god speaks in non-sequiter, that's a pretty clear statement of the problem followed by the solution.
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Simon
It's almost like a fable where someone has tried to come up with an explanation for languages and nationalities but with no scientific knowledge of how they really developed.
So yes, the explanation is invented to fit the evidence but it makes little sense when you know the reality.
Just one more embarrassment for the bible.
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James Brown
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel c —because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
It is pretty obvious he wanted them to scatter and populate the earth.
Now that the earth is much more populated people can communicate with one another through computers and the mass media.
But God got the earth populated.
He has made a good point that people can not do the job on their own.
Man can not successful manage the earth and animals.
God has shown that in spades.
No one will be able to dispute mans missmanagement of the earth and its
resources.
God gave man free will.
And we have shown ourselves that free will leads to greeed and greed leads to mismanagement.
I always got the message from the Garden of Eden that man can not run his life or the world without
us following God.
Satan, Adam and Eve did not want to follow God.
Genetically us being decended from Adam and Eve do not want to follow God either.
Maybe at the time of our judgment we will get to reflect on mans rule of the earth and
decide if we want to subject ourselves to God or not.
Those that don't will go without God.
If God is a myth and we are on our own we should learn from the best run countries in the world.
http://karenlynnallen.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-nine-best-run-countries-in-world.html
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SonoftheTrinity
Maybe at that time God was more of an anti-imperialist and an environmentalist. God as an evil vegan in the pre Abraham days makes a lot of sense, especially when you see what man has done now
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OneEyedJoe
It is pretty obvious he wanted them to scatter and populate the earth.
We must not be reading the same passage...to me it's pretty obvious that he didn't want them to achieve what they'd be able to with a common tounge.
Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them -> let's confuse their language.
The scattering that this (alledgedly) caused was incedental.
But whatever. It really doesn't matter, because either way the account is demonstrably false on many levels.
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RichardHaley
The language barrier is one of the most disruptive elements for mankind and contributes to all kinds of suspicions and misunderstandings. If all mankind could completely understand each other through a common language wouldn't things be at least a little better in the world today? Talk about moving the goal post!