butswana

"1": And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
"2": And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
"3": And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
"4": And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
"5": And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
"6": And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
"7": Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
"8": So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
"9": Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

All right, not a whole lot to go on there, but that's the whole tale. Why exactly did God want to fuck up those nice peoples building project?
Why would it be such a bad thing that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do"? And why would building a tower to heaven enable them to do any thing they imagined?
Was the intent to reach Heaven, or were they just wanting a high perch to drop water balloons from?
Was God worried that they would actually be pounding on the gates of Heaven if they were allowed to continue?
In Hebrew or Babalonian Cosmology, how high up was the surface of this firmament bowl thing suppossed to be? 1,000 feet? 5,000 cubits?
Who is the 'us' in verse 7? Other gods? Angels?
So after God and his posse come down and fuck every thing up the people just wander off in thousands of directions? They don't try to communicate?
This story is totally fucked.

NeverByte

Not too mention which, if it was such a big issue back then, why did the Empire State Building - or any other modern skyscraper - escape unmolested? Must be an iron chariot thing... :devil:

Jack the Bodiless

IIRC, according to the Book of Baruch (not considered canonical by Christians), they reached the Firmament and tried to drill a hole in it with an auger.

I think it's another good example of a clearly-false story in the Bible (along with the Genesis creation and the Noachian Flood). It suppsedly happened a couple of centuries after the Flood (or thereabouts), shortly before 2000 BC, and there was certainly no unified worldwide written language before then: nor was there a discernible worldwide change in the languages being used. So, no "Babel effect".

Eldarion Lathria

It's probably just an echo of a dragoman's tale of labor troubles during the building of Etemanki.

But the god of the old testament is plainly a petty godlet. He pisses himself with jealousy when the Hebrews worship different gods. He's terrified of Adam and Eve gaining knowledge. He's terrified that the people building the Tower of Babel will enter Heaven, or the Firmament or some other such nonsense. He places bets with Satan about Job.

Eldarion Lathria

gstafleu

It is probably an origin myth to explain the existence of multiple languages and peoples. In the beginning there was only one people with one language: "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language." The people then overreached themselves by building this tower to reach heaven. In order to prevent that god then gave everybody a different language, presumably so they couldn't cooperate in any more nefarious projects, and scattered them all over the earth. Voila different people and languages.

The interesting bit here is that there does not seem to be an indication that there was one "good" people, to with the people who originated the myth. Rather it looks like everyone is bad, including the story tellers. This may reflect the eternal Jewish (and now Christian) guilt complex which we see initiated in the Adam and Eve fall from paradise, the origin myth for all human beings.

Gerard Stafleu

Atheos

Looking back on it, when I used to be an inerrantist fundie christian, one night I was reading my bible (as I often did in bed before going to sleep). I had just read the "tower of Babel" story and realized that nothing about it made any reasonable sense. I found myself compelled to conclude that it was a myth that had somehow found its way into scripture.

Since I was familiar with textual criticism from my studies in college I had already developed a certain 'numbness' towards portions of scripture that had managed to creep in by way of inadvertent copying and subsequent redaction (e.g., I John 5:8). I rationalized that such interpolations didn't inherently destroy the message per se. But the tower of Babel just stuck out like a sore thumb. God knew their attempt to build a tower into heaven was pointless. Even in the unlikely event that they had managed to reach thousands of feet they would eventually reach air so thin they could no longer work without supplemental oxygen, something that wouldn't be available for thousands of years.

Add to that the fact that we now have spaceships transmitting images back from the outlying planets in our solar system. Mankind has been to the moon and back. Nothing that might have been accomplished by the few thousand people working together in bronze-age "Babel" would have even begun to compare to the technological accomplishments of the space age.

What's more, a "united" people with a common goal are not as likely to war against each other as divided people who cannot understand each other, and who distrust each other. This implicates Yahweh in purposefully setting the stage for the unspeakable atrocities mankind has heaped upon other civilizations through war and conquest.

In short, this passage was one of the first to chizel away at my (fundamentalist) faith and result in my eventual deconversion.

Weltall

Babel, or 'The writers of Genesis did not major in Linguistics'.

chapka

This just goes to show that you were already a heretic. True Christians know that "The sun and moon, each 32 miles in diameter, circle Earth at a height of 3000 miles" and are therefore much more plausibly accessible than the wicked Copernicans would have you believe.

In all seriousness, I always thought that the Creation story, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel were the three most obvious demonstrations that the Bible shouldn't be taken literally. And the Tower of Babel, as the most recent, is the most easily debunked.

aa5874

At one time, Intelligent Design seemed plausible, but after reading the story of the Tower of Babel, I am of the view the God of the OT is downright dumb. I t is apparent He does not even know where heaven is located.

Kosh

Now, that's just clearly ridiculous. Do you know how long the extension cord would have been?