The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Contents
1. 2. Introduction The Book of Genesis from the Douay, A.D. 1609 Bible 2.1 3. 4. Part of Chapter 11 1 1 1 1 2 3 3 4

Homily by By Fr Munachi Ezeogu, cssp on the Feast of Pentecost The Catholic Encyclopaedia 4.1 4.2 4.3 History of the Tower Site of the Tower of Babel Form of the Tower of Babel

1.

Introduction

The painting of the Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the elder is the inspiration for this paper concerning the biblical Tower of Babel. Chapter 11.1 to 9 of Genesis is but a very small section of the Bible but nevertheless full of profound meaning for man. In this section, ancient history reaches the pinnacle of its fruitless ambition as man, conscious of his new abilities, prepares to glorify himself by his collective effort to build a monument to himself. In this way man would have access to God whenever man wanted, in this way man could manipulate God.

2.
2.1

The Book of Genesis from the Douay, A.D. 1609 Bible

Part of Chapter 11

11:1 And the earth was of one tongue, and of the same speech. 11:2 And when they removed from the east, they found a plain in the land of Sennaar, and dwelt in it. 11:3 And each one said to his neighbour: Come, let us make brick, and bake them of stones, and slime instead of mortar. 11:4 And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands. 11:5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of Adam were building. 11:6 And he said: Behold, it is one people, and all have one tongue: and they have begun to do this, neither will they leave off from their designs, till they accomplish them in deed. 11:7 Come ye, therefore, let us go down, and there may not understand one another's speech. 11:8 And so the Lord scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. 11:9 And therefore the name thereof was called Babel, because there the language of the whole earth was confounded: and from thence the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of all countries.

3.

Homily by By Fr Munachi Ezeogu, cssp on the Feast of Pentecost

The high point of our Easter celebration, the Feast of Pentecost. Pentecost, meaning "fifty days" after the Passover -- was the feast day in which the Jewish people celebrated the Giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. On Mt Sinai the different tribes of Israel entered into covenant with God and with one another and so became the people of God. God gave them the Ten Commandments as a guide to show them how to be a people, because being people of God means relating to God and to one another in a way that God Himself has mapped out, not in the way that we think is right. Proverbs 14:12 says "There is a way that seems right to a people, but in the end it leads to death." The beginning of wisdom, the beginning of true religion, therefore, is when we realize that as humans we are limited and short sighted, and so we ask God to show us how to be the people of God that He has created us to be. Whenever human beings forget how limited we are and try to take the initiative in our dealings with God, what inevitably follows is disaster. An example is the story of the Tower of Babel that we are told in Gen 11 where human beings decided to build a tower that would reach to heaven. In this way they would have access to God whenever they wanted, in this way they could manipulate God. But in the process of building the human bridge to heaven God came and confused their languages. They began to speak different languages, there was no more communication, no more understanding among them, and they could no longer work together. The result was the proliferation of languages and human misunderstanding. 1

Does the story of Babel remind you of the story we read today from the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples of Jesus speaking in other languages? Actually the two stories are related. But Pentecost is not a repeat of Babel, Pentecost is a reversal of Babel, and this for three reasons: 1. At Babel human beings decided to build a tower to God by their own effort; at Pentecost it is now God who decides to build a bridge to humans by sending the Holy Spirit. Babel was a human initiative, a human effort, Pentecost is a divine initiative, a divine activity through the Holy Spirit. Imagine this: Jesus ascends to heaven and mandates the disciples to spread the Good News from Jerusalem to all Judea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. But the task is too much for them. How could these twelve, uneducated, rural fishermen from Galilee go out and address the learned world of Greek philosophers and Roman poets. Moreover even their fellow Jews are hostile to them. So what do they do? They go in and pray, and wait and pray, and wait -- for God's initiative. And as soon as God gives the sign of the Holy Spirit, there they go, all out on the streets boldly and fearlessly proclaiming the Good News. What God asks of us as believers always seems impossible. And it is indeed impossible if we rely on our own initiatives and will power alone. But if, like the disciples, we realize that godliness is above us, and so commit ourselves to waiting daily on God in prayer, God will not be found wanting. At the opportune time God will send the flame of the Holy Spirit to invigorate us, and change us from lukewarm to zealous, fervent, enthusiastic believers. 2. Babel was a requiem of misunderstanding, Pentecost is a chorus of mutual understanding. The miracle of Pentecost is very different from the miracle of Babel. At Babel, the people came together with one language, understanding themselves. After God's intervention they dispersed no longer understanding each other. At Pentecost, on the other hand, people of different ethnic backgrounds (Persians, Asians, Romans, Egyptians, Libyans, Arabs, etc) came together unable to communicate, but after the miracle of Pentecost, they said, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that we hear them, each of us in our own language?" (Acts 2:7-8). In order words, as Peter, for example, spoke everyone from all the different language groups gathered there would hear Peter speaking in their own language. The miracle of Pentecost was a miracle of mutual understanding, a restoration of that precious gift that humanity lost at Babel. Now, someone might ask, is there such a language that one could speak and everybody would understand in their own mother tongue? The answer is yes. Ant the name of that language is LOVE. Love is the language that all women and men understand irrespective of ethnic background. Everybody understands when you smile. Love is the language of the children of God, the only language we shall speak in heaven. 3. Finally, Pentecost differs from Babel in its result. Babel resulted in the disintegration of the human family into different races and nationalities. Pentecost, on the other hand, brings all peoples together and reunifies them under one universal family. This universal family embracing all races and nationalities is called church. "Catholic" means "universal". On Pentecost we celebrate the birthday of the Church. Today is, therefore, an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to be active and faithful members of this family of God we call Church. Fulton J. Sheen once said about the church that even though we are God's chosen people, we often behave more like God's frozen people. God's frozen people indeed: frozen in our prayer life, frozen in the way we relate with one another, frozen in the way we celebrate our faith. We don't seem to be happy to be in God's house; we are always in a hurry to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Today is a great day to ask the Holy Spirit to rekindle in us the spirit of new life and enthusiasm, the fire of God's love.

4.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia

2

The "Tower of Babel" is the name of the building mentioned in Genesis 11:9. 4.1 History of the Tower

The descendants of Noah had migrated from the "east" (Armenia) first southward, along the course of the Tigris, then westward across the Tigris into "a plain in the land of Sennar". As their growing number forced them to live in localities more and more distant from their patriarchal homes, "they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven; and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands." The work was soon fairly under way; "and they had brick instead of stones, and slime (asphalt) instead of mortar." But God confounded their tongue, so that they did not understand one another's speech, and thus scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. This is the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel. Thus far no Babylonian document has been discovered which refers clearly to the subject. Authorities like George Smith, Chad Boscawen, and Sayce believed they had discovered a reference to the Tower of Babel; but Fr. Delitzch pointed out that the translation of the precise words which determine the meaning of the text is most uncertain (Smith-Delitzsch. "Chaldaische Genesis", 1876, 120-124; Anmerk., p. 310). Oppert finds an allusion to the Tower of Babel in a text of Nabuchodonosor; but this opinion is hardly more than a theory (cf. "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia", I, pl. 38, col. 2, line 62; pl. 41, col. 1, I. 27, col. 2, 1. 15; Nikel, "Genesis und Keilschriftforschung", 188 sqq.; Bezold, "Ninive und Babylon", 128; Jeremias, "Das alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients", 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1906, 286; Kaulen, "Assyrien und Babylonien", 89). A more probable reference to the Tower of Babel we find in the "History" of Berosus as it is handed down to us in two variations by Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor respectively ("Histor. Graec. Fragm.", ed. Didot, II, 512; IV, 282; Euseb., "Chron.", I, 18, in P.G., XIX, 123; "Praep. Evang.", IX, 14, in P.G., XXI, 705). Special interest attaches to this reference, since Berosus is now supposed to have drawn his material from Babylonian sources. 4.2 Site of the Tower of Babel

Both the inspired writer of Genesis and Berosus place the Tower of Babel somewhere in Babylon. But there are three principal opinions as to its precise position in the city. (1) Pietro della Valle ("Viaggi descritti", Rome, 1650) located the tower in the north of the city, on the left bank of the Euphrates, where now lie the ruins called Babil. Schrader inclines to the same opinion in Riehm's "Handworterbuch des biblischen Altertums" (I, 138), while in "The Cuneiform Inscriptions" (I, 108) he leaves to his reader the choice between Babil and the temple of Borsippa. The position of Babil within the limits of the ancient Babylon agrees with the Biblical location of the tower; the name Babil itself may be regarded as a traditional relic of the name Babel interpreted by the inspired writer as referring to the confusion of tongues. (2) Rawlinson (Smith-Sayce, "Chaldean account of the Genesis", 1880, pp. 74, 171) places the tower on the ruins of Tell-Amram, regarded by Oppert as the remnants of the hanging gardens. These ruins are situated on the same side of the Euphrates as those of the Babil, and also within the ancient city limits. The excavations of the German Orientgesellschaft have laid bare on this spot the ancient national sanctuary Esagila, sacred to Marduk-Bel, with the documentary testimony that the top of the building had been made to reach Heaven. This agrees with the description of the Tower of Babel as found in Genesis 11:4: "The top whereof may reach to heaven". To this locality belongs also the tower Etemenanki, or house of the foundation of Heaven and earth, which is composed of six gigantic steps.

(3) Sayce (Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, p. 112-3, 405-7), Oppert ("Expdition en Msopotamie", I, 200-16; "tudes assyriennes", pp. 91-132), and others follow the more common opinion which identifies the tower of Babel with the ruins of the Birs-Nimrud, in Borsippa, situated on the right side of the Euphrates, some seven or eight miles from the ruins of the city proper. They are the ruins of the temple Ezida, sacred to Nebo, which according to the above-cited inscription of Nabuchodonosor, was repaired and completed by that king; for it had been left incomplete by a former ruler in far distant days. These data are too vague to form the basis of an apodictic argument. The Babylonian Talmud (Buxtorf, "Lexicon talmudicum", col. 313) connects Borsippa with the confusion of tongues; but a long period elapsed from the time of the composition of Genesis 11 to the time of the Babylonian Talmud. Besides, the Biblical account seems to imply that the tower was within the city limits, while it is hardly probably that the city limits extended to Borsippa in very ancient times. The historical character of the tower is not impaired by our inability to point out its location with certainty. 4.3 Form of the Tower of Babel

The form of the tower must have resembled the constructions which today exist only in a ruined condition in Babylonia; the most ancient pyramids of Egypt present a vestige of the same form. Cubic blocks of masonry, decreasing in size, are piled one on top of the other, thus forming separate stories; an inclined plane or stairway leads from one story to the other. The towers of Ur and Arach contained only two or three stories, but that of Birs-Nimrud numbered seven, not counting the high platform on which the building was erected. Each story was painted in its own peculiar colour according to the planet to which it was dedicated. Generally the corners of these towers faced the four points of the compass, while in Egypt this position was held by the sides of the pyramids. On top of these constructions there was a sanctuary, so that they served both as temples and observatories. Their interior consisted of sun-dried clay, but the outer walls were coated with fire-baker brick. The asphalt peculiar to the Babylonian neighbourhood served as mortar; all these details are in keeping with the report of Genesis. Though some writers maintain that every Babylonian city possessed such a tower, or zikkurat (meaning "pointed" according to Schrader, "raised on high" according to Haupt, "memorial" according to Vigouroux), no complete specimen has been preserved to us. The Tower of Khorsabad is perhaps the best preserved, but Assyrian sculpture supplements our knowledge of even this construction. The only indication of the time at which the Tower of Babel was erected, we find in the name of Phaleg (Genesis 11:10-17), the grandnephew of Heber; this places the date somewhere between 101 and 870 years after the Flood. The limits are so unsatisfactory, because the Greek Version differs in its numbers from the Massoretic text.