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107-571: The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shinar ( Lower Mesopotamia ), where they agree to build a great city with a tower that would reach the sky. Yahweh , observing these efforts and remarking on humanity's power in unity, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other and scatters them around

214-402: A cyclical return to a mythical age. As a result, nearly every sacred story portrays events that establish a new framework for human behavior, making them essentially stories of creation. An origin myth often functions to justify the current state of affairs. In traditional cultures, the entities and forces described in origin myths are often considered sacred. Thus, by attributing the state of

321-403: A cosmogonic myth. Therefore, origin myths can be seen as expanding upon and building upon their cultures' cosmogonic myths. In traditional cultures, it is common for the recitation of an origin myth to be preceded by the recitation of a cosmogonic myth. Within academic circles, the term myth is often used specifically to refer to origin and cosmogonic myths. Folklorists, for example, reserve

428-511: A cultural investment. In the Greek view, the mythic past had deep roots in historic time, its legends treated as facts, as Carlo Brillante has noted, its heroic protagonists seen as links between the "age of origins" and the mortal, everyday world that succeeded it. A modern translator of Apollonius of Rhodes ' Argonautica has noted, of the many aitia embedded as digressions in that Hellenistic epic, that "crucial to social stability had to be

535-553: A custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon —namely the origins of the multiplicity of languages. The confusion of tongues ( confusio linguarum ) resulting from the construction of the Tower of Babel accounts for the fragmentation of human languages: God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood and so God brought into existence multiple languages, rendering humanity unable to understand each other. Prior to this event, humanity

642-861: A heroic model national origin myth, including the Hittites and Zhou dynasty in the Bronze Age; the Scythians , Wusun , Romans and Goguryeo in Antiquity ; Turks and Mongols during the Middle Ages; and the Dzungar Khanate in the late Renaissance . In the founding myth of the Zhou dynasty in China, Lady Yuan makes a ritual sacrifice to conceive, then becomes pregnant after stepping into

749-425: A high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone a peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon." Third Apocalypse of Baruch (or 3 Baruch, c. 2nd century), one of the pseudepigrapha , describes the just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife. Among the sinners are those who instigated

856-582: A holy people; scholars accept it as a discrete collection within the larger Priestly source, and have traced similar holiness writings elsewhere in the Pentateuch. In Numbers the Priestly source contributes chapters 1–10:28, 15–20, 25–31, and 33–36, including, among other things, two censuses, rulings on the position of Levites and priests (including the provision of special cities for the Levites), and

963-489: A name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The L ORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the L ORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech." So

1070-402: A number of similarities to the later written biblical story. The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower. And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in

1177-653: A number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several, albeit without any tower. Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that Hermes confused the languages, causing Zeus to give his throne to Phoroneus , Frazer specifically mentions such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya , the Kacha Naga people of Assam, the inhabitants of Encounter Bay in Australia,

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1284-503: A particular detail in a ceremony, a Navaho chanter answered: "Because the Holy People did it that way in the first place." We find exactly the same justification in the prayer that accompanies a primitive Tibetan ritual: "As it has been handed down from the beginning of the earth’s creation, so must we sacrifice. … As our ancestors in ancient times did—so do we now." Founding myths unite people and tend to include mystical events along

1391-407: A particular reality came into existence. They often serve to justify the established order by attributing its establishment to sacred forces (see § Social function ). The line between cosmogonic myths which describe the origin of the world and origin myths is not always clear. A myth about the origin of a specific part of the world assumes the existence of the world itself, which often relies on

1498-411: A set of claims that are contradicted by non-Priestly passages and therefore uniquely characteristic: no sacrifice before the institution is ordained by Yahweh (God) at Sinai , the exalted status of Aaron and the priesthood, and the use of the divine title El Shaddai before God reveals his name to Moses , to name a few. In general, the Priestly work is concerned with priestly matters – ritual law,

1605-567: A stone (or clay) tower so that he can mount up to heaven and confront the God of Moses. Another story in Sura 2 :102 mentions the name of Babil , but tells of when the two angels Harut and Marut taught magic to some people in Babylon and warned them that magic is a sin and that their teaching them magic is a test of faith. A tale about Babil appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut (i, 448 f.) and

1712-425: A tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 2.1 km (1.3 mi) before the bricks at the bottom were crushed. However, by making the walls taper towards the top they ... could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinnar would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight." Jewish and Christian tradition attributes

1819-475: A woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. And they took a gimlet , and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, "Let us see (whether)

1926-400: Is concerned with priestly matters – ritual law, the origins of shrines and rituals, and genealogies – all expressed in a formal, repetitive style. It stresses the rules and rituals of worship, and the crucial role of priests, expanding considerably on the role given to Aaron (all Levites are priests, but according to P only the descendants of Aaron were to be allowed to officiate in

2033-583: Is dated to the early Persian period (end of the 6th century or beginning of the 5th century BCE), and as the rites highlighted there, circumcision and Sabbath , do not need a temple, the text shows its "universalist, monotheistic and peaceful vision." Buhler et al. (2023) also concluded that P texts correspond to around 20% of the narrative in Genesis (292/1533 verses), 50% of that in Exodus (596/1213 verses), and 33% in both (888/2746 verses). The Priestly work

2140-549: Is fifty cubits (23 m or 75 ft) wide, two hundred (91.5 m or 300 ft) high, and four hundred and seventy stades (82.72 km or 51.4 miles) in circumference . A stade was an ancient Greek unit of length, based on the circumference of a typical sports stadium of the time which was about 176 metres (577 ft). Twenty-five gates are situated on each side, which make in all one hundred. The doors of these gates, which are of wonderful size, are cast in bronze. The same historian tells many other tales of this city, and says: 'Although such

2247-469: Is governed by the covenants, and P's God is concerned that Israel should preserve its identity by avoiding intermarriage with non-Israelites. P is deeply concerned with "holiness", meaning the ritual purity of the people and the land: Israel is to be "a priestly kingdom and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6), and P's elaborate rules and rituals are aimed at creating and preserving holiness. Cases have been made for both exilic and post-exilic composition, leading to

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2354-518: Is little known, but a summary of current theories can be made as follows: The Pentateuch or Torah (the Greek and Hebrew terms, respectively, for the Bible's books of Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy ) describe the prehistory of the Israelites from the creation of the world, through the earliest biblical patriarchs and their wanderings, to the Exodus from Egypt and

2461-602: Is the collective name for the first five books of the Bible: Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers , and Deuteronomy . It forms the charter myth of Israel, the story of the people's origins and the foundations of their culture and institutions, and it is a fundamental principle of Judaism that the relationship between God and his chosen people was set out on Mount Sinai through the Torah, though many stories are adapted from older religions. A founding myth may serve as

2568-559: The Lisān al-ʿArab  [ ar ] (xiii. 72), but without the tower: mankind were swept together by winds into the plain that was afterward called "Babil", where they were assigned their separate languages by God, and were then scattered again in the same way. In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th-century Muslim theologian al-Tabari , a fuller version is given: Nimrod has

2675-490: The Covenant of Mount Sinai . During the Middle Ages, founding myths of the medieval communes of northern Italy manifested the increasing self-confidence of the urban population and the will to find a Roman origin, however tenuous and legendary. In 13th-century Padua , when each commune looked for a Roman founder – and if one was not available, invented one—a legend had been current in the city, attributing its foundation to

2782-567: The Hamites , but also to Joktan , as prince of the Semites , and to Phenech son of Dodanim , as prince of the Japhetites . Twelve men are arrested for refusing to bring bricks, including Abraham , Lot , Nahor , and several sons of Joktan. However, Joktan finally saves the twelve from the wrath of the other two princes. The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of

2889-607: The J or Jahwist/Yahwist source . Michael Coogan suggests that the intentional word play regarding the city of Babel, and the noise of the people's "babbling" is found in the Hebrew words as easily as in English, is considered typical of the Yahwist source. John Van Seters , who has put forth substantial modifications to the hypothesis, suggests that these verses are part of what he calls a "Pre-Yahwistic stage". Other scholars reject

2996-743: The Maidu of California, the Tlingit of Alaska, and the K'iche' Maya of Guatemala. The Estonian myth of "the Cooking of Languages" has also been compared. During the Middle Ages, the Hebrew language was widely considered the language used by God to address Adam in Paradise , and by Adam as lawgiver (the Adamic language ) by various Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholastics. Dante Alighieri addresses

3103-459: The cradle of civilization . The Book of Genesis does not specify the tower's height; the phrase, "its top in the sky" (v.4) was an idiom for impressive height, rather than implying arrogance. The Book of Jubilees mentions the tower's height as being 5,433 cubits and 2 palms, or 2,484 m (8,150 ft), about three times the height of Burj Khalifa , or roughly 1.6 miles high (10:21). The apocryphal Third Apocalypse of Baruch mentions that

3210-524: The "tower of strife" reached a height of 463 cubits, or 211.8 m (695 ft), taller than any structure built in human history until the construction of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, which is 324 m (1,063 ft) in height. Gregory of Tours writing c.  594 , quotes the earlier historian Orosius ( c.  417 ) as saying the tower was "laid out foursquare on a very level plain. Its wall, made of baked brick cemented with pitch,

3317-483: The 'priestly base text' ( Priesterliche Grundschrift ), as running, though not continually, from Genesis 1 to Exodus 40, and "characterized by an inclusive monotheism, with the deity gradually revealing itself to humanity and to the people of Israel in particular," beginning in Genesis 1-11, where God is called Elohim, and ending "with the construction of the tent of meeting (Exodus 25–31*; 35–40*)," reflecting, along with cult, "a progressive revelation of YHWH." This text

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3424-595: The 1981 introduction to the Book of Mormon – despite the chronology of the Book of Ether aligning more closely with the 21st century BC Sumerian tower temple myth of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta to the goddess Innana . Church apologists have also supported this connection and argue the reality of the Tower of Babel: "Although there are many in our day who consider the accounts of the Flood and tower of Babel to be fiction, Latter-day Saints affirm their reality." In either case,

3531-487: The 6th-century-BCE Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II , but had fallen into disrepair by the time of Alexander the Great's conquests. He managed to move the tiles of the tower to another location, but his death stopped the reconstruction, and it was demolished during the reign of his successor Antiochus Soter . Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 – c.  425 BC ) wrote an account of

3638-589: The Jahwist nor the Elohist had ever existed as sources but instead represented collections of independent fragmentary stories, poems, etc. No new consensus has emerged to replace the documentary hypothesis, but since roughly the mid-1980s an influential theory has emerged which relates the emergence of the Pentateuch to the situation in Judah in the 5th century BCE under Persian imperial rule. The central institution in

3745-475: The Jewish sources, said: "God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God" ( Gen. R. xxxviii. 7 ; Tan., ed. Buber, Noah, xxvii. et seq.). The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted

3852-574: The Jews ( c.  94 CE ), recounted history as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God. In this account, God confused the people rather than destroying them because annihilation with a Flood had not taught them to be godly. Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He

3959-401: The L ORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the L ORD confused ( balal ) the language of all the earth, and from there the L ORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. The Tower of Babel is a type of myth known as an etiology , which is intended explain the origin of

4066-650: The Lord of Aratta , which describes events and locations in southern Mesopotamia. The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in Genesis nor elsewhere in the Bible ; it is always "the city and the tower" or just "the city". The original derivation of the name Babel, which is the Hebrew name for Babylon , is uncertain. The native Akkadian name of the city was Bāb-ilim , meaning "gate of God". However, that form and interpretation itself are now usually thought to derive from Akkadian folk etymology applied to an earlier form of

4173-406: The Tower of Babel. In the account, Baruch is first taken (in a vision) to see the resting place of the souls of "those who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them." Next he is shown another place, and there, occupying the form of dogs, Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom,

4280-532: The Trojan Antenor . Priestly source The Priestly source (or simply P ) is perhaps the most widely recognized of the sources underlying the Torah, both stylistically and theologically distinct from other material in it. It is considered by most scholars as the latest of all sources, and “meant to be a kind of redactional layer to hold the entirety of the Pentateuch together,” It includes

4387-403: The Yahwist (the narrative strand) and the Priestly material (a mix of narrative and legal material) in the late Neo-Babylonian or Persian periods. Liane M. Fieldman (2023) considers the composition of the Pentateuch “in the fifth through fourth centuries BCE,” and Priestly source being the last addition, could have been added around fourth century BCE. While most scholars consider P to be one of

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4494-552: The Yahwist and P's additions are relatively minor, noting Israel's obedience to the command to be fruitful and the orderly nature of Israel even in Egypt. P was responsible for chapters 25–31 and 35–40, the instructions for making the Tabernacle and the story of its fabrication. Leviticus 1–16 sees the world as divided between the profane (i.e., not holy) masses and the holy priests. Anyone who incurs impurity must be separated from

4601-467: The biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel exist within Islamic tradition, the central theme of God separating humankind on the basis of language is alien to Islam according to the author Yahiya Emerick . In Islamic belief, he argues, God created nations to know each other and not to be separated. In the Book of Mormon , a man named Jared and his family ask God that their language not be confounded at

4708-420: The bow would become king. All tried, but only the youngest was successful. On his attempt, three golden objects fell from the sky: a plow and yoke, a sword, and a cup. When the eldest two tried to pick them up, fire prevented them. After this, it was decided the youngest son, Scythes, would become king, and his people would be known as Scythians. The Torah (or Pentateuch, as biblical scholars sometimes call it)

4815-480: The builders to reverence. The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God, saying that once every 1,656 years, heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the earth, therefore they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge (Gen. R. l.c.; Tan. l.c.; similarly Josephus, "Ant." i. 4, § 2). Some among that generation even wanted to war against God in heaven (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a). They were encouraged in this undertaking by

4922-475: The builders. According to another midrashic account, one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants. Although not mentioned by name, the Quran has a story with similarities to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, although set in the Egypt of Moses: Pharaoh asks Haman to build him

5029-489: The church firmly believes in the factual nature of at least one "great tower" built in the region of ancient Sumer/Assyria/Babylonia. In Gnostic tradition recorded in the Paraphrase of Shem , a tower, interpreted as the Tower of Babel, is brought by demons along with the great flood : And he caused the flood, and he destroyed your (Shem's) race, to take the light and to take away from faith. But I proclaimed quickly by

5136-504: The composition of the whole Pentateuch , which includes the story of the Tower of Babel, to Moses . Modern biblical scholarship rejects Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch but is divided on the question of its authorship. Many scholars subscribe to some form of the documentary hypothesis , which argues that the Pentateuch is composed of multiple "sources" that were later merged. Scholars who favor this hypothesis, such as Richard Elliot Friedman , tend to see Genesis 11:1–9 as being composed by

5243-437: The conclusion that it has at least two layers, spanning a broad time period of 571–486 BCE. This was a period when the careful observance of ritual was one of the few means available which could preserve the identity of the people, and the narrative of the priestly authors created an essentially stable and secure world in which Israel's history was under God's control, so that even when Israel alienated itself from God, leading to

5350-461: The construction of the tower as a hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant Nimrod . There have been some contemporary challenges to this classical interpretation, with emphasis placed on the explicit motive of cultural and linguistic homogeneity mentioned in the narrative (v. 1, 4, 6); this reading of the text sees God's actions not as a punishment for pride, but as an etiology of cultural differences , presenting Babel as

5457-590: The customs they established: When the missionary and ethnologist C. Strehlow asked the Australian Arunta why they performed certain ceremonies, the answer was always: "Because the ancestors so commanded it." The Kai of New Guinea refused to change their way of living and working, and they explained: "It was thus that the Nemu (the Mythical Ancestors) did, and we do likewise." Asked the reason for

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5564-741: The date of the Jahwistic source), Martin Rose (1981, proposing that the Jahwist was composed as a prologue to the history which begins in Joshua), and Van Seters ( Abraham in History and Tradition , proposing a 6th-century BCE date for the story of Abraham, and therefore for the Jahwist). as well as Rolf Rendtorff ( The Problem of the Process of Transmission in the Pentateuch , 1989), who argued that neither

5671-537: The destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon, atonement could still be made through sacrifice and ritual. Julius Wellhausen , the 19th century German scholar who formulated the documentary hypothesis , fixed the chronological order of its sources as the Yahwist and Elohist , followed by the Deuteronomist , and last the Priestly. At the end of the 20th century a growing number of scholars placed both

5778-461: The documentary hypothesis altogether. The " minimalist " scholars tend to see the books of Genesis through 2 Kings as written by a single, anonymous author during the Hellenistic period . Biblical scholars see the Book of Genesis as mythological and not as an historical account of events. Genesis is described as beginning with historicized myth and ending with mythicized history. Nevertheless,

5885-698: The encounter with God in the wilderness. The books contain many inconsistencies, repetitions, different narrative styles, and different names for God. John Van Seters notes that within the first four books, the Tetrateuch – that is, omitting Deuteronomy – "there are two accounts of creation, two genealogies of Seth, two genealogies of Shem, two covenants between Abraham and his God, two revelations to Jacob at Bethel, two calls of Moses to rescue his people, two sets of laws given at Sinai, two Tents of Meeting/Tabernacles set up at Sinai." The repetitions, styles and names are not random, but follow identifiable patterns, and

5992-516: The first four books of the Pentateuch, (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers). The Priestly source makes evident four covenants , to Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, as God reveals Himself progressively as Elohim , El Shaddai , and Yahweh. Fragments belonging to the Priestly source known as the P texts, whose number and extent have achieved a certain consensus among scholars (e.g. Jenson 1992, Knohl 2007, Römer 2014, and Faust 2019). Recently Axel Buhler et al. (2023), to apply an algorithm, considered

6099-481: The footprint of the King of Heaven. She gives birth to a son, Hou Ji , whom she leaves alone in dangerous places where he is protected by sheep, cattle, birds, and woodcutters. Convinced that he is a supernatural being, she takes him back and raises him. When he grows to adulthood, he takes the position of Master of Horses in the court of Emperor Yao , and becomes successful at growing grains, gourds and beans. According to

6206-484: The function of myths in providing explanations, authorization or empowerment for the present in terms of origins: this could apply, not only to foundations or charter myths and genealogical trees (thus supporting family or territorial claims) but also to personal moral choices." In the period after Alexander the Great expanded the Hellenistic world, Greek poetry— Callimachus wrote a whole work simply titled Aitia —is replete with founding myths. Simon Goldhill employs

6313-592: The god Enki to restore (or in Kramer's translation, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of the inhabited regions—named as Shubur , Hamazi , Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land, "the whole universe, the well-guarded people—may they all address Enlil together in a single language." In addition, a further Assyrian myth, dating from the 8th century BC during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), bears

6420-417: The heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron." When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest. Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel, and of the intentions of its builders. According to one midrash the builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in

6527-578: The inner sanctuary). P's God is majestic, and transcendent, and all things happen because of his power and will. He reveals himself in stages, first as Elohim (a Hebrew word meaning simply "god", taken from the earlier Canaanite word meaning "the gods"), then to Abraham as El Shaddai (usually translated as "God Almighty"), and finally to Moses by his unique name, Yahweh . P divides history into four epochs from Creation to Moses by means of covenants between God and Noah , Abraham and Moses. The Israelites are God's chosen people , his relationship with them

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6634-401: The land of Shinar. And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height [of a brick] was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms, and [the extent of one wall was] thirteen stades [and of the other thirty stades]. In Pseudo-Philo , the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of

6741-440: The landowners was based on the old Deuteronomistic tradition, which had existed since at least the 6th century BCE and had its roots even earlier; that of the priestly families was composed to "correct" and "complete" the landowners' composition. In the final document Genesis 1–11 lays the foundations, Genesis 12–50 defines the people of Israel, and the books of Moses define the community's laws and relationship to its God. Since

6848-402: The late-dating of P is due in large part to a Protestant bias in biblical studies which assumes that "priestly" and "ritualistic" material must represent a late degeneration of an earlier, "purer" faith. These arguments have not convinced the majority of scholars, however. While most scholars agree on the identification of Priestly texts in Genesis through Exodus, opinions are divided concerning

6955-450: The latest strata of the Pentateuch, post-dating both J and D, since the 1970s a number of Jewish scholars have challenged this assumption, arguing for an early dating of the Priestly material. Avi Hurvitz, for example, has forcefully argued on linguistic grounds that P represents an earlier form of the Hebrew language than what is found in both Ezekiel and Deuteronomy , and therefore pre-dates both of them. These scholars often claim that

7062-554: The legend, he becomes founder of the Zhou dynasty after overthrowing the evil ruler of Shang. Like other civilizations, the Scythians also claimed descent from the son of the god of heaven. One day, the daughter of the god of the Dnieper River stole a young man's horses while he was herding his cattle , and forced him to lie with her before returning them. From this union, she conceived three sons, giving them their father's greatbow when they came of age. The son who could draw

7169-441: The local inhabitants. The 17th-century historian Verstegan provides yet another figure – quoting Isidore, he says that the tower was 5,164 paces high, or 7.6 km (4.7 mi), and quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it was high, more like a mountain than a tower. He also quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals, and other authors who claim that

7276-399: The metaphor of sedimentation in describing Apollonius' laying down of layers "where each object, cult, ritual, name, may be opened... into a narrative of origination, and where each narrative, each event, may lead to a cult, ritual, name, monument." A notable example is the myth of the foundation of Rome—the tale of Romulus and Remus , which Virgil in turn broadens in his Aeneid with

7383-402: The mouth of the demon that a tower come up to be up to the particle of light, which was left in the demons and their race – which was water – that the demon might be protected from the turbulent chaos. And the womb planned these things according to my will, that she might pour forth completely. A tower came to be through the demons. The darkness was disturbed by his loss. He loosened the muscles of

7490-491: The multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus:—"When all men were of one language, some of them built

7597-445: The multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon

7704-417: The name, Babel , to the verb balal , which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew. The first century Roman-Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel (בבל) , meaning "confusion". Etemenanki ( Sumerian : "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by

7811-418: The name, Babilla , of unknown meaning and probably non- Semitic origin. Per the story in Genesis, the city received the name "Babel" from the Hebrew verb bālal , meaning to jumble or to confuse, after Yahweh distorted the common language of humankind. According to Encyclopædia Britannica , this reflects word play due to the Hebrew terms for Babylon and "to confuse" having similar pronunciation. Now

7918-654: The narrative sections traditionally ascribed to P should be connected with H instead. Many scholars attribute the laws in the P source to the desire to glorify the Aaronide priestly caste responsible for their composition. The Priestly source begins with the narrative of the creation of the world and ends at the edge of the Promised Land, telling the story of the Israelites and their relationship with their god, Yahweh , encompassing, though not continuously,

8025-429: The notion that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back dripping with blood, so that the people really believed that they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens ( Sefer ha-Yashar , Chapter 9:12–36). According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower, while other rabbinical sources assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from

8132-533: The odyssey of Aeneas and his razing of Lavinium , and his son Iulus 's later relocation and rule of the famous twins' birthplace Alba Longa , and their descent from his royal line, thus fitting perfectly into the already established canon of events. Similarly, the Old Testament's story of the Exodus serves as the founding myth for the community of Israel, telling how God delivered the Israelites from slavery and how they therefore belonged to him through

8239-626: The original ending of the separate P document. Suggested endings have been located in the Book of Joshua , in Deuteronomy 34 , Leviticus 16 or 9:24, in Exodus 40, or in Exodus 29:46. P is responsible for the first of the two creation stories in Genesis (Genesis 1), for Adam's genealogy, part of the Flood story , the Table of Nations , and the genealogy of Shem (i.e., Abraham's ancestry). Most of

8346-408: The origins of shrines and rituals, and genealogies – all expressed in a formal, repetitive style. It stresses the rules and rituals of worship, and the crucial role of priests, expanding considerably on the role given to Aaron (all Levites are priests, but according to P only the descendants of Aaron were to be allowed to officiate in the inner sanctuary). The history of exilic and post-exilic Judah

8453-510: The path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain for the animals used in the construction. In his book, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down (Pelican 1978–1984), Professor J.E. Gordon considers the height of the Tower of Babel. He wrote, "brick and stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot (2,000 kg per cubic metre) and the crushing strength of these materials is generally rather better than 6,000 lbs per square inch or 40 mega-pascals. Elementary arithmetic shows that

8560-555: The phonological similarity between Babylonian Bab-ilu , meaning "gate of God", and the Hebrew word balal , meaning "mixed", "confused", or "confounded". There are similar stories to the Tower of Babel Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta , where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat in Eridu and demands a tribute of precious materials from Aratta for its construction, at one point reciting an incantation imploring

8667-459: The post-Exilic Persian province of Yehud (the Persian name for the former kingdom of Judah) was the reconstructed Second Temple , which functioned both as the administrative centre for the province and as the means through which Yehud paid taxes to the central government. The central government was willing to grant autonomy to local communities throughout the empire, but it was first necessary for

8774-521: The priests and the Temple until purity is restored through washing, sacrifice, and the passage of time. According to Nihan, the purification ritual of Leviticus 16 formed the conclusion of the original Priestly document; in this and similar views, all P-like texts after this point are post-Priestly additions. Leviticus 17–26 is called the Holiness code , from its repeated insistence that Israel should be

8881-534: The primary exemplum , as the myth of Ixion was the original Greek example of a murderer rendered unclean by his crime, who needed cleansing ( catharsis ) of his impurity. Founding myths feature prominently in Greek mythology . "Ancient Greek rituals were bound to prominent local groups and hence to specific localities", Walter Burkert has observed, "i.e., the sanctuaries and altars that had been set up for all time". Thus Greek and Hebrew founding myths established

8988-466: The remainder of Genesis is from the Yahwist, but P provides the covenant with Abraham (chapter 17) and a few other stories concerning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The book of Exodus is also divided between the Yahwist and P, and the usual understanding is that the Priestly writer(s) were adding to an already-existing Yahwist narrative. Chapters 1–24 (from bondage in Egypt to God's appearances at Sinai) and chapters 32–34 (the golden calf incident) are from

9095-519: The scope and protection of the Promised Land . The Priestly themes in Numbers include the significance of the priesthood for the well-being of Israel (the ritual of the priests is needed to take away impurity), and God's provision of the priesthood as the means by which he expresses his faithfulness to the covenant with Israel. The Priestly source in Numbers originally ended with an account of

9202-519: The second half of the 20th century, views on the relative age of P and the Holiness Code (H) have undergone major revision. Scholars including Karl Elliger  [ de ] , Israel Knohl , and Christophe Nihan have argued for the younger age of H compared to P. Together with Jacob Milgrom , Knohl also identifies passages related to H elsewhere in the Pentateuch. Authors such as Bill T. Arnold and Paavo N. Tucker have argued that most of

9309-580: The special relationship between a deity and local people, who traced their origins from a hero and authenticated their ancestral rights through the founding myth. Greek founding myths often embody a justification for the ancient overturning of an older, archaic order, reformulating a historical event anchored in the social and natural world to valorize current community practices, creating symbolic narratives of "collective importance" enriched with metaphor to account for traditional chronologies, and constructing an etiology considered to be plausible among those with

9416-468: The story of Babel can be interpreted in terms of its context: Elsewhere in Genesis, it is stated that Babel ( LXX : Βαβυλών) formed part of Nimrod 's kingdom, which is located in Lower Mesopotamia. The Bible does not specifically mention that Nimrod ordered the building of the tower, but many other sources have associated its construction with him. Genesis 11:9 attributes the Hebrew version of

9523-488: The study of these patterns led scholars to the conclusion that four separate sources lie behind them. The 19th century scholars saw these sources as independent documents which had been edited together, and for most of the 20th century this was the accepted consensus. But in 1973 the American biblical scholar Frank Moore Cross published an influential work called Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic , in which he argued that P

9630-426: The term myth for stories that describe creation. Stories that do not primarily focus on origins are categorized as legend or folk tale , which are distinct from myths according to folklorists. Mircea Eliade , a historian, argues that in many traditional cultures, almost every sacred story can be considered an origin myth. Traditional societies often pattern their behavior after sacred events and view their lives as

9737-578: The time of the "great tower". Because of their prayers, God preserves their language and leads them to the Valley of Nimrod . From there, they travel across the sea to the Americas. Despite no mention of the Tower of Babel in the original text of the Book of Mormon, some leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) assert that the "great tower" was indeed the Tower of Babel – as in

9844-503: The topic in his De vulgari eloquentia (1302–1305). He argues that the Adamic language is of divine origin and therefore unchangeable. Origin myth In modern political discourse the terms "founding myth", "foundational myth", etc. are often used as critical references to official or widely accepted narratives about the origins or early history of a nation, a society, a culture, etc. Origin myths are narratives that explain how

9951-463: The tower built in Babil, God destroys it, and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac , is then confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida relates the same story, adding that the patriarch Eber (an ancestor of Abraham) was allowed to keep the original tongue, Hebrew in this case, because he would not partake in the building. Although variations similar to

10058-517: The tower of Babel is pseudolinguistics and is contrary to the known facts about the origin and history of languages . In the biblical introduction of the Tower of Babel account, in Genesis 11:1, it is said that everyone on Earth spoke the same language, but this is inconsistent with the biblical description of the post-Noahic world described in Genesis 10:5, where it is said that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth gave rise to different nations, each with their own language. There have also been

10165-638: The two chapters were written by different sources, the former by the Priestly source and the latter by the Jahwist . However, that theory has been debated among scholars in recent years. The story's theme of competition between God and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden . The first century Jewish interpretation found in Flavius Josephus explains

10272-459: The universe to the actions of these entities and forces, origin myths give the current order an aura of sacredness: "[M]yths reveal that the World, man, and life have a supernatural origin and history, and that this history is significant, precious, and exemplary". Many cultures instill the expectation that people take mythical gods and heroes as their role models , imitating their deeds and upholding

10379-488: The view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen , that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through

10486-482: The way to make "founders" seem more desirable and heroic. Ruling monarchs or aristocracies may allege descent from mythical founders, gods or heroes in order to legitimate their control. For example, Julius Caesar and his relatives claimed Aeneas (and through Aeneas, the goddess Venus ) as an ancestor. A founding myth or etiological myth (Greek aition ) explains either: Beginning in prehistorical times, many civilizations and kingdoms adopted some version of

10593-401: The whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make

10700-433: The womb. And the demon who was going to enter the tower was protected so that the races might continue to acquire coherence through him. For a long time, historical linguistics wrestled with the idea of a single original language . In the Middle Ages and down to the 17th century, attempts were made to identify a living descendant of the Adamic language. The literal belief that the world's linguistic variety originated with

10807-469: The world, leaving the city unfinished. Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known historical structures and accounts, particularly from ancient Mesopotamia. The most widely attributed inspiration is Etemenanki , a ziggurat dedicated to the god Marduk in Babylon , which in Hebrew was called Babel . A similar story is also found in the ancient Sumerian legend, Enmerkar and

10914-501: The would-be autonomous community to present the local laws for imperial authorisation. This provided a powerful incentive for the various groups that constituted the Jewish community in Yehud to come to an agreement. The major groups were the landed families who controlled the main sources of wealth, and the priestly families who controlled the Temple. Each group had its own history of origins that legitimated its prerogatives. The tradition of

11021-474: The ziggurat in his Histories , which he called the "Temple of Zeus Belus ". According to modern scholars, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki. Stephen L. Harris proposed this occurred during the Babylonian captivity . Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of Genesis 11:1–9 were inspired by the existence of an apparently incomplete ziggurat at Babylon, and by

11128-399: Was not an independent document (i.e., a written text telling a coherent story with a beginning, middle and end), but an editorial expansion of another of the four sources, the combined Jahwist/Elohist (called JE). Cross's study was the beginning of a series of attacks on the documentary hypothesis, continued notably by the work of Hans Heinrich Schmid ( The So-called Jahwist , 1976, questioning

11235-430: Was stated to speak a single language, although the preceding Genesis 10:5 states that the descendants of Japheth , Gomer , and Javan dispersed "with their own tongues." Augustine explained this apparent contradiction by arguing that the story "without mentioning it, goes back to tell how it came about that the one language common to all men was broken up into many tongues". Modern scholarship has traditionally held that

11342-500: Was the glory of its building still it was conquered and destroyed.'" A typical medieval account is given by Giovanni Villani (1300): He relates that "it measured eighty miles [130 km] round, and it was already 4,000 paces high, or 5.92 km (3.68 mi) and 1,000 paces thick, and each pace is three of our feet." The 14th-century traveler John Mandeville also included an account of the tower and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs , or 13 km (8 mi), according to

11449-431: Was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny , seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power... Now

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