Misplaced Pages

#155844

64-572: Peleg's son was Reu , born when Peleg was thirty, and he had other sons and daughters. According to the Hebrew Bible, Peleg lived to the age of 239 years, ( Genesis 11:16–19 ) (up to when Terah was 118). In the Septuagint and some Christian Bibles derived from it, Peleg is called Phaleg and his father is called Heber . His son is called Ragau , born when Phaleg was 130 years old, and he had other sons and daughters. According to

128-478: A gimlet , and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, "Let us see (whether) 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

192-550: A city and a tower in the land of Shinar.' - (10:18) His wife was Ora, daughter of 'Ûr, (the son of Kesed) ( Jubilees 11:1). According to the Masoretic text ( Genesis 11:20 ), Reu was 32 when Serug was born and lived to the age of 239 (when Abraham was either 18 or 78). The Septuagint and Samaritan Pentateuch state that his age on fathering Serug was 132, and the Septuagint thus gives age at death as 339. The biblical film Abraham (1993) features Nadim Sawalha as

256-465: A minor character named Reko, a name phonetically similar to Reu. Tower of Babel 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

320-653: 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,

384-425: 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 a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The L ORD came down to see

448-569: 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

512-431: 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 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

576-717: 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 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

640-420: Is a character in the silent film Infelice (1915). This film is an adaptation of the 1875 novel of the same name by Augusta J. Evans . Dan Peleg (played by Noah Emmerich ) is a Mossad trainer in the miniseries The Spy (2019). Reu Reu or Ragau ( Hebrew : רְעוּ , romanized :  Rəʿū ; Biblical Greek : Ῥαγαύ , romanized:  Rhagaú ), according to Genesis in

704-659: Is a common first name and surname in Israel , also being the root lettering for sailing ( lehaflig להפליג ) and a military half-bivouac tent ( peleg-ohel פלג אוהל ). The meaning of Peleg in English is "brook", a little river. Peleg is the name of one of the principal owners of the fictional whaling ship Pequod in Herman Melville 's Moby-Dick (1851). The following actors have portrayed this character in film adaptations: Peleg Peterson (played by Fred Paul )

SECTION 10

#1732791558156

768-557: 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 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

832-550: 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

896-559: 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

960-607: The Hebrew Bible , was the son of Peleg and the father of Serug , thus being Abraham 's great-great-grandfather and the ancestor of the Israelites and Ishmaelites . According to the apocryphal Book of Jubilees , Reu is said to have been born to Peleg and Lomna of Shinar at the time when the Tower of Babel was begun. 'Behold the children of men have become evil through the wicked purpose of building for themselves

1024-753: 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

1088-462: 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

1152-524: 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,

1216-597: 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,

1280-574: 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, 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

1344-585: 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 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,

SECTION 20

#1732791558156

1408-522: 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 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,

1472-524: The Septuagint, Phaleg lived to an age of 339 years. ( Septuagint Genesis 11:16-19 ) Modern translations generally use the names and dating as in the Masoretic Hebrew text. (compare Genesis 11:16–19 ) According to Genesis 10:25 and 1 Chronicles 1:19 , it was during the time of Peleg that the earth was divided – traditionally, this is often assumed to be just before, during, or after

1536-567: The Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted 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

1600-525: The World . One account, the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan , states that "In the days of Phalek (Peleg), the earth was divided a second time among the three sons of Noah; Shem, Ham and Japheth" – it had been divided once previously among the three sons by Noah himself. Some Creationists interpret this verse to refer to the continent of Pangaea being split into the modern continents. Peleg

1664-403: The authors of Genesis 11:1–9 were inspired by the existence of an apparently incomplete ziggurat at Babylon, and by 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

1728-468: 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

1792-412: The brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight." Jewish and Christian tradition attributes 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

1856-455: The builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in 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

1920-529: 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

1984-426: The building of the tower, but many other sources have associated its construction with him. Genesis 11:9 attributes the Hebrew version of 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

Peleg - Misplaced Pages Continue

2048-489: 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

2112-416: 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 the L ORD scattered them abroad from there over

2176-424: The confusion of the language, when she says thus:—"When all men were of one language, some of them built 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

2240-461: 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

2304-482: 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 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

2368-427: 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 a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon —namely

2432-731: The failure of the Tower of Babel , whose construction was traditionally attributed to Nimrod . The meaning of the Earth being divided is usually taken to refer to a patriarchal division of the world, or possibly just the Eastern Hemisphere , into allotted portions among the three sons of Noah for future occupation, as specifically described in the Book of Jubilees , Biblical Antiquities of Philo , Kitab al-Magall , Flavius Josephus , and numerous other antiquarian and mediaeval sources, even as late as Archbishop Ussher , in his Annals of

2496-573: The former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through 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

2560-468: 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 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

2624-480: 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 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

Peleg - Misplaced Pages Continue

2688-491: 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 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

2752-404: The just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife. Among the sinners are those who instigated 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

2816-402: 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

2880-408: 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 the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon

2944-410: 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 the name, Babilla , of unknown meaning and probably non- Semitic origin. Per the story in Genesis, the city received

3008-429: 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

3072-431: 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

3136-574: The other thirty stades]. In Pseudo-Philo , the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of 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

3200-464: 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 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

3264-466: The spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals, and other authors who claim that 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

SECTION 50

#1732791558156

3328-407: The thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon 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

3392-579: 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

3456-431: The tower and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs , or 13 km (8 mi), according to 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

3520-464: 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

3584-523: 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

3648-458: The tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, 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

3712-453: The twelve from the wrath of the other two princes. The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of 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

3776-640: 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

3840-473: 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 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

3904-487: 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

SECTION 60

#1732791558156

3968-513: Was demolished during the reign of his successor Antiochus Soter . Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 – c.  425 BC ) wrote an account of 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

4032-432: 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

4096-399: 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

#155844