![]() ![]() Come on, let’s go down and ‘confuse’ their language there, so that no one will be able to understand what another says.” And Yahweh scattered them from there all across Earth, and they stopped building the city. And now nothing they intend to do will be impossible for them. ![]() And Yahweh said, “Look, it’s one people and they all have one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And they said, “Come on, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in Sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered all over Earth.” And Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the humans had built. And they said to one another, “Come on, let’s make bricks and burn them hard.” And they had bricks for stone and pitch served them as mortar. And it happened, as they were wandering in the east, and they found a valley in the land of Shin‘ar, and they settled there. The whole Earth had one language and few words. Good has endeavoured to capture the meaning of the Hebrew without any theological preconceptions or reliance on previous English translations. Good in Genesis 1–11: Tales of the Earliest World. The following is taken from the wonderful translation by the recently departed Edwin M. Let’s start with the barebones text of the story. Gustave Doré, La confusion des langues, circa 1865-1868 The text of Genesis 11:1–9 Its roots can be traced through Old English bæblian and the Germanic languages all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. (Due to religious illiteracy, perhaps?)Īnd in case you were wondering (as I was), the English word “ babble” is not derived from Babel. It is not pronounced like the English word “babble”, although that is apparently becoming more common in the US. How much attention does the Tower of Babel get in the science-religion debate compared to the Genesis stories of creation and Noah’s flood? A note on pronunciation and etymologyīefore we get going, let me just note that the proper pronunciation of “Babel” in English is BAY-bull. I’m also interested in the story’s application to the modern creationist movement. Was the Tower of Babel based on a real building? What message is the text trying to convey, both on its own and in context? Like many of the narrative snippets found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis (the Primeval History), its brevity and ambiguous wording have led interpreters to fill in the gaps in all sorts of ways in order to squeeze meaning out of it.Īs we read the text, there are a number of interesting questions we can ask. The Tower of Babel is another biblical story that will be familiar to anyone with a typical Western religious upbringing. ![]()
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