One of the most familiar Bible stories is the legend of the Tower of Babel. It's an epic tale that the majority of Bible scholars would classify as an explanatory myth. Only hard-core fundamentalists still take it as an accurate historical account, intent as they are on maintaining a juvenile grasp of the scriptures. An examination of this familiar tale in the light of objective scholarship and logic should prove insightful to the skeptical and perplexing to the pious. Not many skeptics know that the story of the Tower of Babel is actually rooted in history. There was a real tower that inspired a folk legend eventually incorporated into Genesis. This tower was one of several ziggurats built as part of the temple complexes of the ancient Sumerians (Shinar), the seminal civilization of the Near East. The one at Babel was the largest ever built, and was later known as the Temple of Marduk. Located in the old city portion, it was called Esagila by the Babylonians.
In the 24th century B. C. E., construction on at least one ziggurat was interrupted by the conquests of Sargon of Akkad,* the first great conqueror of the region. Subsequently the Sumerians were supplanted by the Babylonians, and it would remain unfinished for over a millennium and a half. This became a wonder to various peoples, who devised folkloric explanations for its status, among which (predictably) was the displeasure of some god or gods. This much is mundane fact. However, the theological meaning appended to it by the ancient Jews is not only unverified, but unverifiable.
An analysis of their account of the tower reveals some devastating logical and theological problems. According to Genesis 11, God implicitly took offense at the arrogance of man in attempting to build a tower reaching to heaven, and it says he "came down." First of all, this contains the antiquated notion that heaven is literally "up," something no theologian today would assert. This story is the product of an earlier time with a different conceptual universe. Another problem is the fact that even the largest of ziggurats reached only a final height of around 300 feet (very tall buildings were not really possible in Mesopotamia, where only sun-dried bricks were available). The pyramids of Egypt were much taller, yet God did not object to their intruding on his domain and thwart their construction. Today's skyscrapers are taller still, yet neither God nor man has expressed any notion that they impiously infringe on God's sacred realm. Genesis also offers their motive for building the tower: so that they wouldn't get scattered all over the world. As a reason for building, this makes not the slightest bit of sense. What's more, it exhibits a prior awareness of future events, serving as foreshadowing. Hence its literary and mythic basis is apparent.
In this tale (11:7), "God" spoke to an apparent plurality of gods, an indication of pagan borrowing that hadn't yet been entirely laundered away. He complained that "nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do." This divine complaint would make a lot more sense today than it did back then. We can fly through the skies (once thought reserved for the angels), we've gone to the moon, and we've invented numerous technological marvels. We've cured many diseases (once thought sent by God), we've lengthened the lifespan, and we're unlocking the secrets of DNA, the consequences of which are potentially staggering. (All this despite language barriers!) It's utterly illogical to think that God would allow all this to occur without a hint of objection but once got upset when people build a tower that couldn't have possibly reached heaven, one that was not so tall to begin with. (Maybe he was just waiting for a flimsy excuse to do what he had had in mind all along--scatter everyone.)
It must also be pointed out that, contrary to Genesis 11:9, "Babel" means "gate of god." Both Genesis and Exodus resort to folk etymology consistently, even when incorporating foreign names. The emphasis was on finding a symbolic meaning in the context of the story, but in application it was frequently a stretch. Here a vague correspondence was found between "Babel" and the Hebrew word "balal," meaning confused. But it's clear they are not at all the same term. (English speakers tend to insert their own etymology here for "babble.") This folk etymology underscores again the literary basis of the story. Further legendary echoes are found in the traditional attribution of the Tower of Babel to Nimrod. "Nimrod" (10:8-10) is how the Jews rendered the name Ninurta, who was the first Assyrian conqueror, but he lived in the 13th century B. C. E., over a thousand years after the tower's construction had been initiated. His association with the tower, his legendary amplification, and his misplacement in time are all explained by the fact that the Jews' grasp of history prior to Ninurta was hazy, given that they themselves had just emerged as a self-aware cultural entity. In the 19th century C. E., French archaeologists found in the ruins of Babylon an inscription apparently by Nebuchadrezzar (Nabu-kudurri-usur). It referred to an old ziggurat that had long been unfinished but that he had undertaken to complete. Apologists since then offer this as concrete proof of the historical accuracy of the Genesis account. There are four serious problems with this conclusion. First, the historical reality of an unfinished ziggurat does absolutely nothing to verify the theological meaning attached to it by the Jews. The existence of a building, even in ruins, is easy to verify, but whether God took offense at it, halted its construction, confused people's language, and scattered them cannot be concluded from any inscription. This is especially so, given that a plausible explanation exists for its interruption, namely the inevitable disruption of conquest and the disappearance of the Sumerians who had started it.
The second problem poses a theological quandary. The text of the inscription refers in three places to the tower's completion: "I have completed its magnificence," "I built and finished it," and "I exalted its summit." Now if God had found it objectionable from the start, why would he have allowed it to be completed? Wouldn't this have violated his will, and wouldn't he therefore have prevented it? Otherwise, why would he have bothered to stop its construction to begin with? Third, there is some confusion over which of two sites is that of the actual tower. The Babel site is problematic. Nebuchadrezzar's inscription refers to the temple at Borsippa, which was the temple of Nebo, and not to the temple of Marduk at Babel. Since Borsippa and Babel are two different places, and there were temples at both (Babel's being much taller), it's implausible that the former can accurately be referred to as "the Tower of Babel."
The conclusion that the Borsippa site may have been the inspiration for the legend, later mislocated to Babel, is supported by the fact that in ruins it was known as Birs Nimrud. This is a subsequent reference to the prior legend. Additional evidence for Borsippa ironically comes from one of the literalist's key pieces of evidence--the assertion that Borsippa means "tongue tower." This name is derived from the Chaldean ("Barzippa"), indicating a linguistic origin much more recent than the tower itself. Like Birs Nimrud, rather than confirming the Genesis account, it merely suggests the use of existing legend as the source for a later name, legend which also found its way into Genesis during or after the Babylonian Exile.
Further confusion is created by the inscription's reference to Marduk for its inspiration, not to Nebo, whose temple it was, and whom Nebuchadrezzar's very name invokes. This discrepancy calls the inscription's credibility and authorship into question. (Let's hope the mention of "Merodach" instead of "Marduk," and especially the erroneous "Nebuchadnezzar" rather than "Nadu-kudurri-usur"--or even "Nebuchadrezzar"--is the result of translator "license," and not the actual text!)
The Genesis story of the Tower of Babel is an explanatory myth, accounting for the diversity of languages and the distribution of people after the legendary flood. It neatly served the theological and narrative purposes of the Genesis author (Ezra?), but it has no historical basis beyond the sketchy mention of an unfinished tower and some legendary resonances. And this tower, it would even appear, was the wrong one! Die-hard literalists, however, always insist on maintaining the fairy tale as reality, but in so doing they stand on shaky ground. To be more precise, they're like those Warner Brothers cartoon characters who step off a ledge--they won't fall until they look down and realize their lack of foundation. Now biblical literalists can spend the rest of their lives not looking down, or they can get back on the ledge! Where do you stand?
* According to an ancient legend, when Sargon of Akkad was born, his mother placed him in a basket sealed with pitch, and set him adrift on a river. Sargon preceded Moses by more than a thousand years, and his story was recorded in Babylonian archives prior to the composition of Exodus (Grant R. Jeffrey, The Signature of God, Tyndale House, 1997).
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