Here in Washington DC we are of one speech and one subject
is on everyone’s lips. What will the president admit to on
this day of his inquisition? Will he tell Starr the “truth” or find
a way to slide around the issue? A CNN reporter spoke of truth
“as a strategy.” Interesting.
Now, I didn’t mention this on the ASA listserv because of any
interest we have about presidential problems, but to give a
sense of Gen. 11:1: "The whole earth was of one language,
and of one speech."
Somehow we got the idea through mistaken translation and
interpretation in-a-vacuum that this had something to do with
the alteration of a basic language into many languages.
Let me suggest that a proper interpretation would be that the
whole land (erets) was of one speech (saphah), and speaking
(dabar) of one thing.
The subject on the lips of the Semite population in Babylon,
those in the line of Arphaxad mentioned in the same chapter,
was to construct a massive tower.
Mudbrick platforms were built in the major cities of Southern
Mesopotamia to afford a means of surviving the Spring
floods. Around 2300 BC they began to take on a secondary
function. They served as alters to their pagan gods.
In The Atlas of Early Man, Jacquetta Hawkes wrote:
“In Mesopotamia, the temples of the predynastic period
developed into grandiose monuments which dominated
not only the cities they were meant to serve, but the whole of
the valley floor. It has even been suggested that the ziggurats,
the stepped mounds which supported the sacred shrines, were
intended simply as artificial mountains. Though their design
showed high skill, technically they were of the simplest: a
mudbrick core encased in a weatherproof skin of burnt brick
set in bitumen.”
The Mesopotamian ziggurats were, in fact, constructed with
mudbricks and burnt mudbricks as stated in Genesis 11:3. The
bitumen used as a weathertight casing comes to us as "slime"
in the King James version though the New American Standard
uses "tar."
The Hebrew balal means to confound or mix, and from Babel our
English word "babble" is derived, meaning, "to utter meaningless
or unintelligible sounds." These definitions followed the event;
however, the name "Babel" was not chosen in anticipation of
confusion. The origin of "Babel" appears to be rooted in the
Accadian word, babilu, or "BabEl," meaning, "gate of God."
Not only the Semites, but the Sumerians too, were adept at
building ziggurats. In addition to the site at Uruk, the Sumerians
built temple monuments at Nippur, Lagash, Kish, and Ur. Even
smaller population centers to the north were building their own.
At each cult center, a simple temple mound was erected and
dedicated to a particular god. Although these mounds can be
traced to as early as 3000 BC, by the end of the third millennium
they were reaching immense proportions.
The Ashmolean Prism contains a liturgy to the temple at Kes,
presumed to have been in the proximity of Erech and Shuruppak.
Numerous lines end with "attaining unto heaven":
“Oh temple whose design in heaven and earth has been
planned, thou are possessed of pure decrees. Temple
erected in the Land where stand the chapels of the gods.
Mountain house, radiant with abundance and festivity.”
A kind of ziggurat contest ensued as cities added mudbrick
platforms on top of older temple complexes topped with granite,
sandstone, and marble temple enclosures. It became a point of
honor and pride to outdo neighboring cities, and of course, this
demonstrated love and devotion to their deity.
Genesis 11:4: "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city
and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us
make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face
of the whole earth."
Gudea, king of Lagash, sings the praises of the temple he
built to worship Eninnu constructed from burnt bricks, stone, and
"bitumen from wells," and "bitumen from bitumen lake." In
addition to the similarity in building materials, note also the
similarity in attitude and aspirations with the builders at Babel.
In Gudea's words, the temple was "an object of admiration to
the eyes of the gods."
A sense of this pride and competitive spirit that was emblematic
of virtually every city in Mesopotamia can be seen in the
following liturgy from king Gudea:
“The bright crown of the temple rested upon it and as the
lapislazuli mountain of heaven and earth rose from the earth.
The pavement of the terrace of the great temple he laid; as a
pure vessel on which honey and wine are poured it was open
to heaven. The shrine with a couch which he built like a
perfect mountain, as the holy stone vessel of the deep it rose.
On account of the great name which he had made for himself
he was received among the gods into their assembly.”
Notice the commonality between "the great name which he had
made for himself" in the liturgy with "let us make us a name" in
Genesis 11:4. The Semite builders at Babel were not about to
be outdone. After all, they had the one true God, and the other
cities were honoring impostors. They would build a tower of
such proportions that it would show up the others and prove to
them whose God reigned supreme. You can imagine how
happy God would be to have a mound of mudbricks 10 feet
higher than one dedicated to the Accadian sun god, Shamash,
or the Sumerian moon god, Nanna. This misguided endeavor
was not edifying to say the least.
"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face
of all the earth: and they left off to build the city" (Gen. 11:8).
The tower of Babel was one among a number of Mesopotamian
worship centers. Though we may never know with complete
certainty which one it was, the mound at Babylon is a prime
candidate. The following is part of Enuma Elish:
"Now O lord, thou who hast caused our deliverance,
What shall be our homage to thee?
Let us build a shrine whose name shall be called
`Lo, a chamber for our nightly rest': let us repose in it!
Let us build a throne, a recess for his abode!
On the day that we arrive we shall repose in it."
When Marduk heard this,
Brightly glowed his features, like the day:
Like that of lofty Babylon, whose building you have requested,
Let its brickwork be fashioned. You shall name it
`The Sanctuary.’
The Anunnaki applied the implement;”
(From “Anunnaki” meaning “followers of Anu” (father-god)
comes our English word, “angel.” meaning the same thing.
“For one whole year they molded bricks.
When the second year arrived,
They raise high the head of Esagila equaling Apsu.”
(“Apsu” equates to the nether world. The top of the tower they
called “Esagila” would be as high as the Apsu is low.)
“Having built a stagetower as high as Apsu,
They set up in it an abode for Marduk, Enlil, (and) Ea
In their presence he adorned (it) in grandeur.
To the base of Esharra its horns look down.
After they had achieved the building of Esagila,
The Anunnaki themselves erected their shrines.
[...] all of them gathered
[...] they had built as his dwelling.
The gods, his fathers, at his banquet he seated:
‘This is Babylon, the place that is your home!"
Destroyed temples were rebuilt long after the heyday of Sumer
and Accad. The ziggurat at Babylon was restored by
Nabopolassar, the founder of the NeoBabylonian
dynasty, about 625 to 605 BC. These are his words:
“The lord Marduk commanded me concerning Etemenanki,
the staged tower of Babylon, which before my time had
become dilapidated and ruinous, that I should make its
foundations secure in the bosom of the nether world, and
make its summit like the heavens.”
His firstborn son, Nebuchadnezzar, continued in the efforts
started by his father, carrying out building the tower at Babylon
until 562 BC. When finished, a seven stage structure and its
temple complex reached nearly 300 feet in height.
Is Genesis history? The world’s first historian, Herodotus visited
Babylon about 460 BC and gave this report:
“In the midst of the temple a solid tower was constructed, one
stadium in length and one stadium in width. Upon this tower
stood another, and again upon this another, and so on,
making eight towers in all, one upon another. All eight towers
can be climbed by means of a spiral staircase which runs
round the outside. About halfway up there are seats where
those who make the ascent can sit and rest. In the topmost
tower there is a great temple, and in the temple is a golden
table. No idol stands there. No one spends the night there
save a woman of that country, designated by the god himself,
so I was told by the Chaldeans, who are the priests of that
divinity.
In an earlier post George Murphy wrote:
The fact that truth can be conveyed in ways other than
historical narrative is important throughout Scripture, not
just in the opening chapters of Genesis.”
I submit that true meaning will come not from divorcing Genesis
from history, but from understanding Genesis within its proper
historical context.
Also, Jan de Koning wrote:
I agree that reading Gen.1-3 as "real history" in the modern
sense of the word causes many, many problems not only in
reading, but also in faith. More difficulties could be mentioned.
One is for example the gradual estrangement of "ordinary
pew-sitters" and scientists. However, that is not only true for
Gen.1-3. The Christian Reformed Church made it Gen.1-11
in 1988 and appointed a study committee, which reported
in 1991.”
Placing Genesis 11 in “real history” is a necessary step that
puts us on the road to understanding the entirety of Genesis
1-11. In short, it’s all history.
And Howard Van Till wrote:
“The biblical text was not _written_ by God, it was _inspired_
by God. It was written by human beings in the conceptual
vocabularies of their day and culture, and within the limits
of the writers' knowledge base.”
I agree that this is important and needs to be applied to the
first eleven chapters of Genesis as well. But we shouldn't
say Genesis isn't history just because we haven't bothered
to actually study the history.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution, http://www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago."
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Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
Here in Washington DC we are of one speech and one subject
is on everyone’s lips. What will the president admit to on
this day of his inquisition? Will he tell Starr the “truth” or
find
a way to slide around the issue? A CNN reporter spoke of
truth
“as a strategy.” Interesting.
Now, I didn’t mention this on the ASA listserv because of any
interest we have about presidential problems, but to give a
sense of Gen. 11:1: "The whole earth was of one
language,
and of one speech."
Somehow we got the idea through mistaken translation and
interpretation in-a-vacuum that this had something to do with
the alteration of a basic language into many languages.
Let me suggest that a proper interpretation would be that the
whole land (erets) was of one speech (saphah), and
speaking
(dabar) of one thing.
The subject on the lips of the Semite population in Babylon,
those in the line of Arphaxad mentioned in the same chapter,
was to construct a massive tower.
Mudbrick platforms were built in the major cities of Southern
Mesopotamia to afford a means of surviving the Spring
floods. Around 2300 BC they began to take on a secondary
function. They served as alters to their pagan gods.
In The Atlas of Early Man, Jacquetta Hawkes wrote:
“In Mesopotamia, the temples of the predynastic period
developed into grandiose monuments which dominated
not only the cities they were meant to serve, but the whole
of
the valley floor. It has even been suggested that the
ziggurats,
the stepped mounds which supported the sacred shrines,
were
intended simply as artificial mountains. Though their
design
showed high skill, technically they were of the simplest:
a
mudbrick core encased in a weatherproof skin of burnt
brick
set in bitumen.”
The Mesopotamian ziggurats were, in fact, constructed with
mudbricks and burnt mudbricks as stated in Genesis 11:3. The
bitumen used as a weathertight casing comes to us as "slime"
in the King James version though the New American Standard
uses "tar."
The Hebrew balal means to confound or mix, and from Babel
our
English word "babble" is derived, meaning, "to utter
meaningless
or unintelligible sounds." These definitions followed
the event;
however, the name "Babel" was not chosen in anticipation
of
confusion. The origin of "Babel" appears to be rooted in
the
Accadian word, babilu, or "BabEl," meaning,
"gate of God."
Not only the Semites, but the Sumerians too, were adept at
building ziggurats. In addition to the site at Uruk, the
Sumerians
built temple monuments at Nippur, Lagash, Kish, and Ur. Even
smaller population centers to the north were building their own.
At each cult center, a simple temple mound was erected and
dedicated to a particular god. Although these mounds can be
traced to as early as 3000 BC, by the end of the third millennium
they were reaching immense proportions.
The Ashmolean Prism contains a liturgy to the temple at Kes,
presumed to have been in the proximity of Erech and Shuruppak.
Numerous lines end with "attaining unto heaven":
“Oh temple whose design in heaven and earth has been
planned, thou are possessed of pure decrees.
Temple
erected in the Land where stand the chapels of the
gods.
Mountain house, radiant with abundance and festivity.”
A kind of ziggurat contest ensued as cities added mudbrick
platforms on top of older temple complexes topped with granite,
sandstone, and marble temple enclosures. It became a point of
honor and pride to outdo neighboring cities, and of course, this
demonstrated love and devotion to their deity.
Genesis 11:4: "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city
and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us
make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face
of the whole earth."
Gudea, king of Lagash, sings the praises of the temple he
built to worship Eninnu constructed from burnt bricks, stone, and
"bitumen from wells," and "bitumen from bitumen
lake." In
addition to the similarity in building materials, note also the
similarity in attitude and aspirations with the builders at Babel.
In Gudea's words, the temple was "an object of admiration to
the eyes of the gods."
A sense of this pride and competitive spirit that was emblematic
of virtually every city in Mesopotamia can be seen in the
following liturgy from king Gudea:
“The bright crown of the temple rested upon it and as
the
lapislazuli mountain of heaven and earth rose from the
earth.
The pavement of the terrace of the great temple he laid; as
a
pure vessel on which honey and wine are poured it was
open
to heaven. The shrine with a couch which he built like
a
perfect mountain, as the holy stone vessel of the deep it
rose.
On account of the great name which he had made for
himself
he was received among the gods into their assembly.”
Notice the commonality between "the great name which he had
made for himself" in the liturgy with "let us make us a
name" in
Genesis 11:4. The Semite builders at Babel were not about to
be outdone. After all, they had the one true God, and the
other
cities were honoring impostors. They would build a tower of
such proportions that it would show up the others and prove to
them whose God reigned supreme. You can imagine how
happy God would be to have a mound of mudbricks 10 feet
higher than one dedicated to the Accadian sun god, Shamash,
or the Sumerian moon god, Nanna. This misguided endeavor
was not edifying to say the least.
"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face
of all the earth: and they left off to build the city" (Gen.
11:8).
The tower of Babel was one among a number of Mesopotamian
worship centers. Though we may never know with complete
certainty which one it was, the mound at Babylon is a prime
candidate. The following is part of Enuma Elish:
"Now O lord, thou who hast caused our
deliverance,
What shall be our homage to thee?
Let us build a shrine whose name shall be called
`Lo, a chamber for our nightly rest': let us repose in
it!
Let us build a throne, a recess for his abode!
On the day that we arrive we shall repose in it."
When Marduk heard this,
Brightly glowed his features, like the day:
Like that of lofty Babylon, whose building you have
requested,
Let its brickwork be fashioned. You shall name it
`The Sanctuary.’
The Anunnaki applied the implement;”
(From “Anunnaki” meaning “followers of Anu” (father-god)
comes our English word, “angel.” meaning the same thing.
“For one whole year they molded bricks.
When the second year arrived,
They raise high the head of Esagila equaling Apsu.”
(“Apsu” equates to the nether world. The top of the tower
they
called “Esagila” would be as high as the Apsu is low.)
“Having built a stagetower as high as Apsu,
They set up in it an abode for Marduk, Enlil, (and) Ea
In their presence he adorned (it) in grandeur.
To the base of Esharra its horns look down.
After they had achieved the building of Esagila,
The Anunnaki themselves erected their shrines.
[...] all of them gathered
[...] they had built as his dwelling.
The gods, his fathers, at his banquet he seated:
‘This is Babylon, the place that is your home!"
Destroyed temples were rebuilt long after the heyday of Sumer
and Accad. The ziggurat at Babylon was restored by
Nabopolassar, the founder of the NeoBabylonian
dynasty, about 625 to 605 BC. These are his words:
“The lord Marduk commanded me concerning Etemenanki,
the staged tower of Babylon, which before my time had
become dilapidated and ruinous, that I should make its
foundations secure in the bosom of the nether world,
and
make its summit like the heavens.”
His firstborn son, Nebuchadnezzar, continued in the efforts
started by his father, carrying out building the tower at Babylon
until 562 BC. When finished, a seven stage structure and its
temple complex reached nearly 300 feet in height.
Is Genesis history? The world’s first historian, Herodotus
visited
Babylon about 460 BC and gave this report:
“In the midst of the temple a solid tower was constructed,
one
stadium in length and one stadium in width. Upon this
tower
stood another, and again upon this another, and so on,
making eight towers in all, one upon another. All
eight towers
can be climbed by means of a spiral staircase which
runs
round the outside. About halfway up there are seats
where
those who make the ascent can sit and rest. In the
topmost
tower there is a great temple, and in the temple is a
golden
table. No idol stands there. No one spends the night
there
save a woman of that country, designated by the god
himself,
so I was told by the Chaldeans, who are the priests of
that
divinity.
In an earlier post George Murphy wrote:
The fact that truth can be conveyed in ways other than
historical narrative is important throughout Scripture, not
just in the opening chapters of Genesis.”
I submit that true meaning will come not from divorcing Genesis
from history, but from understanding Genesis within its proper
historical context.
Also, Jan de Koning wrote:
I agree that reading Gen.1-3 as "real history" in the modern
sense of the word causes many, many problems not only in
reading, but also in faith. More difficulties could be mentioned.
One is for example the gradual estrangement of "ordinary
pew-sitters" and scientists. However, that is not only true
for
Gen.1-3. The Christian Reformed Church made it Gen.1-11
in 1988 and appointed a study committee, which reported
in 1991.”
Placing Genesis 11 in “real history” is a necessary step that
puts us on the road to understanding the entirety of Genesis
1-11. In short, it’s all history.
And Howard Van Till wrote:
“The biblical text was not _written_ by God, it was _inspired_
by God. It was written by human beings in the conceptual
vocabularies of their day and culture, and within the limits
of the writers' knowledge base.”
I agree that this is important and needs to be applied to the
first eleven chapters of Genesis as well. But we shouldn't
say Genesis isn't history just because we haven't bothered
to actually study the history.
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