Tower of Babel Defies Critics

“When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth?”  (Luke 18:8).  Was Jesus speaking facetiously?  Of course He’ll find faith!  Or will He find unbelief dressed up in Jesus clothes? 

Those who embrace the full Gospel of Jesus Christ believe in supernatural faith healing.  This believer is not anti-doctor, but pro-miracle.  There is some room in the Bible for the field of medical healing.  Isaiah spoke God’s word of healing over Hezekiah, applied what appears to be a fig plaster to his deadly boil, and Hezekiah was healed.  Ezekiel appeared to have been placed in a stroke-like condition by God as a sign to backsliding Israel of impending judgment.  God gave Ezekiel a diet that he ate for 390 days until his recovery.  The recipe found in Ezekiel, chapter four is also on your grocer’s shelves; it is called “Ezekiel’s Bread.”  Paul prescribed “a little wine for thy stomach’s sake” to Timothy for a physical issue with which he was dealing.  Luke, who penned the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, is known as “the beloved physician.”  Physicians are spoken of Biblically both positively and negatively, but God’s prescription for the sick is James 5:14-15:

14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

This miraculous ability belongs to the blood-bought. 

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GOD SAID, Genesis 11:1-9:

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

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.

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

MAN SAID:  Bible tales like the Tower of Babel and the confounding of the language defy anything that resembles credibility.  The Bible is not a reliable record. 

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God’s detractors have challenged the veracity of His Word since their father Satan established this M.O. in Genesis 3:1 when he says to our grandmother Eve, “Yea, hath God said,…?”  Since that time—for over 6,000 years—Satan has paraded his brightest and most eloquent champions before the sons of Adam to challenge and ridicule Holy Writ—but be of good cheer, children of faith, for these houses of clay have failed time after time.  And they will not succeed in their incessant and futile attempts any time in the future. 

Mind-boggling events and miracles are described in the Scriptures that carnal rationality finds ludicrous.  There are magnificent promises given to the childlike: of salvation, of Holy Ghost baptism, of healing, of deliverance, of divine purpose, of eternal life, and more.  I need to know God’s Word is the inerrant truth.  I am staking all upon it. 

One of the Bible’s most maligned accounts concerns the Genesis record of Babel, its tower of rebellion, and the confounding of the once-common language.  Several excerpts from previous GodSaidManSaid features follow:

The following paragraphs are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Tower of Babel:”

The Bible records that, until the time of Babel, everybody spoke the same language.  In the city of Babel, Nimrod and his followers decided to build a tower to heaven. They wanted to make a name for themselves—an ungodly name.  God, seeing that nothing could restrain them from their foolish and wicked endeavor, decided at this place to confound their language.  It was there in the city of Babylon that God created diversity of languages. 

The famed Jewish historian Josephus, who wrote shortly after the life of Christ, states in his book, The Antiquities of the Jews, the following:

Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar.  God also commanded them to send colonies abroad, for the thorough peopling of the earth,—that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth, and enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner: but they were so ill instructed, that they did not obey God;

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 was 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 upon his power.  He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach!  And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers!

Now the multitude was 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 anyone could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that the reby 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 the former sinners; but He caused a tumult among them, by producing in them divers 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 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 his peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon.”  [End of quote]

It was at Babel that the world’s nationalities began, each group separated according to their languages.  Again, Josephus on the formation of nationalities:

After this, they were dispersed abroad, on account of their languages, and went out by colonies everywhere; and each colony took possession of that land which they light upon, and unto which God led them; so that the whole continent was filled with them, both the inland and maritime countries.  There were some also who passed over the sea in ships, and inhabited the islands; and some of those nations do still remain the denominations which were given them by their first founders; [End of quote]

Doctors Morris and Clark weigh in on the founding of nations in The Bible Has the Answers.  The following excerpts are from their book:

The division and separation of the nations took place at Babel, when “the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:9).  This judgment followed man’s first attempt after the great Flood to build a “United Nations,” established for the purpose of exalting man’s will against that of God. [End of quote]

This notion of Babel and its great tower has been ridiculed through the years, but listen to the facts:  In 1899, the German Oriental Society set out on an expedition under the direction of Professor R. Koldewey to examine the famous ruin mound of Babel on the Euphrates.  It took 18 years of excavation.  They uncovered the royal seat of Nebuchadnezzar, and at the same time, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens.  They also uncovered the legendary Tower of Babel. 

Listen carefully to this next piece of information.  This is a statement concerning the common language.  It was at the Tower of Babylon that God changed man’s speech from one common language to many.  George Smith, the staff member of the British Museum who translated the Babylonian account of the Flood, published the following mind-boggling translation of an ancient fragment found in the excavations.  This is what the Babylonians had written:

The building of this temple offended the gods.  In a night, they threw down what had been built, they scattered them abroad and made strange their speech.  The progress then impeded. 

This is the Babylonian’s account, not the Holy Bible's. 

Alfredo Trombetti, in his book The Unity of the Origin of Language, states that he is able to prove the common origin of all languages.  Max Muehler, the comparative philologist, declared concerning the common origin of speech, “We have examined all possible forms which language can assume and we now ask, ‘Can we reconcile with these three distinct forms, the radical, the terminational, inflectional—the admission of one common origin of human speech?’  I answer decidedly, ‘yes.’”

“The admission of one common origin of human speech.”  Could it be?  The following excerpt is from J.M. McDowell’s The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict:

There is now considerable evidence that the world did indeed have a single language at one time. Sumerian literature alludes to this fact several times.  Linguists also find this theory helpful in categorizing languages.  [End of quote]

Again from doctors Morris and Clark:

The origin of human language, and especially the tremendous diversity of human languages, is as yet quite inexplicable to the evolutionist.  There is nothing even remotely comparable to such an ability among the higher animals.  That human speech and language are divine creations is by far the most reasonable explanation.  Furthermore, the fact that the great variety of languages reflects a divine judgment on early man, as the Bible teaches, is also the most reasonable explanation we have.  [End of quote]

In the book review section of Discover magazine, March 2002, is found the following paragraph in a review of M.C. Baker’s book, The Atoms of Language: The Mind’s Hidden Rules of Grammar:

Are the world’s 6,000 languages fundamentally different from one another, or do they share a common underlying structure?  Baker, a cognitive scientist, argues that most, if not all, languages conform to a common set of rules.  Mapping these rules, says Baker, could produce a periodic table of language, a single framework from which all tongues are derived.  [End of quote]

Otto Jesperson of the University of Copenhagen wrote, “Some scholars see the insufficiency of the usual theories and, giving up all attempts at explaining it the natural way, fall back on the religious belief that the first language was directly given to the first men by God through a miracle.”  [End of quotes]

It should be noted that anthropologists trained in molecular biology have established that the entire world’s human population is rooted in one common mother and one common father.  This testifies of one common language—one common beginning.  [End of quote]

The accuracy of Biblical history—and yes, all its miraculous accounts—is simply staggering.  Skeptics who challenge the accuracy of the Bible’s accounts abound, but their skepticism is being overturned on a very regular basis.  One of the world’s most renowned archaeologists, Dr. Eilat Mazar, had this to say concerning her confidence in the Bible’s history:

Mazar, who is both revered and reviled by some of her colleagues for being a “Biblical archaeologist,” says that the Bible is unquestionably the most important historical source for her work since it contains a “genuine historical account of the past.”  “I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of excavation in the other,” she says.  “The Bible is the most important historical source.”  [End of quotes]

Biblical researcher and author Grant Jeffrey, in his 250+-page book Unveiling the Mysteries of the Bible, reports the following concerning the Tower of Babel:

The French government sent Professor M. Oppert to report on a number of the cuneiform inscriptions discovered in the ruins of ancient Babylon.  Professor Oppert translated a long inscription by King Nebuchadnezzar (died 562 B.C.) in which the king referred to the ancient tower in the Chaldean language as Barzippa, which means “Tongue-tower.”  The Greeks used the word Borsippa, with the same meaning of “tongue-tower,” to describe the ruins of the Tower of Babel.  This inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar clearly identified the original tower of Borsippa with the Tower of Babel as described by Moses in the book of Genesis.  Nebuchadnezzar was known as a great builder of cities, palaces, and temples to commemorate his pagan gods. 

King Nebuchadnezzar decided to rebuild the base of the ancient Tower of Babel, built over sixteen centuries earlier by the Biblical Nimrod, the first King of Babylon, who originally founded the city in the centuries following the Flood.  Nebuchadnezzar called the ruined structure “the Temple of the Spheres.”  During the millennium since God had destroyed it, the tower was reduced from its original huge height and magnificence until only the enormous base of the tower (460 feet by 690 feet), standing some 275 feet high, remained within the outskirts of the city of Babylon. 

Today the ruins have been reduced to about 150 feet above the plain with a circumference of 2,300 feet.  King Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the enormous city of Babylon in great magnificence with gold and silver.  He then decided to rebuild the lowest platform of the Tower of Babel in honor of the Chaldean gods.  At great cost, King Nebuchadnezzar resurfaced the base of the Tower of Babel with gold, silver, cedar, and fir on top of a hard surface of baked clay bricks.  These bricks were engraved with the seal of King Nebuchadnezzar. 

In an inscription found on the base of the ruins of the Tower of Babel, King Nebuchadnezzar spoke in his own words, confirming one of the most fascinating events of the ancient past as recorded in the Word of God:

The tower, the eternal house, which I founded and built.
I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold,
other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine.
The first which is the house of the earth’s base,
the most ancient monument of Babylon;
I built and finished it.
I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper.
We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the
seven lights of the earth,
the most ancient monument of Borsippa.
A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not
complete its head.
Since a remote time, people had abandoned it,
without order expressing their words.
Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had
dispersed the sun-dried clay.
The bricks of the casing had been split,
and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps.
Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this
building.
I did not change the site nor did I take away the foundation.
In a fortunate month, in an auspicious day,
I undertook to build porticoes around the crude brick masses,
and the casing of burnt bricks.
I adapted the circuits, I put the inscription of my name in
the Kitir of the portico. 
I set my hand to finish it.  And to exalt its head.
As it had been in ancient days, so I exalted its summit.

Professor Oppert first translated this amazing inscription into French, and William Loftus later translated it into English in his book Travels and Researches in Chaldea and Susiana.  This remarkable ancient inscription confirms the historical accuracy of one of the most unusual and fascinating stories found in the book of Genesis.  The pagan king of Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar, confirmed in his own words the unusual details that “a former king built it, but he did not complete its head [top].”  This ancient inscription confirmed the accuracy of the Genesis account that God had prevented the original builders from completing the top of the Tower of Babel.  Most significantly, King Nebuchadnezzar’s inscription declares that the reason the original king could not complete the tower was that they could not express their own words: “Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words.”  Thus, King Nebuchadnezzar admitted that his ancestors actually lost their ability to “express their words,” to control their language and communications! 

“A former king built it, but he did not complete its head.  Since a remote time, people had abandoned it.”  Compare these words of King Nebuchadnezzar with the inspired words of Moses in Genesis 11:7: “So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.”  Even more startling is the phrase of the pagan king who declared the reason they could not complete the top of the “tongue-tower” was because the “people abandoned it, without order expressing their words.”  This expression by the pagan King Nebuchadnezzar clearly confirms the historical event recorded in Genesis that God supernaturally “confused the language of all the earth” and that He “scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:2-8). [End of quote]

The Tower of Babel?  God’s Word is confirmed by ancient history, archaeology, linguistics, science, Adam and Eve, and Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon himself.  God’s Word is a place to build a life that will last forever. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 11:1-9:

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

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.

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

MAN SAID:  Bible tales like the Tower of Babel and the confounding of the language defy anything that resembles credibility.  The Bible is not a reliable record. 

Now you have THE RECORD. 

 

 

 

References

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Archaeology Confirms Bible, Miracles and All”

GodSaidManSaid, “Babylon that Great City”

GodSaidManSaid, “Tower of Babel”

Jeffrey, G., Unveiling the Mysteries of the Bible, WaterBrook Press, 2002

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