The Genesis Site - Genesis 11

The Story

Earth was just terrorized by a worldwide flood. Nobody survived this disaster. Only eight people with a bunch of animals knew how to escape.
Nations and tribes all around the world have a memory about this event. Their myths and legends tell about a couple of people who were warned by a god to prepare for a great flood. Often these men and women survived in a boat.
All these myths and legends are a reflection of the true story, as told in the Bible.

The descendents of the survivers searched for a place to live. They found a plain in a land that we can find today in Iraq. They planned to settle there and they were making big plans for the future.
Let's see what the Bible tells about this in Genesis 11:

Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn 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, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

There is a lot of confusion about the meaning of the name "Babel". Much people (including most christians) think it means "confusion". The words of the Bible seem to implicate this. But this conclusion isn't true.
The first people (as far as official history knows) who lived in the plains of Shinar - the land of Mesopotamia - were the Sumerians. They called the city of Babel "Ka-dingir-ra". The Akkadian neighbours of the Sumerians translated this in "Bab-ili". "Babylon" is the Greek version of Bab-ili. Ka-dingir-ra and Bab-ili both means "Gateway of God". This is exactly what the Bible is telling. God came down from heaven to earth. We should read Genesis 11:9 as follows:

Therefore its name was called Gateway of God, because there the Lord .........; and from there the Lord .........

Obvious the building people saw something happen what made them conclude God was coming down to earth. Should they really have seen the eternal God? Or was something else going on in or above the city so that it was left immediately?

In contrast to the ideas of classic painters the Tower of Babel was not a rounded tower. Archeology showed without doubt the towers of Mesopotamia were built up with square platforms. It is very likely the first tower was built the same way. They were built with the same materials too: burned bricks and bitumen.
The shape of the tower must have made deep impression on the people of Babel. With the dispersion this shape scattered too. Its contours are recognizable in the first Egyptian pyramids (the so-called step pyramids), as wel as in the pyramids of Meso-America.

One thing isn't mentioned yet. The age in which the event took place. I'm not going to argue about this much. Biblical counting gives roughly 2250 BC. So this means it could have been 10 or 50 years earlier or later. It doesn't really matter for this study. What we are dealing with on these pages is to discover what happened in Babel. We are searching for something that was strong enough to make the building people flee from there save city.

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