If you see an explanation of a name in the Bible, you should always assume that it is wrong until proven.
Khale said:
Here is a simpler (and more correct) explanation for the story of Babel:
The story of Babel was originally an etiological explanation for why the City of Babel was given it's name. Babel*, in the hebrew language, means confusion.
Well, in all probablity it is the other way 'round.
*Babel in it's original language (Assyrian I think?) did not mean confusion I have no idea what it originally meant however. Sorry.
In the first place, the word Bavel always refers to the city. It is never used in any "confusion" sense in the Bible, except for the "explanation". Clearly, seeing Babel as confusion comes after the naming of the city and after the fable. The traditional scholarly explanation of the name is that Babylon is read Bab-ilu in Akkadian and means "The Gate of the Lord". In the book
Die Keilschrift, the professors B. Meissner and K. Oberhuber argue that this is (yet another!) folk etymology, that the name should be read
babilu and not
bâb ili(m) as required by the "Gate" theory. They say that the name is derived from an old field name
babila.
There exists the sciences of archaeology and linguistics - not to mention physics. To suggest that the Harappan, the Xia, and the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom/First Intermediate Period spoke one language before being spanked by YHWH sometime during Akkad/Ur is ludricrous.
I have doubted the existence of the Xia dynasty, but at least there were people there in those
days, and they would not have been involved in the building project. Perhaps that's why they were allowed to keep their language.
But wait -- since the Chinese have stuck to their language, and the pre-tower language was one and the same for all people, that must mean that Chinese is The Original Language! (Substitute any other ancient civilization.)