Is the Story Of Babel True?

Quagmire said:

That's great anaolgy Xexon

My own take is that God looked down one day and said, "OH my Me! Will they ever shutup?! Look at these idiots; they spend all their time babbeling and talking nonsense to each other and they don't even realise it".

So He decided to "confound their language" so they would at least realise that they were just babbleing.

Didn't work though because, then as now they weren't really listening to each other anyway.

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sojourner said:

Regarding your signature: Is it possible to be a skeptical Christian? I hope?:beach:

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Sunstone said:

Is the story of the tower of Babel a true account of how multiple languages came into existence? Why or why not?

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angellous_evangellous said:

I don't read it literally. It's not only foolish (IMHO) to take it literally, but it presents theological problems as well. It is God who divides humanity and renders us unable to communicate and unite for the goodness of humankind. It encourages war and struggle as a divine good. A person who believes this would use this story to keep people from uniting for the purpose of education and medicine.

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yuvgotmel said:

Compare the Biblical account to the Babylonian account:

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]BIBLICAL ACCOUNT from Genesis Chapter 11:[/FONT]

1. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] The entire earth had one language with uniform words.[/FONT]
2. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] When the people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar, and they settled there.[/FONT]
3. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] They said to one another, “Come, let us mold bricks and fire them.” They then had bricks to use as stone, and asphalt for mortar.[/FONT]
4. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top shall reach the sky. Let us make ourselves a name, so that we will not be scattered all over the face of the earth.”[/FONT]
5. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] God descended* to see the city and the tower that the sons of man had built.[/FONT]
6. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]God said, “They are a single people, all having one language, and this is the first thing they do! Now nothing they plan to do will be unattainable for them![/FONT]
7. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] Come, let us* descend and confuse their speech, so that one person will not understand another’s speech.”[/FONT]
8. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif] From that place, God scattered them all over the face of the earth, and they stopped building the city.[/FONT]
9. [FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]He named it Babel, because this was the place where God confused the world’s language. It was from there that God dispersed humanity over all the face of the earth. [/FONT]

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]Footnotes.
11:15 descended. An anthropomorphism denoting special attention, especially for the purpose of punishing the wicked (Moreh Nevukhim 1:10)
11:16 us. God was speaking to the angels, or to the forces of creation (Rashi; Ibn Ezra).[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]“The Living Torah: A New Translation Based on Traditional Jewish Sources”
by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan[/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] BABYLONIAN ACCOUNT:

[/FONT] [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] There was no hyena, there was no lion, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] There was no wild dog, no wolf, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] There was no fear, no terror, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Man had no rival.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]In those days, the land Shubur-Hamazi, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Harmony-tongued Sumer, the great land of the me of princeship, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Uri, the land having all that is appropriate, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The land Martu, resting in security, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The whole universe, the people well cared for, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] To Enlil in one tongue gave speech. [/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Then the lord defiant, the prince defiant, the king defiant, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Enki, the lord of abundance, whose commands are trustworthy, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The lord of wisdom, who scans the land, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The leader of the gods, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The lord of Eridu, endowed with wisdom, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Changed the speech in their mouths, put contention into it, [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Into the speech of man that had been one.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]“Myths of Enki, the Crafty God”[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] by Samuel Noah Kramer and John R Maier, Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, 1989.[/FONT]
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Interpretation of the Tower of Babel:

...as a religion, Christianity has desired to create a thoughtform that would be so powerful that it could dominate the earth with it. I believe such an entity would be too difficult for a single human to control; and possibly, such an entity, infused with such energy from a massive consciousness, might be too powerful for the people to control. Furthermore, if the entity was given such energies from a massive collective consciousness, it could be a particular threat to the higher spiritual planes.

For this reason—to protect man from himself—, the Tower of Babel was destroyed. The people were creating a thoughtform—a god—that could “reach the heavens.” And the Bible states (in Genesis 11) that if the people were single-minded, there would not be anything that they could not do. That entity had to be destroyed before it was created. Otherwise, such a god-on-earth—an organic Kingdom supported by a single-minded people—would easily be overcome by the very thing that they created. Therefore, the languages/religions were dispersed before they killed themselves.

Even without an organic Kingdom, with a single-minded people, being possible, it is hypocrisy to the very nature of spirituality to desire such a thing, because it circumvents the desire to attain a higher plane of existence outside of this mortal world. And it is the equivalent of the act of dethroning God, by exchanging God in heaven to a man-created-god-on-earth.
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sojourner said:

It's no secret (and it certainly bothers me not one iota) that the stories of Genesis have Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian myth as their basis. But I am intrigued by your "interpretation." Where did you get it?

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yuvgotmel said:

I wrote it. It pertains to more than just Christianity though. I cut and pasted it from this thread: http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51353

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sojourner said:

It's intriguing, but cannot be said to pertain to Christianity.

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sojourner said:

It's intriguing, but cannot be said to pertain to Christianity. We can project the meaning onto Christianity, but the writers had no concept of Christianity, the story having been written at least 400 years before Jesus was born, about an incident that is thousands of years older than that.

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Jeremiah 10:1~5: “Hear what the Lord says to you, O house of Israel. This is what the Lord says: ‘Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them. For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsmen shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a melon path, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk.’ …”
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doppelgänger;848785 said:

Check out #12, soj.

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yuvgotmel said:

Symbolism works throughout the ages....

Here's another intriguing bit of symbolism...

Jeremiah 10:1~5: “Hear what the Lord says to you, O house of Israel. This is what the Lord says: ‘Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them. For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsmen shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a melon path, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk.’ …”
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sojourner said:

nor does the symbology work very well with pure Christianity.

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doppelgänger;848800 said:

Seems to work fine with some Christians. Sonic has no trouble applying it.

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sojourner said:

As I said, pure Christianity. Mutations are an exception...

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yuvgotmel said:

So pure Christianity doesn't involve symbols?

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sojourner said:

the symbology works because all religion is archetypal in nature, and the symbols speak to the archetypes -- not to the religion itself.

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sojourner said:

As I said, pure Christianity. Mutations are an exception...:run:

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sojourner said:

It involves symbols, yes. And those symbols do pertain to the precepts of the religion. The Tower of Babel, while it is allegorical (and so contains symbol), was not written to speak about Christianity. It can (and does) speak to Christianity about the nature and status of humanity, since Christianity is comprised of human beings.

However, since the Church is not comprised exclusively of human beings, but relies also upon the presence of God for its existence, that presence of God fundamentally changes the nature and status of humanity, as spoken of in the Tower of Babel story. Therefore, while Christians can see in the story the sinful nature and status of humanity, they, not abiding anymore in a sinful nature, cannot apply the allegory directly to themselves, as a Body in Christ.

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yuvgotmel said:

You're trapped again... as seen in this thread: http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47034
...and you're trying to wiggle out of it...again.

You flip-flop more than a worm on hot pavement.

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