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ON THIS PAGE (Part I)
Emphasis Mine In Bible Verses
What Was The Sin of The Builders of The Tower of Babel?
A Blessing Not a Command
Ignoring The Significance of The Lord’s Words
Roots of Apostasy... The Tower of Babel/Babylon
The Land of Shinar
A Tale of Two Kingdoms
What Were They Building on The Plains of Shinar?
The Babylonian Kings, Their Ziggurats/Temples
Nebuchadnezzar II and The Etemenanki and The Esagila
The Babylonian King, Nabonidus
NEXT PAGE (Part 2) HERE
The spirituality of ancient Babylon has flowed down two separate avenues
to very effectively spread all over this planet and claim millions of followers.
Summary and Conclusion
What Was The Sin of The Builders of The Tower of Babel?
Although the story related in Genesis 11:1-9 clearly shows that the tower being constructed was displeasing to the Lord, there is absolutely nothing in the account that mentions what specific sin the builders were guilty of nor what exactly the significance of the tower of Babel had. The account simply says
They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4 NASB)
Almost immediately after Noah and his family came off the ark and offered sacrifice to the Lord, He told them to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (9:1). However, as the traditional explanation goes the people did not want to be scattered but wanting to make a name for themselves "settled" on the plains of Shinar (11:2). This act of disobedience supposedly incurred God's displeasure causing Him to comedown to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. (V.5)
One other explanation I read goes - "They wanted to climb into heaven and dethrone God and enthrone themselves instead." [00] is a classic case of reading far more into the text than it actually says.
In the first place, half an ounce of common sense would have told the builders that they would not have been able to even get to the first heaven which the Jews considered the area above us where clouds float (God was said to be much higher... in "the heaven of the heavens" or "the highest heaven") . The Hebrew word for heaven is shamayim which was used in three different ways. See The Word "Heaven" in The Bible HERE
Additionally, although the builder's expressed wish to make a name for themselves may have been somewhat prideful, one can hardly be seen as a sin big enough to cause God to come down to earth to 'see what they were up to'. Nor was it a problem large enough to warrant the Lord's subsequent actions and certainly does not it fit the Lord's comment on the situation.
Therefore, using the words "a tower whose top will reach into heaven" had to be an exaggerated description of their intention to build a very high tower behind which was probably a very ominous reason which I will come to in a short while.
A Blessing Not a Command
Although this incident in Genesis 11 has been the basis for quite a few Sunday sermon on obedience, it is quite a stretch to believe that the idea that building a city and settling down was a willful act of disobedience to God's command to fill the earth. It is just plain silly to interpret God saying "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1) with Him issuing a command to immediately travel all over the earth, produce offspring, and colonize every part of it.
In any case these words were a repetition of what God said to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 and those two certainly showed no inclination to leave the garden. Common sense should tell us that if the encounter with the serpent had not happened Adam and Eve's descendants would eventually have spilled out into the rest of the world. No one was on any particular time table.
Similarly, regardless of how big the city was that they built on the plains of Shinar, in the course of time some stragglers would have moved elsewhere and they would have been on their way to 'filling the earth'. Few people are nomads... they settle down, they grow things, they eat their crops and drink their wine. In other words, they enjoy their lives. In time as their families begin to get larger, the younger people settle in other places and the pattern is repeated all over again.
Besides which, if you want to take Genesis 9:1 as a command the "Be fruitful and multiply" part was too. But I hardly think that was to be taken as a command to produce as many children as possible in as short a time period as possible. Much to the contrary, if we actually read the text, it becomes clear that this was part of a blessing... the bestowal of a divine gift.
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1 NASB)
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. "The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky; with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are given. "Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. (Genesis 9:1-3 NASB)
How we managed to turn a blessing into a command is way beyond me.
Ignoring The Significance of The Lord's Words
Sadly, in all our efforts to find an explanation we, by glossing over what the Lord Himself said, have only succeeded in dumbing down the incident. What we can be sure of is that there was a whole lot more to the story than we have been told - it certainly wasn’t anything like the Lord telling the people not to pluck the daffodils and them doing it anyway.
Compare what the Lord said when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit with what He said about the builders of the Tower of Babel...
Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever" (Genesis 3:22 NASB)
The Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech." (Genesis 11:6-7 NASB)
Although the Bible has not told us the significance of what the builders proposed to do, it is obvious that here would have been some disastrous consequences had their plans been allowed to proceed. This bears a marked similarity to the Adam and Eve situation. The Lord's words indicated the seriousness of human actions in both cases but does not explain very much further.
Certainly, whatever it was the builders had begun to do could have had very significant consequences because as the Lord said had they succeeded anything they then purposed to do would become possible for them. The idea that they could in some way reach heaven etc. etc. would not have enabled the architects of the Tower of Babel to 'do anything they purposed to do'.
Somehow or the other, man has gotten it firmly stuck in his head that God has told us everything there is to know about everything. Because every incident in the Scriptures doesn't come wrapped up in a neat package complete with explanatory notes and commentaries, we tend to interpret the more inexplicable ones by our often very limited knowledge.
It simply doesn't always work like this.
The Bible tells us that the Father has told us all we need to know to walk a sometimes very treacherous path towards the coming kingdom.... "the sacred writings" are able to give us the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ (2 Timothy 3:15).. However, He hasn't ever told us nor ever implied that we know everything, or even very much about the spiritual world.
Roots of Apostasy... The Tower of Babel/Babylon
In the Old Testament there are close to 250 occurrences of the word "Babylon", but the word "Babel" occurs only twice - once when speaking of the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom then, in the next chapter ‘the tower of Babel’.
Now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the Lord." The beginning of his kingdom was Babel (Heb. bâbel) and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah (Genesis 10:8-11 NASB)
Therefore its name was called Babel (Heb. bâbel), because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:9 NASB)
This might would cause the average reader to assume that two different places were intended. However, if you refer to a Hebrew lexicon, you will find that both Babel and Babylon were 'translated' from exactly the same Hebrew word - bâbel
In other words, according to the Hebrew Bible, Babel and Babylon are the same place.
Why this one Hebrew word was rendered differently in different passages is one of the many mysteries that surround the translation of some Biblical words. For example, three different proper names have all be translated "hell" (See Many Other ‘Mistranslations’ HERE).
The web site Answers in Genesis claims this is a "linguistic coincidence" (i.e. "the same letters BBL are used to write both Babel and Babylon in Hebrew") [01] which, I am afraid, I do not believe for a moment. We have already decided that Babel and Babylon are two entirely different places thus the fact that the Hebrew uses one name for both has to be explained away. As a matter of fact, there is some clear Scriptural evidence that Babel and Babylon were the same place.
The Land of Shinar
Genesis 11:2 tells us that some of the sons of Noah "journeyed east" and "found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there" where they built the tower of Babel.
The prophet Daniel recorded that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon carried the Temple vessels to "the land of Shinar to the house of his god". The author of Chronicles narrows the location down stating that Nebuchadnezzar took some of the articles of the house of the Lord and put them in his temple at Babylon". Here are the two relevant passages.
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. The Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God; and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his god. (Daniel 1:1-2 NASB)
Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and he did evil in the sight of the Lord his God. Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up against him and bound him with bronze chains to take him to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar also brought some of the articles of the house of the Lord to Babylon and put them in his temple at Babylon. (2 Chronicles 36:5-7 NASB)
That the Jerusalem Temple vessels were stored on the premises in the capital itself is evident from the fact that when Belshazzar held a great feast, he allowed his guests to drink from them. See Daniel 5:1-2.
Note: Daniel refers to Nebuchadnezzar as Belshazzar's father. However, in ancient days, the terms father and son did not have the same strict application they do today. In the Bible, although the word "son" is often used in terms of offspring, or biological children, it is also used in a wide variety of other contexts, including a person's descendants or even their dynasty (See Jesus - ‘Son of God’).
Belshazzar's biological father was Nabonidus who eventually succeeded the very short lived reigns of Nebuchadnezzar's biological descendants as king of Babylon. However, Nabonidus apparently spent very little time in the city which is why his son, Belshazzar acted as co-regent. This accounts for the fact that after he deciphered the meaning of the writing on the wall, Daniel was made "third ruler in the kingdom". (Daniel 5:29). (More about Nabonidus below)
Additionally, "the land of Shinar" is also mentioned in Isaiah 11.11 and Zechariah 5.11. In both cases, "Shinar" was rendered the country or the land of Babylon in the Septuagint.
Then it will happen on that day that the Lord will again recover the second time with His hand The remnant of His people, who will remain, From Assyria, Egypt, Pathros, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, And from the islands of the sea. (Isaiah 11:11 NASB)
And it shall be in that day, the Lord shall again shew his hand, to be zealous for the remnant that is left of the people, which shall be left by the Assyrians, and from Egypt, and from the country of Babylon, and from Ethiopia, and from the Elamites, and from the rising of the sun, and out of Arabia. (Isaiah 11:11 Septuagint)
Then he said to me, "To build a temple for her in the land of Shinar; and when it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal." (Zechariah 5:11 NASB)
And he said to me, To build it a house in the land of Babylon, and to prepare ; and they shall set it there on its own base. (Zechariah 5:11 Septuagint)
It should be readily apparent by now that Babylon was in the land of Shinar.
What Was The 'Tower of Babel'?
The first question that springs to mind is what exactly Noah's descendants were building on the plains of Shinar.
Considering that this particular form of temple was common to the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians, there is more than a distinct possibility that the tower spoken of in Genesis 11 was a ziggurat - a word that may be derived from the Akkadian zaqru which means tall or massive.
These structures were pyramid like, built in several tiers on a square or rectangular platform. Each tier was smaller than the one below, which gave the structure a unique shape, i.e. stepped pyramids. They were built on an immense scale and could be as much as 150 ft tall, with one or more staircases leading to the summit with, very possibly, a temple located at the very top of the structure. (see note below)
Their imposing presence dominated city landscapes
The picture on the left is an artistic depiction on ancient-origins.net of what the zigurrat might have looked like.
To people that lived in small, single story homes in 'cities' that could not have been much bigger than some modern villages, these ziggurats must have appeared to be truly immense. The size of the staircase in front can be assessed by the many pictures of US troops descending it - four abreast.
Note: Because only about three stories remain of the best preserved ziggurat (in Iran), there is no archaeological evidence for the temple at the top. However, in Book I of his Histories (P. 181) the Greek historian Herodotus who lived in the fifth century BC, mentioned the temple at the summit. Whether this is true or not, there is little question that the ziggurats were dedicated to various gods.
That the ziggurat symbolized a link or staircase between heaven and earth is quite clear from ancient cuneiform descriptions. "Mesopotamian ziggurats were typically given names demonstrating that they were intended to serve as "staircases" or "binding" locations between earth and heaven. So we see that a narrative about a tower whose top reached into the heavens fits the times quite well." [02] For example,
The ziggurat of Sippar was called the "Temple of the Stairway to Pure Heaven"
The ziggurat at Nippur was known as 'Eduranki', which means 'House binding Heaven and Earth'.
The ziggurat of Larsa was called the "Temple Linking Heaven and Earth"
The ziggurat Dilbat, located southeast of Babylon was also the "Temple of the Foundation Platform of Heaven and Earth"
The ziggurat in Babylon was called Etemenanki, or "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth". (Details below)
This fits in perfectly with what the builders of the Tower of Babel wanted to do. As they said
“Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven. (Genesis 11:4)
Even more tellingly, the ancient ziggurats were not solitary structures, but seemed to always have some kind of religious complex attached to them which could consist of a courtyard, temples, altars, storage rooms, living quarters etc. This fits in with the Genesis account that tells us they were building both a tower and a "city".
Baked Bricks and Tar (Bitumen)
Finally, Genesis 11:3 tells us that the builders said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar".
Since sun-dried bricks did not last nearly as long, important buildings such as ziggurats were often constructed of baked bricks set in bitumen mortar as was the stair case of one of the earliest known the ziggurat built by Ur-Nammu.
Migdăl?
One objection raised against the idea that the tower of Babel was a ziggurat is that migdăl the Hebrew word translated 'tower', was a watchtower often used in a military context. See for example, Judges 8:9-17, 9:51, 2 Kings 9:17, 2 Kings 17:9, Ezekiel 26:9 etc.
Quite simply, the Israelites did not have a specific term for 'ziggurat' because these constructions were not part of the Hebrew culture when the Bible was written.
In any case, the word migdăl is derived from gâdal, which means to grow, be great or magnify, which is quite an accurate description of the enormous ziggurats.
There is more evidence that
The Babylonian Kings and Their Ziggurats
(And The Connection to The Tower of Babel)
Etemenanki:
The ruins of Babylon, the most famous city in ancient Mesopotamia, lie in modern-day Iraq some 60 miles southwest of Baghdad. It was the site of the very impressive seven storey ziggurat constructed by Nebuchadnezzar as part of the sacred complex in Babylon. The ziggurat was called Etemenanki, or "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth".
The Ésagila, a Sumerian name signifying 'a temple whose top is lofty' was the most important temple complex in ancient Babylon, dedicated to the god Marduk, the patron deity of that city. [03]
As said by UNESCO World Heritage Centre (All Emphasis Added)
The Sacred Complex of Babylon, comprising the Esagila temple dedicated to the God of Marduk and the ziggurat Etemenanki (the legendary Tower of Babylon), constituted the spiritual and political hearth of Babylon, capital of the Old Kingdom of Babylonia.
Both of these Mesopotamian architectural components formed one unit, so that the low temple Esagila, is neither in its construction nor in its content to be separated from Etemenanki. Their cultic connection was established by the procession street Aj-ibur-shapu running between them, which allowed equal access to both sanctuaries. [04]
See THIS site for maps and photographs
However, the ziggurat Etemenanki, was built on the foundations of much older ones ...
"... tower archaeologists discovered a core consisting of the ruins of previous ziggurats, which had been levelled and enlarged several times, before Nebuchadnezzar added a casing of burnt brick 15m thick. [05]
Some sources say that the kings Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar called this immense ziggurat... ziqqurat Bâbîli, "the Tower of Babylon" [06].
The Enűma Eliš
... the Babylonian creation mythos (named after its opening words) was recovered in fragmentary form by Austen Henry Layard in 1849 from the ruined ancient Library of Ashurbanipal (king of Assyria) in Nineveh. Its primary purpose seemed to be the elevation of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, above other Mesopotamian gods. Note, however, that Marduk tells "the gods his fathers" that he will build himself a luxurious house that he will call "Babylon". [Emphasis Added]
Marduk opened his mouth to speak
And addressed the gods his fathers,
"Above the Apsű, the emerald (?) abode,
Opposite Ešarra, which I built for you,
Beneath the celestial parts, whose floor I made firm,
I will build a house to be my luxurious abode.
Within it I will establish its shrine,
I will found my chamber and establish my kingship.
When you come up from the Apsű to make a decision
This will be your resting place before the assembly.
When you descend from heaven to make a decision
This will be your resting place before the assembly.
I shall call its name 'Babylon', "The Homes of the Great Gods"
Althoug we cannot be dogmatic about it all indications are that Nebuchadnezzar built his seven storey ziggurat on the foundations of the original Tower of Babel. According to livius.org, a website on ancient history written and maintained by the Dutch historian Jona Lendering...
"According to the Babylonian creation epic Enűma ęliš, the god Marduk defended the other gods against the diabolical monster Tiamat. After he had killed it, he brought order to the cosmos, built the Esagila, which was the center of the new world, and created mankind. The Etemenanki was next to the Esagila, and this means that the temple tower was erected at the center of the world, as the axis of the universe. Here, a straight line connected earth and heaven. This aspect of Babylonian cosmology is echoed in the Biblical story, where the builders say "let us build a tower whose top may reach unto heaven". [07]
The Babylonian King, Nabonidus
Nabonidus was the Assyrian-born last king of Babylon who ruled from 555-539 B.C. However, because he was away from the city for long periods of time he appointed his son Belshazzar co-regent. In fact, Nabonidus was not in the city when it fell to the Medes and the Persians. See Daniel chapter 5 for the story of the feast given by Belshazzar and the disembodied hand writing something on the wall.
Like his predecessors, Nabonidus took an interest in Babylon's past, excavating ancient buildings etc. He also built a ziggurat on the foundations of a much older one about two hundred miles south of Babylon. In 1854, J.E. Taylor, who was then the British Consul at Basrah, found four ancient inscribed clay cylinders, one at each corner of Nabonidus' ziggurat,  which said in part... (All Emphasis Added)
“I am Nabonidus, king of Babylon, patron of Esagila and Ezida, devotee of the great gods. E-lugal-galga-sisa, the ziggurat of E-gish-nu-gal in Ur, which Ur-Nammu, a former king, built but did not finish it (and) his son Shulgi finished its building. On the inscriptions of Ur-Nammu and his son Shulgi I read that Ur-Nammu built that ziggurat but did not finish it (and) his son Shulgi finished its building.
Now that ziggurat had become old, and I undertook the construction of that ziggurat on the foundations which Ur-Nammu and his son Shulgi built following the original plan with bitumen and baked brick. I rebuilt it for Sin, the Lord of the gods of heaven and underworld, the god of gods, who lives in the great heavens, the Lord of E-gish-nu-gal in Ur, my Lord.” [08]
In other words, the cylinder identifies the site as Ur built during the reign of Ur-Nammu, and describes how Nabonidus reconstructed the ziggurat devoting it to the god Sin. This is noteworthy simply because Marduk had been the chief god of Babylon for several centuries.
As a Side-Note, Belshazzar was long considered to be a figment of Daniel's imagination. However, the clay cylinder found in Ur also records Nabonidus asking the gods to bless his son, Belshazzar.
Abraham
All of which brings us to Abraham who once lived in the land of Ur but was instructed by God to leave there and travel to Canaan
Continue On To Part II - Babel To Babylon And Beyond.
The spirituality of ancient Babylon has flowed down two separate avenues to very effectively spread all over this planet and claim millions of followers. Summary and Conclusion. HERE
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