Holy Moly: Babble

The start of Genesis 11 is a story which doesn't get brought up much by the "literal" Bible folks because it's just such a just-so story that it's hard to read it as anything but. But it's worth talking about for two reasons.

The first is that God comes off as quite a dick.

You've probably heard a version of the story that runs something like this:

Humans decided that they were going to build a tower to Heaven because they could.  It was pride, pure pride, and they thought they could rival God by building a tower so high that it would put them higher than Him.  God saw that and, because He wasn't in the commandment-giving mood, decided to change the languages all the people were speaking so they wouldn't be able to understand each other.  Thus, the people weren't able to work together any more and they failed in their pridefulness.

And that's how humans all came to speak different languages, kids.

You've probably heard that it all relates to Babylon too.  The writers of the story certainly thought it related to Babylon, because they set the story there.  I have a feeling the Babylonians might have taken issue with this reasoning behind the name of their city, but if they wanted to complain, they should have written their own Bible.

The thing is, that's all bogus.  Let's read the real story from the Bible... or rather one translation of it (The Contemporary English Version; while I frequently use the Common English Bible, this translation read a bit more like the story to me in this instance), because I don't read Hebrew and I'm willing to be that most of you don't either.  If you do, feel free to correct the translation.  I've looked at plenty of translations and they all seem reasonably consistent on the details.

At first everyone spoke the same language, but after some of them moved from the east and settled in Babylonia, they said:

"Let’s build a city with a tower that reaches to the sky! We’ll use hard bricks and tar instead of stone and mortar. We’ll become famous, and we won’t be scattered all over the world."

But when the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower, he said:

"These people are working together because they all speak the same language. This is just the beginning. Soon they will be able to do anything they want. Come on! Let’s go down and confuse them by making them speak different languages—then they won’t be able to understand each other."

So the people had to stop building the city, because the Lord confused their language and scattered them all over the earth. That’s how the city of Babel got its name.

Let's unpack that a bit.  First of all, a footnote tells us that "from the east" might also be "to the east" which tells you the problems of translation.  Second, some translations use "Shinar" instead of "Babylonia" which is probably more accurate but means essentially the same thing to the ancient Jew.  Thirdly, some translations give more explicit explanations of what Babel really means to your average ancient Jew, but the crux of it is that it's a play on words based on the Hebrew for "to mix up" or something similar.  Essentially, the city was called Babel because God mixed the people up there.

There's a very interesting translation (The Amplified Bible, which is entirely too Christian for my taste but which does provide some parenthetical context not present in the text itself) which spells out exactly what's going on.

They said, “Come, let us build a city for ourselves, and a tower whose top will reach into the heavens, and let us make a [famous] name for ourselves, so that we will not be scattered [into separate groups] and be dispersed over the surface of the entire earth [as the Lord instructed].” Now 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 [unified] people, and they all have the same language. This is only the beginning of what they will do [in rebellion against Me], and now no evil thing they imagine they can do will be impossible for them.

So now we see what the ancient Jew would have understood: that the problem wasn't pride, but rather that God had said previously that the descendants of Noah were supposed to go forth across the Earth and be fruitful and multiply and so forth, and these folks were gathering together and not spreading out.  Sure, there's a certain pridefulness there, but basically, God said to move on and these people weren't doing it.

Well fuck you, people who yearn for stability and cohabitation.  No communication for you.

So God fucks their shit up and they get back to wandering around the Earth being unable to communicate with one another.  Like the Lord intended.  Seems a bit dickish to me.  But it's a just-so story.  Why are there different languages and cultures?  Babylon.  Now go fetch Grandpa another bourbon.

The second reason this story is worth talking about is the questions it raises about "literal" readers of the Bible.  Firstly, while there's all sorts of furor about evolution, you don't hear too many Christians protesting the teaching of linguistics in schools.  Probably because it's too complicated for them to satisfactorily protest, but that's neither here nor there.  If there was a Noah and an ark and Genesis is literal truth and not myth, then there should be no evidence that languages evolved either, because clearly that's not true: languages all came into being at some point several thousand years ago.

Similarly, sociology should be a problem too.  Culture as we know it didn't evolve, it came into being at some point several thousand years ago when God cast our ancestors to the four winds.  I'm not even talking about the problems of a 6000 year timeline for this; there should be no evidence that culture evolved.  It simply came into being.

Beyond that, if gathering together to build great cities with great towers is evidence that humanity is violating God's will, why don't we see people standing in front of skyscrapers with placards reading, "God Hates Cities?"  I know that the fundamentalist types are worried about one world government and language and so forth, but it seems to me that Genesis 11 trumps anything later than it in the Bible, and all the homosexuality stuff didn't inspire God to create the division of languages and cultures, so all of that seems like small potatoes.  If you're a Biblical "literalist" then you should abandon civilization and move to Antarctica or something to make sure you're not in violation of one of the original instructions given by God to mankind.

Of course, we don't see any of that happening because it's much easier to tell the kiddies that the story of Babel is about people trying to build a tower to Heaven and God punishing their pride.

In the end, it's a just-so story about why we don't all talk and act the same way.  I think I prefer space aliens.