Biblical History of Man: The Flood to Babel part 5

Now we come down to the issue of the tower itself.  Scripture doesn't call it the tower of Babel.  The place they built the tower was given the name of Babel because of the confusion of languages that happened there.

Several reasons have been put forward by various commentators concerning the reasons the people were building this tower.

• Josephus: to keep from being destroyed in another flood, they were building a tower too high for another flood to reach.
• An observatory to observe the stars.  Remember that God put signs in the skies but Satan distorted the meaning
• A place to worship the host of heaven
• Jewish Midrash: there was an idol on top holding a sword aimed toward heaven, the intent being to make war with God
• As a support to hold up heaven so that another deluge would not happen
• Defiance toward God (and toward Abraham)

Regardless of any additional potential motivations, scripture DOES tell us that

• They wanted to keep the people from scattering
• They wanted to make a name for themselves

...both of which were in opposition to God's command.

It seems that they were successful in these two goals because God had to intervene to ensure their obedience.

However, the construction project would not last forever.  In fact, it appears that the tower was complete (Genesis 11:5).  Verse 8 tells us that they were building the city when the confusion of languages happened.  Once the tower was complete, the people could have gone their own ways in obedience to God's commands, and there would have been no need to confuse their languages.

But God's intervention WAS necessary.  So it was not just the building project that kept the people there.  There was evidently some other purpose. 

What did the tower look like?
Many artists of the past 500 years or so have attempted to picture what they thought the tower looked like.

Miguel Rodriguez

Paul Gosselin

Athanasius Kircher

 

Gustave Dore

 

An interesting description of the tower exists in the Jewish Book of Jubilees.  This book is a Jewish collection of writings that are considered pseudopigrapha by the Christian church in the west, but are considered scripture by the Eastern Christian church.  The writings were well known to the early church fathers, and 15 scrolls in the Dead Sea Scrolls are of the Book of Jubilees.

The Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues (x. 18-27; cf. Gen. xi. 1-9).

18. And in the three and thirtieth jubilee, in the first year in the second week, Peleg took to himself a wife, whose name was Lômnâ the daughter of Sînâ’ar, and she bare him a son in the fourth year of this week, and he called his name Reu; for he said: "Behold the children of men have become evil through the wicked purpose of building for themselves a city and a tower in the land of Shinar."
19. For they departed from the land of Ararat eastward to Shinar; for in his days they built the city and the tower, saying, "Go to, let us ascend thereby into heaven."
20. And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which cometh out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar.
21. And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height (of a brick) was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms, and (the extent of one wall was) thirteen stades (and of the other thirty stades).
22. And the Lord our God said unto us: "Behold, they are one people, and (this) they begin to do, and now nothing will be withholden from them. Go to, let us go down and confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech, and they may be dispersed into cities and nations, and one purpose will no longer abide with them till the day of judgment."
23. And the Lord descended, and we descended with Him to see the city and the tower which the children of men had built.
24. And He confounded their language, and they no longer understood one another's speech, and they ceased then to build the city and the tower.
25. For this reason the whole land of Shinar is called Babel, because the Lord did there confound all the language of the children of men, and from thence they were dispersed into their cities, each according to his language and his nation.
26. And the Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth, and behold it was between Asshur and Babylon in the land of Shinar, and they called its name "Overthrow."
27. In the fourth week in the first year in the beginning thereof in the four and thirtieth jubilee, were they dispersed from the land of Shinar.

This record tells us that they built the tower for 43 years and that its size was impressive: 13 stades by 30 stades is 8,281 feet by 19,110 feet or 1.57 miles by 3.6 miles; its height of 5433 cubits is at least 8149 feet or 1.6 miles. 

Now, would you say that this is an impossible situation?  That the whole thing would crumble if it was that large?

• In his book, Structures or why things don't fall down (Pelican 1978–1984), Professor J.E. Gordon considers the height of the Tower of Babel. He wrote, 'brick and stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot (2,000 kg per cubic metre) and the crushing strength of these materials is generally rather better than 6,000 lbf per square inch or 40 megapascals. Elementary arithmetic shows that a tower with parallel walls could have been built to a height of 2.1 km (1.3 mi) before the bricks at the bottom were crushed. However by making the walls taper towards the top they ... could well have been built to a height where the men of Shinnar [sic] would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their own dead weight."

Do you still think this is somewhat fantastic?  Unbelievable?  Here are some other historical records:

• Gregory of Tours (I, 6) writing c. 594, quotes the earlier historian Orosius (c. 417) as saying the tower was "laid out foursquare on a very level plain. Its wall, made of baked brick cemented with pitch, is fifty cubits wide, two hundred high, and four hundred and seventy stades in circumference. A stade contains five agripennes. Twenty-five gates are situated on each side, which make in all one hundred. The doors of these gates, which are of wonderful size, are cast in bronze. The same historian Orosius tells many other tales of this city, and says: 'Although such was the glory of its building still it was conquered and destroyed.'"
• A typical medieval account is given by Giovanni Villani (1300): He relates that "it measured eighty miles round, and it was already 4,000 paces high, or 5.92 km (3.68 mi) and 1,000 paces thick, and each pace is three of our feet." The 14th century traveler John Mandeville also included an account of the tower, and reported that its height had been 64 furlongs or 13 km (8 mi), according to the local inhabitants.
• The 17th century historian Verstegan provides yet another figure - quoting Isidore, he says that the tower was 5,164 paces high, or 7.6 km (4.7 mi), and quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it was high, more like a mountain than a tower. He also quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers and animals, and other authors who claim that the path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain for the animals used in the construction.

But we really don't know for sure what the tower looked like or how large it was, just that its top was to reach to heaven and that it seems to have been completed or near completion.  However, we can make some deductions based on the language of the Old Testament.

The Hebrew word used here for "tower" is migdal.  It is also used to represent a pyramidal bed for planting flowers.  We can probably assume that the tower was a similar shape.  This shape appears all over the world in the form of the ziggurat, or stepped pyramid.

This is an artist's representation of a ziggurat still under construction.  Obviously, it is not as large as described in the records I've listed above!

Recently, scholars have discovered that a private collection of ancient manuscripts belonging to a Norwegian businessman named Martin Schoyen contains a stele in cuneiform text that describes a Babylonian tower called the Etemananki. 

• Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by the 6th century BC Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II. According to modern scholars such as Stephen L. Harris, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews.
• Nebuchadnezzar wrote that the original tower had been built in antiquity: "A former king built the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time earthquakes and lightning had dispersed its sun-dried clay; the bricks of the casing had split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps." [source: Wikipedia]

 

In Nebuchadnezzar's own words:

• The tower, the eternal house, which I founded and built. I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold, other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine. The first which is the house of the earth’s base, the most ancient monument of Babylon; I built and finished it. I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper. We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth the most ancient monument of Borsippa. A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed the sun-dried clay. The bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building. I did not change the site nor did I take away the foundation. In a fortunate month, in an auspicious day, I undertook to build porticoes around the crude brick masses, and the casing of burnt bricks. I adapted the ciruits, I put the inscription of my name in the Kitir of the portico. I set my hand to finish it. And to exalt its head. As it had been done in ancient days, so I exalted its summit.

This same tower was in the reconstruction plans of Alexander the Great about 300 years later.  He ordered it demolished to prepare for rebuilding, but his death interfered with the plans, and nothing more was said about this tower in antiquity.

 

Whether this tower, the Etemenanki was the Tower of Babel, or was another smaller, similar tower will never be known.