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Concept
Tower of Babel
Summary
The Tower of Babel (, Mīgdal Bāḇel) narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth and parable meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages.
According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar (). There they agree to build a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Yahweh, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.
Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in Babylon. While the archaeological record is incompatible with this identification, many scholars believe that the biblical story was inspired by Etemenanki. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 5 The came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech." 8 So the scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the confused (balal) the language of all the earth, and from there the scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Official source
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