The center of the Old Testament? > > Home

Tower of Babel

Is everything you know about it wrong?

Posted Friday, February 08, 2008 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Old Testament  
The latest issue of JETS (December 2007) has some interesting articles. The first is entitled "A Historical Reading of Genesis 11:1-9: The Sumerian Demise and Dispersion under the Ur III Dynasty" by Paul Penley. This fascinating article argues for the a known historical reading of the Tower of Bable, i.e., an event that we actually know about. Instead of being simply a historical event that happened a long time, Penley (a PhD student at Trinity) says that the story refers to the fall of the Ur dynasty. Here is how he gets there.

1. He dates the event as happening as some point between 3500 (based on the rise of urbansim) and 2000 (Abraham).
2. Language has already been diversified by this point, so it cannot be the birth of languages. This is only a localized language being confused.
3. Genesis 11:2 mentions a move eastward, corresponding to a great movement of people moved east and started an urban culture the early 4th century BC.
4. The best place to put the Tower of Babel is the dividing of the land at the time of Peleg (10:25). Hence, this is a localized event that focuses upon the line of Shem only.
5. Dating Peleg based on Abraham gives us about 2100 - 2000 BC, the time of the Ur III dynasty and its demise.
6. Ur III was known as a time of economic prosperity and a time of extensive building of ziggurats, which is probably what the tower of Babel refers to.
7. The fall of Ur III is described in similar language to what happened to Babel (dispersed, etc; see ANET 457-463). If this is the case, then the cause of the dispersion is the Amorites.
8. The fall of Sumeria caused great linguistic difficulty, since Sumerian is not Semitic like the languages of those who followed in Mesopotamia. There is a also a story about language being confused from the time of Ur III. Hence, Sumerian is no longer the trade language which everyone knows.
Conclusions: The story does not refer to one particular incident, but summarizes two thousand years of history. The ziggurat is not one tower but is metaphorical for the entire Sumerian culture. The reason for the confusion of tongues was that the Sumerian kings were playing god, taking on divine roles for themselves. The Tower of Babel is a rejection of paganism. Further, the fall of Ur III and the Sumerian empire led to great upheaval and uncertainty in the land, the perfect time for Abraham to enter the scene and for God to work through him. The Tower of Babel is to be read with the following chapters, as a prologue to Abraham, rather than being read with the Table of Nations.

 

I resonate with much that is found here, such as the belief that the tower was a ziggurat and that the Tower of Babel does not represent the beginning of the languages of the world. But I can't bring myself to follow the whole theory. There is just not enough clues in the text to point to a parable style story rather than simply a directly historical story. I'm not necessarily opposed to the reading proposed here, I just don't think that it is a correct reading. There are too many speculative jumps made in the analysis, although they are interesting jumps.

On a related note, this seems to have some connection with the creation/evolution debate. One of the arguments against an evolution reading of Genesis 1-2 is that if we do not take those chapters literally, then that will set a pattern for the rest of the Bible. And so here in Genesis 11, we have an example of that. If we take Genesis 1-2 and 11 non-literally, then why not Abraham? We could read Abraham as metaphorical for a tribe of people who left Ur and moved to Canaan. I'm not necessarily opposed to non-literal interpretations of texts, but I prefer to have some measure of indication in the texts themselves. If the creationists get ahold of this article, I imagine that this will be a part of their arguments in the future against an evolutionary reading of Genesis 1-2.
 

Login to add comments