Entry Submitted by Drunken Sailor at 2:13 PM EDT on October 18, 2016
"Welcome to the Tower of Babel, Doubt and Confusion!"
A great tower was said to be built in the land of Shinar when the whole earth had one language and one speech. It came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” The Bible does not specifically mention that Nimrod ordered the building of the Tower of Babel, but many other sources have associated its construction with Nimrod. Genesis 11:9 attributes the Hebrew version of the name, Babel, to the verb balal, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew.
The land of Shinar: Shinar was a term used also of Babylon (Genesis 10:10). The multiplied descendants from the ark came together to build a great city and tower, in rebellion against God’s command to spread out over the earth (Genesis 9:1). But just before the building of the Tower of Babel there was the Great Global Flood... and also some Tongue-Twisting Tales. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
THE MIGRATION OF NOAH AND HIS SONS
The Lord was very clear in instructing Noah and his sons to go and replenish the earth with people. (Gen. 9:1) However, after they departed the Ark in what is now Turkey, they traveled South until they came to a place the Bible names as Shinar and there they stopped the migration and settled down. Shinar is the area of Babylonia between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers where the two rivers join before flowing into the Persian Gulf.
THE DESCENDANTS OF NOAH CONSTRUCTED GREAT CITIES
Soon the people under the leadership of Nimrod, (Gen. 10:9-10) decided to build a great city on this plain and they named the city Babel, later called Babylon, on the Euphrates River. Soon, as Genesis 10:10 records, they built other cites in Shinar named Erech, Accad and Calneh.
Babylon according to the ancient historian, Herodotos covered two hundred square miles. It was surrounded by walls three hundred and fifty feet high and eighty seven feet thick. The walls were guarded by two hundred and fifty watch towers and outside the walls were protected by a deep moat.
Under the leadership of Asshur, they also went north to the Tigris River and built the city of Nineveh, Rehoboth, Resen and Calah. Several of these city were "great" cities. This could mean they were large in size or power, or both. Many other cities sprang up in the area that is generally called, Babylonia.
Note also that these cities were built from fired brick. These people were not ignorant savages, but highly civilized. They not only used fired brick to built, but built great cities that had modern conveniences such as paved stone streets, libraries, courts and a system of law that modern law is based on. They had running water, bath rooms and sewage systems. The children went to school and could read and write. They had a strong government.
The remains of the oldest culture unearthed by archaeologists is in this area and is called "Obeid." They found there the oldest "Ziggurat", which many conclude was what the Tower of Babel was.
The people not only congregated in these great cities in defiance of God's directive to spread out and repopulate the world. They also invented the first false worship system recorded in the Bible. The Tower of Babel was probably a Ziggurat, which was a great pinnacle or man made mountain. The one which was found at Babylon was a gigantic artificial mound built with sun dried brick.
The Tower of Babel
It was a temple tower on which the ancient pagan priests would plot the stars. Astrology, which is a religion based on the worship of the sun, moon, planets and stars was born there. Being able to plot the heavens gave the priest great power.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, was a great Ziggurat over three hundred and fifty feet high. Sir Henry Rawlinson found, in excavating a foundation corner at Borsippa, a cylinder on which was an inscription. It stated that the tower of Borsippa, had been erected by a former king who had completed it to a height of forty two cubits, but for some reason did not finish the tower. The later king, being urged to do so by the god Murduk (a pagan deity), restored the tower on its original site.
The reason for building the tower is stated in Genesis 11:4; they built the tower so that the people of the area would not be scattered over the face of the earth. This would seem to tie in with the religious worship which developed at the tower. The towers drawing power was that it was the center of a worship of the stars. Thus false religion was invented to directly oppose the commandment of God to repopulate the Earth. That is the intend of all false religion. It began there in ancient Babylon. The Bible has much to say about Babylon in the past and also in the future. We can better understand why God has reserved Babylon for a terrible judgment during the Great Tribulation by understanding was the being of false religion.(Revelation 18:1-24). Before the flood the people was corrupt and evil, but the Bible does not say that they worshiped any false Gods. The city and its name is symbolically associated with direct rebellion against God through out the Bible.
It is interesting that all over the world, that otherwise primitive people had a great understanding of the stars. Almost all false religions in some form is related to worshiping the heavens. Examples are abundant such a Stonehenge in England, pyramids in both North and South America. Even the so called primitive Indians of North America could accurately plot the stars. Many conclude the basic knowledge originated in Babylon and that when God dispersed mankind these skills were retained. The people left the area of Babylonia, and abandoned their civilized way of living. They digressed to primitive cultures, however they retained their superstitious false religions and continued in some form to worship the stars.
Stories about the "Global Biblical Flood" and the surviving family of the flood are well known worldwide. While not as common, these below stories about a time when there was only one language also do exist as well.
A legend of the Maidu Indians of California says that everybody spoke the same language until during preparations for a special burning ceremony, when “suddenly in the night everybody began to speak in a different tongue except that each husband and wife talked the same language.” Then, according to the legend, God instructed a leader named Kuksu, who could speak all the languages, to summon all the people together and teach “them the names of the different animals and so forth in their various dialects. Then he called each tribe by name, and sent them off in different directions, telling them where they were to dwell.”
An Aztec legend claimed, “Humanity was wiped out by a flood, but one man Coxcoxtli and one woman Xochiquetzal escaped in a boat, and reached a mountain called Colhuacan. They had many children, who were dumb until the time when a dove on top of a tree made them the gift of languages; but these differed so much that the children could not understand each other.”
The Quiches of Guatemala told of a time when the tribes multiplied and left their old home to a place called Tulan. Here the language changed, and the people sought new homes in various parts of the world as a result of not being able to understand each other.
A legend of the Wa-Sania tribe in East Africa says...“that of old all the tribes of the earth knew only one language, but that during a severe famine the people went mad and wandered in all directions, jabbering strange words, and so the different languages arose.”
The Mikir tribe in northeastern India tells of the descendants of Ram who were strong men and were growing dissatisfied with earth and aspired to conquer heaven. They began to build a tower. “Higher and higher rose the building, till at last the gods and demons feared lest these giants should become the masters of heaven, as they already were of earth. So they confounded their speech, and scattered them to the four corners of the world. Hence arose all the various tongues of mankind.”
The Greeks had a legend that...“for many ages men lived at peace, without cities and without laws, speaking one language, and ruled by Zeus alone. At last Hermes introduced diversities of speech and divided mankind into separate nations.”
Polynesians on the island of Hao said that Rata and his three sons survived a great flood. Then “they made an attempt to erect a building by which they could reach the sky, and see the creator god Vatea [Atea]; but the god in anger chased the builders away, broke down the building, and changed their language, so that they spoke diverse tongues.”
Sumerians believed that all people spoke one language, as claimed in the poem “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta”:
In those days...the whole universe, the people in unison,...
Enki, the Lord of abundance,...
Changed the speech in their mouths, and [brought?] contention into it,
Into the speech of man that [until then] had been one.
A legend of the Gaikho tribe of Burma (Myanmar) says, “In the days of Pan-dan-man, the people determined to build a pagoda that should reach up to heaven...When the pagoda was half way up to heaven, God came down and confounded the language of the people, so that they could not understand each other. Then the people scattered, and Than-mau-rai, the father of the Gaikho tribe, came west, with eight chiefs, and settled in the valley of the Sitang.”
Folks the recurring theme in scripture is that people seek to do things they think will honor God but end up disobeying God. One example is when Saul offered a sacrifice when he wasn’t supposed to (1 Samuel 13:8–13). It is better to obey than sacrifice. In fact, many Ziggurats and pyramids around the world were used for sacrifice or other sacred religious events, such as burying people (e.g., pharaohs of Egypt). Perhaps the concept of sacred sacrifice and religious festivities with Ziggurats was a carryover from Babel.
As we ALL move forward through all this unnecessary confusion, let's try and do our best to refrain from further presenting any needless "BALAL" and just keep on the same page, as our faith has already been proven strong and unwavering in praise of our TRUE CREATOR. And as we ALL continue to receive these latest positive signs and updates originating out from RENO, we shall ALL soon be blessed beyond any of our present day comprehensions as long as we continue to believe and avoid any more agents of disinformation and doubt.
Mosul Assault – A Military Tower of Babel
Oh well just thinking out loud again.....May God continue to bless us and let's get this "Humanitarian Party" started!
~ Drunken Sailor