Chapter IV: The Confusion of Tongues

=1.= The next subject which is presented in the sacred text is =the confusion of tongues= at the building of the tower of Babel, Gen. 11:1‒10. In this passage of the Scripture history we have an extremely condensed view of an event which must have been one of greater importance than would appear from the very concise manner in which it is described. All that we know from Scripture is that a certain part of the human race coming from the East settled upon the plains of Shinar, and there began the erection of the highest known tower, with the purpose of making themselves a name before they were “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” They began the tower, using brick from the clay which abounds upon the plain of Babylon and bitumen, called “slime” in the text, for mortar. During the building of this city and tower their language, which up to this period was the same, became confused, so that, being unable to understand each other, they were forced to desist, “and they left off to build the city.” This is the brief history.

=2.= From the recently discovered Assyrian history, recorded upon the =tablets= now in the British Museum, it appears that the Babylonians of the earliest ages had a tradition of this tower and of the sudden confusion of tongues. The event seems to indicate that the determination of the early descendants of Noah, probably under Nimrod or his immediate successors, was to settle on the plains and build a vast metropolis and a tower, whose height should serve the double purpose of a means of direction or as a guide to the city, and also of an advertisement of their immense wealth and enterprise amid the surrounding tribes.

=3. The divine intention= was, however, that the command given to Noah and his descendants, that they should replenish the earth, should be literally executed, and it was the divine intervention which prevented all the people from remaining in that land.

As we have said, =the word Babel= in the Greek form is Babylon; but the word which originally meant “confusion” in the Hebrew seems to have been changed from that form originally given it into _Bab_, or “gate,” el, of “God,” for the actual original Hebrew word for “confusion,” as Buxtorf shows from the Rabbinical word for “confusion,” is Bilbal, or Bilbul. Oppert[40] has shown that the word is distinctly of Assyrian derivation, from Balal, to “confound.” Similar changes from original forms have frequently occurred. Thus Beth-lehem is now Beit-lahm the former meaning “house of bread,” and the latter “house of meat.” Borsippa, the name of the ruined tower near Babylon, supposed to be the Tower of Babel, is now called Bar-Sab, the former (Borsippa) meaning the “tower of languages,” the latter (Bar Sab) meaning the “shattered altar,” as Geikie has mentioned.

=4.= In studying the early parts of Biblical history the student should be mindful that history and traditions as recorded by the Assyrians were borrowed, or, more truly speaking, derived, from the early records of the Babylonian and Chaldæan nations, as in some cases is stated upon Assyrian tablets. This fact we have illustrated, page 26. The original records were kept at the old Chaldæan city of Erech, 90 miles southeast of Babylon, at the present ruins of Warka. Assur-bani-pal, the Assyrian king, beside being a great warrior, was also one who encouraged literature and had an immense library, for those days, 10,000 tablets from which were removed to the British Museum. In his time, 668‒647 B. C., the ancient Chaldæan tongue was translated into Assyrian, and in this library at Nineveh was a lexicon of the Chaldæo-Turanian language with the meaning of the words put in Assyrian cuneiform.[41] This showed that so many years had passed that the ancient Chaldæan language was, at that time, nearly lost.

=5. Those records=, both of the Chaldæan and of the later Assyrian ages, have not only been of great service to the student of ancient history, but they have added much to the explanation and corroboration of Biblical history, as we shall hereafter have occasion to show.

=6.= The ruins of both Nineveh and Babylon bear some names which are =reminiscences of Nimrod=, but these seem to have been applied at some comparatively recent date. The chief structure bearing the name of Nimrod is the _Birs Nimrud_, or Tower of Nimrod, ten miles southwest of the modern town of Hillah, which is near the ruins of Babylon. The large mass of burned brick at this place seems to have been originally erected in the form of a steep pyramid some six hundred feet in height and of the same length at its base. It is extremely ancient, as its Assyrian name proves, which name, Saggatu, “the high temple,” is an old Accadian word.

=7. Nebuchadnezzar=, B. C. 604‒562, one of the greatest builders among the Babylonian kings, says of himself that he builded additions to it, although Tiglath-pileser repaired it one hundred years before. It is now a bare hill of yellow sand and bricks a few miles west of the banks of the Euphrates, reaching a height of about 200 feet, a vast mass of brick-work jutting from the mound to a further height of 37 feet. It is very probable that these are the most ancient remains to be found in Babylonia, and in its form seems to have furnished a universal model for all succeeding temples and towers in that region.[42]