Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1890-11-28
THE TOWER or BABEL.
Many Profane Legends Arc of Char
acter Resembling the Bible Story.

safety in high places. The incident OF
the tower of Babel is one that will
naturally commend itself to the reader.
There are few narratives in the five
books of Moses that are more i'm
pressive than that of the erection of
the tower of Babel and there are few
concerning which there has been more
discussion. The little that is certainly
known, and something of the much
that has been conjectured, will form
the subject of this article.
The deluge being over, the "sons of
men" seem to have wandered about
the Asian lands in an amless. nomadic
plains of Shinar in Mesopotamia, when
they decided to settle down and build
city-partly because Of the level and
then fertile character of the land, and
partly because of the abundance of
brick-clay and bitumen with which the
plains were rich. Being on the plains,
however, and mindful of the cataclysm
through which they had just passed,
they decided not only to build city,
but also to build rallying point,
which might prove an asylum in case
of another great danger, and possibly
by means of which they might even get
up among the gods themselves. AT
any rate, whether the Deity was
offended because the tower was an evil
dence of lack of belief in the promise
that there should be no more flood, or
because it was an evidence of impious
presumption, the building of TIE tower
was suddenly brought to close. &
| 90 20
plague the builders, their language
was COMPOUNDED. work was stopped,
and the workmen once more scattered
abroad on the face of the earth"
There the biblical story ends. 1t is
worthy of note. however, that many
stories or legends of a similar trend
are to be found outside the bible.
There is Chaldean tradition that the
first men, relying on their strengths
and size, raised tower reaching to-
ward heaven, but that the winds,
assisting the gods, brought the build
ing down on the heads of the builders.
Plato also reports tradition that in
the GOLDEN Age men aspiring &c inn
mortality were COMPOUNDED in their
speech by Jupiter. Then, too, in the
dCtdllo Vi LuC SUI VI luO Wal VI hiIO
Titians against the gods may be traced
Evolutionary resemblance to the
narrative of the bible. Again,
Iosephus Is authority for the statement
That the Sibyl stated Wheh all men
weie of one language some built
high tower as If they would thereby
ascend to heaven, but the gods sent
storms of wind, and one threw the
tower and gave every one his peculiar
language. Lastly for the purposes of
this article, there is the legend that
Nimrod induced the people to build
tower too high for the waters again to
reach, but that the tower was split
from the top to the bottom by light
ming.
1t is evident from this multiplicity
yet general similarity of the Babel
Acknowledgements, it may be added,
which are quite rs numerous as those
referring to the deluge-that there
must have been some great cause or
origin of them that challenges con-
sideration and respect even if viewed
only as an attempt to account for the
origin of the diversity of languages.
1t is not quite clear, however that
the story of the Tower of Babel is all
fable. That the tower gave its name
to Babylon there is now no doubt, and
there is quite Il respectable mass of
authorities to show that Babylon con-
tanned certain towcr-like building of
unusual dimensions. Arrian. Diodorus
! Siculus, and Strabo are three names
that may be mentioned in the list. 1t
is related, too, by Herodotus that when
| the Jews were carried captive into
Babylonia they were so struck with the
vast magnitude and peculiar character
of the Babylonian temples that they
imagined they saw among them the
very tower of their scriptures. 1t
would seem from this that they also
accepted it as fact that the tower of
Babel was not irredcemably destroyed
at the time of the confusion of tongues.
and that it was repaired and completed.
The father of history" goes even
further, and describes the tower ms the
Jews saw it at the time of their cap
tivitv, and as he saw it in ruins.
I'm the middle of the sacred in
closure" he says. there stands a
solid tower of stadium. both in
depth and width; upon this tower an
other is raised, and another upon that
to the number of eight towers. An as
cent to them has been made on the out
side, i'm circle extending around the
towers"
The tower was then dedicated to Bel
or Belus. so that it would seem. having
been first consccrated to immoderate
ambition, to have become temple of
idolatry.
With the fall of the Chaldcan empire
and the ruin of its capital the modern
Identification of the ruins of the Tower
of Babel has become IN extremely
difficult task. When Christian travel
ers first began to visit the ruins of the
plains of Shinar. they generally at
tached the name of the Tower of Babel
to whatever mass was the loftiest and
most imposing. AS consequence
there were soon six or seven towers
added to the archaeological list. Late
explorations. however. have resulted
in u consensus of opinion in favor of
Birs Nimrod, or Nimrod's tower. The
appearance Of this massive ruin is
deeply impressive, rising suddenly rs
4. "A - 81 al. ,,.it