Evidence for the Tower of Babel

[Sunday21]

 

[Blossom76]

I always found the story of the Tower of Babel disturbing!  It seems to me that humanity was getting along - and getting ahead, the God and his angels came down and stopped our progress.  I don't agree with what happened, I can't see what is wrong with the progress of the human race, I don't understand why God would want to stop that. ?. It also created a lot of division within humanity, wars, religious differences, segregation.

 

⁵ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.⁶ The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

⁸ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 

 

It doesn't make sense to me that it was over the unity of humanity and the building of a city and a skyscraper, we have plenty of those now.  We no longer have the unity of the human race though, maybe God had more of a problem with the unity thing?

Just my two cents, I guess the Old Testament is full of disturbing stories when you think about it

Great video though, I love seeing any evidence of scripture ?

[zil]

I didn't watch the whole video, but it seemed to have the timeline wrong (at least as far as the Biblical account of the tower of Babel).

The Genesis account of the tower is too vague to take much of anything from.  But the account in the Book of Jasher is interesting (and perhaps other historic books may have interesting stuff in them, not sure).  The text is free online.  Chapter 9, starting in verse 21.  They intended to reach heaven and go to war against God and take heaven from Him, place their own gods there.  If a brick fell and broke, they would mourn it; but if one of the workers fell, they wouldn't care.  In short, the people were exceedingly wicked.  Rather than destroy them, God confounded their language.  It makes sense in a way - they separate, and the overwhelming influence of the most wicked over the whole is reduced, giving individual groups a chance to choose better - if they will.

Honestly, I don't think we really know what happened or what the story is meant to tell us.  It's a bit of knowledge we can look forward to learning later.

[Blossom76]

2 hours ago, zil said:

But the account in the Book of Jasher is interesting (and perhaps other historic books may have interesting stuff in them, not sure).  The text is free online.  Chapter 9, starting in verse 21.  They intended to reach heaven and go to war against God and take heaven from Him, place their own gods there.  If a brick fell and broke, they would mourn it; but if one of the workers fell, they wouldn't care.  In short, the people were exceedingly wicked.  Rather than destroy them, God confounded their language.  It makes sense in a way - they separate, and the overwhelming influence of the most wicked over the whole is reduced, giving individual groups a chance to choose better - if they will.

I'll definitely be reading this book, thank you

[Traveler]

 

One of the early historians of antiquities was an individual called Josephus.  He is interesting to me because his entire motivation was that he claimed that there were in his day – extended and powerful efforts to “change” the history of the Jews (kind of like fake news) from within the Roman empire.  He wrote in an effort to keep the records correct (straight).  Josephus explained that following the flood most people remained in mountains on high ground because they were afraid of another flood.

He then explains that Nimrod was the grandson of Ham and had contempt for G-d.  The lower lands were much more fruitful and productive.  To entice people to come down from the mountains and live in low lands to create wealth and power in a centralized government, Nimrod built a great tower where the people could go to be safe from another flood.  According to Josephus the sin of Nimrod and the people was to trust in the “arm of flesh” (Nimrod) and not to call upon G-d (have faith in G-d).  The other problem is that G-d commanded the people to spread out across the earth and not create just one very powerful government.  This can be read in Chapter 4 of Josephus’ first book.

I find this account interesting for many reasons.  One is that it makes a lot more sense than what many think is being told in the Bible.  But there is something else I find much more important.  That is that for 3,000 years things had been taught and during the time of Josephus subtle changes were being made to “disrupt” the truths of the ancients.  In other words, we have another witness (other than the Book of Mormon) that precious truths were being deliberately being taken out and altered (great apostasy) from sacred scriptures.

 

The Traveler

Edited January 15, 2018 by Traveler

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Blossom76 said:

I always found the story of the Tower of Babel disturbing!  It seems to me that humanity was getting along - and getting ahead, the God and his angels came down and stopped our progress.  I don't agree with what happened, I can't see what is wrong with the progress of the human race, I don't understand why God would want to stop that. ?. I

It doesn't make sense to me that it was over the unity of humanity and the building of a city and a skyscraper, we have plenty of those now.  We no longer have the unity of the human race though, maybe God had more of a problem with the unity thing?

A common interpretation (not prophetic, mind you) is that they were actually building a temple to replace the temple of the Lord.  It was yet another period of apostasy.

To have all the nations of the earth united in a good cause would be wonderful as you say.  But to have all the nations of the earth united in apostasy is a very bad thing.  That is what the Lord was stopping by getting them to stop talking to each other.

I personally have a different take on it.  I believe the confounding of tongues was due to man's evil and desire to NOT get along with one another. 

The power of the Holy Ghost is what allows proper communication between man and man as well as man and God.  Spirit to spirit communication.  When we as mortals wish to deny the Holy Ghost, then that communication is dimmed.  People start using their own jargons, accents, figures of speech, and secret combinations.  This separated tribes and nations who could not or would not understand each other.  They naturally separated.

What I've found in life as well as a study of scriptures is that whenever man is cursed, 90% of the time, man curses himself. But the scriptures tend to short-hand it to "God cursed man because of iniquity."

[Blossom76]

17 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

The power of the Holy Ghost is what allows proper communication between man and man as well as man and God.  Spirit to spirit communication.  When we as mortals wish to deny the Holy Ghost, then that communication is dimmed.  People start using their own jargons, accents, figures of speech, and secret combinations.  This separated tribes and nations who could not or would not understand each other.  They naturally separated.

Thank you, thats so very true.

[wenglund]

7 hours ago, Blossom76 said:

I always found the story of the Tower of Babel disturbing!  It seems to me that humanity was getting along - and getting ahead, the God and his angels came down and stopped our progress.  I don't agree with what happened, I can't see what is wrong with the progress of the human race, I don't understand why God would want to stop that. ?. It also created a lot of division within humanity, wars, religious differences, segregation.

To me, the moral of the Tower story is that pride goeth before the fall. Here we have a people with such arrogance as to suppose they could get to heaven and become gods on their own, thereby eliminating any need for God, or at the very least circumventing God and perhaps doing so in a way contrary to or in defiance of  His will. God showed them otherwise, and this for their own good (humility is requisite in seeking Christ), and in a way that wisely restored their reliance on God (when challenged with communicating with other people, then people will tend to communicate with God.).

Sadly, the same form of pride is manifesting itself today by way of modern atheism, particularly disciples of Nietzsche:

Quote

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Dr. Jordan B Peterson provides a fascinating perspective by suggesting that the moral of the Tower story is that, with state-ism (the worship of governments of man), when things get too big, they are destined to fail, which he likewise relates to our own day with the collapse of Communism and the potential collapse of socialized Western civilization:

In other words, the Tower story is a cautionary tale against pride and big man-made governments.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited January 15, 2018 by wenglund