The Tower of Babel

[Ruben]

What meaning should we give to the tower of Babel?  Has God truly confused the language of men for fear that they would build a tower to reach heaven?

[Carborendum]

On 12/3/2024 at 12:25 AM, Ruben said:

What meaning should we give to the tower of Babel?  Has God truly confused the language of men for fear that they would build a tower to reach heaven?

My theory:

The tower was emblematic of forgetting God as and ultimate source of truth and depending on the strength of man as the ultimate power. This always introduces pride into the society.

The way this has been playing out today:

This ideology never stops with the individual.  They change definitions of words to mean whatever they want it to mean. 

Men are women. 
Women are men. 
"War is peace."
"Freedom is slavery."
"Ignorance is strength."

Society fractures along ideological lines.  And to support those ideologies, people speak differently.  They change vocabulary to suit their narratives.  They use different accents.  They rift from others who disagree.  They refuse to even talk in a civil manner with people with whom they disagree.  They have no common values on which to base judgment.

"Thought corrupts language.  Language corrupts thought."

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them."

"It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."

Edited December 4, 2024 by Carborendum

[laronius]

There is a belief, which I lean towards, that the idea wasn't to build a tower high enough to physically get to heaven but that the tower was an apostate form of a temple. I have yet to hear a good explanation of how the language changed though. Might just be symbolic.

[zil2]

There is another idea, that the city of Enoch was literally (the physical location) taken from the earth (slowly) and raised to some other place and the tower of Babel was intended to reach the city of Enoch.

I don't have time right now - have to post an ink review! - but the account in the Book of Jasher (you can read for free at that google books link) is interesting.

Back for more in a while.  Easy answer though - God feared nothing, confounding their language and scattering them was in response to their unity in arrogance and wickedness.

[zil2]

1 hour ago, laronius said:

I have yet to hear a good explanation of how the language changed though. Might just be symbolic.

Ether gives a clue - people were made to "not understand" their words - it doesn't say that God altered the language from, say Adamic to French.  Rather, it suggests he altered the people so that they could not understand each other.  @Carborendum explains well how that happens.

[mikbone]

Ether 1:34-35

The Jaredites spoke the Adamic language.  It is the language that God taught to Adam & Eve.  It is a language that is perfect.  Likely it is hard to mis-communicate your words in this language.  When we go to paradise we will have to re-learn the language.  Kind of like how people tend to learn English when they move to the USA or Hebrew when they move to Israel.  I bet that Spirt Prison has maintained the many fractured languages of the world.

Ether 12:24 And thou hast made us that we could write but little, because of the awkwardness of our hands. Behold, thou hast not made us mighty in writing like unto the brother of Jared, for thou madest him that the things which he wrote were mighty even as thou art, unto the overpowering of man to read them.

Another thought is that God is communicating that there is no shortcut to finding Heaven.  No telescope or spaceship will get us there either.

[zil2]

29 minutes ago, mikbone said:

The Jaredites spoke the Adamic language.  It is the language that God taught to Adam & Eve.  It is a language that is perfect.  Likely it is hard to mis-communicate your words in this language.

Probably.  But it also probably got corrupted along with everything else as the fall began, and thus was no longer perfect, and miscommunication was possible by the time of Babel.

Quote

Ether 1:34 And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.

Getting old has made this easier to understand.  Young people are all the time trying to come up with ways to speak so their parents don't understand what they're saying.  And then there's "woke" where people co-opt words, symbols, and entire ideas so that you basically can't understand each other because the words themselves have different meanings.  These days, you can't use a rainbow image, or even show something that has rainbow colors to it, without people assuming you intend to communicate support for the alphabet soup folk.  Long gone is simply appreciating a rainbow for its beauty.

Whether God altered people, or whether God saved the Jaredites from being "confounded" by simply helping them to keep their knowledge of the truth, it's hard to say - scripture is never about the technicalities, but rather the spiritual significance.

The tower of Babel in the book of Jasher starts in verse 20 of Chapter 9.  This is happening in the days of Abraham, consistent with people still living very long lives. It goes into details about the various intents of the builders - all rebelling against God. It describes them valuing a brick over the life of a man.  Verse 32 reads:

Quote

And God said to the seventy angels who stood foremost before him, to those who were near to him, saying, come let us descend and confuse their tongues, that one man shall not understand the language of his neighbor, and they did so unto them.

And since they couldn't understand each other, violence erupted between them.  Huh.  Sound familiar?

[zil2]

9 hours ago, Ruben said:

What meaning should we give to the tower of Babel?

I think @mikbone hit on it best - there is no way for us to get to heaven on our own (even if all mankind united in the effort), let alone, as the Book of Jasher includes, with the intent to overthrow God (Lucifer, anyone?).  Jesus Christ is the only way for us to reach heaven.  All our effort will amount to nothing without Him and without following Him.

Also, one could learn from it how important it is to be able to communicate with our fellow men, and that this is a gift from God, maintained in righteousness and lost in wickedness.  Whether physically or linguistically, God will "scatter" the wicked, both to hinder their efforts and for their own good.

[NeuroTypical]

10 hours ago, Ruben said:

What meaning should we give to the tower of Babel?

I speculate it is a scriptural symbolic story.  I don't lose any sleep over the possibility that I am wrong, nor do I take issue with anyone who speculates differently.

[Just_A_Guy]

On 12/2/2024 at 11:25 PM, Ruben said:

What meaning should we give to the tower of Babel?  Has God truly confused the language of men for fear that they would build a tower to reach heaven?

I suppose I’m open to the possibility that it’s symbolic/allegorical, or at least significantly embellished in some ways.

But a lot of better men than me, take it as historical.  Moroni seems to take it as historical.

I frankly don’t know how to say that Moroni’s account of the Brother of Jared is allegorical or mythologized when it talks about why the BoJ left the old world, but then jerk back and straight-facedly say that it is historical when it describes the BoJ’s interactions with the antemortal Christ.

I can understand and to some extent agree with the argument that the BoM doesn’t necessarily prove Genesis narratives about—say—a literal Eden or a global Flood, because the authors’ allusions to those events would have been washed through the filter of how their culture had trained them to read the Torah.  But with the Jaredite narrative, Moroni’s primary source isn’t the Torah; it’s the Jaredite record itself.  And that record seems to have confirmed that there really was a tower and there really was a confusion of the languages (or, at least, a credible threat thereof).

Edited December 4, 2024 by Just_A_Guy

[Maverick]

On 12/2/2024 at 11:25 PM, Ruben said:

What meaning should we give to the tower of Babel?  Has God truly confused the language of men for fear that they would build a tower to reach heaven?

According to the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon God truly did confound the languages and scattered the people for building the tower.

The exact reason for why building the tower was considered a very wicked deed, worthy of this action in order to stop it, isn’t clear. A common belief is that the people were attempting to get to heaven. Another explanation I’ve seen, which makes more sense to me, is that the people were attempting to build the tower so they could escape and not perish if God sent another great flood. They were trying to outsmart God, in the hopes that they could be wicked without him being able to stop them. 

[Traveler]

39 minutes ago, Maverick said:

According to the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon God truly did confound the languages and scattered the people for building the tower.

The exact reason for why building the tower was considered a very wicked deed, worthy of this action in order to stop it, isn’t clear. A common belief is that the people were attempting to get to heaven. Another explanation I’ve seen, which makes more sense to me, is that the people were attempting to build the tower so they could escape and not perish if God sent another great flood. They were trying to outsmart God, in the hopes that they could be wicked without him being able to stop them. 

According to the historian Josephus in his account of the Jewish antiquities the Tower of Bable was preciously as you have outlined.  Josephus claimed to write the antiquities because of efforts in his time to alter various notions of ancient doctrine.  I have referenced his account of the Tower of Bable as evidence (textual criticism) that our modern Bible has been corrupted making the Book of Mormon a divine necessity in preparing the world for the return of the Messiah.

Josephus’ reference to the Tower of Bable as a refuge from a divine flood.  Also, that the reason for confounding language was to prevent conspiring evil from taking over and corrupting all of humanity.  According to Josephus, following the flood the sons of Noah were commanded to disperse throughout the world.  Nimrod was defying G-d and organizing mankind from a single place according to secret ways established prior to the flood.  This was why a refuge from G-d’s conventual punishment was deemed necessary.

As an additional note I agree with @mikbone concerning the profound nature of the Adamic language (both written and spoken).  That it was a language without ambiguity.  We have a similar language in our time without ambiguity (not only in the language itself but across all human cultures) that we call mathematics.

It is my personal impression that Nimrod and the Tower of Bable has profound prophetic ramifications for today and that the reference we are given in the Book of Mormon to the Tower of Bable and that secret combinations destroyed two of histories most advanced civilizations is meaningful for our time.  I strongly believe that no government or society will stand and survive the tribulations of these last days that opposes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the restoration.

 

The Traveler