Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel | |
---|---|
מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל | |
General information | |
Type | Tower |
Location | Babylon |
Height | See § Height |
The Tower of Babel
According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar (שִׁנְעָר; Σενναάρ). There they agree to build a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Yahweh, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.
Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably
Etymology
The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" (אֶת-הָעִיר וְאֶת-הַמִּגְדָּל) or just "the city" (הָעִיר). The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for Babylon) is uncertain. The native, Akkadian name of the city was Bāb-ilim, meaning "gate of God". However, that form and interpretation itself are now usually thought to be the result of an Akkadian folk etymology applied to an earlier form of the name, Babilla, of unknown meaning and probably non-Semitic origin.[7][8] According to the Bible, the city received the name "Babel" from the Hebrew verb בָּלַל (bālal), meaning to jumble or to confuse.[9]
Narrative
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east,[b] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 5 The LORD[c] came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech." 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused (balal) the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
Composition
Genre
The narrative of the tower of Babel[12] is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon. Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon.[13]: 426 The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages. God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood so God brought into existence multiple languages.[13]: 51 Thus, humans were divided into linguistic groups, unable to understand one another.
Themes
The story's theme of competition between God and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of
Authorship and source criticism
Jewish and Christian tradition attributes the composition of the whole
Comparable myths
Sumerian and Assyrian parallel
There is a
In addition, a further Assyrian myth, dating from the 8th century BC during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC), bears a number of similarities to the later written biblical story.[citation needed]
Greco-Roman parallel
In
"Rendering the heights of heaven no safer than the earth, they say the giants attempted to take the Celestial kingdom, piling mountains up to the distant stars. Then the all-powerful father of the gods hurled his bolt of lightning, fractured Olympus and threw Mount Pelion down from Ossa below."[19]
Mexico
Various traditions similar to that of the tower of Babel are found in Central America. Some writers[
Another story, attributed by the native historian
Arizona
Still another story, attributed to the
Nepal
Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been reported among the Tharu of Nepal and northern India.[24][further explanation needed]
Botswana
According to David Livingstone, the people he met living near Lake Ngami in 1849 had such a tradition, but with the builders' heads getting "cracked by the fall of the scaffolding".[25]
Other traditions
In his 1918 book,
Mythological context
Biblical scholars see the Book of Genesis as
Genesis 10:10
Genesis 11:9[30] attributes the Hebrew version of the name, Babel, to the verb balal, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew. The first century Roman-Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel (בבל), meaning "confusion".[31]
Etemenanki, the ziggurat at Babylon
Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by the 6th-century-BCE Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II, but had fallen into disrepair by the time of Alexander's conquests. He managed to move the tiles of the tower to another location, but his death stopped the reconstruction, and it was demolished during the reign of his successor Antiochus Soter. The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) wrote an account of the ziggurat in his Histories, which he called the "Temple of Zeus Belus".[32]
According to modern scholars, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki. Stephen L. Harris proposed this occurred during the Babylonian captivity.[33] Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of Genesis 11:1–9[34] were inspired by the existence of an apparently incomplete ziggurat at Babylon, and by the phonological similarity between Babylonian Bab-ilu, meaning "gate of God", and the Hebrew word balal, meaning "mixed", "confused", or "confounded".[35]
Later literature
Book of Jubilees
The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower.
And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar. And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height [of a brick] was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433
stades[and of the other thirty stades]. (Jubilees 10:20–21, Charles' 1913 translation)
Pseudo-Philo
In
Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews
The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE), recounted history as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God. In this account, God confused the people rather than destroying them because annihilation with a Flood had not taught them to be godly.
Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into
tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power... Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion. The Sibylalso makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus:—"When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone a peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon."
Greek Apocalypse of Baruch
Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest. (Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 3:5–8)
Midrash
Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of other causes for building the Tower of Babel, and of the intentions of its builders. According to one midrash the builders of the Tower, called "the generation of secession" in the Jewish sources, said: "God has no right to choose the upper world for Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war with God" (Gen. R. xxxviii. 7; Tan., ed. Buber, Noah, xxvii. et seq.).
The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted the builders to reverence. The passage mentions that the builders spoke sharp words against God, saying that once every 1,656 years, heaven tottered so that the water poured down upon the earth, therefore they would support it by columns that there might not be another deluge (Gen. R. l.c.; Tan. l.c.; similarly Josephus, "Ant." i. 4, § 2).
Some among that generation even wanted to war against God in heaven (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a). They were encouraged in this undertaking by the notion that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back dripping with blood, so that the people really believed that they could wage war against the inhabitants of the heavens (Sefer ha-Yashar, Chapter 9:12–36). According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries to build the Tower, while other rabbinical sources assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from the builders.[29]
According to another midrashic account, one third of the Tower builders were punished by being transformed into semi-demonic creatures and banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now by their descendants.[37]
Islamic tradition
Although not mentioned by name, the Quran has a story with similarities to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, although set in the Egypt of Moses: Pharaoh asks Haman to build him a stone (or clay) tower so that he can mount up to heaven and confront the God of Moses.[38]
Another story in
Although variations similar to the biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel exist within Islamic tradition, the central theme of God separating humankind on the basis of language is alien to Islam according to the author Yahiya Emerick. In Islamic belief, he argues, God created nations to know each other and not to be separated.[40]
Book of Mormon
In the
Despite no mention of the Tower of Babel in the original text of the Book of Mormon, some leaders in
Gnosticism
In Gnostic tradition recorded in the Paraphrase of Shem, a tower, interpreted as the Tower of Babel, is brought by demons along with the great flood:
And he caused the flood, and he destroyed your (Shem's) race, to take the light and to take away from faith. But I proclaimed quickly by the mouth of the demon that a tower come up to be up to the particle of light, which was left in the demons and their race - which was water - that the demon might be protected from the turbulent chaos. And the womb planned these things according to my will, that she might pour forth completely. A tower came to be through the demons. The darkness was disturbed by his loss. He loosened the muscles of the womb. And the demon who was going to enter the tower was protected so that the races might continue to acquire coherence through him.[44]
Confusion of tongues
The confusion of tongues (confusio linguarum) is the origin myth for the fragmentation of human languages described in Genesis 11:1-9,[45] as a result of the construction of the Tower of Babel. Prior to this event, humanity was stated to speak a single language. The preceding Genesis 10:5[46] states that the descendants of Japheth, Gomer, and Javan dispersed "with their own tongues." Augustine explained this apparent contradiction by arguing that the story 'without mentioning it, goes back to tell how it came about that the one language common to all men was broken up into many tongues'.[47] Modern scholarship has traditionally held that the two chapters were written by different sources, the former by the Priestly source and the latter by the Jahwist. However, that theory has been debated among scholars in recent years.[48]
During the Middle Ages, the Hebrew language was widely considered the language used by God to address Adam in Paradise, and by Adam as lawgiver (the Adamic language) by various Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholastics.
Dante Alighieri addresses the topic in his De vulgari eloquentia (1302–1305). He argues that the Adamic language is of divine origin and therefore unchangeable.[49]
In his
Before the acceptance of the
The primacy of Hebrew was still defended by some authors until the emergence of modern linguistics in the second half of the 18th century, e.g. by Pierre Besnier (1648–1705) in A philosophicall essay for the reunion of the languages, or, the art of knowing all by the mastery of one (1675) and by Gottfried Hensel (1687–1767) in his Synopsis Universae Philologiae (1741).
Linguistics
For a long time, historical linguistics wrestled with the idea of a single original language. In the Middle Ages and down to the 17th century, attempts were made to identify a living descendant of the Adamic language.
Multiplication of languages
The literal belief that the world's linguistic variety originated with the tower of Babel is pseudolinguistics, and is contrary to the known facts about the origin and history of languages.[51]
In the biblical introduction of the Tower of Babel account, in Genesis 11:1,[52] it is said that everyone on Earth spoke the same language, but this is inconsistent with the biblical description of the post-Noahic world described in Genesis 10:5,[53] where it is said that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth gave rise to different nations, each with their own language.[3]: 26
There have also been a number of traditions around the world that describe a divine confusion of the one original language into several, albeit without any tower. Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that
The Estonian myth of "the Cooking of Languages"[55] has also been compared.
Enumeration of scattered languages
There are several mediaeval historiographic accounts that attempt to make an enumeration of the languages scattered at the Tower of Babel. Because a count of all the
Other sources that mention 72 (or 70) languages scattered from Babel are the
The tradition of 72 languages persisted into later times. Both José de Acosta in his 1576 treatise De procuranda indorum salute, and António Vieira a century later in his Sermão da Epifania, expressed amazement at how much this 'number of tongues' could be surpassed, there being hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages indigenous only to Peru and Brazil.
Height
The Book of Genesis does not mention how tall the tower was. The phrase used to describe the tower, "its top in the sky" (v.4), was an idiom for impressive height; rather than implying arrogance, this was simply a cliché for height.[15]: 37
The Book of Jubilees mentions the tower's height as being 5,433 cubits and 2 palms, or 2,484 m (8,150 ft), about three times the height of
A typical medieval account is given by
The 17th-century historian
In his book, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down (Pelican 1978–1984), Professor
In popular culture
- M.C. Escher depicts a more stylized geometrical structure in his woodcutrepresenting the story.
- The composer Anton Rubinstein wrote an opera based on the story Der Thurm zu Babel.
- American choreographer Adam Darius staged a multilingual theatrical interpretation of The Tower of Babel in 1993 at the ICA in London.
- Brueghel's 1563 painting.[59]
- The political philosopher Michael Oakeshott surveyed historic variations of the Tower of Babel in different cultures[60] and produced a modern retelling of his own in his 1983 book, On History.[61] In his retelling, Oakeshott expresses disdain for human willingness to sacrifice individuality, culture, and quality of life for grand collective projects. He attributes this behavior to fascination with novelty, persistent dissatisfaction, greed, and lack of self-reflection.[62]
- A. S. Byatt's novel Babel Tower (1996) is about the question "whether language can be shared, or, if that turns out to be illusory, how individuals, in talking to each other, fail to understand each other".[63]
- The progressive band Soul Secret wrote a concept album called BABEL, based on a modernized version of the myth.
- Science fiction writer Ted Chiang wrote a story called "Tower of Babylon" that imagined a miner's climbing the tower all the way to the top where he meets the vault of heaven.[64]
- Fantasy novelist Josiah Bancroft has a series The Books of Babel, which concluded with book IV in 2021.
- The Tower of Babel appears in the 47th episode of the anime series Arabian Nights: Sinbad's Adventures.
- This biblical episode is dramatized in the Indian television series Bible Ki Kahaniyan, which aired on DD National from 1992.[65]
- Chris Huelsbeck, the composer for the music appearing in several parts of the Turrican game series, has created an orchestral piece titled "Tower of Babel" which appears in Turrican II: The Final Fight.
- In the 1990 Japanese television anime Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water, the Tower of Babel is used by the Atlanteans as an interstellar communication device.[66] Later in the series, the Neo Atlanteans rebuild the Tower of Babel and use its communication beam as a weapon of mass destruction. Both the original and the rebuilt tower resembles the painting Tower of Babel by artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
- In the video game Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones the last stages of the game and the final boss fight occur in the tower.
- In the web-based game Forge of Empires the Tower of Babel is an available "Great Building".
- Argentinian novelist Jorge Luis Borges wrote a story called "The Library of Babel".
- The Tower of Babel appears as an important location in the Babylonian story arc of the Japanese .
- In the video game series Doom, the Tower of Babel appears multiple times. In the original 1993 Doom, the level "E2M8" is named and takes place at the "Tower of Babel". In Doom Eternal the campaign level "Nekravol" contains the Tower of Babel, but instead of its biblical purpose, it functions as a processing line for the suffering of human souls. In-game it is referred to as "The Citadel", but the concept art for Doom Eternal (The Art of Doom Eternal artbook, and the Steam Trading Card) refers to it as the "Tower Babel".
- 2017 comic book La tour de Bab-El-Oued (The tower of Bab-El-Oued) from Sfar's The Rabbi's Cat series refers to the Tower of Babel in a context of intercultural conflict and cooperation (Jews and Muslims during the French colonization in Algeria).[67]
- The fragmentation of modern society, in part due to social media, has been likened to a modern Tower of Babel.[68]
- In the video game Doshin the Giant, the final monument the island inhabitants can create is called the Tower of Babel,[69] which begins to sink the island. The titular Doshin the Giant then sacrifices himself to save the island.
- The 2023 video game Chants of Sennaar is largely inspired by the Tower of Babel.[70]
See also
- Babylonian astronomy
- Borsippa
- Enuma Anu Enlil
- Eridu
- Evolutionary linguistics
- List of world's tallest structures
- Minar (Firuzabad)
- Origin of speech
- Sons of Noah
Notes
References
- ^ 11:1–9
- ISBN 978-0-19-517610-0. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
- ^ ISBN 9780195297515.
The Jewish study Bible.
- ISBN 9780795337154.
- ISBN 9780195358704.
- ^ a b Kramer, Samuel Noah (1968). "The 'Babel of Tongues': A Sumerian Version". Journal of the American Oriental Society. Vol. 88, no. 1. pp. 108–111.
- ISBN 978-0-567-37030-3.
- ^ Dietz Otto Edzard: Geschichte Mesopotamiens. Von den Sumerern bis zu Alexander dem Großen, Beck, München 2004, p. 121.
- ISBN 978-0-684-81913-6.
- ^ "Genesis 2 Notes". NRSVUE Bible. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
- ^ "Genesis 11". NRSVUE Bible. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
- ^ Genesis 11:1–9
- ^ ISBN 9780195332728.
- ^ ISBN 9780874846966.
- ^ JSTOR 27638419.
- ISBN 0-06-063035-3.
- ISBN 978-1-62654-006-4.
- ^ "Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta: composite text." Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Line 145f.: an-ki ningin2-na ung3 sang sig10-ga den-lil2-ra eme 1-am3 he2-en-na-da-ab-dug4.
- ^ "Metamorphoses (Kline) 1, the Ovid Collection, Univ. Of Virginia E-Text Center".
- ^ a b Frazer, James George (1919). Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. London: Macmillan. pp. 362–387.
- ^ "Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxóchitl". letras-uruguay.espaciolatino.com. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
- ^ Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 76.
- ^ Farish, Thomas Edwin (1918). History of Arizona, Volume VII. Phoenix. pp. 309–310. Retrieved 5 March 2014.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Beverley, H. (1872). Report on the Census of Bengal. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press. p. 160.
- ^ David Livingstone (1858). Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. Harper & Brothers. p. 567.
- ^ Levenson 2004, p. 11 "How much history lies behind the story of Genesis? Because the action of the primeval story is not represented as taking place on the plane of ordinary human history and has so many affinities with ancient mythology, it is very far-fetched to speak of its narratives as historical at all."
- JSTOR 3267364.
- ^ Genesis 10:10
- ^ Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. pp. 395–398.
- ^ Genesis 11:9
- ^ Josephus, Antiquities, 1.4.3
- ^ "Herodotus, the Histories, Book 1, chapter 179".
- ISBN 978-0-7674-2916-0.
- ^ Genesis 11:1–9
- ISBN 978-0-380-01032-5.
- ^ The Biblical Antiquities of Philo. Translated by James, M. R. London: SPCK. 1917. pp. 90–94.
- ^ Ginzberg, Louis (1909). Legends of the Jews, Volume 1. New York. Archived from the original on 1 October 2015.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Pickthal, M. "Quran" (in English), Suras 28:36 and 40:36–37. Amana Publishers, UK 1996
- ^ "Surat Al-Baqarah [2:102] – The Noble Qur'an – القرآن الكريم". Quran.com. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
- ISBN 9780028642338.
- ^ Ether 1:33–38
- ^ Daniel H. Ludlow, A Companion to Your Study of the Book of Mormon p. 117, quoted in Church Educational System (1996, rev. ed.). Book of Mormon Student Manual (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), ch. 6.
- ^ Parry, Donald W. (January 1998), "The Flood and the Tower of Babel", Ensign
- ISBN 9781590306314. Retrieved 14 February 2022.
- ^ Genesis 11:1–9
- ^ Genesis 10:5
- ISBN 1579582206.
- JSTOR 27638419– via JSTOR.
- ^ ISBN 978-90-04-09702-5.
- ISBN 0-674-51052-6.
- ISBN 9780262661652.
- ^ Genesis 11:1
- ^ Genesis 10:5
- ^ Frazer, James George (1919). Folk-lore in the Old Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend and Law. London: Macmillan. p. 384.
- ^ Kohl, Reisen in die 'Ostseeprovinzen, ii. 251–255
- doi:10.2307/295030(subscription required).
- ^ Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, from the 1916 translation by Earnest Brehaut, Book I, chapter 6. Available online in abridged form.
- ^ Selections from Giovanni's Chronicle in English.
- ISBN 0-85170-623-1.
- ISBN 978-1-84540-594-6.
- ISBN 978-0-88706-912-3. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-8262-6517-3.
- ^ Dorschel, Andreas (25 November 2004). "Ach, Sie waren nicht in Oxford? Antonia S. Byatts Roman "Der Turm zu Babel"". Süddeutsche Zeitung 274 (in German). p. 16.
- ^ Joshua Rothman, "Ted Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction", The New Yorker, 2017
- ^ Menon, Ramesh (15 November 1989). "Bible ki Kahaniyan: Another religious saga on the small screen". India Today.
- ^ "NADIA & REALITY". Tamaro Forever presents The Secret of Blue Water. 13 June 2019. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
- ^ Debarnot, Eric (15 December 2017). "Le chat du rabbin Tome 7 : La tour de Bab-El-Oued – Joann Sfar". Benzine (in French).
- ^ Haidt, Jonathan (11 April 2022). "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid". The Atlantic.
- ISBN 4-575-16201-9.
- ^ Donlan, Christopher (12 September 2023). "Chants of Sennaar review - a puzzling linguistic marvel". Eurogamer. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
Further reading
- Sayce, Archibald Henry (1878), Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 3 (9th ed.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 178 , in Baynes, T. S. (ed.),
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 91.
- Maas, Anthony John (1912). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company. . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.).
- Knecht, Friedrich Justus (1910). . A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture. B. Herder.
- Pr. Diego Duran, Historia Antiqua de la Nueva Espana (Madrid, 1585).
- Ixtilxochitl, Don Ferdinand d'Alva, Historia Chichimeca, 1658
- Lord Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. 9
- H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States (New York, 1874)
- Klaus Seybold, "Der Turmbau zu Babel: Zur Entstehung von Genesis XI 1–9," Vetus Testamentum (1976).
- Samuel Noah Kramer, The "Babel of Tongues": A Sumerian Version, Journal of the American Oriental Society (1968).
- Kyle Dugdale: Babel's Present. Ed. by Reto Geiser and Tilo Richter, Standpunkte, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-9523540-8-7(Standpunkte Dokumente No. 5).
External links
- "Tower of Babel." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
- Babel In Biblia: The Tower in Ancient Literature by Jim Rovira
- Our People: A History of the Jews – The Tower of Babel
- Book of Genesis, Chapter 11
- "The Tower of Babel and the Birth of Nationhood" by Daniel Gordis at Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation
- SkyscraperPage – Tower of Babel, Tower of Babel – Baruch
- HERBARIUM Art Project. Anatomy of the Tower of Babel. 2010
- The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE), James Orr, M.A., D.D., General Editor – 1915 (online)
- Easton's Bible Dictionary, M.G. Easton M.A., D.D., published by Thomas Nelson, 1897. (online)
- Nave Topical Bible, Orville J. Nave, AM., D.D., LL.D. (online)
- Smith's Bible Dictionary (1896) (online)