An Atheistic Bible Study Of Genesis - Chapter Eleven - Babel

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A bridging chapter that leads from the Flood story to the beginning of the story of Abraham. We are told that everyone on Earth shared a common language and speech system. This is in spite of the preceding chapter referring to the Canaanite clans spreading round the World with their different languages. The clans rooted in the sons of Shem are also described in chapter ten as having different languages. Despite this, the people settling in the desert region of Shinar decide to build themselves a mighty city, Babel, (a derivative name for Babylon). While most cities were built from stone, the early Babylonians built their city in brick. The centre-piece of the city was to be a vast tower that would reach right into the heavens. God see the project when the tower is only half complete and he halts the construction programme. How he stops it is not stated. He also confounds everyone’s language to impede people from uniting on such scientific engineering construction programs ever again (we nevertheless built the skyscrapers of Manhattan and other commercial cities). The tower itself was not destroyed in the Bible though it is often depicted being destroyed in art work and movies. The building work was just stopped. The scattering of the people of different tongues and nations was due to the ‘babel’ or babble. People couldn’t communicate with one another or therefore conspire, scheme and plot together. However such scattering effectively ruined human communication, interaction, or trust and forms a foundation for prejudice and xenophobia. Gee, thanks God. The chapter ends with the naming of the descendants of Shem, one of Noah’s three sons. Some of these descendants lived absurdly longer than 500 years each. Only Terah stands out with some importance. He is the father to three sons, Nahor, Haran and Abram. Haran dies soon after his wife gives birth to Lot. Abram and Nahor also marry. Abram’s wife was Sarai (later re-spelt Sarah). Nahor’s wife was Milcah. All of the surviving members of the family including Abram, Sarai, Lot, and Nahor, move to the Canaanite city of Haran (named after the dead brother to Abram and Nahor). Sarai is described as barren (the Bible never considers the male as potentially the impotent infertile one, only the women). The fall of Babel shows a Biblical contempt for human invention, science and engineering. We were being held back needlessly here. The confounding of language, after twice acknowledging this happens naturally, is nothing for God to take pride in, as in alienating peoples on the planet he sets the scene for the violent conflicts to follow. Arthur Chappell