You may find yourself wondering why some people don’t speak English. In fact, there are about 6,500 different languages spoken in the world today! Why is that? How confusing!
If you ask your public school teacher, she’ll probably say that as humans “evolved” in different parts of the world, they developed languages on their own. I bet she never read the Bible, because it tells us the truth!
Maybe it looked like this!
Traveling as a single vast group (no doubt with Ham and his descendants as slaves), they entered the land of Shinar.
The Bible doesn’t say anything about them having maps, and you’d think a worldwide Flood which exerted enough pressure to turn sediments (and buried dinosaurs) into stone would have wiped out landmarks, but somehow, they knew it was the land of Shinar.
(We’re going to ignore the entire chapter of Genesis 10, which tells us all about how the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth became great nations building vast cities and spreading all over the place. They had big cities and were spread out, but they were really all together in one place.)
The people made bricks, and used slime for mortar. (Gen. 11:3)
I wonder how big and tall a tower you could build with slime as mortar. Would that meet building code?
The people decided to build a city with a tower that would reach to Heaven. By doing this, they hoped to make a name for themselves and prevent themselves from being scattered. (Gen. 11:4)
Since these were the only people on Earth, who were they trying to impress? Make a name for themselves for whose benefit?
God came down and saw the city they were building, and the tower. He said, “The people are all as one, and speak one language; if they continue to succeed in this, they’ll be able to do anything they put their minds to!” (Gen. 11:6)
Was God jealous of his Creation’s success? Would your Mommy or Daddy be jealous if you were successful at something? How would that make you feel?
What will God do? SABOTAGE, what else?
God went down (in spite of already being down) and confused their language, so they couldn’t understand each other. They scattered all over the world and gave up on building the city. (Gen. 11:7-8)
How would you feel if your Mommy or Daddy saw you making a really nice drawing, realized that you could do whatever you put your mind to . . . and poured paint on your drawing and took away your crayons?
Would you feel loved?
That’s the difference between humans and God. When humans sabotage one another’s efforts instead of being happy that we’re successful, it is a horrible thing. When God does it, it’s called “Love”.
I LOVE the tower of Babble story because it removes the "God is omniscient" claim. If God were omniscient, he would know that humans could not build a tower so big it could reach God's kingdom.
Again we have God acting like a human … because he was begat by the human mind.
ok…first of all…to say that we are ignoring chapter 10 is to ignore that fact that when the stories were recorded they were not separated by chapters and verses. also, there is no statement in the text that claims that the story in chapter 11 takes place chronologically after chapter 10.
also, i think it stands to reason that the place they found was called Shinar because that is what they named it after they found it. the text does not, in any way, imply that they found a place that they recognized from before the flood. besides, how could anybody haved recognized anything, seeing as none of them were alive before the flood? so the statement that they somehow knew it was Shinar is invalid. they knew it was called shinar b/c that's what they decided to name the inhabitable plain they found.
Greetings,
And speaking of chapter 10, that is the one BEFORE the story of Babel, where the whole earth had the same language (11:1), we have the inspired word of the Bible god describing the decendants of Shem, Ham and Japeth. In each case they were described as "separated … ACCORDING TO HIS LANGUAGE … Ah well what can we say!
And if the Bible god hates universal language so much, why do the American Christians keep pushing for English only. Just wondering.
Adios amigos,
Infidel
who, exactly, is pushing for "English only?" and "English only" what, exactly? i'm an Enlgish speaking, white American Christian, and I attend a bilingual church. so i think that the fact that some obscure small group of old WASPS, which you may have spoken to, think that only English should be spoken in America, is an unfair basis on which to assume that all "American Christians" keep pushing for English only.
stereotyping is just as ugly coming the other way.
also, i would like to point out that the moral of the story isn't that the "Bible god" hates universal language. if we were to derive a moral, it would be that God hates sinful pride, especially, when a people becomes so self-righteous as to beleive they are actually gods and attempt to reach heaven. God actually provided a reversal for this action (reserved for the humble and reverent) in the book of Acts, when he caused a large crowd of people to hear the disciples (who were illiterate and unlearned) all speaking in their own languages.
MORE MORE MORE!! I thought you were going to post one a week??
Um . . . Yes, yes I was. And I haven't kept up on it.
I will post another one tonight!