Post on the topic of the tower of Babel. Tower of babel
the most important episode from the story of ancient humanity in the book. Genesis (11. 1-9). According to the biblical story, the descendants of Noah spoke the same language and settled in the Shinar Valley. Here they began the construction of the city and the tower, "with a height to heaven, let us make a name for ourselves," they said, "before [in MT" so as not "] we are scattered over the face of the whole earth" (Gen. 11.4). However, the construction was stopped by the Lord, Who "confused tongues". People, who had ceased to understand each other, stopped building and scattered over the earth (Gen. 11. 8). The city was named "Babylon". Thus, a story about V. b. (Gen. 11. 9) is based on the consonance of the Hebrews. the name "Babylon" (,) and the verb "mix" (,). According to legend, the construction of V. b. led by a descendant of Ham Nimrod (Ios. Flav. Antiq. I 4. 2; Epiph. Adv. haer. I 1. 6).
The biblical story about V. b. gives a symbolic explanation of the reasons for the emergence of a variety of languages of the world, a cut can be correlated with modern. understanding of the development of the languages of mankind. Research in the field of historical linguistics allows us to make a conclusion about the existence of a single proto-language, conventionally called "Nostratic"; Indo-Europeans emerged from it. (Japhetic), Hamito-Semitic, Altai, Uralic, Dravidian, Kartvelian and other languages. The followers of this theory were such scientists as V. M. Illich-Svitych, I. M. Dyakonov, V. N. Toporov and Vyach. Sun. Ivanov. In addition, the story about V. b. is an important indication of the biblical understanding of man and the historical process and, in particular, of the secondary nature of the division into races and nations for the human essence. Later, this idea, expressed in a different form in ap. Paul, became one of the foundations of Christ. anthropology (Col. 3.11).
In christ. traditions of V. b. - a symbol, firstly, of the pride of people who consider it possible to reach heaven on their own and have as their main goal “to make a name for themselves”, and, secondly, the inevitability of punishment for this and the futility of the human mind, not sanctified Divine grace. In the gift of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, scattered humanity receives the once-lost ability of complete mutual understanding. V.'s antithesis. represents the miracle of the founding of the Church, which unites the nations with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2. 4-6). B. b. also is the prototype of the modern. technocracy.
The image of the "city and tower" in the book. Genesis reflected a whole complex of mythological universals, for example, the idea of the "center of the world", which was to become a city built by people. The historically attested temples of Mesopotamia did indeed fulfill this mythological function (Oppenheim. P. 135). In the Holy. Scripture construction V. b. described from the standpoint of Divine Revelation, in the light of which it is primarily an expression of human pride. Dr. aspect of the story about V. b. is an indication of the prospects for the progress of human civilization, and at the same time in the biblical narrative there is a negative attitude towards the urbanism of the Mesopotamian civilization (Nelis J. T. Col. 1864).
The image of V. b. Undoubtedly reveals parallels with the Mesopotamian tradition of temple building. Temples of Mesopotamia (ziggurats) were stepped structures from several. terraces located one above the other (their number could reach 7), on the upper terrace was the sanctuary of the deity (Parrot. R. 43). Sacred Scripture accurately conveys the realities of the Mesopotamian temple building, where, unlike most other states, Dr. In the Near East, dried in the sun or baked bricks and resin were used as the main material (cf. Gen. 11.3).
During an active archaeological study, Dr. Mesopotamia has made many attempts to find the so-called. V.'s "prototype" in one of the excavated ziggurats, the most reasonable is the assumption of the Babylonian temple of Marduk (Jacobsen. P. 334), which had a Sumerian. the name "e-temen-an-ki" is the temple of the cornerstone of heaven and earth.
Find the remains of V. b. tried already in the XII century. Up to the end. XIX - early. XX century 2 ziggurats were identified with it, in Borsippe and Akar-Kufa, on the site of ancient cities located at a considerable distance from Babylon (in the description of Herodotus, the city was so large that it could include both points). With a ziggurat in Borsippe V. b. identified Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who twice visited Babylonia (between 1160-1173), German. researcher K. Niebuhr (1774), eng. artist R. Kerr Porter (1818) and others. In Akar-Kuf V. b. saw the German L. Rauwolf (1573-1576), the merchant J. Eldred, who described in the end. XVI century ruins of the "tower". Ital. traveler Pietro della Valle, who compiled the first detailed description fortifications of Babylon (1616), considered V. b. sowing the most. from its hills, to-ry kept the ancient name "Babil". Attempts to find V. b. in one of the 3 tales - Babil, Borsippe and Akar-Kufa - continued until the end. XIX century.
In the beginning. XX century borders dr. Babylon was identified and the neighboring cities were no longer perceived as part of it. After the excavations of K.J. Rich and H. Rassam in Borsippe (the settlement of Birs-Nimrud, 17 km south-west of Babylon, II-I millennium BC), it became clear that in connection with V. b. we can not talk about her ziggurat, which was part of the temple of the goddess Nabu (Old Babylonian period - 1st half of the 2nd millennium BC; restructuring in the New Babylonian period - 625-539). G.K. Rawlinson identified Akar-Kuf with Dur-Kurigalsu, the capital of the Kassite kingdom (30 km west of Babylon, founded in the late 15th - early 14th centuries, already in the 12th century BC abandoned by the inhabitants) , which ruled out the possibility of his ziggurat, dedicated to the god Enlil (excavated in the 40s of the XX century by S. Lloyd and T. Bakir), to consider V. b. Finally, the excavation of Babil, sowing itself. from the hills of Babylon, showed that he was not hiding a ziggurat, but one of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar II.
Find V. b. inside Babylon was one of the tasks assigned to the Germans. expedition R. Koldevei (1899-1917). In the central part of the city, the remains of a foundation platform were discovered, which in 1901 were identified with the foundation of the Etemenanka ziggurat. In 1913 F. Wetzel carried out cleaning and measurements of the monument. His materials, published in 1938, became the basis for new reconstructions. In 1962, Wetzel completed his studies of the monument, and H. Schmid carried out a detailed analysis of the materials collected over a century and published (1995) a new, more substantiated periodization and reconstruction of the Etemenanki ziggurat.
Iconography
The biblical story about the construction and destruction of V. b. was illustrated already in early Christ. period. The earliest surviving image is in the London manuscript of the book. Genesis (Cotton Genezis. London. Otho. B. VI. Fol. 14, 14v, 15, late V - early VI century). In her miniatures and in mosaics repeating them, c. San Marco in Venice (XII century) also represents the separation of people (separation of languages) after the destruction of the tower. In the Byzantine. illuminated Oktatevkhs, as a rule, there is a scene of the destruction of V. b. (Vat. Gr. 747. Fol. 33v, XI century; Vat. Gr. 746. Fol. 61v, XII century). Along with illustrations of the books of Sacred. Scriptures construction V. b. ("Pandemonium") as one of the most important episodes world history depicted in medieval miniatures. works of historical content: the Christian topography of Cosmas Indikoplova, chronographs, paleas, received wide use in Old Russian. bookishness. In the mosaics of San Marco V. b. depicted as a structure on a rectangular base; in the facial lists of the Christian topography of Kosma Indikoplov (for example, RNB. OLDP. F 91. L. 25v., early XVI century) it looks like a faceted tower with windows and an extended top; the illustrations of the obverse Pskov Paleya (State Historical Museum. Syn. 210. L. 65, 65 rev., 1477) show the construction of V. b. (in the form of a pillar) and its destruction. In these scenes, builders are usually depicted with various tools, carrying a stretcher with a stone, verifying the masonry along a plumb line.
From the book illustration, the scene of the construction of V. b. got on the icons "St. Trinity in action ”(for example, an icon from the middle of the 16th century, the State Russian Museum): the tower looks like an octahedron with an open top, in front of it is King Nimrod giving orders to the builders, in the heavenly segment - the Lord. To Western Europe. art image V. b. found in illustrations of the Bible, Psalms, world chronicles, in the Middle Ages. maps, in wall paintings and stained-glass windows, as well as in easel painting (for example, "The Tower of Babel" by artist P. Bruegel the Elder, 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna). In addition to rectangular, multifaceted or round V. b. may have the form of a stepped structure (for example, on the frescoes of the Santa Maria Novella church in Florence, mid-14th century) or a spiral pyramid (like P. Bruegel's).
Lit .: Unger E. Der Turm zu Babel // ZAW. 1927. Bd. 45 S. 162-171; Dombart T. Der Stand der Babelturmsproblem // Klio. 1927. Bd. 21 S. 135-174; Gressmann H. The Tower of Babel. N. Y. 1928; Wetzel F., Weisbach F. H. Das Hauptheiligtum des Marduk in Babylon, Esagila und Etemenanki. Lpz. 1938 (Osnabrück 1967); Vincent L.-H. De la tour de Babel au temple // RB. 1946 T. 53. P. 403-440; Parrot A. Ziggurat et tour de Babel. P., 1949; Baur G. F., Mauville A. The Tower of Babel // Priestly Studies. 1953. Vol. 21. p. 84-106; Protasyeva T. N. Pskov Paleya 1477 // DRI. M., 1968. [Issue:] The Art of Pskov. S. 97-108; Nelis J. T. Tour de Babel // Dictionnaire Encycl. de la Bible. Tournhaut, 1987. Col. 1864; Jacobsen T. Babel // IDB. Vol. 1. P. 334; Oppenheim A. L. Ancient Mesopotamia: Potrait of a Dead Civilization. Chicago, 1977 (Russian translation: Oppenheim A. L. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Perished Civilization. M., 1980); Vicari J. Les ziggurats de Tchoga-Zanbil (Dur-Untash) et de Babylone // Le dessin d "architecture dans les sociétés antiques. Leiden, 1985. P. 47-57; Klengel Brandt. The Tower of Babel: Legend and History: Translated from German M., 1991; Allinger-Csollich W. Birs Nimrud II: "Tieftempel" - "Hochtempel": Vergleichende Studien Borsippa-Babylon // Babylonische Mitteilungen. 1998. Bd. 29. S. 93-330; Schmid H. Der Tempelturm Etemenanki in Babylon. Mainz, 1995; Albrecht S. Der Turm zu Babel als bildlicher Mythos: Malerei - Graphik - Architektur // Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne / Hrsgar. 1999. S. 553-574.
Another mystery of history, to which modern scholars still cannot find an answer, is associated with the death of the biblical Babylon and the famous Tower of Babel in Borsippus. This tower, half burnt down and melted to a glassy state by the monstrous temperature, has survived to this day as a symbol of God's wrath.
It is a clear confirmation of the veracity of the biblical texts about the terrible fury of the heavenly fire that struck the Earth in the middle of the second millennium BC.
According to biblical legend, Babylon was built by Nimrod, who is usually identified with the giant hunter Orion. This is a very important circumstance in astral legend, which determines one of the five places of previous appearances of the "retribution comet" in the night sky, which will be described in the appropriate place.
Nimrod was the son of Hush and a descendant of Ham, one of the three sons of Noach: “Hush also begat Nimrod: this one began to be strong on earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said: a mighty hunter, like Nimrod, is before the Lord. His kingdom in the beginning was: Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Halne, in the land of Senaar. " / Gen. 10: 8-10 /
The biblical myth tells that after Noah's flood people attempted to build the city of Babylon (from Sumerian. Bab-ily - "the gate of God.") And the Tower of Babel "as high as heaven."
And here it is appropriate to say that in mythological texts the name “gates of God”, “heavenly gates”, as well as “gates of hell” are used to designate places of cosmic explosions, in the epicenter of which all living things perished from heavenly fire.
Enraged by the unheard-of human audacity, Gd “mixed their tongues” and scattered the builders of the Tower of Babel throughout the earth, as a result of which people stopped understanding each other: “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they decided to do. Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore, his name was given: Babylon; for there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth "/ Gen. 11: 5-9 /.
Therefore, another meaning of the word Babylon is reproduced from the Hebrew word balal - "confusion".
TURRIS BABEL Athanasius Kircher, 1679
This deliberate biblical misrepresentation of the name of the city, based on the similarity of the sound of the words, in fact reflects the historical reality. The results of archaeological excavations indicate that the time of the death of Babylon was the time of the great migration of tribes and peoples, the mixing of their languages and customs, the development and seizure of new territories.
Not far from the city of Babylon are the ruins of Borsippa with the preserved ruins of a burnt ancient temple and a huge temple tower, which is considered to be the legendary Tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible.
True, some archaeologists dispute this name, on the grounds that within the city of Babylon there was its own temple tower, and no less solid in size.
As determined by archaeologists, the tower from Borsippa previously consisted of seven tiers-steps, standing on a massive square base.
They used to be painted in seven colors: black, white, purple red, blue, bright red, silver and gold. Even now, the remains of the tower are impressive. Its melted skeleton, standing on a hill, rises 46 meters above the base of the tower.
The walls of the tower, built of baked bricks, as well as the huge religious premises inside, were badly damaged by fire.
From the heat of an inconceivable temperature, the upper, most of the tower literally evaporated, and the remaining, smaller part of the tower melted into a single glassy mass, both from the inside and from outside.
Here is how Erich Zeren writes about it: "There is no explanation for where this heat came from, which not only heated, but also melted hundreds of burnt bricks, scorching the entire skeleton of the tower, all its clay walls."
It is curious to cite the testimony of Wilhelm Koenig, who tried to comprehend the reason for the incredible heat that literally melted the stepped ziggurat tower in Borsippa: building bricks can only melt in very high fires.
ROMANESQUE PAINTER, French The Building of the Tower of Babel Fresco - Abbey Church, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe
And here is how Mark Twain described the tower from Borsippa traveling through Mesopotamia in 1867:
“... it had eight tiers, two of which stand to this day - a gigantic brickwork, scattered in the middle of the earthquake, scorched and half-melted by the lightning of an angry Gd. "
I must say that until now no researcher has been able to satisfactorily explain this monstrous melting under the influence of an inconceivable temperature, due to which the upper part of the masonry turned into steam, and the remnants of the melted tower seemed to split from top to bottom.
Attempts to explain this reflow by a high-power lightning strike cannot be considered convincing, which is clearly seen from the information on linear lightning given below.
According to modern concepts, linear lightning is a giant spark that occurs between clouds, or between a cloud and the surface of the earth. Their average size is estimated at several kilometers, but sometimes lightning up to fifty and even one hundred and fifty kilometers are encountered. The average discharge current is from 20 to 100 kiloamperes, but sometimes it reaches 500 kiloamperes.
The average temperature of the lightning channel is 25000-30000 degrees Kelvin.
It is quite obvious that not a single, even super-powerful lightning could fuse the Tower of Babel into a single monolith. And even more so to destroy the temple adjacent to it, as well as the city of Babylon located fifteen kilometers from it, the circumference of which, according to archaeologists' data, was 18 kilometers, and the thickness of the walls is estimated at 25 meters.
Pieter Bruegel - TOWER OF BABYLON 1563
According to Herodotus, the city of Babylon was an almost regular quadrangle, and was located on both sides of the Euphrates River. Each side of this quadrangle was approximately 22 kilometers, and the walls were 50 cubits thick (one cubit - about 52 cm), and six chariots in a row could be driven along them at the same time.
And the height of the walls, and it is almost impossible to believe, reached 100 meters. The walls of the city had 100 copper gates, and 250 towers stood on the walls themselves. The whole city was surrounded by a wide and deep moat.
In the middle of the second millennium BC, Babylon was the cultural, spiritual and political center of Chaldea, and one of the richest and most powerful cities in all. Of the Ancient World... This was the time of the heyday and greatness of Babylon. The city had the largest reserve of gold in the world, and nothing seemed to shake its power.
Contemporaries called it “the beauty of Chaldea”, “the granary of Chaldea”, “pride of Chaldea”, “glory of the kingdoms”, “golden city”. Biblical texts report that "Babylon was a golden cup in the hand of the Lord."
So what destroyed Babylon and melted the Tower of Babel to a glassy state?
There is no doubt that this monstrous temperature, which is comparable only with the heat of a nuclear explosion, arose as a result of a gigantic electric-discharge explosion of a falling celestial body, a column of fire of which covered the temple tower, and the released energy of the discharge, in the form of a colossal power of the blast wave, fell on the city of Babylon, in turning it into heaps of rubble in a matter of minutes.
The destruction of the city was so terrible that the compilers of biblical texts find it difficult to select epithets to denote its terrible destruction.
Babylon, which was "a golden cup in the hand of the Lord," suddenly, in the course of one day, "became a terror among the nations", "a desolate desert", "a heap of ruins", "a house of desolation" and "a dwelling of jackals."
This is how the biblical prophecies about the destruction of Babylon, which have come true, look like: “Here comes a fierce day, with anger and burning fury, to make the earth a wilderness and destroy its sinners from it. The celestial stars and luminaries do not give light from themselves; the sun is darkened at its rising, and the moon does not shine with its light. I will punish the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and I will put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and I will abolish the arrogance of the oppressors; … For this I will shake the sky, and the earth will move from its place from the fury of the Lord of hosts, on the day of His burning anger…. And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the pride of the Chaldeans, will be overthrown by Gd, like Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never settle, and there will be no inhabitants in it for generations. " / Is. 13: 9-11,13,19-20 /
It must be said that the power of an electric-discharge explosion of a large meteorite can amount to hundreds of thousands of megatons in TNT equivalent, which significantly exceeds the power of modern thermonuclear charges, therefore, the death of Babylon, enclosed by cyclopean walls, with its giant ziggurats, as evidenced by the biblical texts, lasted less than one hour.
The city was literally swept off the face of the earth by a colossal blast wave, turning into huge mountains of charred rubble and debris.
The ruins of ancient Babylon are located on the banks of the Euphrates, about a hundred kilometers from the modern capital of Iraq, Baghdad, and after the explosion, they were giant mountains of garbage and are located near the later Arab settlement of Gillah.
The Arabs called these rubble hills Amran ibn Ali, Babil, Jumjuma and Qasr.
The location of ancient Babylon was initially known to archaeologists, and some of them, including the successful Layard and Oppert, even made trial excavations on its ruins, but realizing the huge amount of excavation work and the amount of money needed for this, they did not dare to organize serious archaeological research.
And only at the very end of the nineteenth century, in the spring of 1899, the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, having received a fabulous amount of half a million gold marks for the production of work at that time, ventured to start excavations, of course not assuming that he would need eighteen years to get to the ruins of the capital ancient Chaldea.
To carry out a volume of excavation work that had never been done before, he had to write out a field railway from Germany and lay a railway track to the excavation site. I must say that Railway the first, and, it seems, the only time, was used in archaeological work of this scale.
The thickness of the layer of earth, mixed with desert sand, ash and ash, over the ruins of Babylon exceeded ten meters, but hard work in the hellish conditions of the desert was rewarded with discoveries that brought Robert Koldewey deserved world fame.
On the basis of the excavations of the expedition of Robert Koldevei, it became possible to reproduce the reconstruction of Ancient Babylon, in the ruins of which, during the excavation of the gate of the goddess Ishtar, images of the syncretic animal "Sirrush" were found, consisting of parts of four syncretic animals: a fantastic four-legged animal, which could not be identified, an eagle, a snake and a scorpion, which allows us to consider it a prototype Great Sphinx.
Biblical texts call Babylon the city of sin and depravity, but in fact it was a real city of the gods. Archaeologists have excavated on its territory dozens of temples of the supreme god Marduk and hundreds of sanctuaries of other deities. For example, according to cuneiform texts, the city had "53 temples, 55 sanctuaries of the supreme god Marduk, 300 earthly and 600 heavenly deities, 180 Ishtar altars, 180 Nergal and Adadi altars, and 12 other altars."
But this did not save him from the fury of cosmic fire and flood.
Remains of the original Tower of Babel excavated by Robert Koldewey
I must say that none of the researchers and archaeologists wants to pay attention to the fact that the ruins of Babylon, destroyed by an electric discharge explosion, were also flooded by the waters of Noah's flood.
Babylon, which the workers of Koldevei dug up, was a city built on the ruins of numerous, even more ancient buildings, but many years of attempts to get to these cultural layers were unsuccessful, groundwater constantly flooded the mines.
The catastrophe that destroyed Babylon undermined all the foundations of the Babylonian kingdom and caused its decline.
Historical documents have absolutely accurately recorded the date that is considered the beginning of the New Babylonian kingdom - 1596 BC. in modern chronology.
And this once again testifies to the fact that the death of the Old Babylonian kingdom was the result of a cosmic catastrophe in 1596 BC, about which modern historians are not yet aware.
The Tower of Babel illustration for the Bible by Gustave Dore
In chapter 11 we find the biblical tradition of the Tower of Babel / Babel of Babel.
The biblical tradition of the Tower of Babel.
Tower of Babel. Hendrick III van Cleve, 1563After the Great Flood, only his family members managed to escape. Accordingly, humanity in the years after the Flood was represented by one people speaking the same language. Humanity settled on the earth, but they had a common language. When Noah and his family left the Ark, God commanded them:
"Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth."
However, Noah's descendants moved east and decided to build a city and a tower.
"Before scattering over the face of the whole earth."
The descendants of Noah decided to build the city of Babylon ("gates of the gods") and a tower to heaven. With a tower to heaven, these people wanted to exalt themselves, or, as the Bible says, "to make a name for themselves." Surprisingly, the words "Tower of Babel" and " Babel"Are not mentioned in the Bible. In the Bible, we only find "a city and a tower." According to the Bible, the city of Babylon was named "Babel" from the Hebrew word bala, that is jumble and confuse.
The tower was supposed to exalt a man, but not God, so the Lord was angry. God interrupted the construction of the Tower of Babel by creating different languages so that the builders could not communicate. People, having ceased to understand each other, left Babylon and scattered across the Earth.
The story of the Tower of Babel is the biblical version of the appearance of different languages.
Interesting fact: the 10th chapter of Genesis tells about the descendants of Noah, about 70 of them are mentioned. Interestingly, there are also about 70 separate language groups on Earth.
The story of the Tower of Babel in biblical and apocryphal texts.
The story of the Tower of Babel appears in several texts:
Genesis. Chapter 11 begins:
1 There was one language and one dialect throughout the whole earth.
2 Moving from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they had bricks instead of stones, and earthen pitch instead of lime.
4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower, its height reaching to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men were building.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they decided to do;
7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.
8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].
9 Therefore his name was given: Babylon, for there the Lord confused the tongue of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth.
Book of Jubilees. Chapter 10.
Provides the most detailed description of the tower construction.
“Behold, the sons of men have become evil through a vile design that they will build for themselves a city and a tower in the land of Sinaar, for they have moved from Ararat to the east to Sinaar”. For in his day they built a city and a tower, saying, "We will climb it to heaven." And they began to build in the fourth week, and burned with fire (bricks), and bricks served them in place of stone, and the cement with which they fortified the gaps was the asphalt from the sea and from the water sources in the land of Sinaar. And they built it for forty-three years. And the Lord our God said to us: “Behold, this is one people, and they began to do this! And now I will not depart from them! Behold, we will go down and mix their languages so that they do not understand each other and scatter to countries and peoples, and may their plan never come true until the day of judgment! ” And the Lord came down, and we went down with Him, to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building; and He dissolved every word of their language, and no one understood the word of the other. And so they refused to build a city and a tower. For this, the whole country of Sinaar was named Babel (Babylon). For thus God has dissolved all the tongues of the sons of men; and from there they scattered to their cities according to their languages and peoples. And God sent strong wind on their tower and threw it to the ground. And so she stood between the land of Assur and Babylon in the land of Sinaar; and they named her ruins.
Greek Apocalypse Baruch. Chapter 3.
And I asked Angel: "Please, sir, tell me, who are these people?"
And he said: “These are the ones who gave the advice to build the tower.
They themselves, whom you see, drove out many men and women to make bricks.
The woman alone, who was making bricks, when the time came for her to give birth, they did not allow to leave, but, making bricks, she gave birth and carried her child in a towel, and made bricks.
And when Yahweh appeared to them, he changed their tongues, when the tower reached a height of three hundred sixty-three cubits.
And taking a drill, they began to try to drill the sky, saying: "Let's see, a clay sky, copper or iron."
Seeing this, God did not allow them, but struck them with blindness and multilingualism and left them as you see them. "
The story of the construction of the Tower of Babel from the point of view of Christian morality.
The Tower of Babel story highlights the stark contrast between a person's opinion of his own accomplishments and God's view of those accomplishments. The Tower of Babel was supposed to be the first grandiose building project of mankind, but it did not.
According to the Bible, people used brick instead of stone and resin instead of lime mortar- they used "man-made" and not natural "God-given" materials. People did not trust in the Lord in their construction, and therefore they failed. The Tower of Babel was created by humans to draw attention to their abilities and achievements, not to give glory to God.
However, the history of the construction of the Tower of Babel also teaches us that unity is our strength. However, this power is not always for the benefit of a person. Genesis says:
… And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they decided to do.
By this, God indicates that when people are united in their goals, they can perform impossible feats, noble and ignoble.
The Bible teaches that there is strength in unity, but one must be careful: unity of purpose in worldly affairs can ultimately be destructive. Division and one's own point of view in worldly affairs are sometimes preferable to great universal exploits for the glory of idolatry and apostasy. For this reason, God sometimes intervenes in human affairs to prevent further human arrogance. God frustrates the plans of people so that they do not go beyond the limits of God.
The story of the Tower of Babel is also interesting in the sense that here the Lord first speaks of himself in plural referring to the Trinity:
... let us go down and confuse their language there ...
The story of the Tower of Babel continues the theme of the competition between man and God, begun in c. Flavius Josephus explains the construction of the tower as an arrogant act of defiance against the God of the arrogant tyrant Nimrod. The Bible does not directly indicate that the Tower of Babel was ordered to be built by Nimrod, but many other sources associate its construction with Nimrod.
Some researchers, historians and biblical scholars have an alternative point of view on the significance of the episode of the construction of the Tower of Babel. They see the Lord's punishment not as a punishment for pride, but as God's understanding of the need for cultural differences. These scholars represent Babylon as the cradle of all civilizations.
What do scholars say about the Tower of Babel?
One possible approach to the history of the Babylonian pandemonium is a literal approach. If we admit that the Tower of Babel is historical fact, then one would expect that some remains or ruins of the Tower of Babel exist and will be found. However, the remains of the Tower have not been found by archaeologists.
However, perhaps the story still has a historical background. Many scholars, including biblical scholars, compare the Tower of Babel with the ancient buildings of Mesopotamia - ziggurats. Ziggurats also served for religious rites. The Jews who were captured by Babylon were undoubtedly aware of these buildings.
A candidate for Tower of Babel is the ziggurat of Etemenanki in Babylon. It was a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk, the patron god of Babylon, the supreme deity of the Babylonian pantheon. It is known that this, the highest, ziggurat was located in Babylon. The tower was probably taller than 90 meters. The time of construction is unknown, but it is known for certain that in the 18th century BC. the tower already existed. The tower (ziggurat) was destroyed, or rather dismantled by Alexander the Great for the purpose of its reconstruction. However, the plans were not destined to come true due to the death of Alexander. The ruins of the ziggurat were discovered by the German scientist R. Koldewey in 1897-1898.
Ziggurat of Etemenanki in Babylon. Astronomical version.
There is another (pseudoscientific?) Explanation of the Babylonian pandemonium, this time in terms of astronomical phenomena. It is known that during the supposed time of the construction of the Tower of Babel, disturbances in the atmosphere of Jupiter affected the motion of Mercury, pushing it closer to the Sun. In its new orbit, Mercury made close contact with Earth. Their magnetospheres touched each other, causing a burst of electromagnetic energy towards the Earth. Maybe, this phenomenon influenced the thinking of people on Earth. This version takes place, since it has been proven that in case of defeat electric shock the person may lose speech and memory. If such an electromagnetic surge was observed in Babylon, then this could be the reason for the mixing of languages and the Babylonian Babel.
Who is the author of the story of the construction of the Tower of Babel?
The tradition of attributing the authorship of Genesis, and indeed of the entire Pentateuch, to Moses; however, at the end of the 19th century, a different hypothesis was put forward ( documentary hypothesis) about the existence of four primary sources, called sources J, E, P and D. According to this version, the story of the Tower of Babel came to us from source J (Yahvist).
Phraseologism Tower of Babel.
What does the phraseologism Tower of Babel mean?
Definition 1.
The Tower of Babel is a tall building, structure.
Definition 2.
The Tower of Babel is an ambitious project, the implementation of which is problematic.
Definition 3.
The Tower of Babel is an undertaking that will perish from excessive pride and arrogance.
Phraseologism Babylonian pandemonium.
Babylonian pandemonium meaning 1.
The word pandemonium means the construction of a pillar (the Church Slavonic name for the tower).
Expression Babel means confusion, hectic, hectic, disordered activity that is not able to lead to positive results.
Babylonian pandemonium meaning 2.
Phraseologism Babylonian pandemonium - means polyphonic noise, turmoil, din, chaotic congestion of people.
Plots about the Tower of Babel in culture.
Painting.
The story of the construction of the Tower of Babel is reflected in many paintings. For example, the Tower of Babel is the subject of three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The first painting was created after Brueghel's visit to Rome and was a miniature on Ivory... Unfortunately, this picture has not reached us. Two other paintings, painted in 1563, have survived.
These canvases are called "The Tower of Babel" and "The Little Tower of Babel"
Little Tower of Babel Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563 (Rotterdam)
Tower of Babel. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563 (Vienna) Images of Bruegel's Tower of Babel intentionally resemble the Roman Colosseum, which long time was seen by Christians as a symbol of pride.
Lucas Van Falkenborch, a contemporary of Bruegel, also depicted the Tower of Babel in his canvases.
Tower of Babel. Lucas van Falkenborch, 1595 
Tower of Babel. Lucas van Falkenborch, 1594 The story of the Tower of Babel is common in Christian iconography.
The Tower of Babel in literature.
The plot of the Tower of Babel has received wide interpretation in world literature. He was approached by Franz Kafka in the parable "The Coat of Arms of the City", Thomas Mann in the novel "Joseph and His Brothers", Andrei Platonov in the novel "The Pit", Ray Bradburry in the dystopian novel "Fahrenheit 451", Clive Lewis in the novel "The Loathsome power ", Victor Pelevin in the novel" Generation P ", Neil Stevenson in the novel" Avalanche ", etc.
The Tower of Babel in Music.
The most famous interpretations of the story about the construction of the Tower of Babel in music is A. Rubinstein's oratorio "The Tower of Babel". The Tower of Babel is often mentioned in popular music (Elton John, Bobby McFerrin, Bad Religion, Aquarium, Kipelov, etc.)
7 Wonders of the World. Tower of Babel.
Tower of Babel.
The Tower of Babel (Hebrew מִגְדָּל בָּלַל Migdal Bavel) is a tower to which the biblical tradition is dedicated, set forth in chapter 2 of Noach (verses 11: 1-11: 9) of Genesis.
The Tower of Babel is not on the "official" list of wonders of the world. However, it is one of the most prominent structures of Ancient Babylon, and its name is still a symbol of confusion and disorder.
Jan Collaert 1579
According to an ancient biblical legend, after the Flood, more than four thousand years ago, all people lived in Mesopotamia (from the east, people came to the land of Shinar), that is, in the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and everyone spoke the same language. Since the land of these places was very fertile, people lived richly. They decided to build a city (Babylon) and a heavenly tower to "make a name for themselves."
Marten Van Valckenborch I (1535-1612)
For the construction of a monumental structure, people used not a stone, but an unbaked raw brick; to join bricks, they used bitumen (mountain resin) instead of lime. The tower kept growing and growing in height.
Theodosius Rihel 1574-1578
Finally, God was angry with the foolish and vain people and punished them: he made the builders speak in different languages... Because of this, the stupid proud people ceased to understand each other and, abandoning their weapons, stopped the construction of the tower, and then dispersed in different directions of the Earth. So the tower turned out to be unfinished, and the city where the construction took place and all languages were mixed was called Babylon. Thus, the story of the Tower of Babel explains the emergence of different languages after the Flood.
A number of biblical scholars trace the connection between the legend of the Tower of Babel and the construction in Mesopotamia of high towers-temples called ziggurats. The tops of the towers were used for worship and astronomical observations.
Fresco 1100
The highest ziggurat (91 m high, one rectangular step and seven spiral steps - 8 in total) was in Babylon. It was called Etemenanki, which means "the house where heaven meets earth." It is not known exactly when the original construction of this tower was carried out, but it already existed during the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC).
Assyrian king Sinacherib in 689 BC NS. destroyed Babylon, and Etemenanki suffered the same fate. The ziggurat was restored by Nebuchadnezzar II. The Jews, forcibly resettled by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon after the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah, became acquainted with the culture and religion of Mesopotamia and, undoubtedly, knew about the existence of ziggurats.
During excavations in Babylon, the German scientist Robert Koldewey was able to discover the foundation and ruins of the tower. The tower mentioned in the Bible was probably destroyed even before the era of Hammurabi. It was replaced by another, which was erected in memory of the first. According to Koldewey, it had a square base, each side of which was 90 meters. The height of the tower was also 90 m., The first tier had a height of 33 m., The second - 18, the third and fifth - 6 m each, the seventh - the sanctuary of the god Marduk - was 15 m high. By today's standards, the structure reached a height of 30- storey skyscraper.
Calculations allow us to say that about 85 million bricks were used for the construction of this tower. A monumental staircase led to the upper platform of the tower, where the temple rushed into the sky. The tower was part of a temple complex located on the banks of the Euphrates River. Clay tablets with inscriptions found by archaeologists suggest that each section of the tower had its own special meaning. The same tablets provide information about the religious rituals performed in this temple.
The tower stood on the left bank of the Euphrates on the Sakhn plain, which literally translates as “frying pan”. It was surrounded by houses of priests, temple buildings and houses for pilgrims who flocked here from all over Babylonia. The description of the Tower of Babel was left by Herodotus, who thoroughly examined it and, perhaps, even visited its top. This is the only documented eyewitness account from Europe.
Tobias Verhaecht, The Tower Of Babel.
The Tower of Babel was a stepped eight-tier pyramid lined with burnt bricks on the outside. Moreover, each tier had a strictly defined color. At the top of the ziggurat was a sanctuary lined with blue tiles and decorated with golden horns at the corners (a symbol of fertility). It was considered the habitat of the god Marduk, the patron saint of the city. In addition, inside the sanctuary were a gilded table and bed of Marduk. Stairs led to the tiers; religious processions climbed along them. The ziggurat was a shrine that belonged to the entire people, it was a place where thousands of people flocked to worship the supreme deity Marduk.
The upper platforms of the ziggurats were used not only for cult, but also for practical purposes: for the view of the warriors-guards of the surrounding area. Cyrus, who took possession of Babylon after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, was the first conqueror to leave the city intact. He was amazed at the scale of Etemenanka, and he not only forbade anything to be destroyed, but ordered to build a monument on his grave in the form of a miniature ziggurat, a small tower of Babel.
Hendrick III van Cleve (1525 - 1589)
And yet the tower was destroyed again. The Persian king Xerxes left only ruins from her, which Alexander the Great saw on his way to India. He, too, was struck by the gigantic ruins - he, too, stood before them as if spellbound. Alexander the Great intended to build it again. “But, - as Strabo writes, - this work required a lot of time and effort, because the ruins would have had to be removed by ten thousand people for two months, and he did not realize his plan, as he soon fell ill and died”.
Lucas van Valckenborch 1594
Lucas van Valckenborch 1595
Currently, only the foundation and Bottom part walls. But thanks to the cuneiform tablets, there is a description of the famous ziggurat and even its image.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Tower of Babel 1564.
The plot of the Tower of Babel is widespread in Christian iconography - in numerous miniatures, manuscripts and printed editions of the Bible (for example, in a miniature English manuscript of the 11th century); as well as in mosaics and frescoes of cathedrals and churches (for example, the mosaic of the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice, late XII - early XIII century).
Fresco of the Tower of Babel from the Venetian Cathedral of San Marco.
In Iraq, there are still towers of this type - very tall, stepped or spiral-shaped. In Babylon itself, almost nothing reminds of the tower, only part of the wall and the foundation have survived, as well as the beautiful ancient reliefs of the royal palace in the excavations.
The current building of the European Parliament is modeled on the painting of the unfinished Tower of Babel, painted in 1563 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The motto of the European Parliament in French: “Many languages - one voice” distorts the meaning of the biblical text. The building was constructed to give the impression of being unfinished. In fact, this is the completed building of the European Parliament, the construction of which was completed in December 2000.
Who in our time has not heard the myth about the legendary Tower of Babel? They learn about this unfinished building from deep childhood. But not every skeptic knows that this tower has a confirmed real existence. This is evidenced by the notes of the ancients and modern archaeological research. Today we go to Babylon to the remains of the Tower of Babel.
Biblical Legend of the Tower of Babel
The biblical legend about how people wanted to build a tower to heaven, and for this they received the punishment in the form of separation of tongues, it is better to read in the biblical original:
1. There was one language and one dialect throughout the whole earth.
2 Moving from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they had bricks instead of stones, and earthen pitch instead of lime.
4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower, its height reaching to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men were building.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they decided to do;
7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.
8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].
9 Therefore his name was given: Babylon, for there the Lord confused the tongue of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth.
History, construction and description of the Etemenanki ziggurat
Babylon is famous for its many structures. One of the main personalities in the exaltation of this glorious ancient city is Nebuchadnezzar II. It was during his time that the walls of Babylon, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Road were built. But this is just the edge of the iceberg - during all forty years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in the construction, restoration and decoration of Babylon. He left behind a large text about his work done. We will not dwell on all the points, but it is here that there is a mention of the ziggurat in the city.
This Tower of Babel, which, according to legend, could not be completed due to the fact that the builders began to speak different languages, has another name - Etemenanki, which means the House of the Cornerstone of Heaven and Earth. During excavations, archaeologists were able to discover the huge foundation of this building. It turned out to be a ziggurat typical of Mesopotamia (we can also read about the ziggurat in Ur), located at the main temple of Babylon, Esagil.
The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563 )
During the whole time, the tower was demolished and restored several times. For the first time, a ziggurat was built on this site even before Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), before it was already dismantled. The legendary structure itself appeared during the reign of King Nabupalassar, and the final construction of the summit was taken over by his successor Nebuchadnezzar.
The huge ziggurat was erected under the direction of the Assyrian architect Aradahdesh. It consisted of seven tiers with a total height of about 100 meters. The diameter of the structure was about 90 meters.
At the top of the ziggurat was a sanctuary covered with traditional Babylonian glazed bricks. The sanctuary was dedicated to the main deity of Babylon - Marduk, and it was for him that a gilded bed and table were installed, and gilded horns were fixed at the top of the sanctuary.
At the base of the Tower of Babel in the Lower Temple was a statue of Marduk himself made of pure gold with a total weight of 2.5 tons. About 85 million bricks were used to build the Etemenanki ziggurat in Babylon. The tower stood out among all the buildings of the city and gave the impression of power and grandeur. The inhabitants of this city sincerely believed in the descent of Marduk to their place of residence on earth and even talked about this to the famous Herodotus, who visited here in 458 BC (a century and a half after construction).
From the top of the Tower of Babel, another tower was visible from the neighboring city - Euriminanki in Barsippa. It is the ruins of this tower that have long been attributed to the biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he proposed to rebuild the magnificent structure anew, but his death in 323 BC left the building forever dismantled. In 275, Esagila was rebuilt, but Etemenanki was not rebuilt. Only its foundation and immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.
