The Tower of Babel

Abstract

EVER SINCE it became definitely known that the great and imposing ruins of Birs Nimrud were remnants of the ziqqurrat of Borsippa, the view that they represented the Tower of Babel has been abandoned by most scholars. This view, according to Koldewey, the excavator of ancient Babylon, was tenable only so long as Oppert's fantastic ideas as to the extent of the city found credence. It is now held as almost certain that Marduk's famous Temple Esagila, with its ziqqurrat E-temen-an-ki, is the structure referred to in Gen. 11.1 It seems to me however that the ancient and traditional identification of the 'tower of Babel' with the site of Birs Nimrud must be revived. It is plainly the intention of Gen. 11. 1-9 to tell that Yahweh hindered the builders of the tower, so that they could not complete their work. For only to the temple with its tower and not to the residential sections can the statement in v. 8, 'They had to stop building the city' apply. Since the temple of an ancient city was its real heart and centre this synecdoche is not surprising. Furthermore a cessation of 'building the city' would not become very easily the part of a story if referring to the residential part, but a great temple tower that had remained a torso or had fallen into decay would stimulate the imagination profoundly. To this Birs Nimrud bears ample testimony, for the travellers of all times have been deeply stirred by the sight of its vast ruins. The story of Gen. 11, then, clearly arose and circulated at a time when the tower referred to had been a torso for a considerable period.