The Tower of Babel: the origin of languages

“At first, when the building of the Tower of Babel was begun, everything went rather well; it seemed there were centuries ahead. Better still, the general opinion was that one could never be slow enough. The essential thing about the enterprise is the idea of building a tower that reaches the heavens. Once grasped in its grandeur, the idea can no longer disappear: as long as there are men, there will be the desire, the ardent desire, to complete the building of the tower.” Les armes de la ville (The City Coat of Arms) (Franz Kafka)

Everyone knows this story: at the origins of humanity, men wished to build a tower that would rise up to the heavens in order to dethrone G-d there. To thwart these designs, G-d sowed the confusion of tongues; men no longer understood one another, and the building of the tower ceased. And men scattered over the whole earth, and that is the origin of all the languages spoken in the world. This way of telling the story is a religious interpretation of the text.

Let us indeed read the text:

“Everyone made use of one and the same language and the same words. As men moved eastward, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another: ‘Come! Let us make bricks and bake them in the fire!’ The brick served them as stone and the bitumen served them as mortar. They said: ‘Come! Let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top pierces the heavens! Let us make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over all the earth!’ Now Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built. And Yahweh said: ‘Behold, they all make one single people and speak a single language, and this is but the beginning of their undertakings! Now nothing they plan will be beyond their reach. Come! Let us go down! And there let us confound their language so that they no longer understand one another.’ Yahweh scattered them from there over all the face of the earth, and they ceased to build the city. Hence it was named Babel, for it is there that Yahweh confounded the language of all the inhabitants of the earth, and from there that he scattered them over all the face of the earth.”

— Genesis Chap. 11 v. 1/9

André Parrot (archaeologist) writes in his book La Tour de Babel (The Tower of Babel): “the Tower of Scripture ceased, for us, to be a manifestation of man’s pride. Instead of a clenched fist raised in defiance toward the sky, we regard it, above all, as a hand stretched out toward that same sky, as a call for help.”

This explanation perhaps concerns the Ziggurats (the Babylonian religious towers), but certainly not the biblical text. This way of telling the story, by inverting the meaning given to the tower in its relation to the gods, is also a religious interpretation of the text.

It appears in the text that, at the outset, the building of the Tower does not concern G-d. It is He who will feel concerned by the Tower! A non-interpretive reading of the biblical text shows that it broaches two subjects — the first concerns the city and the Tower, the second concerns language and dispersion — and that it contains doublets:

• v3 — They said… “Come” / v4 — They said: “Come!”
• v5 — Yahweh came down to see / v7 — Come! Let us go down!
• v7 — let us confound their language / v9 — Yahweh confounded the language
• v8 — Yahweh scattered them from there / v8 — it is from there that he scattered them

If one separates the verses, avoiding the doublets and placing on one side the text about the city and the tower, and on the other the text about language and dispersion, here are the two texts one obtains:

The story of the city and the tower.

“As men moved eastward, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said: ‘Come! Let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top pierces the heavens! Let us make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over all the earth!’ Now Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that the men had built. This is but the beginning of their undertakings! Now nothing they plan will be beyond their reach. Yahweh scattered them from there over all the face of the earth, and they ceased to build the city. Hence it was named Babel, for it is from there that he scattered them over all the face of the earth.”

The story of language and dispersion.

“Everyone made use of one and the same language and the same words. They said to one another: ‘Come! Let us make bricks and bake them in the fire!’ And Yahweh said: ‘Behold, they all make one single people and speak a single language. Now nothing they plan will be beyond their reach. Come! Let us go down! And there let us confound their language so that they no longer understand one another.’ Hence it was named Babel, for it is there that Yahweh confounded the language of all the inhabitants of the earth, and from there that he scattered them over all the face of the earth.”

These two stories are coherent. Let us analyze the first story: This text recounts that, in the course of their migration (the only reference in the biblical text to a human migration at the origins of the peopling of the earth), men arrived in a plain (that of Babylonia). And they desired to gather together in a city. To signal the city to the men scattered across the plain, they raised a marker: the Tower. Its function: to be a beacon to guide men back to the city. There is no question here of any aggression toward G-d. And the gods (it is a plural) took fright. Along with Chap. 3 v. 22, where the man and the woman ate of the forbidden fruit, this is the only time it is a question of the fear of G-d (or of the gods) aroused by the action of men. The sanction was the dispersion of men and the halting of the building of the city and the tower (this is the ziggurat of Babylon).

Let us take the second story: This text speaks of the dispersion of languages out of this city, Babel, which is none other than Babylon. It is an etiological text. And the whole art of the storyteller is to be able, in his narrative, to present as many etiologies as possible within the same story (the fact that the two stories both speak of Babylon may have favored their fusion). It teaches us why several languages exist in the world; why there was at Babylon a tower half-built; how and why men were scattered over all the earth. The idea expressed is that all men would come from Babylon, where every spoken language of the world could be heard; at that time Babylon was the equivalent of New York today.

This interest in Babylonia appears from the time of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, in 587, of the deportation to Babylon that followed, and of the return, with Ezra and Nehemiah, of those who did not succeed in integrating into that country. Exchanges then arose between Palestine and Babylonia, cradle of the new religion of Ezra: Judaism. This text was written in Palestine, as is attested by the following (half-)verse, which we had neglected in the second story:

“The brick served them as stone and the bitumen served them as mortar.”

When Palestinians arrived in Babylon, they were surprised by the walls of the City built of brick (cf. the palace of Sargon and the Ishtar Gate), where they themselves used stone, and these bricks were set with bitumen, where they themselves used mortar. And in the middle of the City, they discovered a tower that had collapsed long ago, and that appeared unfinished, because the fallen bricks had been gathered up to build other houses. And they saw an unfinished Ziggurat, the half-built tower. The cause of this, according to legend, was the intervention of the gods.

Harpocration of Alexandria, during his journey to Babylon in A.D. 355, recounted that an old man, at the sight of one of the collapsed towers, assured him that it had been built by giants who wanted to scale the sky. For this mad impiety, some were struck by lightning, and the others, on the order of god, henceforth no longer recognized one another.

If now we invert the propositions expressed, we obtain the following propositions, more in keeping with reality:

First proposition: “All men came from Babylon, where every spoken language of the world could be heard,” we said. Inverting it, we obtain: Men from various countries came to Babylon, where one could hear all the languages of the world spoken. The visitor’s greatest surprise was this multitude of languages spoken there, as if the whole earth had arranged to meet there. When he recounted the story, which before being written was spoken, the storyteller inverted the proposition and made all the languages set out from the city of Babylon.

Second proposition: “There was at Babylon a tower (the Ziggurat of Etemenanki) half-built,” becomes, when inverted: there was at Babylon the Ziggurat of Etemenanki (“the gate of heaven and earth,” in Sumerian) half-destroyed. When he recounted the story, the storyteller inverted the proposition and made of the collapsed tower of Babylon (this happened several times, and it was several times rebuilt) an unfinished tower.

Babylon, which means the “Gate of God” or “Gate of the gods” (thanks to the Ziggurat, whose summit served as a resting place for the gods and whose stairway was the link between man and the gods¹), became in Hebrew etymology “Babel” (bll), “to confound.” Babel allowed the storyteller, who played on etymology, to recount the cause of the origin of languages.

This text is similar to the story of Prometheus, punished for having given fire to men. The power of men would have equaled that of the gods. The gods took fright and created languages to divide men, bringing about the creation of peoples, with, as consequences, wars between peoples not speaking the same language.

The text says “Eḥad” for one language, which has the sense of same: the same language, the same words, one same people.

Let us return to the text:

“Everyone made use of one and the same language and the same words. And G-d said: ‘Behold, they all make one single people and speak a single language, and this is but the beginning of their undertakings! Now nothing they plan will be beyond their reach. Come! Let us go down! And there let us confound their language so that they no longer understand one another.’”

This text preserves the nostalgia for a single language of origin, that of all men; it preserves the sole mythic reference to a common origin of men: the story of the creation of Adam for bodies, the story of the building of the Tower of Babel for language.

This text, the remnant of a MYTHIC NARRATIVE OF ORIGINS, preserves the idea that once upon a time men could have spoken ONE SINGLE LANGUAGE, IDENTICAL, THE SAME LANGUAGE.

Notes