The Tower of Babel , whose first mention was made by the Sumériens was, according to the Genèse, a tower which the men wished to build to reach the sky. Descendants of Noah, they thus represented whole humanity and were supposed all speech the same one and single language on Ground, one and only one adamic Langue. To thwart their project which he considered full with pride, God multiplied the languages so that the men do not include themselves/understand any more. Thus construction could not advance any more, it stopped, and the men dispersed on the ground.

This history is used to illustrate a matter, like the dangers to want to place itself at equal of God, to defy it by our research of knowledge, or like the need that with humanity to speak, to include itself/understand to carry out great projects. As with the risk to see failing these projects when each group of specialists starts to speaking only the Jargon about its discipline.

One can also, more simply, to see it like an attempt at response of the men to the apparent mystery of the existence of several languages.

The accounts of constructions which the men tried to raise to the sky for a long time marked the spirits, source of inspiration for good number of writers and artists.

Possible origin

Perhaps the history of the tower of Babel originates in a building which really existed. It would be about Etemenanki (“the house-base of the sky and the ground”), a Ziggourat dedicated to the god Mardouk with Babylon. Built by the first Babylonian dynasty (- 1894 to -1595), it was to measure 90 meters height. However its form was not circular. The archaeological excavations of the site of Babylon proved that this ziggourat had a rectangular base common in the majority of these ziggourats. However one can put the question: “Why is it represented like a tower? ” The answer most plausible remainder that of the confusion of the painters of the time: indeed, with 205km in the north of the site and 125km in the north of Baghdad the minaret of the mosque of Samarra is, the Malwiya tower, which are neither more nor less that one can admire in the majority of the representations of the tower of Babylon, its single form, in spiral, influenced many painters and explorers. However this mosque dates from the 9th century, and thus does not have probably any bond with the ancient city of Babylon.

French text of the Bible

The tower of Babel is evoked in the Genèse, in the chapter chapter 11, verses 1 to 9:

Translation in the Bible of Jerusalem

Everyone made use of the same language and same words. As the men moved with the East, they found a valley with the country of Shinéar and they were established there. They said one to the other: “Let us go! Let us make bricks and cook them with fire! ” The brick was used to them as stone and the bitumen was used to them as mortar. They said: “Let us go! We build a city and a tower whose top penetrates the skies! We make a name and let us not be dispersed on all the ground! ”

However Yahvé went down to see the city and the tower which the men had built. And Yahvé known as: “Here that does everything only one people and speaks only one language, and such is the beginning of their companies! Now, no intention will be unrealizable for them. Let us go! Let us go down! And there, let us confuse their language so that they do not mean any more the ones the others. ” Yahvé dispersed them from there on all the face of the earth and they ceased building the city. Also it was named Babel, because it is there that Yahvé confused the language of all the inhabitants of the ground and it is there that it dispersed them on all the face of the earth.

Current translation

All the ground had only one language and the same words. As they had left the East, they found a plain with the country of Schinear, and they lived there. They said one to the other: Let us go! Let us make bricks, and cook them with fire. And the brick was used to them as stone, and bituminizes it was used to them as cement. They still said: Let us go! We build a city and a tower whose top touches with the sky, and make us a name, so that we are not dispersed on the face of all the ground.

The Eternal went down to see the city and the tower which the sons of man built. And the Eternal known as: Here, they train only one people and have all the same language, and it is there what they undertook; maintaining anything would not prevent them from doing all that they would have projected. Let us go! let us descend, and there confuse their language, so that they do not hear any more the language, from/to each other. And the Eternal dispersed them far from there on the face of all the ground; and they ceased building the City. This is why it was called name of Babel, because it is there that the Eternal confused the language of all the ground, and it is from there that the Eternal dispersed them on the face of all the ground.

Other sources

A Protestant interpretation

The passage of the tower of Babel - account etiologic justifying the diversity of the languages and the people - mark the account closure of the origins which extends starting from Gen. I. This account is marked out by the sin, by “its eruptions”: the fall, the account of Caïn and Abel, song of Lemec, the Flood. However a distinction, seems to us it, must be made. Contrary to the fall, with the account of Caïn and Abel and the song of Lémec, which stigmatize with the sins or the individual behaviors, the unions of the Ange S which will cause the flood and ventures construction of the tower of Babel are collective sins or behaviors. In these two cases, they are events where humanity is included/understood like the community of wire of Adam.

At the end of the history of the origins, it is thus a question of marking the collective sin of a human community and of showing the judgment by God of it. A judgment without call, intervention of the grace. Starting from this word: “the Lord dispersed them on the face of all the ground”, the account of the tower of Babel and that of the origins opens in the future with the direction where the question of the relation between the men and God is put.

(will Conférez Von Rad, Théologie of the Old Testament , vol. I, Geneva, Labor and Fides, p. 146)

Coran and the Moslem tradition

August 1st

Origin of the name

Babel comes from the word Akkadien Bāb-ili (the door of God), Bāb meaning “door” and it meaning “God”. (declined ili ) Another significance bab- 'el (the city of God). One can see a Onomatopée also there: cf prattle .

It may be that it was also called thus in reference to “Babylon”

For Christian Dufour in To hear the words which say the evils , the name of Babel can be " entendu" according to two versions: either God moves away the Verb, or the intelligence looks further into the Verb. Two versions which tend to connect the single language with the Verb of God.

Appearances and references

In the literature

• the library of Babel (1941) of Jorge Shine Borges
• Babel, the Promised Language , of Alain-Abraham Abehsera, BibliEurope - Connective, 1999 (test on the universal relationship of the languages with the Hebrew biblical). ISBN 2-911398-34-3
• the man who defied Babel: Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof of Rene Centassi and Henri Masson, foreword of Louis Christophe Zaleski-Zamenhof, Ramsay Editions; ISBN 2-7475-1808-6; 2002.
• Of the Towers of Babel of Jacques Derrida
• Babel of Jean-Claude Francklin
• Babel, the tower of the men of Daniel Brentwood
• Babel or incompletion of Paul Zumthor, editions of the Threshold
• the prohibited sacrifice chapter 3 of Marie Balmary editions Grasset 1999.
• the Tower song of Guy Béart

In painting

Martin van Valckenborch (1535-1612), the Tower of Babel , oil on wood 49,5 X 66,6 cm (Pinacoteca; His)

With the cinema

• In the film Metropolis , a scene tells the history of the tower of Babel: its goal, its construction, incomprehension between the hand and the head and its end. In another scene, a man seeks to rise with the top of the others by the means of a robot to the appearance of little girl, being able to control the world top of a tower called Ziggurat, made with the image of the tower of Babel.
• In the film Alexandre of Oliver Stone, a scene shows the tower of Babel located at Babylon.
• the film of Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel refers to the myth by taking support on the difficulties encountered by the men to communicate, whereas they all are consequently plain humanity.

In cartoon films

• the tower of Babel makes its appearance in Nadia, the secrecy of blue water . It was built by the Atlantes but this one was also used for their destruction.
• In the Castle in the sky , the origin of the castle is little known but the credits make think of the topic men which have wanted to raise with row of gods (life in clouds, power infinite which can make the good or the evil following their will) and which were almost destroyed, the survivors having very to relearn. The bond is all the more obvious as one of these castles appearing in the credits strongly resembles the representation of Pierre Bruegel.
• In Patlabor , E. Hoba (in reference to Jéhovah) tries to sabotage the Babylon project by introducing a virus which causes the appearance of the word " Babel" on the screens of computer and the madness of the robots infected by this virus. The purpose of this operation is to prevent the return of God, supposed to punish the man, as in the Old will, following the Pharaonic Babylon project.
• One can also see it in certain video games like " Illusion off time" in which a hero evolves/moves inside a tower resembling the tower of Babel, in Mario Bros 3 where it constitutes a small level in the world 5 which precisely is the world of the sky.

In band-drawn

• the Tower of François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters reports the history of a maintenor in a tower of a disproportionate size, evoking the tower of Babel.

See too

Random links:

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