Space For Doubt

I think this was the next item on my domino list, if for no other reason than the proximity to the flood.

No one denies that, in addition to any potentially legitimate historical existence, the Tower of Babel story has significant symbolic meaning. Since it is commonly taught as an actual historic event, I thought I’d breakdown the feasibility of this.

There’s a lot of ground to cover in the symbolic meaning that I won’t attempt much of here. That’s not my forte and I’ll never pretend like it is.

I’m going to address this in the physical realm. Either they built it or they didn’t. Maybe it was small. Maybe it was super tall. Whatever the case, let’s see what physics, anthropology, and some logic tell us about this.

Traditional SDA interpretation:

• The tower was built using bitumen and clay bricks
• The tower was built with the goal to
  • Avoid future floods (EGW)
  • Investigate the source of the flood (EGW)
  • Make a name for themselves (Bible)
• Prior to the tower, all humanity had one language
• The tower was built between 100-340 years after the flood (~2200 BC.) depending on which source you read.

Other add-on beliefs I’ve heard

• Ethnic diversity also came into play at the tower of Babel.
  • People have trouble defending the fact that all known ethnic differences (height, skin color, anatomical shape differences) supposedly developed in a span of <2,000 years. By coming up with a theory that those differences also were imbued by God at Babel, they are much more ok with that view.

Problems:

We have records going back to the early ~3,000s B.C. that multiple languages existed in written format. This would mean they had existed in spoken form for quite some time prior to that. One can make inferences that spoken language existed based on the type and complexity of archaeological findings (the art, instruments, drawings, etc), but direct positive proof of something not written down is understandably absent. Many scholars think spoken languages went back to as early as ~40,000 B.C.

Here is a full stop-the-presses, 100% contradiction. The bible says all humanity had one language. By the early 2,000’s B.C. we had several on the scene. There’s really no way out of this one.

Let’s see what happens if we move our tower back to the latest, and very generous, date of ~4,000 B.C. Probably not enough to avoid other spoken languages, but we’ll give the benefit of the doubt here.

Uh oh. Here’s another problem. No archaeological finds to date have found a first use case of bitumen and clay brick before ~3,300 B.C. It doesn’t appear to be a commonly used construction material until around 3,000 B.C.

For us to confidently go back far enough to avoid any likely multiple spoken languages scenario, we go back too far to have the knowledge to use the requisite building materials.

We are really in a pickle here. One could make the case that knowledge could be gained and lost. A people group could in theory discover this building material, use it for the first time, have their languages confused, then lose the knowledge for another several hundred or thousand years. That’s not too far of a stretch. However bitumen and baked clay aren’t exactly rocket science. It’s not like we had to rediscover advanced chemistry here. It’s a difficult proposition to see a construction material “science” like this making it’s exit for potentially thousands of years.

What about some other problems?

A tower built of bitumen and clay bricks would not have the structural integrity needed to go thousands of feet into the air to avoid the flood waters. The force on the materials themselves require a compression strength that is just not met with clay bricks. It may have the strength needed to exceed the height of a local flood (limited flood theory). We’ll come back to that.

We also have to take into consideration intelligence. These people were supposedly so smart that they had previously (just like…a few hundred years before) been genetically engineering dinosaurs (SDA view only). At this point they supposedly also had pretty long lifespans. Many probably had second hand accounts of the flood from the ark inhabitants themselves. After all they were still alive. Would a people this smart really think they could build a tower that high? (if the flood was global)

Hypothesis:

The tower of babel may have been a real construction event and would make significantly more sense when viewing the flood as a regional flood only a hundred or so feet deep. However while this answers some questions, this poses several issues with regards to available construction materials and language development. Here’s a few solutions to this problem:

1.) The Incorrect Date

• A construction date significantly prior to traditional one to avoid multiple languages
• An assumption that construction material science was gained and then lost
• A tower not built with flood water exceeding height in mind, OR, that it was based on the local flood height only.

2.) The Incorrect Language Statement

• The statement that there was only one language at the time was incorrect. Perhaps this meant only one language for that small known geographical area?
• A tower not built with flood water exceeding height in mind, OR, that it was based on the local flood height only.

3.) The Symbolic Message

• This story is just a symbolic device used to convey a message to the people at the time. Perhaps a warning or an explanation of why current things are the way they are.

To me, it sure feels like option #3 fits the bill pretty nicely.

There’s some additional musings I’ve had with this story as well, on God’s thoughts and actions. They seem rather peculiar, but I’ll get into that another time.

Peace.