WEBVTT - The Tower of Babel 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:14.720 Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from housetop dot com. 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.239 And the whole earth was of one language and of 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:20.680 one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:22.959 from the east that they found a plain in the 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:26.720 land of Shinar, and they dwelt there, and they said 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.479 to one another, go to, let us make brick and 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:33.360 burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:37.159 slime they had for mortar. And they said, go to, 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.240 let us build a city and a tower whose top 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:42.920 may reach unto heaven, and let us make a name, 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:45.839 lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:49.360 whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.320 city and the tower which the children of men built, 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.360 and the Lord said, behold, the people is one, and 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.600 they have all one language. And this they begin to do. 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.120 And now nothing will be restrained from them which they 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.760 have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down. 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:10.880 And they're confound their language that they may not understand 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:14.880 one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:17.119 thence upon the face of all the earth, and they 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.560 left off to build the city. Therefore is the name 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.040 of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:26.720 the language of all the earth? And from thence did 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:29.880 the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:34.200 the earth. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. 0:01:34.280 --> 0:01:36.720 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:39.760 that was a reading from the Book of Genesis in 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:43.440 the Bible. It is the story of the Tower of Babel. Robert, 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:46.640 I've got to ask you, what did this story look 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:48.880 like when you were a little kid. Inside your head? Oh, 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.040 I mean, I guess it's always kind of looked the same. Um, 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:55.160 I don't, I don't. I wish I did you picture 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:57.840 the tower? Yes, But I have to say I had 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.520 this book of Bible stories with illustrations for each one, 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.400 and I think it was kind of Gustaf Dora inspired. 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.320 It had a kind of spiraling, you know, almost a 0:02:08.639 --> 0:02:11.160 seashell kind of looked to it. And I was always 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:13.399 taken by that. I was this was a fabulous book 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:15.520 in many respects because I remember it had it just 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.480 had all of these strange illustrations to them, especially the 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:22.400 more mystical Old Testament occurrences. Now, did it have a 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:26.640 direct translation of the Genesis account along with illustrations or 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:29.960 was it like adapted into a modern sort of retelling 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:31.640 of the So I think it was adapted because it 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.520 was kind of for kids, you know, So I didn't 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:37.760 have access in that book to the you know, the 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:39.920 the nice keen James version that we have here with 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:44.240 all the slime and mortar and weirdness and some other translations. 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:50.160 That word slime is rendered tar alright, So if you're 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:52.640 not familiar with it, the account of Genesis basically lays 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.960 it all out. So humans got smart, they got organized, 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:58.560 they got more than a little bit ambitious. They decided 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:00.440 to build a structure that would show of the world 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:04.120 just how amazing they really were. And uh, God wasn't 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:07.200 too crazy about this development. So in this, uh, this story, 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.760 in this myth, he blasts their language so that they 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:13.360 can't understand each other and scatters them far and wide. 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.480 Then the tower is never finished. Right, So this is 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:19.600 pretty straightforward about how this would work in the logic 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.160 of the story. Right, if you confuse the tongues, if 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.480 you ever, if everybody speaks the same language, they can 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:28.000 all work together. If you make them all speak different languages, 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:31.880 then they can't coordinate their activities, and thus the building 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:33.800 of the tower has to stop. Yeah, it's it's at 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:37.600 least gonna set back production of the tower somewhat because 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:39.880 you're gonna have to figure out how I mean in 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.240 this magical scenario, You're gonna have to figure out how 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:45.520 your language relates to their language. You're gonna have to 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:49.000 figure out some sort of common means of communicating, and 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:52.840 it's essentially have to reorganize the whole the whole venture. 0:03:53.080 --> 0:03:55.600 Now this is coming right pretty much right after a 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:58.080 catastrophe in the Book of Genesis, because this is after 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:00.920 the flood narrative, right, so we had the whole earth 0:04:01.040 --> 0:04:04.560 except for one family destroyed in the Great Flood. So 0:04:04.600 --> 0:04:07.800 it's after the flood, and and so you've got people 0:04:07.840 --> 0:04:12.000 rebuilding civilization. But they get a little haughty, and there 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.560 are multiple ways that you could interpret what they're doing 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:19.520 when they're building this tower up to heaven. As a child, 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:21.719 I think the way I read the story was, well, 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.720 they're prideful right there, saying look what we can accomplish. 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.040 Were showing off, and God did not like their pride 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.320 and punish them for it. More recently, when I look 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:35.240 at this story, I see an implied threat essentially that 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:39.080 they are attempting to physically scale to the heavens so 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.280 that they could challenge the gods. In one sense, they 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:46.320 are bridging heaven and earth. Yeah, it's like a yeah, 0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:48.360 it really is, and so what's what's God to do? 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:50.960 I mean, there are some accounts I remember reading when 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:53.240 I was younger. They would even say that the workmen 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:55.640 on the tower, like on their lunch break, I guess, 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:58.200 would shoot angels with bows and arrows because it was 0:04:58.200 --> 0:05:00.200 getting that high, you know, it was getting clo to 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.279 the heavenly domain. Yeah, when I when I was young, 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:05.400 and for the longest I think it was the definitely 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:08.880 the pride version, the idea that they just got too boastful, which, 0:05:08.880 --> 0:05:12.599 on one hand, the message there ties in I guess 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:14.440 nicely with a lot of human endeavor. I don't get 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:16.880 too full of yourself, because God still got the final word. 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:19.880 But it also kind of makes God look like a 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.920 paranoid jerk where he's just like, oh, this tower is 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:24.920 getting a little too tall from my like and I'm 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:27.240 gonna smite that, Like why you're God, They're just building 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:30.160 a tower. That The behavior is more understandable if you 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:33.120 interpret it as an attempt to overthrow the gods, a 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.320 threat against their place in the sky. It also makes 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.719 more sense when you think about ancient cosmology with with 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:43.000 the idea that the heavens were actually a fairly low 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:46.719 plane that you could access through ascension in the air. 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.720 When when I was a kid, I had this story 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:52.479 in my head, and I was trying to picture it 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:55.360 as something that had happened. But I also had knowledge 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.240 of outer space travel and and how big the atmosphere 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:00.679 actually was, so I was trying to picture it like, Okay, 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:02.719 so they're building a tower that literally goes up to 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:07.120 space because that's where God is. Well, I didn't necessarily 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:09.040 think God was in space, but that was the only way, 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:11.120 knowing about space, that's the only way I could really 0:06:11.120 --> 0:06:14.240 interpret it. And so I was picturing a tower that 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:16.560 just went up as far as you could see, which 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:18.960 is kind of ridiculous to picture. Now, if you see 0:06:19.000 --> 0:06:22.760 the great artistic representations of the story, it's not really 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.640 that the tower reaches beyond where you can see, though 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.279 actually I guess in some of them it is. But 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:32.600 like later we'll be looking at a Peter bru Egels interpretation, 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:35.080 and it's more just kind of this massive project that 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.359 more reflects pride, I think. Yeah, And even with just 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.159 a basic almost subconscious understanding of engineering, you look at 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.880 those representations and you know this thing is not going 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:48.320 to reach a low Earth orbit or anything. Right now. 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:50.200 You can also look at the myth, you know, in 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.360 two basic ways as well. I guess you can say 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:56.560 that this was basically an etiological attempt, you know, to explain, well, 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:58.880 why do we have all these languages? Yeah, and ideologies 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:02.080 are extremely common and in ancient literature and ancient mythology, 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:04.520 and you find them all throughout the Bible. The Book 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.479 of Genesis is full of stories that tell you a 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:09.880 story about something that happened, and it sort of ends 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.640 with the punch line, and that's why these people are 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:16.000 now called this which relates to some fact about the story, 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:18.560 you know it would be like, And then they cut 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.240 off one guy's leg, and that's why this tribe is 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.120 now called the left footers. Yeah. And then but then 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:27.559 there's just not a real But then there's another level 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.600 too to our interpretation of this tale, this myth uh 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:33.560 as And and I think I think it's not too 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:35.640 much of a stretch to to think about it being 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.120 baked into the original purpose as well is that it 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:42.160 explains why people can't get along very well, why people 0:07:42.240 --> 0:07:45.200 can't come can can very rarely come together on a 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:49.560 megaproject um and and stick with it like something's going 0:07:49.600 --> 0:07:52.560 to fall apart. Uh. And you have to have extenuating 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:57.960 circumstances to allow something grandiose to happen to begin with. Yeah, 0:07:58.040 --> 0:07:59.880 And in that vein, I can see how it's not 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.600 only an ideological story to explain why we have all 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:06.240 these different languages on Earth, why there's so much conflict, 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:11.679 but it also has some kind of ancient techno paranoia, 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:16.720 uh idea. Right, So there's actually a bit of discussion 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:19.240 of technological change in the story. They say, you know what, 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:23.360 they were burning those bricks thoroughly. This actually represented a 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:27.160 technological upgrade. And the architecture of ancient Mesopotamia, a lot 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:29.200 of it was built with mud bricks. These are sun 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:32.400 baked mud bricks that you would form together out of 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:35.360 clay and then allow to harden in the sun. And 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:37.600 these were you know, you could build out of them, 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.680 but they didn't. They weren't in it for the long haul. Later, 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.600 if you had fire baked bricks that you made at 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:46.080 a much higher temperature, they would be much sturdier. So 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:50.720 we're seeing here there's technological change. This technological change leads 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:54.360 to either on one interpretation, you know, Huber as people 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:57.640 being uh very haughty about what they can do with 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.240 their their new ovens and kilns now out, or it 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:03.720 leads to them saying, you know, we've got this new power, 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:06.600 we could ascend to the heavens and take over. Yeah, 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:08.640 they're like, how you touched on the sort of the 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:11.000 violence of making the bricks, because they're they're kind of 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.160 perpetrating an act of violence on the earth, remaking the 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.439 earth into an artificial mountain. And in so many mythologies, 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:19.160 I mean, the mountain is the mountains are where the 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.800 gods live. The mountain is the thing that bridges Earth 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:24.280 to the sky. Yeah. So eventually in this episode, we 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:28.640 want to take a quick look at about the diversification 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:33.400 of languages and where language speciation comes from. But before 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:35.240 we get into that, I think we just want to 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.520 talk about the myth itself because it's such an interesting story. Yeah, 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:40.160 we're gonna kick off with the myth. We're gonna talk 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:42.559 a little bit about art, and yeah, we're gonna get 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:47.120 into some engineering and linguistics. But first the myth and 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:49.240 uh and and as is the case with the number 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:51.000 of these Old Testament stories, and we went into this 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.040 a little bit when we we talked about the Great 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.160 Flood in a previous episode, like these are these are 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:00.360 tales that existed before the the Old Testament was really thing? Like, 0:10:00.360 --> 0:10:03.960 these were tales that they were brought into this collection. Well, 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:06.280 you can, you can definitely look at it that way. 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.360 Another way to look at it is that, um, if 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:13.840 the tales in Genesis didn't necessarily come from other stories 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.040 that you'd find and say ancient Sumerian literature or something 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:19.480 like that, you might say that they had a common 0:10:19.520 --> 0:10:22.560 ancestor you know that they they might not be direct 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.240 descendants of one another, but might be cousins that come 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:29.840 from more primeval stories. But yeah, it's hard to know exactly, 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:32.920 but you can see parallels in in other ancient Sumerian 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.080 mythology that are very interesting. And I want to get 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.319 into it a little bit, but first I just wanted 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:40.280 to take a peek at some of the translation notes, 0:10:40.320 --> 0:10:42.480 which was this is one of my favorite things to 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.559 do about an Old Bible story is go look up 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:49.520 a fairly literal translations, such as like the New American 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:53.000 Standard version that's a trans English translation of the Bible that, 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:57.200 more so than most versions, tries to follow the literal 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:00.600 word for word progression of the text. Now, a lot 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:05.000 of times this doesn't necessarily render the best reading um, 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:06.960 but it is just more interesting to see what the 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.680 original language looked like, and then also look at there 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.199 there will be usually if there's like a if it's 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:15.040 a good online resource, there will be like footnotes you 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:17.720 can click that will tell you literally what the original 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.720 word was. So, for example, everywhere the word language appears 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:24.040 in this original story, it says the whole earth was 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.200 of one language and of one speech. Literally, that's the 0:11:27.240 --> 0:11:30.760 whole earth was of one lip or had one lip. 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:35.320 So I'm imagining everybody sharing a lip or sort of 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:39.160 lip locking all the time when they're talking, and the 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:41.839 the one speech was of one set of words or 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:46.080 few words. And so when God speaks to God, God 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.439 is speaking to some kind of other heavenly beings one 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.960 would assume other gods in the earlier pantheon or angels. 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.720 God says, let us go down there and confuse their 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:58.880 lips so that they will not understand one another's lip. 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:03.480 But there's also another ideological feature of this story, which 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.760 is that it tries to explain the origin of the 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:09.400 term Babel. So you've got this line in verse nine 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:11.720 where it says, therefore is the name of it called 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:15.080 babble because the Lord did their confound the language of 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:18.040 all the earth, and thence did the Lord scatter them 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:20.480 abroad upon the face of the earth. So he's talking 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.080 about this place called Babel. Literally, this is probably referring 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.360 to Babylon. That's their word for it. But also there's 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.040 a joke in the name because the Hebrew word baalal 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:35.760 means confused or confound, So it's trying to say there's 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:37.880 some kind of cognate in the word they use for 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:42.120 the place Babylon and the word for confused. It's like, yeah, 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.319 that's why they call that place Babylon. It's because it's confused. 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:49.319 Old Testament jokes. You know why they call it Pittsburgh. 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.200 It's the pit. Yeah, there you go. It's the same spirit. 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:56.959 Or here's another one, Joe, which us state is um 0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:58.840 is high in the middle and around on both ends. 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:04.560 I have no idea. Oh hioh, there you go. Uh man. 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:09.680 But back to ancient Babylon. Oh you got me there, 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:14.120 Robert I am slain, I die Horatio. So back to 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:17.040 the original myth. So we've got this Genesis version. But 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.920 there are also other versions of the same story. For example, 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.239 one appears in the Book of Jubilees, which is another 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:26.960 ancient Jewish text that is sort of a retelling of 0:13:27.000 --> 0:13:29.839 a lot of the other Genesis stories. It's a it's 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:32.400 a retelling of the history of the Jewish people and 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:34.800 their relationship with God, and it's sort of like dictated 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.880 by angels, and they give just a few extra details 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.559 in the story. For example, in the Jubilees version, it says, 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:43.800 and they began to build, and in the fourth week 0:13:43.840 --> 0:13:46.600 they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.640 for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:52.680 together was asphalt, which cometh out of the sea and 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:55.400 out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinnar. 0:13:55.960 --> 0:13:58.160 So that's given us a little more detail about like 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:02.160 the technological origins of their instruction methods. More about the 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:05.680 construction methods. They specified the size of the tower and 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:08.640 they built it forty and three years. Where they're building 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:11.560 its breadth was two hundred and three bricks, and the 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:13.760 height of a brick was the third of one. It's 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:16.600 height amounted to five thousand, four hundred and thirty three 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.160 cubits and two palms, and the extent of one of 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:25.720 the walls was thirteen states and of the other thirty states. 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:29.440 So if Google's unit conversion program of length of the 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:31.600 length of a cubit is right, this means that the 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.680 tower would have been about eight thousand, one fifty ft tall. 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.880 And to put that in in in terms of modern buildings, 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:43.440 the Burge Khalifa in the United are Arab Emirates is 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.400 two thousand, seven hundred seventeen feet tall. So this would 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:51.520 have dwarfed the tallest building that has has ever existed, 0:14:51.520 --> 0:14:55.760 the stall structure that's ever existed, by a substantial degree. Now, 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.840 I wonder how this compares to the alternate designs for 0:14:58.920 --> 0:15:01.440 the Colossus of Chane Cargo we talked about in our 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.880 in our Chicago World's Fair episode. Remember the other proposed 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:09.200 structures before they had the ferris wheel, they were going 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.360 to be thousands and thousands of feet tall, many Birch 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.160 Khalifa's Yes, I don't know, it would be interesting to 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.800 go back super fans can listen and tell us what 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:20.960 we said. Uh. And then also we get another detail 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.680 in the Jubilees version about how God knocked the tower 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:25.720 down in the end, so he didn't just scatter the people, 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:27.920 but he crushed the tower. So it says, the Lord 0:15:28.000 --> 0:15:31.040 send a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:33.920 upon the earth, and behold it was between as Sure 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:37.360 and Babylon in the land of Shannar, and they called 0:15:37.400 --> 0:15:40.520 its name Overthrow. So it looks like we get another 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.000 ideological legend there. There's some place that translates roughly to 0:15:44.120 --> 0:15:47.280 overthrow apparently, and saying you know why we call it 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.560 overthrow because it's where God knocked down the tower. It 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:52.480 does put a totally different spin on the myth. Like 0:15:52.520 --> 0:15:54.120 on one level, he just he's like, what do I 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:56.040 have to do to knock down this tower? I just 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:58.680 have to confuse their languages, snap of the fingers. It's done. 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:01.120 It takes care of itself. But in this version he 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:02.960 does that, but he's like, a heck, I'll not get 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:07.480 down to why I'm a giant toddler. Uh. So there 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:10.920 are also some interesting parallels here where you've got the 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:15.040 Sumerian got Inky, and one of his roles that has 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:18.720 been discovered in in recent decades is as the confuser 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.120 of languages in Sumerian mythology. So I want to refer 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:25.600 to a paper I came across by Samuel Noah Kramer, 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:30.040 who is a twentieth century Sumerian history expert, and he 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:33.280 wrote this paper called the Babble of Tongues a Sumerian 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:36.560 Version in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. Now 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:40.600 this was from night so this is not a new discovery, um, 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:42.520 but but we do find that it when it comes 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:47.840 to studying the Tower of Babble, new research is is 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:50.400 a very relative term. There's not a lot of like 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:53.280 cutting edge study of this. This. There was some new 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:55.360 stuff at the time this came out, though, because he 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.880 had just recently gotten access to some new cune of 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:02.640 form tablets have filled in the gaps in a previously 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:07.480 known legend that that that had had incomplete sections because 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:11.159 of the deterioration of our sources. So he notes that 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:14.480 the biblical scholar E. A. Spicer had demonstrated in his 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.119 Anchor Bible commentary on Genesis that the Tower of Babel 0:17:18.240 --> 0:17:20.879 narrative likely had a cune of form source, so another 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:25.360 Mesopotamian source going back to this other ancient Mesopotamian literature, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.480 and Kramer was trying to bolster this view given recent 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:32.080 discoveries of his day of clay fragments filling in this 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:35.960 incomplete fragment from a Sumerian epic tale known as in 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:39.880 mer Car and the Lord of Arrata, and the details 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:42.399 of the narrative aren't especially important. Basically, it's about a 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:45.280 conflict between two rulers or kings. One is in mere 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.159 Car and he wants to get the king of Rata 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.560 to submit to him and pay tribute of gold and gems. 0:17:52.119 --> 0:17:55.800 And there's one section known as the Golden Age passage, 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:58.399 and this is where an envoy from Rata is asked 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.639 to deliver this sort of formalized statement. It's kind of 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.400 like a hymn or a poem to his master. And 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.159 this is Kramer's translation of the part that was already 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:12.639 known when before these new tablet pieces were discovered. It 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.400 goes like this, Once upon a time, there was no snake, 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:20.520 there was no scorpion, there was no hyena, there was 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.720 no lion, there was no wild dog, no wolf. There 0:18:24.800 --> 0:18:29.159 was no fear, no terror. Man had no rival in 0:18:29.200 --> 0:18:33.720 those days. The lands of Saber and Hamazi, harmony tongued summer, 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:37.160 the great land of the decrees of prince ship Uri, 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:40.480 the land having all that is appropriate, the landmark to 0:18:40.840 --> 0:18:45.000 resting in security, the whole universe, the people in unison, 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:48.240 to in Leal, and that's a Sumerian chief god to 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:53.199 in Leal. In one tongue spoke then Adah, the Lord Adah, 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:57.360 the Prince Adah, the king. In Key, Adah the Lord Adah, 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:00.040 the Prince, Adah, the king, and repeats it again, a 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:02.080 Da the Lord ada the Prince, a Da the King. 0:19:02.119 --> 0:19:05.160 There's a lot of repetition in these um So that's 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:07.000 what they had already. But then there was this new 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:11.040 discovery that added in some new fragments. It went on 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:15.040 to say, in Key, which is another Sumerian guard, the 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:19.520 Lord of abundance, whose commands are trustworthy, the Lord of Wisdom, 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:23.920 who understands the land, the leader of the gods endowed 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.679 with wisdom, the Lord of airy. Do change the speech 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:31.479 in their mouths, brought contention into it, into the speech 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:34.960 of man that until then had been one. So here's 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:37.680 another version of the story. Of the confusion of tongues. Now, 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:39.960 this one lacks a lot of detail. It doesn't say 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.600 that humans were building a tower. It doesn't really give 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.480 a rationale for in Key changing the languages that people spoke. 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:49.200 It just says that people offered praise to in Leal 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.040 in one tongue. They all spoke the same language, and 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:55.399 then at some point this great figure in Key brought 0:19:55.480 --> 0:20:01.600 contention into their languages and split the languages into different fragment. Now, 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.840 Kramer notes a difference from the Biblical account. Of course, 0:20:04.880 --> 0:20:07.919 in the Biblical story, the gods confused the speech of 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:12.000 humankind because humankind is threatening to encroach into the heavens, 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:14.199 which is the domain of the gods, and it's a 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:18.000 conflict between between God and the humans that leads to 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:21.280 the confusion of tongues. But in the Sumerian version, as 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:24.080 I was saying, there's nothing apparent that the humans did 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.359 to have their speech confused. So Cramer suggests that any 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.880 Key confusing the tongues of humanity is a result of 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:35.160 his rivalry with the other god of the Sumerian pantheon 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:37.560 that's mentioned in the story the Big One in Leal, 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:41.440 rather than of a rivalry with humans. This is interesting 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:45.280 because it makes me think about the differences very broadly 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:49.640 between worshiping a pantheon of gods or a single god, 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:52.760 between being polytheistic and monotheistic. So if you just have 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:55.920 one god, well, well, let me take it from this direction. 0:20:56.119 --> 0:20:59.000 If you have multiple gods, and it's possible that these 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.359 gods don't get along, and then you're just left with 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:06.280 the residual um chaos of their turmoil. In the same way, 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.040 might be an innocent bystanding yeah, yeah, in a way 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:12.800 that I think relates to modern experience, but even ancient experience, 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.400 where you know, what are you doing? You're just a 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.359 normal person trying to live your life. You're a farmer, 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.240 you're a craftsman, your podcast or whatever you are. And 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:26.400 the conflicts among the greats, among the kings, the governments 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:30.760 of the nations themselves, the way no input do you 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:32.639 have no input? But then you still have to suffer 0:21:32.720 --> 0:21:36.080 what the wages of these conflicts. But it's not a 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:38.359