Tower of Babel: What were the Gods Afraid of?

In Genesis 11, the Lord comes down to see the city and the tower that the people have built. The Lord speaks to his cohorts "well, now they all have one language and this is what they do!"

(Was this really a singular verbal language, or could it be a metaphor that they were all of one mind? Wasn't it their intention to build this tower in order to reach God? Why did this God not want to be reached or known?)

What the Lord said next seems to be disturbing. In Genesis 11:6 the Lord says "if they succeed with this nothing they undertake to do will be impossible." In other words, with this type of unity the people could accomplish anything!

Why were these gods afraid of people being unifed and peaking into the heavens to try to know god?

Is this not the very thing we are doing now? We have babelfish to translate most any language. So not only do we have "one language" many of us are unified in one accord to seek answers. Towers power our communication network.

Why would the Lord not want a unified people that could accomplish great things? Why did this Lord and his cohorts feel so threatened that they destroyed the unity of the people?

As a non religious person.

I always got puzzled by this, if ancient astronauts were real, then maybe there where ships above, and ignorant humans back then assumed they could build something to get up there?

Also, is there any evidence at all that the tower of babel was built, besides that in the bible?

The scriptures in Genesis 11 never call it the Tower of Babel. One translation says "And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven;...."

As far as archaelogical evidence, there is only speculation and remnants of ziggaurats in several places.

Although the scriptures say that they burned bricks and made mortar to build it, there are others scriptures that speak of a temple built without hands and bricks. Structures themselves, do not unite people nor make them of one accord. That is why I suspect this story of a brick building may be the embellishment of a metaphor.


There is another thing that strikes me as odd. Most cultures seemed to believe that the gods dwelled "in the high places". In scriptures God is often depicted as being on a mountain top or speaking from the rumbling of a volcano. If this was the case, then why would humans attempt to build a structure that would be taller than a mountain? Why not instead journey to the mountain and climb it to reach God?

I've always found that story puzzling, apparently the sky scrapers we have today don't bother those gods.

Well, apparently this deity was located somewhere up there in a physical place. He said, "Let us go down and confound there language..."

That suggests that he did indeed reside somewhere up in the sky, why would he have to come down if he didn't? So, was this deity not omnipresent? What exactly is this deity?

Originally posted by Alethea

It was a way of limiting the repetition of what happened prior to The Flood...
...the hybridization of human genetics...
...God was slowing down the threat to the 'seed of men'...
...until the Messiah could be born from among us.

Once the Messiah came there was no reason to limit the 'towers'.

probably in the real world: we try to build a tower to watch the anciet flying sausers,and the aliens get scared and decided to laser the tower down

reply to post by Alethea


I'm not sure how relevent the following information may be to your inquiry but there is a "coincidence" i have noticed concerning this subject matter...

9-11

Chapter 9, verse 11 of the KORAN states:
".....we make communications clear for a people who know."
Chapter 11, verse 9 of the BIBLE states:
"..and God so confused languages"

I don't think it is coincidence that one book's chapter and verses is the exact opposite of the other.

9-11 in the Koran talks of making communications understandible.
11-9 in the other book talks of making communications confused and seperate.

Coincidence, or social engineering?

reply to post by Alethea

It's hard to get good data from the Bible. Its content has been so worked over by so many different copyists and translators with biases.

Per Sitchin and others, the Bible stories are all taken from earlier sources. From what I have read, the Tower of Babel refers to a temple that was being built by a god that the ruling gods were afraid of. They wanted to destroy his temple and his followers as they saw it as a kind of insurgency.

The problem of language is a separate issue. As I understand it, that happened much earlier. The gods had educated man so that they could be better servants. They all had a common language originally. But mankind was very prolific and the gods became worried that they would go away to create their own civilizations, leaving the gods uncared for. Apparently the "confusion of languages" was one strategy to prevent this from happening. The gods eventually lost control of mankind anyway, but due partly to their crafty work, earth's population has remained unable to live peacefully together.

Originally posted by troubleshooter

It was a way of limiting the repetition of what happened prior to The Flood...
...the hybridization of human genetics...

Do you think the 'little people' would really have had that kind of knowledge to execute something like that?

Those people were supposedly wiped out with the flood, and their knowledge with them. Unless...perhaps it was the gods themselves who held that knowledge of hybridization and decided to wipe out their experiments gone awry.

Originally posted by Esoteric Teacher
reply to post by Alethea

 

I'm not sure how relevent the following information may be to your inquiry but there is a "coincidence" i have noticed concerning this subject matter...

9-11

Chapter 9, verse 11 of the KORAN states:
".....we make communications clear for a people who know."
Chapter 11, verse 9 of the BIBLE states:
"..and God so confused languages"

I don't think it is coincidence that one book's chapter and verses is the exact opposite of the other.

9-11 in the Koran talks of making communications understandible.
11-9 in the other book talks of making communications confused and seperate.

Coincidence, or social engineering?

Because the God of one book is not the same god as that of the other.

The Tower was a communication or transport device...
...there are two sides to this conflict...
...one desires it the other did not...
...guess which God won?

reply to post by Alethea


What were the gods afraid of? Knowledge and Unity. The Tower of Babel story is similar to many other stories of the mortals becoming too smart or gaining "forbidden" knowledge. Much like the Eden story depicts God as wanting to keep Adam and Eve dwelling in ignorance the God in the Tower of Babel story fears what happens when man unites. Its all about man becoming LIKE god. Man reaching the heavens, man gaining the knowledge of good and evil, Prometheus giving fire, the angels in the book of Enoch giving forbidden knowledge of metallurgy and the like...

The gods always make men in their image and they always seem to fear that we will become to unruly too control and too smart not to rebel. The first tool of enslaving a people is superstition and psychologically swaying people, the second is controlling knowledge.

This is all in a strictly literary sense though, since none of this stuff ever really happened (or if it did it has been so altered through time that it bears little resemblance to the actual events)



[edit on 20-4-2010 by Titen-Sxull]

This is a brilliant topic, one thats confusing for a number of reasons.

1. Mankind sets to build a tower to reach heaven
2. Heaven gets uphappy about this.
3. Heavens "comesdown" and confuses the languages

This results in mass confusion and the end of that particular project. I've also always assumed that a diaspora followed immediately.

Mankind wanted to and was able at this early point, to create a single overwhelming object which would have taken the efforts of everyone. This object would in essence make man a god in his own mind (what i *think* is the actual problem here).

God(s) being upset, did not destroy the tower, presumably knowing that man would swear to rebuild at the first opportunity, instead confused their languages. Now here is a secret of sorts.How many thousand men must have been there? Each their own language? It was a non event. No space ships and laser cannons, just *click* and we can't finish our conversation.

I imagine the group went downhill from there, with confusion fading into anarchy, and everyone leaving to go thei own way (the diaspora).

IMHO the language issue is more relevant than the building.

Originally posted by Alethea

Originally posted by troubleshooter

It was a way of limiting the repetition of what happened prior to The Flood...
...the hybridization of human genetics...

Do you think the 'little people' would really have had that kind of knowledge to execute something like that?

Those people were supposedly wiped out with the flood, and their knowledge with them. Unless...perhaps it was the gods themselves who held that knowledge of hybridization and decided to wipe out their experiments gone awry.

The story of the Old Testament manuscripts is the 'Seed of Men' running the guantlet of attempts to enslave and destroy it.

That was the purpose of all the killing/culling of tribes by Abe and Israel.

It was the purpose of the strict laws/punishments of Israel...
...as a form of social engineering to maintain their identity and the Seed of Men.

Where did you think all the stories of hybrid animals and animal/men came from?
Where did you think the legends of half man half god's came from?
Why do you think the world is so hung up about who we have sex with?
Because it never turned out well...
...the hybrids always tried to replace the 'Seed of Men'...
...and in modern/post-modern times we are bent on destroying the knowledge and credibility of the very documents that tell us of it...
...and kill off the very religions that ignorantly preserved the knowledge for us.

We are about to face the same threat again and most people can't wait to embrace those who would destroy us.

could be a bunch of bs from the days when typical people couldn't imagine it would be so freakin' commonplace that we'd be able to build structures way taller than the tallest things they knew ... and that we'd develop the technology and desire to comprehend each other all over the world ... and that that wouldn't be a bad thing, but an effort to understand and try, as futile as it might be, to improve global understanding.

reply to post by l_e_cox


I think you are probably pretty close here...

I think the problem the "gods" came up with is that they taught their language to the slaves/clones...and them educated them enough to utilize tools and whatnot

eventually the lowly educated became more educated through inquisitiveness, thus giving the "gods" an eventual rival/equal in the long term...you cane extend that term exponentially by segregating the subordinates

i.e. by language, color, race, ect.

When all man speak as one (one language )
they also have the ability to think as one
The instant multi media networks such as face book and twitter that kind of thing... is now helping to shape the consciousness of the world
Creating a mass conscious thinking ...and as the saying goes
What ever a person focuses upon in life they make real
So who ever has the power over the (instant) mass media also has the power to create ....to manifest

In the wrong hands ....not even god ..can do anything about it ...because that is what god is ....a mass consciousness

When translation was needed ...thought needed time to get the idea ....and so new idea's took time to change the world
Now things are changing so fast ....the world cannot keep up with it all
In a way the genie has been let out of the bottle
and....now...
We do not know how to undo what we have done

Originally posted by Alethea
Why would the Lord not want a unified people that could accomplish great things? Why did this Lord and his cohorts feel so threatened that they destroyed the unity of the people?

Well, probably because he didn't. Not just because he didn't exist but because no such tower ever existed.

The more rational and logical theory is that the story of the Tower of Babel was nothing more than that - a story.

It was a fable, a myth. It was used to explain to primitive people why groups of individuals around the world all spoke different languages.

They had no idea about linguistics; how language evolves, how pidgins and creolescome about, etc.

Originally posted by Esoteric Teacher
9-11

9/11 ? Twin Towers (tower of babel) ? One language = currency ?

It can't be....

Originally posted by noonebutme


It was a fable, a myth. It was used to explain to primitive people why groups of individuals around the world all spoke different languages.

They had no idea about linguistics; how language evolves, how pidgins and creolescome about, etc.

The "Lord" and his collegues confused their languages as a result of their fears. I would like to stay focused on why, exactly did they fear men. And why are we told that there was a group of them that made this decision, not a singular God?

Did they fear that man would find out who they really were?
Were they just a group of elites like we have today?