And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they [the descendants of Noah] journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. — Genesis 11:1–9
Obviously, Moshe (Moses), traditionally identified as the author of "Genesis," did not mention the destruction of the tower, only the confusion of languages. However, the "Book of Jubilees" (or the "Book of Division"), "detailing the history of the division of the days of the Law, of the events of the years, the year-weeks, and the jubilees of the world" which angels revealed to Moshe during the 40 days he was on Mt. Sinai, claimed that God overturned the tower with a great wind. (The book also maintained that Hebrew was the language of Heaven and was originally spoken by all the creatures in the Garden of Eden, though the animals lost the power of speech when Adam and Eve were expelled. After the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Hebrew was forgotten by humans, until the angels taught it to Abraham.) Although the Tower of Babel does not appear in the Qur'an, the 9th-century historian Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī repeated Titus Falavius Josephus' claim that Noah's great-grandson Nimrod had built the tower in Babil but added the deatails that God destroyed it and that Syriac, the universal language, was confused into 72 languages; the 12th-century geographer Yāqūt ibn-'Abdullah al-Rūmī al-Hamawī claimed that winds swept mankind together into the plain later called Babil, where Allah assigned them separate languages, and then winds separated them again. Two centuries later Abu Al-fida' Isma'il Ibn 'ali ibn Mahmud Al-malik Al-mu'ayyad 'imad Ad-din elaborated on al-Tabari's account by saying that Noah's great-great-grandson Abir (Eber) refused to participate in the towe's construction and thus was allowed to retain the original language, Hebrew.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they [the descendants of Noah] journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
ReplyDelete— Genesis 11:1–9
Obviously, Moshe (Moses), traditionally identified as the author of "Genesis," did not mention the destruction of the tower, only the confusion of languages. However, the "Book of Jubilees" (or the "Book of Division"), "detailing the history of the division of the days of the Law, of the events of the years, the year-weeks, and the jubilees of the world" which angels revealed to Moshe during the 40 days he was on Mt. Sinai, claimed that God overturned the tower with a great wind. (The book also maintained that Hebrew was the language of Heaven and was originally spoken by all the creatures in the Garden of Eden, though the animals lost the power of speech when Adam and Eve were expelled. After the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Hebrew was forgotten by humans, until the angels taught it to Abraham.) Although the Tower of Babel does not appear in the Qur'an, the 9th-century historian Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī repeated Titus Falavius Josephus' claim that Noah's great-grandson Nimrod had built the tower in Babil but added the deatails that God destroyed it and that Syriac, the universal language, was confused into 72 languages; the 12th-century geographer Yāqūt ibn-'Abdullah al-Rūmī al-Hamawī claimed that winds swept mankind together into the plain later called Babil, where Allah assigned them separate languages, and then winds separated them again. Two centuries later Abu Al-fida' Isma'il Ibn 'ali ibn Mahmud Al-malik Al-mu'ayyad 'imad Ad-din elaborated on al-Tabari's account by saying that Noah's great-great-grandson Abir (Eber) refused to participate in the towe's construction and thus was allowed to retain the original language, Hebrew.