Primeval History (Genesis 1-11): The Tower of Babel

Part 4: The Table of Nations

    So far in this series of posts, we’ve seen how the findings of modern science support the primeval history of the Bible (Gen. 1-11), despite what both skeptics and science denialists claim. The stories of the garden of Eden, the pre-Flood world, Noah’s Flood, and Noah’s descendants all parallel what we find in the history of early human civilization. The last narrative of the primeval history is that of the tower of Babel, which claims to explain the origin of the different languages in the ancient Near East. Let’s see how well this story corresponds to the historical record.

    Nimrod the Hunter

Before the actual story of the tower of Babel, the biblical author tells us about a king named Nimrod whose exploits were legendary in the ancient world:

Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to become a mighty warrior. He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Yahweh.” The beginning [or head] of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Akkad, all of them in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. (Gen. 10:8-12)

Although Nimrod was associated with the tower of Babel in later Jewish and Christian tradition, he’s not mentioned in the actual Babel narrative. Nonetheless, if he was a historical figure, his exploits certainly would have left some evidence behind. So is there any evidence that such a king existed?

    First of all, we’re told that the beginning or head/center (depending on how Hebrew reshith is interpreted) of his kingdom was in “Shinar” (Sumer), and that the first cities he ruled were “Babel” (Babylon), “Erech” (Uruk), and Akkad. This means that Nimrod, if he existed, is most likely named on the Sumerian King List. [1] His kingdom also extended as far as Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia, which he is said to have built, among other towns. Finally, he was well-known as a hunter in the ancient world.

    There is a king in the Sumerian King List who matches this description. According to the SKL, one of the first kings of Sumer after the Flood was Enmerkar, king of Uruk. The name “Enmerkar” literally means “Enmer the Hunter,” and the consonants of his name (nmr) are almost identical to the original Hebrew consonantal spelling of Nimrod (nmrd), as noted by archeologist David Rohl. [2] Enmerkar was credited as the builder of at least one town(s) as early as the Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3100 BC), as the “ad-gi4 list” from this time speaks of “Enmerkar… who know[s] how to build towns.” [3] For this reason, his reign is dated to the Late Uruk period (ca. 3400-3200 BC).

    In line with the biblical account, the period of Enmerkar’s reign was one of expansion. The Uruk expansion was first identified in the 1970s, when two sites were discovered in Syria which had significant similarities to the Uruk civilization in Sumer. Uruk-influenced sites or Uruk ‘colonies’ existed in southern Iran, northern Mesopotamia, and even as far northwest as Anatolia. [4] Several hypotheses about this expansion have been advanced, most convincingly, that the Uruk civilization was an informal empire motivated by economic imperialism. [5] Interestingly, a common motif in Late Uruk art and architecture is the ‘hunter-king’ who is at the head of political and religious authority. [6] This evokes the biblical description of Nimrod, king of Erech (Uruk), as a “mighty hunter.”

Figure 1. Adapted from Wikipedia. Map of Uruk expansion overlaid with the regions of the “head” and periphery of Nimrod’s kingdom according to the biblical account.

    The only difficulty in identifying Nimrod with the Late Uruk king Enmerkar is the fact that the biblical author says he ruled “Babel” (Babylon). The city of Babylon didn’t exist until the late 3rd millennium BC, and didn’t become prominent until the time of Hammurabi (mid-2nd millennium BC). It couldn’t have been one of the chief cities of Nimrod’s kingdom. However, the name of Babylon (NUN.KI) in Akkadian cuneiform was also the name of Eridu, a very prominent city which Enmerkar is said to have built in the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. [7] One of the religious quarters of Babylon was also called “Eridu.” The 3rd-century BC historian Berossus, in his History of Babylonia, used “Babylon” interchangeably where the Sumerian King List spoke of “Eridu,” showing that the two cities were still conflated at that late date.

    The Tower of Babel (Eridu)

Now we’ve identified Nimrod the hunter-king with Enmerkar, king of Uruk, whose kingdom began with Eridu and Uruk and spread as far as Nineveh. But what about the tower of Babel story itself? Here’s what the Bible states about this event:

Now the whole land had one speech and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole land.”

Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And Yahweh said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one speech, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their speech there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the land, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the speech of all the land, and from there Yahweh scattered them abroad over the face of all the land. (Gen. 11:1-9)

Note that Nimrod is nowhere mentioned in this narrative; rather, the focus is on the people of the land. Although it’s possible Nimrod was their king, it’s also possible that they were acting under a different king, no king, or over the span of multiple kings’ reigns.

    As argued above, the “Babel” of the biblical account is most likely Eridu, which had the same name in cuneiform (NUN.KI) as Babylon and could be conflated with that city. Eridu was one of the first settlements in southern Mesopotamia, founded ca. 5400 BC, and was considered the first city in Sumerian mythology, which is consistent with the Bible’s claim that “Babel” was the first city built in “Shinar” (Sumer) after the Flood.

    Eridu was also the site of a major temple to the Sumerian god Enki called E-Abzu (“House of the Aquifer”). The first stratum of this temple (XVII) dates to ca. 5300 BC, shortly after the founding of the city, and the last stratum (I) dates to the Late Uruk period. [8] Interestingly, based on Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the Late Uruk king Enmerkar (whom we have identified with Nimrod) was associated with the building of this temple. After the last period of construction, however, further building suddenly stopped. According to the excavators,

One of the most extraordinary aspects of the terrace-structure associated with Temple I, was the immensel [sic] long time during which it must have remained standing and even in use. For, at least a thousand years after it was built, it had been re-paved with broken bricks, bearing the stamp of a Larsa king. [8]

This puzzling cessation of construction at E-Abzu after the Late Uruk period is a remarkable confirmation of the biblical account of the tower of Babel, which states that the people “left off building the city” after they were scattered by Yahweh!

    Language Confusion

The story of the tower of Babel also purports to explain how the different languages in the ancient Near East came about. Interestingly, the Sumerian epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta makes a similar but opposite statement. In this epic, Enmerkar seeks to obtain rare stones from the land of Aratta in order to build up the E-Abzu temple in Eridu. He tells his messenger to chant the following incantation to the lord of Aratta:

“…may the lands of Cubur and Hamazi, the many-tongued, and Sumer, the great mountain of the decree of magnificence, and Akkad, the land possessing all that is befitting, and the Martu land, resting in security – the whole universe, the well-guarded people – may they all address Enlil [the chief god] together in a single language! …Enki… the lord of Eridu, shall change the speech in their mouth, as many as he had placed there, and so the speech of mankind is truly one.” [7]

Here we see that Enmerkar’s attempt to build the temple of E-Abzu needed all the people of the land to have the same speech, to agree as one in their praise of the gods Enki and Enlil. Changing their speech, as Yahweh did in the biblical account, would foil this attempt.

    However, there was already more than one language in the ancient Near East at this time, as the above quote makes clear. In what sense was “the whole land” of “one speech,” and how did God “confuse their speech” (Gen. 11:1, 7)? The word “speech” (Heb: saphah; LXX: glossa) used here is not the same as the word used to describe the distinct “languages” (Heb: lashon; LXX: cheilos) of the nations (Gen. 10:32). Sapheh typically isn’t used to refer to the language spoken, but to the content of the speech – e.g., righteous or evil, praising or blaspheming. [9] This doesn’t mean that the people all had the same spoken language and it was divided, but that they had unity of purpose in praising the pagan god Enki and building his temple, and God made it so they could no longer agree. This interpretation was held by ancient Jewish and Christian commentators as well. [10]

    Conclusion

Like the rest of the primeval history, the story of Nimrod and the tower of Babel is supported by the sciences, specifically archeology. The existence of Nimrod is confirmed by the evidence for the Late Uruk king Enmerkar – both were known as hunters, town-builders, ruled over a Mesopotamian kingdom from Uruk and Eridu, and had almost identical names. The tower of “Babel” (Eridu) can be identified with the temple of Enki, E-Anzu, which was built continually from ca. 5300 to 3200 BC until construction suddenly stopped. The confusion of speech in Genesis 11 is indirectly corroborated by the Sumerian epic, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. Each of these facts would have been difficult or impossible for an Israelite in the 1st millennium BC to know, so this is evidence for the divine inspiration of the biblical account!

______________________________

[1] https://www.livius.org/sources/content/anet/266-the-sumerian-king-list/.

[2] David M. Rohl, From Eden to Exile (Lebanon, TN: Greenleaf Press, 2003), 74.

[3] Dina Katz, “Ups and Downs in the Career of Enmerkar, King of Uruk,” in Fortune and misfortune in the Ancient Near East, ed. Olga Drewnowska and Małgorzata Sandowicz (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 201-2.

[4] Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 11-97.

[5] Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System, 110-127.

[6] Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System, 14-15, 41; Michael Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Oxford: Andromeda Oxford Ltd., 1996), 71; Guillermo Algaze, “The Prehistory of Imperialism,” in Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbors, ed. Mitchell S. Rothman (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2001), 34; Hans J. Nissen, “Cultural and Political Networks in the Ancient Near East During the Fourth and Third Millennia B.C.,” in Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors, 156-7; Henri Frankfurt, The Cambridge Ancient History 1:2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 80.

[7] For the meanings of NUN.KI see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/𒉣𒆠#Akkadian; David Rohl, From Eden to Exile, 65; for the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, see https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1823.htm.

[8] Fuad Safar et al., Eridu (Baghdad, Iraq: Ministry of Culture and Information, 1981), 78-87; the first archeological evidence of baked bricks was also found at Eridu, dating to the Uruk period, which accords with the biblical account (Gen. 11:3), see Kadim H. Hnaihen, “The Appearance of Bricks in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Athens Journal of History 6, no. 1 (2020): 80.

[9] Chris Gousmett, “The confusion of languages,” Evangelical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (2018): 42-46.

[10] Philo, Conf. Ling. 15ff; Jerusalem Targum [Gen. 11:1]; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 17.17; Gregory Nazianzen, Orations 41.16.

When was the Trinity discovered?

    I’m interrupting the ongoing series of posts about Genesis 1-11 to present something very interesting that I found while reading the 4th-century Cappadocian Fathers. According to most Protestants, the doctrine of the Trinity was revealed by God, through Jesus, to the writers of the New Testament in the 1st century AD. At the very least, it’s believed to be an inference that can easily be drawn from the NT, which was believed by Christians from the earliest times of the church. Protestant trinitarians must believe this, because they reject the infallibility of the Church as believed by the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. If the Trinity was a later discovery, not able to be inferred directly from the biblical texts, this removes the basis for Protestants to believe in the Trinity.

    However, the belief that the Trinity can be inferred directly from the Bible (and was always believed by the church) wasn’t even held by the earliest trinitarians in the 4th century AD. According to Gregory of Nazianzus, the 4th-century trinitarian apologist, this doctrine was first explicitly written down by Athanasius of Alexandria, allegedly under the influence of divine inspiration:

Here too was shown in a very high degree the simple-mindedness of Athanasius, and the steadfastness of his faith in Christ. For, when all the rest who sympathised with us were divided into three parties, and many were faltering in their conception of the Son, and still more in that of the Holy Ghost, (a point on which to be only slightly in error was to be orthodox) and few indeed were sound upon both points, he was the first and only one, or with the concurrence of but a few, to venture to confess in writing, with entire clearness and distinctness, the Unity of Godhood and Essence of the Three Persons, and thus to attain in later days, under the influence of inspiration, to the same faith in regard to the Holy Ghost, as had been bestowed at an earlier time on most of the Fathers in regard to the Son. (Oration 21.33)

There are a few interesting things to note about this passage. First, Gregory says that prior to Athanasius, “few indeed were sound upon both points” — that is, there were very few theologians who held that both the Son and the Holy Spirit were united in Godhood with the Father. Even the belief that the Son was one in essence (homoousios) with the Father was only “bestowed at an earlier time on most of the Fathers”; presumably, by this Gregory refers to the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, at which the Father and the Son were declared to be homoousios. At the Council of Serdica in AD 343, the bishops of the West came up with a statement proclaiming “one Godhood of Father and Son,” without mentioning the Holy Spirit. [1]

    Second, according to Gregory, the doctrine of the Trinity was first set down in writing by the bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, who became a bishop three years after the Council of Nicaea in AD 328. He, possibly “with the concurrence of but a few,” was the “first and only one” to set in writing that the Son and the Holy Spirit both had a “Unity of Godhood and Essence” with the Father. Athanasius was actually quite radical in his day, and was known as Athanasius Contra Mundi (“Athanasius Against the World”) for much of his ministry, because he was opposed to so many other bishops. He was even deposed from his see by a council of sixty Eastern bishops and the emperor Constantine in AD 335, due to both the radicality of his beliefs and his alleged mistreatment (even assassination) of ‘Arians.’ [2]

    Finally, Gregory also says that the doctrine of the Trinity was first explicitly set down in writing “in later days” (i.e., after the Council of Nicaea) “under the influence of [divine] inspiration.” This is a truly incredible claim, not only because it implies that the Trinity wasn’t taught before ca. AD 330, but because it assumes a view of divine inspiration that every Protestant should be inclined to reject. We don’t believe that any church is infallible (for good reason); why should we believe that Athanasius was? If we do admit that a church father can be inspired, why Athanasius and not his opponents? Personally, I have a hard time believing that a man who was known to use violent tactics (even, allegedly, assassination) to suppress dissent could have been so pious and inspired by God as his friends believed. [3]

    But if the Trinity was such a new doctrine in the 4th century that Athanasius was the first to set it down in writing, then why was it universally believed by the church after that time? First of all, it wasn’t. Although trinitarianism grew in popularity, largely due to the apologetic work of the Cappadocian Fathers, it was by no means universally believed. Gregory of Nazianzus admitted in 380 that “the wise men amongst ourselves [i.e., Christians]” could not agree on whether the Holy Spirit was a power, a created being, or God (Oration 31.5). The first explicit mention of a tri-personal God, the view that God is in some way three persons (i.e., trinitarianism proper) doesn’t occur until the 370s. [4]

    The reason why the Trinity became universally accepted wasn’t because of some consensus reached by the fathers discussing among themselves, but by a twist of fate. The Roman emperor Theodosius I happened to be a trinitarian, and in AD 380, he simply outlawed all other views:

According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the singular Deity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in equal Majesty and in a Holy Trinity. We order the followers of this law to embrace the name of Catholic Christians. But as for the others, since, in our judgment they are demented and insane, we decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of Heretics, and shall not presume to give to their assemblies the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation, and in the second the punishment of our authority which, in accordance with the will of Heaven, we shall decide to inflict. (Edict of Thessalonica)

Theodosius I proceeded to depose the Homoian bishop of Constantinople and place Nicenes (still a minority party in that city) in positions of power. This edict was upheld by a ‘kangaroo council’ the next year, called by Theodosius I, which only trinitarian bishops were allowed to attend. [5] From that point onward, until the Protestant Reformation, non-trinitarians were harshly persecuted and not allowed to lead congregations. If Theodosius had been an Arian instead, or a binitarian, the church’s beliefs about God would look very different today.

    The fact is, trinitarianism was a new doctrine, even in the 4th century AD when it was mandated as the official religion of the Roman Empire. This was admitted even by trinitarian apologists like Gregory of Nazianzus, as we saw above (Oration 21.33). Although they believed that their interpretation could be derived from the Scriptures, they fully admitted that this interpretation was new, and was first set down in writing by Athanasius of Alexandria under divine inspiration in ca. AD 330. Protestants, therefore, are on very unsure footing in their belief in the Trinity. Even Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have to recognize the historical contingencies on which their belief in this doctrine rests. Shouldn’t we rather go back to the Scriptures themselves and believe what they say about God: that he is one person, the Father alone, and that Jesus is his human Son and Messiah who was exalted by him? [6]

______________________________

[1] https://www.fourthcentury.com/creed-of-the-western-serdican-council/. They believed that the Father and Son were the same in essence, but they did not believe the Father and Son were co-equal like later trinitarians, as they immediately went on to say, “No one denies that the Father is greater than the Son: not on account of another essence, nor yet on account of their difference, but simply from the very name of the Father being greater than that of the Son.” For this reason, Athanasius strenuously rejected to the Creed of Serdica, even though it was signed by about ninety bishops from the West.

[2] https://www.fourthcentury.com/the-council-of-tyre-ad-335/

[3] “In Alexandria itself, he maintained the popular support which he enjoyed from the outset and buttressed his position by organizing an ecclesiastical mafia. In later years, if he so desired, he could instigate a riot or prevent the orderly administration of the city. Athanasius possessed a power independent of the emperor which he built up and perpetuated by violence. That was both the strength and the weakness of his position. Like a modern gangster, he evoked widespread mistrust, proclaimed total innocence - and usually succeeded in evading conviction on specific charges.” — Timothy Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 230.

[4] Dale Tuggy, “When and How in the History of Theology Did the Triune God Replace the Father as the Only True God?”, TheoLogica 4, no. 2 (2020): 27-51.

[5] Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 5.8.5-10; Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 7.7.2-5.

[6] To see what the Scriptures actually teach about the nature of God and Jesus, see my blog post, “The Biblical Case for Unitarianism.”

Primeval History (Genesis 1-11): The Table of Nations

Part 3: The Flood of Noah

    Throughout this series of posts on the primeval history of the Bible, we’ve seen how the biblical account is not only consistent with but supported by modern science. Based on archeological and paleoclimatological data, the garden of Eden existed in the modern-day Persian Gulf around 10,000 BC. Genetic evidence supports the biblical description of an extremely violent pre-Flood world, peaking in the mid-7th millennium BC. The biblical data can also be used to date Noah’s Flood to ~6,500 BC, the exact time that there is known to have been a massive local flood in the ancient Near East. In this post, we’ll take a look at the account of Noah’s descendants and their spread across the post-Flood world (Gen. 10).

    The Table of Nations

After describing the devastating flood that took place in Noah’s day, the author goes on to give a detailed account of Noah’s descendants and where their lineages lived. Although his wasn’t the only line that survived the Flood, it’s clear that it has a special significance in the biblical account, as he was the ancestor of the Hebrews and the nation of Israel (Gen. 11:10-32). [1] After human civilization in the Near East was devastated, Noah’s descendants spread out across the land and repopulated it.

Figure 1. Map of the locations of Noah’s descendants according to the biblical Table of Nations (Genesis 10). Note the lack of representation east of the Zagros mountains, in modern-day Iran.

    However, when viewed in light of the extent of civilization in the ancient Near East, the extent of the Table of Nations is rather selective. No people group east of the Zagros mountains in modern-day Iran is represented, even though Neolithic human civilization existed as far as the Indus Valley. This is even in spite of the fact that Indo-Iranian cultures were in contact with Mesopotamian cultures (see, for example, the legend of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta). Why is the Table of Nations selectively describing the spread of human civilization over the Levant, Europe, and North Africa, while ignoring Indo-Iranian cultures?

    The Neolithic Migration

This mystery becomes much less problematic in light of the findings of genetics and archeology, which have identified a migration of Neolithic people from the Levant into Europe and North Africa beginning in the 7th millennium BC. [2] The initial migration of farmers, from eastern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) into the Aegean, can be dated to after 6,500 BC on archeological grounds. [2] Incidentally, this is the date of the massive flood that was suggested to be Noah’s Flood in my previous post. Neolithic civilization spread slightly later to North Africa, from groups of farmers living in the Levant and Europe. [3] In contrast, the Indo-Iranian Neolithic developed separately from the Levantine-European-North African Neolithic, and forms a distinct genetic grouping. [4]

Figure 2. From Fig. 4 of [4]. There are two distinct genetic groupings separating cultures east and west of the Zagros mountains, which stretch all the way back into the Neolithic.

Thus, once again, the biblical account and modern science support each other! The biblical primeval history, including the Table of Nations, is primarily concerned with the origin of Israel and other Semitic peoples. Therefore, it ignores the origin of Neolithic civilization east of the Zagros mountains, as this was distinct from the spread of civilization in the Levant, Europe, and North Africa.

    Based on the Table of Nations, it appears that Noah’s descendants mixed with the other Neolithic farmers of Anatolia after the Flood, who subsequently spread their culture across Europe and North Africa. This makes even more sense if the “mountains of Ararat” on which Noah’s vessel landed (Gen. 8:4) were in northern Mesopotamia, as usually supposed, rather than in southern Iran (see my previous post for a brief discussion of this). Noah’s lineage would only have been one of many in the ancient Near East, so we wouldn’t expect any specific genetic evidence of his descendants’ spread, but the extent described in Genesis 10 is totally consistent with what we find from genetics and archeology.

    Conclusion

After the account of Noah’s Flood, the biblical author describes the spread of Noah’s descendants across the land. But strangely, no people group east of the Zagros mountains is mentioned in the Table of Nations. This corresponds well to the findings of modern science, that Neolithic culture spread from eastern Anatolia throughout Europe and North Africa after around 6,500 BC, but Indo-Iranian Neolithic culture was genetically and archeologically distinct. This is a remarkable confirmation of the accuracy of the biblical account, once again showing how the Bible and modern science, rather than contradicting, perfectly complement each other!

Part 5: The Tower of Babel

______________________________

[1] See footnotes 7 and 8 of the previous post. According to the biblical author, the lines of Jabal, Jubal, and the nephilim survived the Flood (Gen. 4:20-22; 6:4; Num. 13:33), which indicates that the universal language of Genesis 7 is hyperbolic (cf. Josh. 10:40).

[2] Mark Lipson et al., “Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers,” Nature 551 (2017): 368-372; Ayça Omrak et al., “Genomic Evidence Establishes Anatolia as the Source of the European Neolithic Gene Pool,” Current Biology 26 (2016): 270-275.

[3] Luciana G. Simões et al., “Northwest African Neolithic initiated by migrants from Iberia and Levant,” Nature 618 (2023): 550-556.

[4] Farnaz Broushaki et al., “Early Neolithic genomes from the eastern Fertile Crescent,” Science 353, no. 6298 (2016): 499-503.