Literature and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 1, The Tower of Babel.

In the Book of Genesis, after the Old Testament God floods the whole world and Noah and

his Ark and his family survive, we hear the story of a certain mysterious tower.

It's a cryptic story.

In all of the 50 chapters of Genesis,

amidst the gigantic saga of humankind's creation all the way down to the scattering of the 12 tribes of Israel.

The story of the Tower of Babel is easy to forget.

The nine little verses about this tower are less memorable than the lurid tale of

Sodom, Gomora, and Lott. The tragedy of Cain and Abel, the story of Joseph and the dreams of the

Pharaoh, and of course the initial narrative involving Adam Eve and their expulsion from Eden.

Amidst all these more colorful and dramatic episodes, the brief history of the Tower of Babel and what happened

to it is a minor narrative excursion, a digression amidst Genesis's general focus on the

forebears and descendants of the Patriarch Abraham.

It's a short story, short enough for us to retell the whole thing here.

Let's hear a translation of this story. This is the NRSV translation published in the

new Oxford Annotated Bible. Here's the opening of Genesis, Chapter 11.

Quote,

Now the whole Earth had one language in the same words,

and as the descendants of Noah migrated from the east,

they came upon a plane in the land of Shinar and settled there.

And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.

...