Lucas van Valckenborch 1568
IMPORTANT SUMERIAN AND AKKADIAN SITES AND THE BIBLE
Genesis 10:10 refers to "Babel" (Babylon-NIV), "Erech," "Akkad," and "the land of Shinar." // Genesis 11:28-31 refer to "Ur." // Genesis 11:31, 32 and 12:4-5 refer to "Haran."This map also shows the location of the Amarah Crater. This two mile in diameter crater provides physical evidence that a cosmic impact took place in the Holy Land during Biblical times. The crater was discovered after Saddam Hussein had the lakes drained in Southern Iraq in retaliation against the Marsh Arabs in the area. The Sumerian text The Curse of Akkad and the Bible’s story of the destruction of the "Tower of Babel" both record the occurrence of this catastrophic event which ties to the sudden abandonment of Akkadian sites, and collapse of the Akkadian Empire.
The Tale of the
Tower – Part 1
The Truth about What Really Happened at the
Tower
of Babel
In his
book excerpt from The Comets of God,
archeologist and author, Dr. Jeffrey Goodman forces readers to look at the
Tower of Babel Bible story with new analytical eyes and a heavy dose of
skepticism.
Its
central theme [“The Curse of Agade”]
concerns national catastrophe as a direct consequence of divine
wrath kindled by a defiant
act on the
part of man.
Samuel
Noah Kramer, who
Translated
the Sumerian work
“The Curse of Agade” (Akkad)
Why
should we care about the story of the Tower of Babel? This strange little nine verse story packs a
powerful punch! First, it illustrates
beautifully that when translators have no clue what happened, it is possible to
come up with a fairy tale that is far from reality. Yet this brief story contains enough
information that undeniably validates its place in the historical record.
As
traditionally told in the Bible, the story of “The Destruction of the Tower of Babel” (Genesis
10:8-10 and 11:1-9) is about a time when the whole world spoke the
same language, and people came together to make a “name” or “authority” for
themselves by building a new city and a new temple tower at Babel in the
“land of Shinar.” However, because the people became one and
had one language, nothing they imagined they could do would be restrained from
them. The God of the Bible then went
down and confused or mixed their language so that they could not understand one
another’s speech. People’s speech now
sounded like babble to one another. This
traditional translation and interpretation says that, as a result of the
destruction of this universal language, an event popularly called “the
confusion of tongues,” people stopped building the new city and the new temple tower, and the Lord
scattered the people over the face of the whole world.
There
are several problems with this version of the story. First, this traditional translation and
interpretation of the Tower story derived
hundreds of years ago does not fit with what we know from other scriptures in
the Bible (Genesis 10:10 and Zechariah 5:11) that also talk about
the “land of Shinar.” The second problem is that the traditional
interpretation of a universal language at the time of the Tower does not fit
archeological and historical records. Most importantly, we get a very different
account about what happened from the writings of the people from the land of Shinar, who were building the
new tower.
The
historical record clearly shows that the people referred to in the Tower story were Sumerian and Akkadian, people who joined
together from two different nations to form the Akkadian Empire. Fortunately
for us, these people left written records behind. These cuneiform records are helpful
in determining an accurate translation of the Tower story. In addition, physical evidence has been found
that confirms their account of what caused them to stop building the new city
and tower and abandon the area. Taken
together these events resulted in the sudden collapse of their new empire, and gives us a different explanation of
the story recorded in the Bible.
For many
in the archeological, historic and linguistic world this Bible story has kept them from taking the Bible too seriously. The story does not fit with what
archeologists know about the ancient cultures of the Near East and about the
origins of the languages of the world.
There could have been no universal language at the time of the story
because different populations of people speaking different languages in Europe,
Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas had existed long before the first temple towers (ziggurat from zigura
“to raise up”) were built in Mesopotamia. (It was the Sumerians who first
built these temple towers to worship their gods.)
Specifically,
it is now well known that two
totally different languages, Sumerian and Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian are later
dialects of Akkadian) were spoken in the
“land of Shinar” (Genesis 10:10,
11:2 and Zechariah 5:11) long before the Tower of Babel (Babylon) was built there. Archeological
sites have yielded tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets written in
both Sumerian and Akkadian, some dating to over
1,000 years before the
new tower and the new city referred to in the Bible story were built. Further, the phrase “land of Shinar” is actually a direct
reference to these two cultures when two
very different languages were spoken.
The word “Shinar” is merely the
spelling out in English (transliteration), of a Sumerian word that means “Sumer-Akkad” just as ancient
literature repeatedly makes reference to “the land of Sumer and Akkad.” [1] In fact, in the land of Shinar, that is, in the land
of Sumer and Akkad (Akkad was to the north of Sumer), different languages
were not a point of confusion, since the Akkadians, the Semitic
conquerors of the Sumerians, for the most part
adopted the Sumerian culture and made Sumerian their literary and
religious language. The schools for
scribes at the new city of Akkad (Genesis 10:10 and
11:4) made the study of Sumerian their basic
discipline, and there were bilingual dictionaries and
even manuscripts where each line in a Sumerian composition was
followed by the Akkadian translation.
How
could the Bible be so wrong about the origins of the different languages of the
world? The answer is the Bible
isn’t wrong; the problems lie with the translation and interpretation of
certain lines from the original text.
Reevaluating the translation and interpretation of the original Hebrew
text should be the first step when
the scriptures appear to be incorrect when compared to the known historical or
scientific record. Mistakes made in earlier translations and
interpretations must not be upheld and defended as Biblical truth simply
because the erroneous interpretation has been accepted as fact for centuries by
respected theologians.
These
errors in translation and interpretation in the story of the Tower of Babel
become apparent once the literal meaning of the original Hebrew words used in this
Biblical story are researched. Careful examination
reveals this is not a story about the destruction of a universal “language” to
stop the building of a city and a temple tower, but rather a
story about the destruction of the Middle East’s first empire, the empire of
Sumer and Akkad, which was called the “Akkadian Empire,” to keep this empire
from becoming too powerful. As stated, the corrected translation of
these events is supported by cuneiform writings, the historical
record, and by physical evidence. (The
destruction of this first empire has a direct correlation to end times Bible prophecy which tells of
a coming antichrist and his empire.)
So, how
did the mistranslation and misinterpretation of the Tower story come
about? Since the ancient Hebrew language
did not use vowels, the traditional translation of the Tower story has taken the
Hebrew consonants b-b-l to denote the word “babel” and then assumed this word meant “confusion
caused by language differences.” This is
nothing but a play on words that is solely based on the word “babel” being similar to the
actual Hebrew word (balal) for “confusion” or “mixing.”[2] But, despite the popularity of this contrived
etymology, “babel” is not a Hebrew word, nor should it
even appear in the story of the Tower in the first
place.
The
Hebrew consonants b-b-l actually constitutes the
spelling out in Hebrew, the transliteration of the Akkadian word “babylon” or “babilum.”
The Hebrew consonants b-b-l appears
in the Old Testament 282 times and only twice are they
rendered as “Babel,” with both instances
appearing in the Tower story. The other 280 times these consonants are
rendered as “Babylon.” More recent translations than the King James
Version of the Bible, such as the New American Standard (NAS) and the New
International Version (NIV), acknowledge
that the consonants translated as “Babel” should be translated as “Babylon.”
Archeologists
have long known the name “Babylon” is an Akkadian word that means “gate of god,” or “house of god,” and that every temple tower was called a babylon, a gate
or house of god.[3] Thus, the
Hebrew consonants b-b-l in this story actually refers
to a place that came to be called “Babylon” because of the babylon, the temple tower that was built
there. The Moody Bible Institute in The
Wycliffe Bible Commentary says that, “The best Hebrew lexicographers claim
that it [Babel translated Babylon] could not have come
from the Hebrew balal to ‘confuse’ or ‘mix,’ but that it meant ‘gate of
God.’” The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible says “a popular etymology
[for Babel or Babylon] replaced the
original meaning of the name.”
The key
to determining that this story is actually about the destruction of an empire
comes from learning the meaning of certain types of political idioms or
expressions peculiar to the ancient Near East.
For example, in Genesis 11:1 the original Hebrew text of this
story literally says “the whole land was of one
lip” (e.g.
see Septuagint). This has been
traditionally translated as “the whole earth was of one
language.” However, in the ancient Near
East “one lip” is an idiom that
means “one government.” Confirmation of
this interpretation comes from other terms that are used a number of times in
the original Hebrew text of the story that refer to “one government,” “one
command” and the people being “one” or “united.” The concepts of “one government,” “one
command,” and being “united” convey the concept of “empire.”
Thus,
while the traditional translation of Genesis 11:1 says, “And the whole
earth was of one language and of one speech”; a historically correct
translation of Genesis 11:1 says, “And the whole land was of one
government and one commander.” Obviously, the concept of “one government”
and “one commander” fit the description of an “empire.” It was through the political power of
an empire that the people become “one” and made a “name” or “authority” for
themselves (Genesis 11:6 and 11:4 NIV), not the building of
another temple tower. To strengthen
this empire the Akkadians, the Semitic conquerors of the Sumerians, adopted the
Sumerian religion, and a new city and tower or babylon was being built to serve
the new empire.
Genesis 11: 1 Translation
Literal Traditional Historically correct
“And the whole land “And the whole earth “And the whole land was
or earth was of one was of one language of
one government and
lip and of one word, and
of one speech.” one commander.
cause or command.”
Coincidentally,
a Babylonian document used the
same type of idiom that was used in the Bible’s story of the Tower of Babel. This document tells how Sargon, the founder of the Akkadian Empire, conquered a
number of countries. Then it literally
says, “He made its (the land’s) mouth be one,”
which has been translated by a leading expert in the language as “He
established there a central government.” In this case, the idiom “mouth be one”
was used to refer to “central government,” which is another way to convey the
concept of “empire.”[4]
Even
if one doesn’t know that “one
lip” is an
ancient idiom meaning “one
government,” there is another way to determine that this is a story about the
destruction of an empire and not a universal language. The Hebrew word that literally means “lip”
(saw-faw #8193 in Strong’s Concordance) that is traditionally
translated as “language” or “speech” in the Tower story (Genesis
11:1, 6, 7 and 9) can also be taken to be a Hebrew word that means
“gathering” (saw-fakh #5596 in Strong’s Concordance), where “one gathering” is consistent
with “one government” under one commander as in empire.[5] The three Hebrew consonants used for the
Hebrew word meaning “lip” (#8193 in Strong’s Concordance) are the same
consonants used for the Hebrew word meaning “gathering” (#5596 Strong’s
Concordance), the only difference being in the vowel signs.
(It is important to understand that the
writing of ancient Hebrew only used consonants.
Consonants were written down, vowels were not written down. It was not until about 600 AD that a complete
system of vowel signs was added to the text of the Old Testament by the scribes
of the Massoretes [“transmitters”]. So aside from context, it is impossible to
distinguish between certain ancient Hebrew words that contain the same set of
consonants as in the case with words #8193 and #5596 in Strong’s Concordance.
)
Thus, in Genesis 11:1 we can have “one gathering” or “one
government” (“one lip”) under “one commander,” where either
translation fits the historical context of the Akkadian Empire as begun and
commanded by Sargon. This empire brought people of different states,
cultures and languages together into a single politico-religious entity in the land of Shinar. Genesis 10:10 tells how the land of Shinar, that is, the land of Sumer and Akkad, included the Sumerian city of Erech (Uruk) and the Akkadian cities of Akkad and Babylon. The lesson here is that Biblical translations
cannot ignore historical or cultural context. When the Tower story is correctly
translated and interpreted, the Bible should be credited with accurately
telling the story of the collapse of the historical Akkadian Empire.
So why did God destroy the tower and
how? Why is this Bible story important
and how does it connect to the end times? This story contains a sore spot for God and a
warning for mankind that practically guarantees the intervention of God every time. The answers are revealed in Part 2 of The
Tale of the Tower.
[1][1] The unquestioned
dean of Sumeriology, Samuel Noah Kramer wrote that scholars usually identify
the word “Shinar” with Sumer, but it “actually stands for the Sumerian
equivalent of the compound word ‘Sumer-Akkad.’” Samuel Noah Kramer, The
Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character,the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963, p. 297.
[2][2] In Modern Hebrew the
actual word for the phenomena of speech known as “babble”is “siyach” not
“babel.”
[3][3] To the Sumerians and
the Akkadians a “gate of god” also represented a“door of god,” a “gate of
heaven,” and a “house of god”; places where man and god met. Proverbs 8:34
talks about watching daily at God’s “gates” and at his “doors.” In Genesis
28:12-17 Jacob after dreaming of a ladder or stairs reaching to heaven and
seeing God says, “How awesome is the place, this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven.”
[4][4] Interestingly, the
NIV in two instances translates the Hebrew word translated as “lip” (#8193 in Strong’s
Concordance) as “mouth.”
[5][5] For example, the
Hebrew word saw-fakh (#5596 in Strong’s Concordance) is
translated as “gathered together” in Job 30:7 KJV and NAS and“unite”
in Isaiah 14:1 NIV.
