Coffee Thursdays Just Brewing Thoughts
The tower of Babel
I was watching the Brad Pitt movie “Babel” and I thought I should write something about it. Not of the movie context though as expected the movie was too commercialized, uncompromised vision as it failed to answer the characters' ambiguity. The movie basically summed up that developed countries always had the privileges to its people while the citizens of the poorer nations suffer their fate while some consistently aim to find greener pastures outside their land. It pictures America as a superpower, a Hollywood face obscurely giving silent message. But why Babel? When I was studying in the seminary I thought the Tower of Babel story was very interesting. Genesis chapter 11 of the Holy Bible narrates the tower was built by united humanity to get closer to God of the heavens. God observing the futile efforts of man destroys the tower and confuse the previously united humanity. Thus, the story of the different languages and races of the world was created.
Why would God destroy the united efforts of man with the common goal to reach him?
This was never explained in the Bible, accordingly the Book of Jubilees explains the tower's destruction in terms of humankind's deviancy in comparison to God. Within a Judeo-Christian framework, humankind is a weak creation dependent on a perfect being for existence. Moreover, the destruction of the Tower of Babel is a hubristic act of defiance towards God who created them. Concerned of different interpretations, I asked a Buddhist Chinese friend, he said Buddhism never mentioned about the origin of different languages and culture, he reckoned there was nothing stated in Buddhist teaching. The Quoran of the Muslims had no accounts of the existence of the tower, though Islamic traditions in the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th century Muslim historian al-Tabari, a fuller version was given: Nimrod had the tower built in Babil, Allah destroyed it, and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac, then confused into 72 languages. The Hebrew version of the name of the tower, Bavel, was attributed in Genesis11:9 to the verb balal, which meant to confuse or confound in Hebrew.
The ruins of the ancient Tower of Babel can be found near the city of Hillah, in modern-day Iraq, in the province of Babil, approximately 60 miles south of Baghdad.
As I believe, history is always one sided. It depends on who writes the story and how the author wants to portray it. But in my simple understanding of the Tower of Babel, it signifies that man can never be like God, and the more he searches for answers it will leave him confused and lost. And men can never be united as one. The languages, cultures, races, etc. created our borders of understanding each other. Babel is a word that spawned out of man's arrogance thus, conceived confusion. Through the lessons of the past and the news of today; Humankind is inherently flawed and self-absorbed. We see countries and borders as a place, but failed to realize we created mental borders amongst ourselves.