Firm Foundations: The Tower of Babel
Genesis 11: Now the whole earth [a]had the same language and [b]the same words. 2 And it happened as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and [c]settled there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and they had tar for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” 5 Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have [d]the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be [e]impossible for them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their [f]language, so that they will not understand one another’s [g]language.” 8 So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called [h]Babel, because there Yahweh confused the [i]language of the whole earth; and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
We just finished the story of Noah, the ark, and the worldwide flood last week and I hope you can see how Scripture marches forward toward the way of salvation in Jesus Christ.
Now, by way of introduction to our passage for today, let me return for a moment to a topic I’ve addressed before. Remember that I mentioned that around the world, we find multiple cultures and people groups who have a worldwide flood story that has been passed down from one generation to the next. I found this quote.
https://answersingenesis.org/the-flood/flood-legends/flood-legends/
“According to Dr. Duane Gish in his popular book Dinosaurs by Design, there are more than 270 such stories, most of which share a common theme and similar characters.”
In other words, there are 270 ancient stories from ancient tribes of people about a flood that killed everyone, with survivors who were saved by God. Let me give you an example. See if this sounds familiar.
“Hawaiians have a flood story that tells of a time when, long after the death of the first man, the world became a wicked, terrible place. Only one good man was left, and his name was
(get this) Nu-u. He made a great canoe with a house on it and filled it with animals. In this story, the waters came up over all the earth and killed all the people; only Nu-u and his family were saved.
Isn’t that remarkable. Hawaii and the region of Mesopotamia where the flood story from Scripture came are separated by approximately 8000 miles.
Another flood story is from China. China is about 3500 miles from the origin of the Biblical flood story. The Chinese story records that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on earth. After the great flood, they repopulated the world.”
Remarkable. And there are 270 ancient flood stories (list some from chart) like that from different people groups around the world. Some leave out some details, other have inaccurate details. The most common details that are alike in the stories are that there was a favored family, an ark was provided to save them, the whole world was destroyed by water. Some of them mention the animals saved, some of them mention details such as the birds being sent out, and landing on a mountain.
So, here’s what we have to ask. Let’s take the number I mentioned before; 270 ancient stories. If there are 270 ancient flood stories in the tales of peoples from all over the globe, you have to ask, how did they arrive at those stories? How did those stories start?
But let’s stop and think for a moment. If we overlay this question with how evidence is treated in the courtroom we can only come to one of three conclusions. If we were to go into a court room trial around some crime that was committed, say, 100 years ago, and we found 270 independent accounts of the crime in varying news sources, firsthand accounts, and reference books. And if all of those accounts agreed on key points concerning the crime, we would conclude that one of three things were true. Either all of those 270 individuals colluded together to tell a common story, or they all got their story from a common source, or they were all witnesses to the same crime. In other words, it happened just as they saw it happen.
And that’s basically what we have to do with the story of the flood here in Genesis. 270 cultures have flood stories, so either they all copied the story from a common source, or they all experienced it back in ancient history and it was passed down through tribal origin stories.
This same reasoning becomes important as we look today at the story of the tower of Babel. There are elements of the story that have made it into the fabric of many ancient peoples around the world. And that fact leads us to ask a similar question as we did about the flood. Was this just a story borrowed from one place and spread around the world? Or does all the world have a common ancient history?
Prayer
The story of the tower of Babek takes us through a couple of generations the flood, and is key to our understanding the development of human civilization in history. It answers questions like, “What is the origin of all of the languages of the world? And “Why did humanity separate into ethnic groups in various parts of the world?” and “Why did mankind choose to migrate around the world?”
But it also answers some doctrinal questions. And this is how we will lay out the story; around those doctrinal questions. Here they are. Is all of humanity one race, or multiple races? How does God reveal His law? Is death inevitable? What do people do with God’s good gifts? How does the world of men survive? Who controls the events of the world? Let’s begin.
I. Is all of humanity one race, or multiple races?
This is a hot button issue in our nation and world today. Because racial identity plays into politics and power, some people have chosen to make it the end all be all of important issues. For some it is no longer a high virtue to look at a person based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. So, considering how important it is for many in our society, we need to have a solid understanding of how the Bible answers the question; Is all of humanity one race, or multiple races? And the Scriptural answer is that all people are the same race; Adam’s race. We all come from the same stock.
Malachi spoke these words to the Levites of the nation of Israel.
Malachi 2:10 “Do we not all have one father? Has not one God created us?
Paul preached to the Greeks in Athens and said this…
Acts 17:26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation,
Paul was teaching about the resurrection and said this…1 Corinthians 15:39 All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish.
There’s only one race.
And that lack of differentiation is further emphasized when people come to Christ.
Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Jesus calls all the redeemed, of every race, brothers and sisters.
Hebrews 2: 11 For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them (I’ll insert here; all) brothers,
So, where does that doctrine come out of the book of Genesis? It is there from the start. We all are descendants of Adam and Eve. We all came from the stock of Noah through Shem, Ham, or Japheth. This is Genesis chapter 10.
A. Noah had 3 sons; Shem, Ham, and Japheth
After the flood narrative, Genesis lays out the genealogies of Noah’s three sons. Remember that eight people entered the ark, Noah and his wife, and his three sons and their wives. And Genesis 10 tells us their genealogies. Let’s just get a flavor of those genealogies by reading some here. And I am going to intersperse some things that Josephus said about some of these peoples.
https://answersingenesis.org/genesis/josephus-and-genesis-chapter-ten/
This record is often called the table of nations. The historian Josephus lived a little after Jesus. He was a Jewish man given the task of writing the history of the Jews by the Romans who would shortly destroy Jerusalem and its temple. But what we get from Josephus is like a connect the dots between the genealogies in Genesis and the Jewish interpretation of those genealogies in Jesus’ day. In other words, Genesis tells us the names of the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, but Josephus wrote down more details, as they were understood and observed over 2300 years, about what peoples came out of each of those descendants. He tells us further detail about how humanity dispersed over the earth after the tower of Babel. Let’s look at some of it.
10 Now these are the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah; and sons were born to them after the flood.
This is what Josephus says about the descendants of Japheth.
“Japheth, the son of Noah, had seven sons; they inhabited so, that, beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais, and along Europe to Cadiz; and settling themselves on the lands which they came upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names;”
The long and short of it is that if we take what Josephus says about the descendants of Japheth we find that they migrated north to what we know as Europe and Asia Minor today.
2 The sons of Japheth were Gomer (Galatians or Galls) and Magog (Scythians: modern day Russians) and Madai (Medes or ancient Iran) and Javan (Greeks) and Tubal (Spain and Portugal) and Meshech (Turkey) and Tiras. (Bulgaria, Romania)3 The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz (Germany) and [a]Riphath and Togarmah. (Turkey) 4 The sons of Javan were Elishah and Tarshish, (Greeks) Kittim and [b]Dodanim.5 From these the coastlands of the nations [c]were separated into their lands, every one according to his tongue, according to their families, into their nations.
Now there’s some interesting reading right? And you are sufficiently impressed that I can pronounce those names right? But here’s the point; this is a genealogical record of the three sons who are the single ancestors of all the races of the world. And we could spend time elaborating on each of these names and peoples, describing the nations that eventually sprang from each of them. Others have done a lot of that work. We’re not going to describe the nations extensively here. The genealogy goes on to say…
6 The sons of Ham were Cush and [d]Mizraim and Put and Canaan.7 The sons of Cush were Seba and Havilah and Sabtah and Raamah and Sabteca; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.
And so on. Josephus wrote this about the descendants of Ham.
“The children of Ham possessed the land from Syria and Amanus, and the mountains of Libanus; settling all that was on its sea coasts, and as far as the ocean, and keeping it as their own. Some indeed of its names are utterly vanished away; others of them, being changed, and another sound given them, are hardly to be discovered; yet a few there are which have kept their names entire.”
And by comparing the information he had in Jesus’ day to modern history, we find that the descendants of Ham journeyed south and west and settled in Canaan, Egypt, and Africa.
11 From that land he went out to Assyria and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah,12 and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. 15 Canaan [h]was the father of Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth
16 and the Jebusite and the Amorite and the Girgashite17 and the Hivite and the Arkite and the Sinite18 and the Arvadite and the Zemarite and the Hamathite; (and the electric light as J. Vernon McGee used to say) and afterward the families of the Canaanite were scattered.
20 These are the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, by their nations.
From Ham came many of Israel’s eventual enemies; Babylon, Assyria, the Philistines, the Canaanites.
The last genealogy from Scripture is that of Shem. We know that from Shem comes the word “semitic” or semite. The semitic people.
21 Also to Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, (we get the designation “Hebrew” from his name) and the [j]older brother of Japheth, children were born.22 The sons of Shem were Elam (the ancestors of the Persians) and Asshur (Assyrians) and Arpachshad (Chaldeans) and Lud and Aram. (Syrians)
The genealogy goes on but it describes the descendants of Shem as occupying what we call the middle east today. They were the semitic people.
Josephus had this to say about the descendants of Shem.
“Shem, the third son of Noah, had five sons, who inhabited the land that began at Euphrates, and reached to the Indian Ocean.”
B. The table of nations historicity
Now I read all of that for a couple of reasons. One is to remind you that the stories we read in the Bible were true stories about real people. The stories of the flood and the tower of Babel from the Bible, though there are flood stories and tower stories in other records from ancient cultures, the Bible is unique in that it provides us with the mundane details that indicate to us that this was the original record.
So, the Bible gives us a clear record of how all the peoples of the world dispersed from the site of the tower of Babel, in the region of ancient Mesopotamia.
So, going back to our story it says is that all the different peoples of the world were once living together in this area.
11 Now the whole earth [a]had the same language and [b]the same words.2 And it happened as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and [c]settled there.
Noah and his family moved down from the mountain where the ark stopped and settled down to life. And the family grew to a clan, and then a tribe. How big did this Noahic tribe get?
We don’t know the number. But we can draw some conclusions based on typical population growth. The Torah notes that there were 8 people in the ark: Noah, his wife, his 3 sons, and the sons wives. I got this information off line.
“The next important piece of information we need is the average growth rate” during the years between the end of the flood and the tower of Babel. “Of course, we have no hard data on that. Worldwide, the average growth rate today is 1.14%. However, smaller countries have growth rates as high as 5%. I think its fairly safe to assume that with such a small starting population (only 8 survivors of the flood), the growth rate was on the higher side. Remember that birth control was not quite in vogue then. So I think a 3.5% growth rate is a safe assumption.
Next, we need the formula to calculate growth based on initial population (P), growth rate®, and number of years (Y). That formula is: ((1+R) ^ Y) * P Plugging in our values: ((1 + .035) ^ 339) * 8
This yields a population at the time of the Tower of Babel of over 920,000 people! So even assuming everyone else in the world was destroyed save those 8 people in the ark, the world would have been quite populated by the time of the building of the Tower of Babel.
Even if we assume a smaller population growth rate, say 2.5%—which would be a very conservative number given such a small starting population—again, using our formula:
((1 + .025) ^ 339) * 8 yields a much smaller population of 35,000 people, but still not insignificant.
And so, they are staying together. They were all one language. The word for journeyed in this chapter literally means “to pull up tent pegs.” They were a nomadic people, probably moving from one area to the next to supply the grazing needs for their animals. Our original point was; there is no race but Adam’s race.
So, this question often comes up. How did all the races and ethnic groups of the world come from these original 6 people? And this is an important issue today. I read an article in psychology today that I want to share with you.
“How can there be a “white” Hispanic? Why is there a preponderance of “black” players in the NBA? Why is the infant mortality rate of blacks double that of whites in the U.S.?
I’ll give you a hint—it’s not about biology. In humans today, there are not multiple biological groups called “races.” However, race is real and it impacts us all. What we call “race” are social categories. They play a role in our lives, histories, and futures. We talk about race, or avoid talking about it, all the time—but few of us really stop and think about what race really is, and importantly, what it is not.”
Then the author goes on to say this.
“There is currently one biological race in our species: Homo sapiens sapiens.”
Then he basically boils down what we call race today to “historical, linguistic, ethnic, religious, or other background” factors.
Our idea of race today is just a social construct. It’s a way of putting people into categories that we create. This author brought up a couple of interesting facts to shore up that argument. He said this…
“in the U.S., the Irish were not always “white,” and despite our government’s legal definition, most Hispanics/Latinos are not seen as white today (by themselves or by others).”
But the reality is this…
“There is no genetic sequence unique to blacks or whites or Asians. In fact, these categories don’t reflect biological groupings at all. There is more genetic variation in the diverse populations from the continent of Africa (who some would lump into a “black” category) than exists in ALL populations from outside of Africa (the rest of the world) combined!
There are no specific racial genes. There are no genes that make black people in the USA more susceptible to high blood pressure, just as there are no genes for particular kinds of cancers that can be assigned to only one racial grouping. There is no neurological patterning that distinguishes races from one another, nor are there patterns in muscle development and structure, digestive tracts, hand-eye coordination, or any other such measures.
Even something thought to be so ubiquitous as skin color works only in a limited way, as dark or light skin tells us only about a human’s amount of ancestry relative to the equator, not anything about the specific population or part of the planet they might be descended from.
There is not a single biological element unique to any of the groups we call white, black, Asian, Latino, etc. In fact, no matter how hard people try, there has never been a successful scientific way to justify any racial classification, in biology. This is not to say that humans don’t vary biologically—we do, a lot—but rather that the variation is not racially distributed.”
Hum. That’s exactly what the Bible says
All we have are human beings. And that’s how the Bible defines “race.” There is only one race; the human race.
Acts 17:26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,
And it is important that we get this right. Because Christians, churches, and denominations are being pushed from every corner to conform to whatever the determined momentary societal truth is. We have to stand on Scripture, which does not change.
Now, the question is, how did all the varieties of skin colors come from one man and one woman? You might respond that there were 8 people, and we don’t know what color Noah’s son’s wives were. Let me shake you up a bit. We don’t know what color Noah was. Well, he was always white in the Sunday School pictures I saw. They say, maybe Noah’s son’s wives were from different races. I got news for you, all 8 people who entered the ark were the descendants of one couple; Adam and Eve, and what color were Adam and Eve? Well, they were always white in the Sunday School pictures I saw as a kid.
I hate to keep harping on this, but it seems that this is a question that will not go away. There are no races, and if you were trying to number race by skin color, then you would have to say there are hundreds of variations from white, yellow, red, brown, blue, even shades of green. But let’s go back to the old song, “red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight.” What were Adam and Eve? A simplistic explanation is this; What do you get when you mix red and yellow, black and white, and throw in some brown? That’s what Adam and Eve were. They had a genetic makeup that allowed for every color of humanity to be produced. And it is likely that the people descended from Noah were of varying shades of skin.
Well, we spent quite some time on that, but I think that it is important, because people, even Christian people are being drawn back into looking at people based on skin color.
Even our own denomination.
list the southern baptist resolutions regarding race
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The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States and has a significant influence on evangelical Christianity, has addressed issues related to race and racism through various resolutions over the years. Here are some key resolutions related to race that the SBC has adopted:
These resolutions reflect the SBC's evolving stance on issues of race and racial reconciliation, moving from a history marred by support for segregation to a more recent emphasis on repentance, reconciliation, and denunciation of racism in its various forms.