The captive monarch could hardly believe what he was seeing. He could tell for some time that Nebuchadnezzar's soldiers were on the verge of being home, but young Jehoiachin, the surrendered king of Judah, could behold it now, and his mom and wives and friends could see it too, judging from their gasps. He'd been seeing glittering blue in the heart of the blue sky, but now that the tall city walls were in sight, spanning the mighty river, the mountain looming in its midst was all the more visible – a broad pyramid of seven great stages, a tower looming over everything. Jehoiachin's jaw gaped; not a sight in all Jerusalem prepared him for this... this... which could've buried the temple of the LORD beneath itself.1 Next to him, a soldier wiped a homecoming tear from his eye. “Etemenanki,” he murmered. Jehoiachin didn't know the word. But he did recall an old, old story...
“And it came to pass, in their journeyings in the east” – these people whose wanderings hasn't let them develop a clear identity beyond a mysterious 'them,' wandering southeast hundreds of miles from the mountains of Ararat, hunting for somewhere to call home2 – “and they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there” (Genesis 11:2). Shinar's the region we'd today call southern Iraq, essentially the land otherwise known as ancient Sumer,3 although 'Shinar' was a late westerner's word for the plain, not a native one.4 Thousands and thousands of years ago, this fertile Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris River in the east and the Euphrates River in the west “became a magnet for migrants” from all over, able to support many lifestyles with its bounty.5
In Genesis, though, this story is set in a time when “all the earth had one lip and the same words” (Genesis 11:1) – not only is communication easy, but the people gathered there “share a common understanding of the world.”6 A prospect arises, in this “society built on confidence and trust,”7 of “unanimously accomplishing one single purpose,” of getting everybody on the same page for one big idea.8 And so “they said, a man to a companion, 'Come!'” (Genesis 11:3). “Each man thus roused his neighbor,” acting as an evangelist for this big idea, busying himself in grassroots community organizing.9 This is, in modern terms, practically “participatory democracy.”10 And it's a landslide, issuing in a “generally agreed-upon plan of action.”11
Here's the plan: “Come, let us brick bricks” (Genesis 11:3). They took clay-rich river mud and, from March to October, spent their free time mixing it with sand and hay, kneading it with water into a thick mixture, shaping it into rectangles, and leaving it to dry beneath the warm sun for a day or two in the dry air.12 They'd later come up with the myth that the world's first brick came from the hands of a wise god who'd nipped off a hunk of clay and grown a forest of reeds just so he could make that brick.13 We've found sun-dried mud bricks archaeologists say are over nine thousand years old, but almost seven thousand years ago, someone realized you could make a better, stronger brick by baking it in an oven.14 That's what they do here in Genesis: “Let us brick bricks and burn them to a burning” (Genesis 11:3), making them “stable, strong, and meant to endure for ages.”15
“To them,” the people who settled in Shinar, “the brick was for stone, and bitumen was for them as mortar” (Genesis 11:3). To Israelite eyes, accustomed to natural stone and mortar, brick and bitumen “were poor substitutes,” a hint that we should read on critically.16 But the combination of kiln-fired bricks and bitumen as construction staples in that part of the world goes back before 3000 BC, to “the beginning of urbanization.”17 It stimulates their imagination to new heights, and so “they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city'” (Genesis 11:4). The people of Sumer were exceptional pioneers at building cities.18 It's “a technical fruit of the human orientation toward social existence,” a “collective effort” that “magnifies the power of the human will.”19 In the story, the builders pitch this city as if “the fulfillment of a recurrent human dream, a dream of humankind united, living together in peace and freedom, no longer at the mercy of an inhospitable or hostile nature.”20 Of course, a city, however consensus-based, will birth “technologies of control” leading to a “stratified society.”21
And this isn't just any generic city. Only at the end of the story does the writer let slip its name: Babel – which we know more familiarly by the Greek spelling, 'Babylon' (Genesis 11:9), on the east bank of the Euphrates River. Early Babylon, whenever it was first founded, was actually a rather unimportant podunk town, largely unnoticed by its neighbors.22 Over time, though, it slowly grew into a metropolis of “astonishing palaces, mighty temples, imposing gates..., and grand ceremonial boulevards..., the embodiment of divine and secular power.”23 And there was, in Babylon, a temple dedicated to the city's patron god, Marduk. This central temple was called “Esagila, the exalted sanctuary,”24 and in Sumerian, 'Esagila' means “House with Top Raised High.”25
Which reminds us of what else they said: “Let us build a city and a tower, and its head is in the heavens” (Genesis 11:4). Even though the Bible uses just the generic Hebrew word for 'tower,' every major city in this part of the world had one special building that towered over the rest. They called it a ziggurat, from a root word meaning 'to be built up high,' and just about everybody now recognizes that the tower in this verse is meant to be a Babylonian ziggurat.26 Developed from the high platforms that earlier Sumerian settlements perched their temples on, a ziggurat was “the most visible part of the Mesopotamian temple complex.”27 A ziggurat was a tower of stages, wide to narrow, built of a large core pyramid of sun-dried mud bricks, covered by a mantel of baked bricks. Generally on one side, there'd be three huge ramp staircases, one coming from straight ahead and the other two running up the front of the ziggurat to meet it.28 At the top was a small shrine, the ziggurat's 'head,' built of glazed brick and surrounded by groves of greenery.29 Those who built a ziggurat really did say they “raised as high as heaven the head of the ziggurat,”30 so that “its top was high and reached the heavens.”31
The ziggurat in Babylon had a name, Etemenanki, which is Sumerian for “House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth.”32 Built in a courtyard on the west side of Babylon's Processional Way, we know Etemenanki was 300 feet wide by 300 feet long and, if we believe the Babylonians, about 300 feet high.33 That's their great tower whose top reaches the heavens: almost a third the height of the Eiffel Tower. No wonder later Jewish imagination made it nearly 700 feet high,34 or even over eight thousand feet high.35 But even on the lowest estimates, Etemenanki would've taken over ten million bricks to build.36 In the time when Jehoiachin saw it, Nebuchadnezzar's dad said he'd repaired it using “mud bricks without number” and “baked bricks like countless drops of rain,” cementing them together with a flood of “refined and crude bitumen.”37 Nebuchadnezzar then continued the work “using bitumen and baked brick,” and at the top, he said, he “resplendently built a holy shrine, a well-adorned bedroom, using baked bricks colored with shining blue glaze.”38
A ziggurat, to the Babylonians, “represented a mountain peak close to heaven and had roots like a tree reaching down to the underworld.”39 These artificial buildings were meant to bind together what was above and what was below, linking all the realms of the world. So a ziggurat was “the obvious channel of communication between the celestial and terrestrial spheres,”40 essentially a human “hotline to heaven.”41 A ziggurat was “built in honor of the divinity that resides at the summit,” since the shrine at the top “served as the residential quarters for the god” between heaven and temple.42 Effectively, the ziggurat was one huge stairway for a god to walk down, descending from heaven above to the earth below to be with us.43 And so, by mentioning a ziggurat, Genesis implies “the first biblical mention of polytheism,” the pagan portrait of many gods made in our image.44
It's not for nothing that the earliest Sumerian way of writing the word 'god' was a little star, because these many gods were held to manifest their judgments through heavenly portents people could observe and interpret.45 The peoples of Mesopotamia were famously obsessed with astrology as far back as records go, and it's often thought that ziggurats, which we now know were built to align with the heavenly bodies, hosted special rituals and also made a convenient place for priests to gather their data.46 If so, then on the tower, “the priests, watchfully yet apprehensively, conducted measurements of the heavenly motions, on the basis of which they sought knowledge useful for the life of the city,” using “celestial divination as a source for effective policy creation” in Babylon.47
That's what the builders have in mind when they call to “build ourselves a city and a tower, and its head is in the heavens” (Genesis 11:4). But the Babylonians had a different story about where their city and its tower came from. In the beginning, they said, the gods were at war with a monster-goddess named Tiamat, a losing battle until a strapping young god named Marduk stepped up to bat for them. Marduk carved up Tiamat's corpse to make the world, and as the crowning achievement, Marduk declared he intended to make himself a home in this world: “I will name it Babylon, Houses of the Great Gods!”48 Out of gratitude, the other gods say they want to build his shrine of rest, and he happily accepts their generous offer: “Build Babylon, the task you have sought; let bricks for it be molded, and raise the shrine!”49 The gods spend a whole year just making all the bricks, and then, “when the second year arrived, they raised the top of the Esagil..., they built the soaring ziggurat... and established homes for Anu, Enlil, Ea, and him. In splendor he sat down before them.”50 Marduk welcomes the gods at last to a fancy feast, declaring, “This is Babylon, your place of residence; sing merrily here, sit down amid its joyfulness!”51 So, to sum up, the Babylonians said theirs was a city built by gods and for gods, shortly after the world was made – “Babylon, called into being by the heavens.”52 These same gods had built the tower of Babel, the “soaring ziggurat,” whose shrine welcomed the gods of highest heaven.
That was the mainstream story, but other Babylonians had an even more radical one: “All the lands were sea,” and then “Babylon was made, Esagil was created,” and only then, after Babylon and its temple, did the original god make the other gods, who gratefully “gave an exalted name to the pure city,” Babylon, “in which they were pleased to dwell.”53 In that version, Babylon and its temple actually predated the gods worshipped in it; they were born there, which is why some called “Babylon the place of the creation of the great gods,”54 and “Esagil: house which creates all the gods.”55 For some Babylonians, their city was even more divine than the gods!
They called it “Babylon, the city whose brickwork is ancient,”56 but Genesis shoots back that there was no Babel in the beginning; Babylon appears only chapters and chapters into the world's story.57 They even called it “Babylon, the creator of god and man,”58 but Genesis answers that it's just a city and tower “which the sons of humanity built” (Genesis 11:5). The builders of Babel may be taken by the later residents for gods, but Genesis has their number: they're the children of Adam, wayward flesh and blood. Babylon is seriously demoted.
And Babylon, Genesis says, shouldn't have gotten started. The order of events so far has been mimicking the kinds of building stories Babylonians told. First they'd start with the circumstances that led to the decision to build something, then they'd discuss the preparations that were made, and only then would they go on to narrate the construction. But in Babylonian stories, the decision to build something never went ahead without stating that the gods signed off on the project; in fact, Babylonians would tell you that any time people tried to build a new city without divine approval, it was an open invitation to disaster. Well, guess what gets pointedly skipped over in Genesis? The part where the builders of Babel get permission. It's “a major violation of divine/human protocol.”59 The sad truth is that “they took counsel with their own judgment, not with God, to build a city.”60
What makes it worse is why they're doing it. “Let us build to ourselves a city and a tower” (Genesis 11:4). The Babylonians may claim all this work is a tribute to the gods, may aim to pass it all off as hospitality toward heaven, but Genesis exposes their piety as a pretense for pride: “Their motivation for constructing sacred space was to bring benefits to themselves.”61 So it's really all about them, “co-opting religion in the service of self-worship.”62 Pagans of this character can't even help but take the names of their own false gods in vain!
A ziggurat would've been visible from many miles away, “from practically every point of the urban hinterland,” and that visibility would define a sense of territory and community.63 Babylonians thought of Babylon as the center of the world, and their gods claimed it as a “place of repose for all time,” never to find a closed door or a missing welcome mat there.64 Just like that, the builders in Genesis aim to avoid being “scattered on the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:4), losing the protection and stability of this home they're building, forfeiting what they feel they've gained.65 As if they're the gods of Babylon, they want it as their place of repose forever, there to maintain strength and safety and security through their dense crowd and thick city walls.66 And once people accept the city and take rest in it, they'll be stamped by it, Babelites forever.67
The builders also declare, “Let us make for ourselves a name” (Genesis 11:4). They want “to be remembered in perpetuity,” to achieve something so remarkable that it “will never pass into oblivion.”68 They aim to be “the agents of their own eminence.”69 That was part of the reason for a ziggurat, whose landscape-dominating power on the plain would easily “generate a sense of civic pride” within.70 The Babylonians really did want their city, Babylon, to “be exalted throughout the inhabited world,” to have fame and influence everywhere.71 And if it were, then the whole world might forever have ziggurat minds and ziggurat hearts.
It's not for nothing that they describe a tower “with its head in the heavens” (Genesis 11:4). While Babylonians think their ziggurats bind heaven and earth together, from the Bible's point of view they “transgress the boundaries of heaven and earth.”72 Nebuchadnezzar himself described his work on the tower as “raising the superstructure of Etemenanki to have its summit rival the heavens.”73 From the Bible's point of view, that boast to 'rival the heavens' is “offensive and blasphemous.”74 Though Babylonians never thought to use a ziggurat to storm heaven, their latent dream was “to ascend to heaven” (Isaiah 14:13), as if their burnt bricks were squared seraphim ferrying them aloft, that mortared mud and clay men might touch heaven with their earthiness,75 and so maybe “to become like gods themselves.”76 No wonder later Jews spoke of “the tower of war against God.”77
The builders of Babel made a monument, “the massive structure of a building of fantastic proportions,” as the heart of an even vaster and growing city.78 It's a perennial truth that “the human race... always longs for more and reaches out for greater things..., always lusting after more.”79 We have “a boundless capacity to dream up grand projects,”80 and Babel rises from the page as “the place where every human achievement was possible.”81 “This they have begun to do; and now all that they imagine to do will not be withheld from them” (Genesis 11:6). “Whatever human minds conceive, they can achieve.”82 That's what Babel is all about.
If humanity enjoys unmitigated success here and now, “nothing will succeed in checking their impulse” – they'll run roughshod over every boundary.83 We'll never believe that any no is serious, that any line should be drawn, any limit respected. And in our day especially, “the project of Babel has been making a comeback,” yielding “everywhere evidence of a revived Babylonian vision.”84 We cleave the atoms of the universe in twain, we ape life and monkey around in genetic codes, we design artificial intelligence to slave for us and stave off a cosmic loneliness, we dream of setting foot on Mars, then colonizing heaven and her stars – but would we build anything there but a Babel above?85 There's a frightfulness of human reach without restraint, power and genius naked of wisdom and love.
So it is in our lives. What are we prepared to build in life to avoid the things we fear? What do we do, to dreams do we chase, in our endless quests to make ourselves a name that lasts, to build a legacy that can be looked at? To what lengths will we go to advance our vision for how the world should be shaped, how life should be lived? Even the nobler ziggurats we profess to build to God are often brick-by-brick paeans to ourselves and our agendas. Unmoored, that way always “ends with us rallying all the forces at our disposal to serve whatever god of worldly flourishing we have made for ourselves.”86
But still its builders persist. They raise their tower, “intended to pave the way for a divine entrance to the city.”87 At this point in a building story, we expect a festival to celebrate the finished tower, where the building will be dedicated and the god is invited to come down on it.88 No doubt they expect “the lord of Babylon, Marduk the exalted,”89 to show up, of whom they believe that “no god can alter the utterance of his mouth,” and “when his anger is ablaze, no god can face him.”90 But instead we read that Yahweh, “the LORD, came down” (Genesis 11:5). And Babel will find him to be a very big surprise indeed.
What they have built – and what we build – may be “so gigantic from a human perspective” that it appears in their eyes as a literal skyscraper; but God does not see as we see.91 “The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of humanity had built” (Genesis 11:5). Their lofty, impressive, fabulous tower, and their vast, lively, mighty city, which they expect to present loud and large before his face, is in his eyes “so puny,” “so insignificant,” that they aren't even visible from his heaven.92 They're “so far from the heavens that God must come down to see it,”93 that he has to “go down in order to scrutinize the scene.”94 It's actually an extremely funny satire, as if they present before heaven their monumental city and tower, and the Lord makes a show of grabbing his microscope and stooping to squint at their miniscule grandeur.95
But “what could empty human presumption have achieved... even if it outstripped the whole region of the cloudy air?”96 Every ziggurat was highly “prone to collapse” and needed constant maintenance, due to subsidence in the ground and its unstable core – and that went double for Etemenanki.97 You can visit the site today, but you won't even have to lift your eyes; it's a little dirt hill inside a sunken square moat, hardly worth writing home about. Babylon, as an icon of human achievement, was as unstable as a house built foolishly on shifting sands (Matthew 7:26). So are the little Babels we can't seem to stop ourselves from building whenever people “follow the feelings and desires of their own heart in doing or saying whatever they please.”98 Like the pitiful ruins in Iraq today, our labors for self are “impermanent and futile,” hardly rising before the Lord.99
Babel was a template, and the Bible's last dizzying visions zoom out on human history and behold there one vast culture, Babylon the Great, which through the ages allures and intoxicates the world's peoples, plying them with prosperity and pride (Revelation 14:8). “She glorified herself and lived in luxury” (Revelation 18:7). This is “the great city that has dominion” within world culture even today (Revelation 17:18), for “in the spiritual sense, Babylon is the devil's city.”100 And to all, she offers a drink from her “golden cup full of abominations” (Revelation 17:4). It's a nauseating picture, a genuine grotesque.
But the city that boasts it births its gods will mourn their deaths from her own deathbed. “Her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Revelation 18:5), so “her judgment has reached up to heaven and has been lifted up even to the clouds,” higher than Etemenanki's peak (Jeremiah 51:9). “Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and though she should fortify her strong height,” even if Babylon achieves every dream she can muster, “yet destroyers would come from me against her, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 51:53). As for the Babylon of history, so for Babylon the Great. On that day “the great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell” (Revelation 16:19), “for here we have no lasting city” (Hebrews 13:14). “Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more” (Jeremiah 51:64).
But as the Lord once came down and shall come down again to see that tower and its city, so in between did the same Lord God come down, in our flesh and in our blood, to survey our sin and the monuments of our pitiful pride. He came to call us in mercy to tear them all down and to cease our construction, that we might instead move to a better “city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14), “the city that has foundations” of grace amazing, the city “whose designer and builder is God” and not the sons of men (Hebrews 11:10), “the holy city... coming down out of heaven from God,” and not trying to rise up to heaven from earth (Revelation 21:2).
St. Augustine offered these shocking words of wonder, that “all the wicked belong to Babylon, as all the saints to Jerusalem. But Babylon gradually changes into Jerusalem; and how could it do that, unless through him who justifies the godless?” The gateway to this new city is the cross by which the Lord justifies even the ungodliest Babel-builder who will only hand his brick-basket over to the thorn-crowned God who stooped to serve. Zion is Babel's only hope. So now “walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers..., that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever” (Psalm 48:12-14). It has towers – its tower is the church, raised not by human hands101 – but it needs no ziggurat standing tall, “for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb,” and “the glory of God gives it light” (Revelation 21:22-23).
Two cities there are, then: Babylon, grand and luxurious, and Zion, a city under Babel's thumb until her years are done. And two perspectives there are: the sight of man, in which our towers rise high and nigh unto the sky, and the sight of the LORD, in which love looms larger and mercy alone is monumental. Of such things, Babylon has not known. Which city stands at the heart of the world? Which is the center of your world? Is it the city of man, or is it the city of God? Is it the city of today and tomorrow, or the city of eternity? And whose sight do you trust? For in what you see as mountains and what you see as molehills, therein lies the vision that will guide your life. May you see and walk by the glory of God. May you climb no tower but the cross, on whom the One in whom heaven and earth are bound as one died for you, that a better city might rise again. Amen.
1 Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014), 235.
2 Robin B. Ten Hoopen, “'And as They Travelled Eastward' (Genesis 11:2): Travel in the Book of Genesis and the Anonymous Travelers in the Tower of Babel Account,” in Susanne Luther, Pieter B. Hartog, and Clare E. Wilde, eds., Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Travel Experiences, 3rd Century BCE to 8th Century CE (De Gruyter, 2023), 23; John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (T&T Clark, 2014), 170; John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 187.
3 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 289.
4 John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (T&T Clark, 2014), 171.
5 Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 20-21.
6 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 223.
7 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 129.
8 André LaCocque, “Whatever Happened in the Valley of Shinar? A Response to Theodore Hiebert,” Journal of Biblical Literature 128/1 (Spring 2009): 33.
9 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 225.
10 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 289.
11 Phillip Michael Sherman, Babel's Tower Translated: Genesis 1-11 and Ancient Jewish Interpretation (Brill, 2013), 27.
12 Kadim Hasson Hnaihen, “The Appearance of Bricks in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Athens Journal of History 6/1 (2020): 82-83.
13 The First Brick, obverse, lines 24-28, in W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 381.
14 Kadim Hasson Hnaihen, “The Appearance of Bricks in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Athens Journal of History 6/1 (2020): 75-78.
15 Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 38.
16 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 290.
17 Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 129.
18 Charles Gates and Andrew Goldman, Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome, 3rd ed. (Routledge, 2024), 34.
19 R. R. Reno, Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary (Brazos Press, 2010), 133.
20 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 219.
21 Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 35-36.
22 Stephanie Dalley, The City of Babylon: A History, c.2000 BC–AD 116 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 12.
23 Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 60.
24 Chronicle of the Esagila, line 21, in Writings from the Ancient World 19:265.
25 VAT 17115, line 1, in Andrew R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (Peeters, 1992), 81.
26 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 82; Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 179; James McKeown, Genesis (Eerdmans, 2008), 71; Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 171; Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 130.
27 Ronald Hendel, “Genesis 1-11 and Its Mesopotamian Problem,” in Erich S. Gruen, ed., Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity (Steiner Franz Verlag, 2005), 31.
28 Olaf Pedersen, Babylon: The Great City (Zaphon, 2021), 155-156.
29 Shiyanthi Thavapalan, The Meaning of Color in Mesopotamia (Brill, 2020), 68.
30 Samsu-iluna, inscription E4.3.7.4, lines 82-87, in Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods 4:377.
31 Esarhaddon, inscription 57, iv.21, in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4:127.
32 Stephanie Dalley, The City of Babylon: A History, c.2000 BC–AD 116 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 204.
33 Olaf Pedersen, Babylon: The Great City (Zaphon, 2021), 153.
34 3 Baruch 3:6, in Alexander Kulik, 3 Baruch: Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch (Brill, 2010), 151.
35 Jubilees 10:21, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:76.
36 Olaf Pedersen, Babylon: The Great City (Zaphon, 2021), 165.
37 Nabopolassar, inscription 6, i.37–ii.8, in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire 1/1:48.
38 Nebuchadnezzar II, inscription 23, i.38-43, in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire 1/1:157.
39 Stephanie Dalley, The City of Babylon: A History, c.2000 BC–AD 116 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 16.
40 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 82.
41 Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014), 236.
42 Giorgio Buccellati, When on High the Heavens...: Mesopotamian Religion and Spirituality with Reference to the Biblical World (Routledge, 2024), 52; Tremper Longman and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 132.
43 Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 170-171.
44 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 291.
45 Francesca Rochberg, In the Path of the Moon: Babylonian Celestial Divination and Its Legacy (Brill, 2010), 322, 333.
46 Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination (Museum Tusculanum Press, 1995), 34; Davide Nadali and Andrea Polcaro, “The Sky from the High Terrace: Study on the Orientation of the Ziqqurat in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 16/4 (2016): 103-108; Vance Tiede, “Ziggurats: An Astro-Archaeological Analysis,” in Sonja Draxler, Max E. Lippitsch, and Gudrun Wolfschmidt, eds., Harmony and Symmetry: Celestial Regularities Shaping Human Culture (tredition, 2020), 179, 183; Stephanie Dalley, The City of Babylon: A History, c. 2000 BC–AD 116 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 16.
47 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 42; Jeffrey L. Cooley, Poetic Astronomy in the Ancient Near East: The Reflexes of Celestial Science in Ancient Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, and Israelite Narrative (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 110.
48 Enuma elish V.129, in Johannes Haubold and Sophus Helle, et al., ed.s, Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), 71.
49 Enuma elish VI.45-58, in W.G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 113.
50 Enuma elish VI.59-65, in Johannes Haubold and Sophus Helle, et al., eds., Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), 77.
51 Enuma elish VI.70-73, in Johannes Haubold and Sophus Helle, et al., eds., Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), 79.
52 Tintir = Babylon i.7, in Andrew R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (Peeters, 1992), 39.
53 The Founding of Eridu, lines 10-16, in W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 371-373.
54 Tintir = Babylon v.90, in Andrew R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (Peeters, 1992), 69.
55 VAT 17115, line 7, in Andrew R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (Peeters, 1992), 81.
56 Tintir = Babylon i.8, in Andrew R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (Peeters, 1992), 39.
57 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 83.
58 Tintir = Babylon i.30, in Andrew R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (Peeters, 1992), 41.
59 Andrew Giorgetti, “The 'Mock Building Account' of Genesis 11:1-9: Polemic against Mesopotamian Royal Ideology,” Vetus Testamentum 64/1 (2014): 10-12.
60 Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus 2.31, in Robert M. Grant, Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum (Clarendon Press, 1970), 77.
61 Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 133.
62 Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 171.
63 Giorgio Buccellati, When on High the Heavens...: Mesopotamian Religion and Spirituality with Reference to the Biblical World (Routledge, 2024), 23.
64 Enuma elish V.138, in Johannes Haubold and Sophus Helle, et al., eds., Enuma Elish: The Babylonian Epic of Creation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025), 73.
65 Carol M. Kaminski, From Noah to Israel: Realization of the Primaeval Blessing After the Flood (T&T Clark, 2005), 24-29.
66 Paul Borgman, Genesis: The Story We Haven't Heard (IVP Academic, 2001), 36.
67 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 135.
68 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 30.6, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:224.
69 André LaCocque, “Whatever Happened in the Valley of Shinar? A Response to Theodore Hiebert,” Journal of Biblical Literature 128/1 (Spring 2009): 34.
70 Giorgio Buccellati, When on High the Heavens...: Mesopotamian Religion and Spirituality with Reference to the Biblical World (Routledge, 2024), 23.
71 Chronicle of the Esagila, line 20, in Writings from the Ancient World 19:265.
72 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 161.
73 Nebuchadnezzar II, inscription 27, ii.14-18, in Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire 1/1:168.
74 André LaCocque, “Whatever Happened in the Valley of Shinar? A Response to Theodore Hiebert,” Journal of Biblical Literature 128/1 (Spring 2009): 36.
75 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 290, 292.
76 Jonathan Grossman, “The Double Etymology of Babel in Genesis 11,” Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 129/3 (2017): 365.
77 3 Baruch 2:7, in Alexander Kulik, 3 Baruch: Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch (Brill, 2010), 133.
78 Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 2.14, in Ancient Christian Writers 14:112.
79 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 30.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:222-223.
80 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 219.
81 André LaCocque, “Whatever Happened in the Valley of Shinar? A Response to Theodore Hiebert,” Journal of Biblical Literature 128/1 (Spring 2009): 31.
82 Johnson T.K. Lim, Grace in the Midst of Judgment: Grappling with Genesis 1-11 (De Gruyter, 2002), 182.
83 John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 30.11, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:228.
84 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 242-243.
85 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 183.
86 R. R. Reno, Genesis (Brazos Press, 2010), 133.
87 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 229.
88 Andrew Giorgetti, “The 'Mock Building Account' of Genesis 11:1-9: Polemic against Mesopotamian Royal Ideology,” Vetus Testamentum 64/1 (2014): 13.
89 Enmesharra's Defeat v.10, in W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 295.
90 Enuma elish VII.152-154, in W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 133.
91 Donald E. Gowan, From Eden to Babel: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1-11 (Eerdmans, 1988), 118.
92 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 180; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 118.
93 Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17 (Eerdmans, 1990), 354.
94 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 83.
95 John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 187; Christopher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture (Zondervan Academic, 2022), 209.
96 Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 16.4, in The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/7:192.
97 Stephanie Dalley, The City of Babylon: A History, c.2000 BC–AD 116 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 205.
98 Bede, On Genesis 11:4, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:237.
99 Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 130.
100 Bede, On Genesis 11:1-2, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:233.
101 Hermas of Rome, Shepherd 11.3 = Visions 3.3.3, in Loeb Classical Library 25:201.
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