6 T he Tower of B abel Read Genesis ıı Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. Genesis ıı:9
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e are always curious as to why things are the way they are. Why is the sky blue? How does water freeze? Why does the moon shine more brightly on some nights than on others? The story of the Tower of Babel could have begun as an answer to such a question: Why do people speak in so many diverse languages? The setting of the story is the city of Babylon, the city to which the Jews were brought after the Babylonian conquest of Judah in 597–587 BC. Babylon was a city built of bricks and mortar. There was no natural stone in Babylonia (present-day Iraq), so people made bricks of clay baked in kilns. The inspiration for the story of the tower may have come from the shape of the pagan temples in Babylon. The principal temples of worship in Babylonia were the ziggurats, pyramidlike structures built to resemble mountains. There was usually a sanctuary on the ground level of the ziggurat that was matched 13
