![]() ![]() Literary and historical analysis may suggest that a poem mocking Babel was the core tradition of the story. Since none of the individual elements are superfluous, however, such reconstructions are hardly convincing. As evidence, they point to subtle tensions, apparent repetitions, and the seemingly large number of motifs. Scholars often assume that the story of the tower of Babel was stitched together from different sources or that it underwent stages of literary development. The story ends with an etiology (an origin story) connecting the name of the city with the confusion ( b a lal) of languages and identifying the city as the origin point for the dispersion of humanity ( Gen 11:9). The narrative’s conclusion focuses on the real issue at hand: God’s dissolution of humanity’s linguistic unity, an act that results in dispersion and that reflects the historical experience of the Israelites in the exilic and postexilic periods. The tower itself, however, is a minor motif-something mentioned twice and only in passing (see Gen 11:4-5). The tower, then, is a symbol of humanity’s ability and propensity to cross boundaries and of God’s endeavor to check such behavior. It is true that God expresses some concern about safeguarding the line between the human and divine spheres, perhaps even suggesting that the people pose some kind of threat to the divine realm ( Gen 11:6, Job 42:2). The standard answer is that the project of building a tower reaching the heavens is a symbol of humanity’s arrogant pursuit of fame and power-ideas closely linked in the ancient Near East.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |