Latter Day Saints and the Tower of Babel

[_Choyo Chagas]

The fact that Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization and built tower off babel like structures is a definite plus. Its interesting because that would mean that Moah would have landed in that area and Mesopotamia has a Noah like flood in their legends. You can see one of two ways that the Bible was influenced by the Mesopotamia legends or Mesopotamia was influenced by Noah. I personally believe the later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

Mesopotamia IS NOT the cradle of civilization. It is only one of several.

history is not a forté of bomgeography (as of littlenipper)

they have learned the history from some religious scifi

[_Maksutov]

The fact that Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization and built tower off babel like structures is a definite plus. Its interesting because that would mean that Moah would have landed in that area and Mesopotamia has a Noah like flood in their legends. You can see one of two ways that the Bible was influenced by the Mesopotamia legends or Mesopotamia was influenced by Noah. I personally believe the later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

To hold such a belief all one has to do is disregard physics, specifically the weak nuclear force that governs radioactive decay, to discount the implications that follow upon those facts. These people are referred to as cranks or crackpots.

Excellent, Spotlight!

One of the interesting implications of the historical and pseudoscientific fantasies of McKane and Nipper is that the current establishment of scientists, scholars, historians of all kinds must be engaged in a vast conspiracy to suppress The Truth and also to create and maintain, through ongoing deception and collusion, thousands of hoaxes that simulate research, development and application. These conspiracies would be several orders of magnitude greater than required to fake a moon landing.

[_ClarkGoble]

LDS members are supposed to believe in the literal ToB because it's affirmed in the Book of Mormon as well as other scriptures. Of course modern scholarship has shown such a dispersion of languages to be mythical and the tower itself to be a legend. Why don't Mormon scholars demonstrate the truth of the Book of Mormon by giving us evidence of the Tower? Do we know which continent it was on? Or can this story be discarded as folklore and invention, as we can the Book of Mormon itself?

I think that's pushing things far too much. It's referred to in one piece of modern revelation and not by name. Nor are the traditions about it that rise in say conservative Christian narratives affirmed. All we know was that there was a great tower, a dispersal of people and a worry about having their language confounded/ The Book of Mormon doesn't portray everyone somehow forgetting their language and getting a new one. The meaning of "confound the language" is completely vague.

Some unknown event at a ziggurat leading to dispersal and possible loss of writing fits the Book of Mormon account fine. (And accords with 1 Ne 3:19) Even acknowledging that the text presents it as a summarization by Moroni of other records and not the direct record. i.e. it's quite possible Moroni unintentionally modified the text some what.

[_ClarkGoble]

The fact that Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization and built tower off babel like structures is a definite plus

It's a cradle but not the only one. Reading the Old Testament account (likely compiled around 200 BCE) as talking of all peoples simply can't be supported. At a minimum it conflicts with the Book of Mormon which says some people didn't have the language confounded (whatever that means)

[_Themis]

All we know was that there was a great tower, a dispersal of people and a worry about having their language confounded/ The Book of Mormon doesn't portray everyone somehow forgetting their language and getting a new one.

So we have two stories of a great tower in which God is upset at the people and is going to disperse and confound their languages so they will not understand each other. That is some very specific details from both stories, and they both happen in the old world with the same timeline.

The meaning of "confound the language" is completely vague.

No the story in Ether is quite specific. It says they would no longer understand each others words.

Some unknown event at a ziggurat leading to dispersal and possible loss of writing fits the Book of Mormon account fine. (And accords with 1 Ne 3:19) Even acknowledging that the text presents it as a summarization by Moroni of other records and not the direct record. i.e. it's quite possible Moroni unintentionally modified the text some what.

Sure Moroni could have made up the story like Joseph did, but why. Moroni is a character who is a prophet of God. He either read and wrote down by divine assistance a divine translation from Benjamin or was it Mosiah, or from his own divine translating. I love the whole was it king Benjamin or King Mosiah. I remember Dan Peterson making a defense of this one by saying Joseph didn't need to change it because there was a possible timeline for King Benjamin to do the translation. It was dumb to suggest Joseph didn't need to change his story, because that is the gem in this one. Joseph saw a hole in his story and edited it to fix the problem.

It's a cradle but not the only one. Reading the Old Testament account (likely compiled around 200 BCE) as talking of all peoples simply can't be supported. At a minimum it conflicts with the Book of Mormon which says some people didn't have the language confounded (whatever that means)

The whole story is fiction. It was probably created long ago when people wondered why their are so many people speaking different languages. Joseph believes this story really happened and borrowed from it, like so much of the Bible, in the Book of Mormon. Christians who are not biblical literalists can easily dismiss the story as myth without affecting the core of their religion. LDS cannot do it very easily. Joseph makes these events real, and not just with the Book of Mormon. Some though do go with inspired fiction. I take it from your posts you assume God would not do that. Imagine that, we all make assumptions of what God would logically do. The difference is I don't make assumptions here to protect a belief.

[_ClarkGoble]

All we know was that there was a great tower, a dispersal of people and a worry about having their language confounded/ The Book of Mormon doesn't portray everyone somehow forgetting their language and getting a new one.

So we have two stories of a great tower in which God is upset at the people and is going to disperse and confound their languages so they will not understand each other. That is some very specific details from both stories, and they both happen in the old world with the same timeline.

The reason I make the distinction (which I think is quite important) is to recognize the two narratives aren't the same. So we can't assume the traditions of the first narrative (from the Bible with unknown origin but compiled in its current form around 200 BCE) should tell us about the second. The term "babel" being a key example.

The meaning of "confound the language" is completely vague.

No the story in Ether is quite specific. It says they would no longer understand each others words.

But what words? You're assuming it's regular talking. And from the text that's a perfectly reasonable reading. But it's hardly the only one. I don't think it's the correct one.

Some unknown event at a ziggurat leading to dispersal and possible loss of writing fits the Book of Mormon account fine. (And accords with 1 Ne 3:19) Even acknowledging that the text presents it as a summarization by Moroni of other records and not the direct record. i.e. it's quite possible Moroni unintentionally modified the text some what.

Sure Moroni could have made up the story like Joseph did, but why. Moroni is a character who is a prophet of God. He either read and wrote down by divine assistance a divine translation from Benjamin or was it Mosiah, or from his own divine translating.

But this gets into the whole infallibility point I brought up which some appear to think of as a strawman. Yet this is precisely the logical form it takes. Effectively it asks why we should expect the text to take the form of a regular narrative recounting by a person if that person is a prophet. To which the obvious question is why should we expect anything else? There's no evidence a prophet suddenly knows everything by being a prophet or changes texts to turn them into a collection of absolutely true propositions without error.

The whole story is fiction. It was probably created long ago when people wondered why their are so many people speaking different languages. Joseph believes this story really happened and borrowed from it, like so much of the Bible, in the Book of Mormon.

That's a perfectly fine reading. It's not a reading I think it correct but it's definitely supportable from the text. We just need to be careful not to take it as the only defensible reading from the text.

[_aussieguy55]

They were not all speaking the same language

https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hi ... el_wtj.htm

"At numerous sites in North America, such as Danger Cave in Utah, stratified
remains of Indian cultures are radiocarbon-dated from 9000 to 3000
B.C.64 At Sierra Madre Oriental and other sites in Mexico, human and cultural
remains are carbon-dated from 7000 to 1400 B.C.65 Since these Indians
apparently came from Asia originally, we would expect their languages around
5000 B.C. to relate to Asian languages, but not to ancient Near Eastern languages.
In any case, whatever languages they may have spoken, they were in America
speaking them before the tower of Babel began to be built and, all during the time
from 3500 to 2000 B.C.
We can say then that there is firm archaeological ground based both on
radiocarbon dates and stratified sites to support the conclusion that long before
the tower of Babel began to be built and all during the fourth millennium B.C.,
men were scattered over the entire globe speaking a multitude of different lan-
guages. This conclusion is clearly opposed to the assumptions underlying
Gen 11:1-9 and opposite to the statements in 11:1 and 6 in particular.
At this point someone might suggest that perhaps the tower of Babel should
be dated earlier. But, on what basis would anyone suppose that it should be
dated earlier than c. 3500 B.C.? "

[_SteelHead]

3 words
Pay lay ale.

Without the tower of babel all the old teachings about adamic become even more meaningless. Guess Joseph Smith was just making it up.

[_ClarkGoble]

They were not all speaking the same language

https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hi ... el_wtj.htm

People there where the event took place. I recognize there were lots of people elsewhere speaking other languages. Indeed if we adopt a "mangled historical" take on the narrative then we have people simply being scattered and adopting these other languages. Much like the Book of Mormon presents happening with the mulekites.

[_ClarkGoble]

Without the tower of babel all the old teachings about adamic become even more meaningless. Guess Joseph Smith was just making it up.

I don't quite see the dependence. Could you expand a little?