the tower of Babel story?

Question

Do you think this is an allegory for when the continents were joined together as one large land mass?

I have thought this to be the case since I was young.

Answer 1

Was a dumb idea anyway... everyone knows man can't survive above 24000 feet anyway.

Answer 2

No - It is retelling of a lesson in the principle of isosticy that the ancient Egyptians learned when trying to build the first pyramid as too steep of an angle. At a certain point the blocks on the bottom begin to crumble due to the weight of the overlying weight. It was such a critical event that the Jews took it and twisted it into a moral story. These moral stories were used to keep the population under control and were later incorporated into the bible.

It is like wearing a woobie to keep from being attached by a polar bear in Florida.

Answer 3

No, but it may one of the stories in the Bible that is just a story.
I seriously doubt God got upset because some little humans built a tower 500 feet tall, and thought they were up there with the gods, and God punished them. I don't see an Almighty Creator as being egotistical and petty like that.
The God, (Elohim), in the Old Testament, and the We in the Quran are, I believe, the Powers and Principalities. They have
authority to do things, but I don't see everything they do
as being a direct command from our Creator.
Myself, I think we come from different planets, which would easily explain the many languages.

Answer 4

When the continents were joined, there were no people. And ancient peoples had no way of knowing about continental drift.
The Myth of the tower of babel is just another story designed to keep people in thier places. The moral of the story goes "don't try to better yourself, you'll just fail if you do". Once again keeping gullible sheep in their pews and filling the collection plate.

Answer 5

No.

The building of the tower of Babel actually happened, and the problems encountered in the Genesis story are remarkably similar to those encountered by Uruk's empire.

The tower itself likely did not "reach into the heavens". From the point of view of the writers, a 50-foot tower would have done that. The description of the tower in the Bible is remarkably similar to the way Sumerians descibed their city of Uruk, and the architecture and use of bitumen in waterproofing was nearly identical.

We now know that, even though Nimrod is never mentioned outside the Bible, Nimrod's kingdom existed between about 4000 and 3000 BC. It began in Uruk, eventually included Susa, Babel, Agade, Nineveh, Brak, Nimrud, Assur and other cities across northern Iraq.

(Interestingly, since writing didn't develop until 3500 BC, most of the details of the Genesis story survived by oral tradition, and they survived largely unchanged and generally accurate. When writing did develop, there was only one language, Sumerian, and it had few words, about 300, with another 800 formed from combining the first 300.)

Answer 6

Hardly. Pangaea was broken up long before mankind stepped foot on the planet. Rather, its an attempt by early (and very unscientific man) to explain why people spoke so many different languages, using the ziggurats of Sumeria, Babylonia, and Assyria as their imagery.

EDIT: It was also their attempt to call the Babylonian faith vain and fruitless.

Answer 7

Actually this story is abut man's useless attempts to get to God by his own power and efforts. I do think you are right about Pangia. I believe that this story took place just before Pangia broke up into a more modern looking planet.. Jim

Answer 8

No. Humans weren't around when the continents were joined together

Answer 9

No. Just simple people thinking they could get closer to heaven by building their own hill! Then the story grew from there, like stories do get added to over time.They also thought gods lived on hills and mountains! We are a bit more sensible now!

Answer 10

I don't think human oral traditions would reach as far back as Pangaea, since that was 250 million years ago. We haven't been around that long.

What I think happened is they needed something to explain that travelers from neighboring countries spoke completely different languages.

Answer 11

The Tower of Babel was an enormous rocket.
The first intelligent people - able to undertake to conquest of space travel - wanted to go to their creators (the 'Elohim' - literally translated means 'Those who came from the sky' mis-translated as God ). They wanted to show the creators that they were not only intelligent but scientific, graceful and peaceful.