The Tower of Babel discovered in archaeological excavations.

[Xavier]

From: https://aleteia.org/2017/05/02/evidence-that-tower-of-babel-really-existed-is-discovered/amp/

see also: "The baked clay tablet that Dr. George examined, discovered a century ago in Babylon (now modern-day Iraq) and now privately held, shows what the ziggurat looked like, with its seven steps. It shows the king with his conical hat and staff. And below is text that describes the commissioning of the tower's construction.
"This is a very strong piece of evidence that the tower of Babel story was inspired by this real building," Dr. George told Smithsonian. "At the top ... there is a relief depicting a step tower and ... a figure of a human being carrying a staff with a conical hat on. Below that relief is a text which has been chiseled into the monument, and the label is easily read. It reads:
Etemenanki, Ziggurat Babel.
"And that means 'the Ziggurat or Temple Tower of the City of Babylon.' The building and its builder on the same relief," the professor says."

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/ancient-babylonian-tablet-provides-compelling-evidence-tower-babel-did-021378

Now compelling evidence has emerged that the Tower of Babel actually existed, and that the story is more than just a symbolic tale of man's hubris.

A stone tablet from the private collection of a Norwegian businessman Martin Schøyen includes the clearest image ever found of the Great Ziggurat of Babylon, according to Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian history at the University of London.

The tablet, which has been captured on film for the first time by Smithsonian Magazine, shows an illustration of a pyramid-like structure, with a depiction of King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled Babylon from 605-562 BC, standing next to it.

First built around the time of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), the ziggurat in Babylon was in a serious state of disrepair by the time Alexander I the Great came along, and was taken down in 331 BC.

With no evidence to tell us what it actually looked like, until now we have only had, in the words of the Schøyen Collection's catalog, "a long series of fanciful paintings to rely on."

This tablet, for the first time, gives us a contemporary illustration of the tower; along with an inscription giving us an account of Nebuchadnezzar II's building plans and the restoration process.

The Schøyen Collection has documented the translation of the inscription on the tablet, noting that it contains a helpful caption identifying the drawing as:

ETEMENANKI: ZIKKURAT BABIBLI: "THE HOUSE, THE FOUNDATION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, ZIGGURAT IN BABYLON"
The inscription goes on to describe the restoration process:

"NEBUCHADNEZZAR, KING OF BABYLON AM I – IN ORDER TO COMPLETE E-TEMEN-ANKI AND E-UR-ME-IMIN-ANKI I MOBILIZED ALL COUNTRIES EVERYWHERE, EACH AND EVERY RULER WHO HAD BEEN RAISED TO PROMINENCE OVER ALL THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD – THE BASE I FILLED IN TO MAKE A HIGH TERRACE. I BUILT THEIR STRUCTURES WITH BITUMEN AND BAKED BRICK THROUGHOUT. I COMPLETED IT RAISING ITS TOP TO THE HEAVEN, MAKING IT GLEAM BRIGHT AS THE SUN"

[GloriaPatri]

The ziggurat of Babylon hardly reached the heavens. It was, at most, 91 meters high. The Great Pyramid at Giza (which is older) was 150 meters high.

We have skyscrapers now that are nearly a kilometer tall, and yet there is no punishment from God for "hubris." Face it Xavier, the Tower of Babylon story was concocted because the ancient Judaeans were astounded by just how more advanced than them Babylonia was and also wanted to craft an origin story for the many languages spoken in a cosmopolitan city like Babylon.

But lingustics has proven that there were many diverse human languages long, long, long before Nabopolassar built the Etemenanki in Babylon circa 610 B.C.

[Xavier]

Wrong on all counts. Your modernist psychological explanations did not expect such a tower would exist in the first place. They built and rebuilt it many times and the height it had under more recent kings was not the height it originally had when it was built by Nimrod.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/some-very-compelling-evidence-the-tower-of-b/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/the-sticky-clue-that-links-the-tower-of-babe/

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers.

Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion ...

The Hebrew Prophets alone against the world taught all men that the True God was One - even some of the Platonists and others got the knowledge that God is One from them much later, after times of great peace during the reign of King Solomon the wise, and after under King Cyrus, knowledge of the one true God of Heaven had spread to several Gentile nations. That you admit that God is One should lead you to the knowledge that the true God is He alone Who revealed Himself as One and Almighty in human history to the Prophets.

[Michael Wilson]

The story of the Tower of Babel does not require that it be the highest structure ever built; it wasn't the height of the building that offended God, but the pride and presumption of the builders to build a tower that would reach Heaven.

[GloriaPatri]

Wrong on all counts. Your modernist psychological explanations did not expect such a tower would exist in the first place. They built and rebuilt it many times and the height it had under more recent kings was not the height it originally had when it was built by Nimrod.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/some-very-compelling-evidence-the-tower-of-b/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/the-sticky-clue-that-links-the-tower-of-babe/

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers.

Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion ...

The Hebrew Prophets alone against the world taught all men that the True God was One - even some of the Platonists and others got the knowledge that God is One from them much later, after times of great peace during the reign of King Solomon the wise, and after under King Cyrus, knowledge of the one true God of Heaven had spread to several Gentile nations. That you admit that God is One should lead you to the knowledge that the true God is He alone Who revealed Himself as One and Almighty in human history to the Prophets.

Xavier, there is no evidence for the Ziggurat being tall enough to reach the heavens. Provide some actual archeological evidence or simply admit that you're taking this on faith in the claims of a book.

Furthermore, the dates of 610 BC are not wrong, nor is my claim that divergent languages existed long before the rise of Sumerian civilization. Those are simple historical facts.

And no, "modernist psyschological explanations" never said that Babylonians did not build tall buildings. Modern archaeologists simply know that they were smaller than contemporaraneou buildings meant to reach the heavens, like the pyramids of Egypt. And that they never truly "reached the heavens"

[Quaremerepulisti]

Nobody (I think) is denying there was an actual, physical Tower of Babel.

But the claim that everyone was speaking the same language up until that point is obviously false.

Face it, Xavier, you're like Captain Picard on the "Darmok" episode of Star Trek: TNG, not realizing that story-telling is simply the way people communicate and communicated.

[Daniel]

The historians/archaeologists are obviously just trying to further discredit the Mosaic authorship of Genesis. Whatever they found is not the tower of Babel, seeing as what they found was built by Nabuchodonosor during the Babylonian captivity whereas the real tower of Babel was built by Nemrod shortly after the flood. But to say that this 'ziggurat of Babylon' is the tower of Babel is to say that Genesis was not written by Moyses and that the stories in it are myth.

The idea that maybe the tower of Babel was rebuilt numerous times throughout history is interesting, but I don't think it's very historical. More likely Nabuchodonosor's ziggurat is something completely unrelated.

[Heinrich]

The story of the Tower of Babel does not require that it be the highest structure ever built; it wasn't the height of the building that offended God, but the pride and presumption of the builders to build a tower that would reach Heaven.

Bishop Sheen alluded to this in one of his episodes.

[Heinrich]

Nobody (I think) is denying there was an actual, physical Tower of Babel.

But the claim that everyone was speaking the same language up until that point is obviously false.

Face it, Xavier, you're like Captain Picard on the "Darmok" episode of Star Trek: TNG, not realizing that story-telling is simply the way people communicate and communicated.

Unsubstantiated bullying. State your evidence. Linguists are routinely baffled as to why so many words in the most diverse of languages(by geography and culture) have the same phonetic, semantic, and syntactical resemblances.

[GloriaPatri]

Nobody (I think) is denying there was an actual, physical Tower of Babel.

But the claim that everyone was speaking the same language up until that point is obviously false.

Face it, Xavier, you're like Captain Picard on the "Darmok" episode of Star Trek: TNG, not realizing that story-telling is simply the way people communicate and communicated.

Unsubstantiated bullying. State your evidence. Linguists are routinely baffled as to why so many words in the most diverse of languages(by geography and culture) have the same phonetic, semantic, and syntactical resemblances.

Have you ever compared Sumerian Cuneiform and Egyptian Hieroglyphics? They are two completely unrelated languages. And that's not taking into account  the various tribal tongues of Africa, Old Chinese, or the Indus language. All of these languages have contemporaneous archaeological evidence from an era that predates any and all possible datings for the "Tower of Babel."

[Quaremerepulisti]

Unsubstantiated bullying. State your evidence. Linguists are routinely baffled as to why so many words in the most diverse of languages(by geography and culture) have the same phonetic, semantic, and syntactical resemblances.

What of it?  There were plenty of civilizations existing at the same time as the Tower of Babel, all speaking different languages.  That's what's relevant.

[mikemac]

Nobody (I think) is denying there was an actual, physical Tower of Babel.

But the claim that everyone was speaking the same language up until that point is obviously false.

Face it, Xavier, you're like Captain Picard on the "Darmok" episode of Star Trek: TNG, not realizing that story-telling is simply the way people communicate and communicated.

Nemrod (Nimrod) was the son of Chus, who was the son of Cham (Ham), who was the son of Noe (Noah). Source

So three generations from Noah, how many people do you think there would be on the planet, all descended from Noah's three sons?  A couple of hundred?  500 at the very most?

Why would you think this small amount of people would be speaking more than one language?

[Xavier]

Yes: "2. THE UNITY OF LANGUAGES- The unity of the languages of the world proves the recent common origin of man. Prof. Max Muller, and other renowned linguists, declared that all languages are derived from one. This is abundantly proven by the similarity of roots and words, the grammatical construction and accidents, the correspondence in the order of their alphabets, etc. The words for father and mother similar in form, for example, are found in many languages in all the five great groups, the Aryan, the Semitic, the Hamitic the Turanian and Chinese groups, showing a common original language and proving the early existence of the home and civilization. The similarity of these and many other words in all of the great Aryan or Indo-European family of languages, spoken in all continents is common knowledge. Lord Avebury names 85 Hamitic languages in Africa in which the names of father and mother are similar; 29 non-Aryan languages in Asia and Europe, including Turkish, Tibetan, and many of the Turanian and Chinese groups; 5 in New Zealand and other Islands; 8 in Australia; and 20 spoken by American Indians. Answer: The French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are daughters of the Latin; Latin is a daughter of the Aryan; and the Aryan, together with the other sister languages is, no doubt, the daughter of the original language spoken by Noah and his immediate descendants." Source

GP, Josephus, a renowned historian of the first rank admired even by secularists, tells you as historical fact that about 3000 years before his time, Nimrod really lived and really constructed this tower of Babel. Look at the boasting on the inscription and you can see, it is the completion of a tower that already existed, and it bespeaks great pride and temerity in that it was intended to be an affront against Almighty God, "I COMPLETED IT RAISING ITS TOP TO THE HEAVEN, MAKING IT GLEAM BRIGHT AS THE SUN" -

The Middle East has been called the cradle of civilization even by secularist writers - shortly after 3200-3000 B.C., we see the flourishing and spread of many cultures, this is the world after the flood. The mighty Egyptian Pharoahs rose around this point to prominence, before Almighty God defeated them in Moses' time. Modernist historians used to deny even the existence of the Hethites/Hittites, who are also mentioned in Gen 10 along with Nemrod. They even had the temerity to claim their lack of knowledge about the Hittites - so scant were their records of ancient times before they finally discovered it - supposedly proved the Prophet Moses was mistaken. But he was proved right again, and they were proven wrong: "Almost fifty times in the Old Testament, we can read about a people known as the Hittites[Hethites] ... Without a doubt, the Old Testament frequently mentions the Hittites as a very real group of people. But for many years in secular history and in archaeology, the Hittites were as invisible as men from Mars. No solid archaeological evidence could be found that verified the existence of the Hittites. For this reason, many people scorned the biblical record and insisted that the absence of information concerning the Hittites proved that the Bible was filled with incorrect material.

However, the year 1906 saw many people changing their minds about both the Hittites and the Bible. An archaeologist, Hugo Winckler, visited a city in Turkey named Boghaz-Köy. Upon excavating portions of the city, he found a breathtaking number of human artifacts—including five temples, many sculptures, and a fortified castle. But more important, he found a huge storeroom filled with over 10,000 clay tablets. After completing the difficult task of deciphering the tablets, it was announced to the world that the Hittites had been found. The sight at Boghaz-Köy had been the Hittite capital city, Hattusha (see Price, 1997, p. 83). All the people who had used the absence of archaeological evidence about the Hittites to mock the Bible's accuracy were shamefaced and silent, and another small piece of evidence was added to the ever-growing mass of facts verifying the Bible's accuracy."Link

You face it, GloriaPatri, the facts are precious little of ancient history would be known without the written record of Biblical times. This Tower that was constructed at Babel with aspirations to be "THE FOUNDATION OF HEAVEN AND EARTH" is remniscent of the succeeding kings at Babylon trying to complete Nimrod's unholy work. Babel also describes worldliness in general and the pride of man against God.

[Heinrich]

Xavier, you are at the core of things evangelizing and doing what is pleasing to the Lord. Yet I would rather catch up on the latest scores or listen to a Sensus Fidelium homily than take the time to delineate what I already know to be true with trusted documentation. Only then to have the asperberger power duo byte dump in response. If St. Jerome himself were to appear to these two spiritually mormphemeless dorks, they would be the salty, smirking turds that they are.  I have read enough and studied linguistics enough to know that the Babel is clearly the core of language development, i.e. its genesis. Thank you for providing the documentation.

[Quaremerepulisti]

Xavier, you are at the core of things evangelizing and doing what is pleasing to the Lord. Yet I would rather catch up on the latest scores or listen to a Sensus Fidelium homily than take the time to delineate what I already know to be true with trusted documentation. Only then to have the asperberger power duo byte dump in response. If St. Jerome himself were to appear to these two spiritually mormphemeless dorks, they would be the salty, smirking turds that they are.  I have read enough and studied linguistics enough to know that the Babel is clearly the core of language development, i.e. its genesis. Thank you for providing the documentation.

Yep, you're sure showing 'em.  Respond to the claim that many civilizations are known to have been speaking different languages prior to Babel with evidence of the tree of languages deriving from one, which "no doubt" was the one spoken at Babel.  And then show the Hittites actually existed (which isn't in question here).  Obviously anyone who fails to see that this TOTALLY DESTROYS "evolutionist" claims deserves to be personally insulted and threatened.  Because you're doing the Lord's work and all this is pleasing to Him.