Tower+of+Babel

=//The Tower of Babel//=


 * //Origins//**: According to modern scholars, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews. Etemenanki was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was famously rebuilt by the 6th century BC by the Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II..


 * //Summary//**: The story of the Tower of Babel was originally found in the Book of Genesis of the Bible. It is the story of how at one time after the Great Flood, all humans spoke the same language. The migrated to Shinar (in the east) and wanted to build a great tower all the way up to the heavens in case they were spread upon the earth, they could find their way back. God saw this and was worried they would be able to accomplish all with their unity. And so he scattered them across the globe and gave them different languages so they would not be able to communicate with each other. They never finished building their great city but they called it Babel because that was where god had "confounded the language of all the earth" (Genesis 11:1-9). According to one modern legend, "sack" was the last word uttered before the confusion of languages.[13http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel#cite_note-12]

In other versions of this religious text, the tower is built but destroyed later on by fire, wind, or angry god(s). >> And they began to build, and in the fourth week they made brick with fire, and the bricks served them for stone, and the clay with which they cemented them together was asphalt which comes out of the sea, and out of the fountains of water in the land of Shinar. And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height [of a brick] was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms, and [the extent of one wall was] thirteen stades [and of the other thirty stades]. (Jubilees 10:20-21, Charles' 1913 translation) >> In Pseudo-Philo, one of the earliest accounts (c. AD 70) though not thought to be by Philo, the direction for the building is ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of the Hamites, but also to Joktan as prince of the Semites, and to Phenech son of Dodanim as prince of the Japethites. Twelve men are arrested for refusing to bring bricks, including Abraham, Lot, Nahor, and several sons of Joktan. However, Joktan finally saves the twelve from the wrath of the other two princes.[9http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel#cite_note-8]// >> Third Apocalypse of Baruch //(or 3 Baruch,// c //2nd century), one of the pseudepigrapha, describes the just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the afterlife.[3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel#cite_note-Harris-2] Among the sinners are those who instigated the Tower of Babel. In the account, Baruch is first taken (in a vision) to see the resting place of the souls of "those who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them." Next he is shown another place, and there, occupying the form of dogs. Those who gave counsel to build the tower, for they whom thou seest drove forth multitudes of both men and women, to make bricks; among whom, a woman making bricks was not allowed to be released in the hour of child-birth, but brought forth while she was making bricks, and carried her child in her apron, and continued to make bricks. And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits. And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heavens, saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest. //(Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 3:5-8)// > //(Wikipedia﻿)// > Genesis 11: 1-9 > And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children built. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
 * The //Book of Jubilees//contains one of the most detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower.
 * //Biblical Reference//**:

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Babel Fish, a fish that you put in your ear to help you understand other languages (universal traslator)
 * //References in Literature//**:

" The Babel fish," said The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy not from its carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish. "Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. "The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.' "'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.' "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic. "'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing. "Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best- selling book Well That About Wraps It Up For God. "Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."



Significance and how the story functions in //The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy//-- The reference to the story of the **//Tower of Babel//** creates the Babel Fish which allows the main characters in the book/movie to communicate with alien races, translating the "babel" into intelligent conversation.

//**Tip-offs**//: "Babel," translating languages, confusions, towers, angry god(s), unity vs. disunity, building a city, group effort, babel fish Yahoo //Babel Fish// Translator, Babel Fish Band, Babel Radio
 * //Real-Life Examples//**:



Irish texts such as //Lebor Gabála Érenn// and //Auraicept na n-Éces// claim that the legendary king Fenius Farsa chose the best features of all the confused languages and fused them together to create Goidelic, the forerunner of the Irish language.

The composer Anton Rubinstein wrote an opera based on the story, //Der Thurm zu Babel//.

American choreographer Adam Darius staged a multilingual theatrical interpretation of //The Tower of Babel// in 1993 at the ICA in London.