But Jehovah came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building. And Jehovah said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

So Jehovah scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.

Therefore its name is called Babel. Genesis 11:5-9

Introduction

Over the last two sessions we looked at the Biblical Account of the Great Flood, examining various aspects of the Flood, its consequences and possible problems with the Biblical Great Flood.

Today, we will look at some of the most important events as Noah’s family began to multiply on the new earth after the Great Flood.

The Land of Shinar

As discussed last session, the most likely place that the Ark settled on was Mount Judi, which would place Noah and his family at the north-east corner of what is today called Mesopotamia, a Greek term meaning “between the rivers”. The rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Tigris river was only about fifteen kilometers west from where I suggested that Noah may have made his initial settlement and farm. The Euphrates, where the Khabour River joins it, is 290 kilometers to the south-west.

The Bible gives this account:

Now the whole earth had one language and 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. Genesis 11:1 & 2

So, where is this land of Shinar?

Shinar means the “land of two rivers” in Hebrew (derived from shene nahar), similar to Mesopotamia in Greek. It is also significant that the Euphrates is named after one of the most famous rivers in the Pre-Flood world. This is a common thing among settlers moving into a new land, and suggests that when they encountered the new river, they named it after the Euphrates they knew from the pre-Flood world, as it was not long after they left the Ark and began exploring.

The land of Shinar includes Cizrie, and extends across to the Euphrates catchment and up into the Harran plain and perhaps south as far as the Sinjar mountains. Many researchers believe Sinjar is a version of Shinar, and the Sinjar and Abd Al’Aziz mountains mark the southern edge of Shinar. To the north, the land of Shinar extends up into the mountains that form the headwaters of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers (Figure 1).1 Mesopotamia today includes this area plus the entire plain to the south, all the way to the Persian Gulf. We will discuss the plain in this land of Shinar shortly.

Figure 1: The Probable Extent of the Land of Shinar.

The Rise of Nimrod

The Bible also talks about Nimrod, and the kingdoms he began building:

The sons of Ham were Cush, Mizraim, Put, and Canaan. The sons of Cush were Seba, Havilah, Sabtah, Raamah, and Sabtechah; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan. Cush begot Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth.

He was a mighty hunter before Jehovah’s face; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod, the mighty hunter before Jehovah’s face.”2 And his first kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh: a city of broad streets, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah (that is the principal city). Genesis 10:6 to 12

Babel

Then we are given more information about what happened in Nimrod’s city of Babel:

These were the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, in their nations; and from these the nations were divided on the earth after the Great Flood. Now the whole earth had one language and one speech.

And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar,3 and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had bitumen for mortar.

And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

So Jehovah scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.

Therefore its name is called Babel, because there Jehovah confused the language of all the earth; and from there Jehovah scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. Genesis 10:32 to 11:9

We need some background to understand these verses.

The first thing to understand is that Nimrod was not a favoured son of God’s.

Flavius Josephus, about 90 CE, wrote this in his Antiquities of the Jews:

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...

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 [in the Flood]; 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 Sibyl also makes mention of this tower, and of the confusion of the language, when she says thus:—“When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven; but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone a peculiar language; and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon.”

But Where Was Babel and its Famed Tower?

Several locations for Nimrod’s first kingdom have been proposed. The most widely accepted one is the least plausible. Josephus says that Babel is actually Babylon, due to the similarity in names and the fact that there are the ruins of an ancient ziggurat there (called Etemenanki (meaning ‘temple connecting heaven and earth’, located at 32.53639°N 44.42083°E and indicated in Figure 2). There are serious problems with this suggestion: First, Babylon is too far from where the Ark landed, and in the wrong direction. Babylon is 560 km to the south-south-east of Noah’s village. But Noah’s descendants travelled west, not south. And why would they travel so far south, and most of it over good agricultural land, before they settled down? And why would they pick this spot, which has no mountains to hunt in and to protect the cities and is essentially the same as the rest of the plain?

Secondly, Babel is Hebrew, derived from their verb balal which means Confusion, due to the confusion caused when God changed their languages. Babylon is derived from the Akkadian name of the city of Bab-ilim, meaning the “Gate of God”. So these are actually two different cities with different names that mean very different things.

Figure 2: The Babylonian Ziggurat Location. It is far to the south of where the Ark landed, but Babel should be to the West.

Finally, the ziggurat at Babylon is too young. At the time the Tower of Babel was built, the area around Babylon would have been marshland subject to regular flooding. It appears to be one of the many perverse attempts to copy the original tower. It soon fell into disrepair and was restored by Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century BCE. The ziggurat had a square base aligned roughly east-west and was 91 meters high. By the mid-third century BCE it had collapsed again and Alexander the Great had it demolished, with the intention of rebuilding it.4

A more plausible proposal by Anne Habermehl places Nimrod’s first kingdom in the Khabur Triangle.5 The center of this area is about 150 km west-south-west from ‘Noah’s village’. This location is in the correct direction, is a plain with good farmland and is a reasonable distance to travel. She suggests that Tell Brak was Akkad, Tell Aqab was Erech and Tell Fakhariya was Calneh. But she does not have a specific suggestion for the location of Babel, apart from assuming it was somewhere inside the triangle formed by these three Tells. (Figure 3).

Figure 3: The Khabur Triangle and Habermehl’s proposal for Nimrod’s first kingdom.

But I have two problems with this region. First, there is no obvious location for the Tower of Babel. I suggest Tell Hamees as perhaps the best candidate for Babel inside this area, though building the Tower on a mountain in the Sinjar range would maximise visibility. The Bible makes it clear that the tower was a very massive structure, so there should be a very massive mound left where it had been built. There should perhaps even be some of the bricks and foundations left below ground that would help verify the location. And it seems likely that the local people should still have stories about where the tower had been built. But there are none of these things in this area.

Second, the Triangle has no obvious defensive terrain to make the area both easier to defend and easier to keep disgruntled citizens and slaves from escaping.

Their expeditions to the west of the Khabur Triangle discovered a large plain in the Land of Shinar that ran north and was protected by mountains on the east, north and west sides. The enclosed plain was about 30 km wide and over 50 km long, providing 1500 square kilometers of prime, well-watered agricultural land. Such a plain could feed at least 5 people per hectare, using the wheat and barley seed that Noah had brought on the ark, so it could easily support at least 750,000.6 It is called the Harran Plain today (Figure 4). Though it was 300 km from Noah’s village, it was to the west and its many attributes made the journey worthwhile. In fact, the distance would have suited Nimrod, as it would make it more difficult for those that had stayed with Noah to come and correct them, and also more difficult for those with him to go back to talk with Noah and see the Ark.

I think it is likely that Nimrod recognised this plain as just the sort of place he was looking for. Let us speculate on what he would do there:7

Figure 4: Harran Plain, the likely location of Nimrod’s first kingdom. (Google Earth)

Nimrod’s Kingdom

He began building the four cities in the Harran plain/valley, and established a series of Lookouts on the surrounding mountains which could also function as training facilities for the army he was creating and even as religious centers. At first, they had only access to stones for tools and durable containers. But they still had knowledge of the pre-Flood crafts and technology they had learned in Noah’s village. These skills allowed them to make sophisticated stone tools, stone structures and even stone monuments. These Lookouts were all deliberately buried later and have only been rediscovered in the last 25 years (Figure 5). The most famous and largest of these is Gobekli Tepe, near Sanliurfa at the north-west corner of the Harran plain. There will be more on these tepes later.

Figure 5: Lookouts/Religious Sites Constructed Around the Harran Plain.

The four cities are listed in the Bible as Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh. It is likely, for reasons shown below, that Babel is today called Harran, though it has also been called Carrhae. Accad may have been the tell to the south-east of Tell Abiad, Syria, at 36.6842N 38.9854E. Erech may have been at Sanliurfa, at 37.1849N 38.7912E. In between these times the city has been called Urfa, Edessa and perhaps Ur.8 Calneh may have been on the tell at Camlidere Bucagi, at 37.1562N 39.0652E. Each locality listed has a large and ancient tell, and is well located for both utilising and protecting the Harran plain (Figure 6).

Figure 6: The Harran Plain and the Cities of Nimrod

The Tower of Babel

As time passed, their numbers grew, and they began to rapidly find new resources and reestablish more complex technologies. Their development of furnaces for firing clay led to the grand idea of a very high brick tower. Nimrod needed something spectacular to get everyone’s attention and approval. The tower would do just that.

But where should they build it? They would want it to be where almost everyone in the kingdom could see it, so an elevated central position would be ideal, as the elevation would make it much easier to build an impressively high tower. It turned out that the city which came to be called Babel was just right.

I think it is likely that the city of Babel is called by the name of Harran today. Harran is a safe distance into the Harran plain, and is centrally located. It has a flattish hill in it which is about 23 meters above the surrounding plain (Figure 7). A tower built there would be seen by everyone entering the Harran plain, and its huge central mound is still highly visible today.

Figure 7: Haran: the Tell in the Center is the Likely Site of Babel

The highest position on the Haran tell is located at 36.8632N 39.0297E, and it appears to be inside a 100 by 100 meter square which has its edges aligned exactly east-west and north-south (Figure 8). If this square is actually the foundations of the Tower of Babel, it means the base of the tower covered one hectare. This is larger than the foundation of the Empire State Building at 129 by 57 meters, which is 0.735 hectares.

Figure 8: Proposed Location for the Tower of Babel. It has been partly overbuilt, and the Sabian Tower can be seen to its North-East.

It could not have been designed to be as high as the Empire State building, due to its heavier construction from fired bricks instead of a supporting steel frame. However, it would still have been a very impressive structure, perhaps reaching up to well over a hundred meters (328 ft) if it had been completed. This height is plausible as the tallest load-bearing brick building in the world today is the Monadnock Building in Chicago. It has a 21 by 61 meter footprint, vertical walls and is 66 meters (216 ft) high. Its walls are 1.8 meters thick at the base and its height was limited only by the desire to have maximum rental space in the lower floors. A tower with a larger and squarer footprint where the commercial profitability was not the main concern could have been quite a bit taller.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadnock_Building.

There are many ideas about what the Tower of Babel may have looked like, or was intended to look like. The many stepped pyramidal ziggurats built around the world by different cultures, in such places as Iran, Egypt, the Americas, Cambodia and China, suggest that the Tower may have been a tall ziggurat, and this pattern was taken away by the various families of the earth when they dispersed after their languages were changed. (See Figures 9 to 14 and https://www.rae.org/essay-links/babel/ for more details.) As one example, the Etemenanki ziggurat at Babylon matches closely with the ground impression at Harran, as it was about 91 by 91 meters square, and was 91 meters tall when Nebuchadnezer had reconstructed it. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etemenanki).

This area of the Harran tell is the largest and highest mound in the plain. Any structure built on it would be clearly visible almost everywhere in the Haran plain and even out into the broader Mesopotamian plain to the south. This would make the tower and its surrounding city an ideal symbol of their superiority and ability.

Figure 9: Building the Tower of Babel.

I think they would have used a lot more cranes.

Figure 10: the Ziggurat of Ur (Iraq)

Only the bottom section is still standing. It is a typical square, stepped pyramid design.

Figure 11: An Artist’s Impression of a more elegant, curved Tower.

Figure 12: Pyramid of the Sun, Mexico. Another massive, square, stepped Ziggurat.

Figure 13: A Spiral “Tower of Babel” ‘Replica’ built at the Mosque of Samara, Iraq

Figure 14: Some of the many other copies of the Tower from around the world.

Local Claim to Nimrod’s Tower

Is there any local belief that Nimrod’s tower was built on this tell? Yes there is. In fact, at one point a tall square tower was built farther north on the tell as a monument to remind people that this tell had been the site of the Tower of Babel. Most of that tower is still there today (Figure 8). The tower dates back to the BCE Sabian temple to their moon-god Sin. It was partly demolished by the prefect Cinegius due to the Sabians love for human sacrifices. It was later incorporated into the Grand Mosque, completed in 750 CE.9

Archaeological Evidence for the Tower

Is there any archaeological evidence to support this location for Babel? Yes, there is. There are at least two locations on the Harran tell where deep trenches have been dug. As Figures 15 and 16 show, there are the ruins of ‘modern’ cut stone buildings that are a couple of thousand years old still partly standing. Beneath that are the remains of some roughly built structures made from field stones. And beneath that are the remains of buildings constructed from fired bricks with elegant arched doorways and plastered walls with sections of strong curved arches above them, presumably to support a vaulted roof or another story of a multi-story structure. These structures may have been part of Nimrod’s city of Babel, or constructed after the tower fell from recycled bricks.

Figure 15: Buried brick walls unearthed in the Harran Tell, plus large carved stone cisterns.

Figure 16: More deeply buried brick walls and sophisticated architecture uncovered in the Harran Tell.

The Neolithic Lookouts/Temples

The Pre-pottery Neolithic Lookouts/temples at Gobekli Tepe (37.2232N 38.9224E, Karahan Tepe (37.0922N 39.3015E) and the other Tepe sites there have also provided some startling archeological evidence. First, they are now acknowledged as the most ancient ‘temples’ ever found, and have been carbon dated at about 9,500 BCE.10 Archeologists are mystified by how these supposedly primitive hunter-gatherers could have built the large temple complex at Gobekli Tepe with hundreds of intricately carved standing T shaped megaliths up to six meters tall. Some of these pillars are set into a floor which appears to be concrete. So Gobekli Tepe is much older than the more basic megaliths like Stonehenge. These discoveries have shifted the ‘cradle of civilisation’ from southern Mesopotamia up into this region.11 There is another mystery there too. The deepest level contains the largest and most sophisticated T-pillars and carvings (Figures 17 to 22). Which make us wonder: why did ‘civilisation’ appear to go backwards from these achievements for hundreds, apparently thousands of years? And how did several of the carvings hidden at Gobekli Tepe become traditional body paint images used by Australian Aboriginals? We will see below that God’s Confusion of Languages explains these things.

Figure 17: Overview of the Gobekli Tepe Lookout/Temple Site

Figure 18: Broken T-pillar with Reliefs of a Bull, Fox and Stork. (Gobekli Tepe)

Figure 19: T-pillar with a three dimensional carving of a predator, likely a tiger. (Gobekli Tepe)

Figure 20: Central Pillar with Carvings of Human Hands and Geometric Motifs. (Gobekli Tepe) These geometric motifs are still being used by Australian Aborigines. How did they get to Australia?

Figure 21: Remnant of A Totem Pole with Human Figures Carved Into It. (Gobekli Tepe) This concept was used by the Native North Americans. How did it get there?

Figure 22: Snake Carvings, a Few of the Many at Gobekli Tepe.

Some of the alternative ‘explanations’ for Gobekli Tepe include construction by aliens, or by humans under instruction by aliens, or by Australian Aborigines who migrated from Australia to Gobekli Tepe to build it, or by an unknown civilization that died out during the Ice Age. I think the Biblical Nimrod-related explanation, followed by dispersion after the Confusion of Languages, fits the facts better than any of these.

The Tower Builders

How many people would have been available to build Nimrod’s kingdom, including the tower at Babel? I would guess that it would require a population of several hundred thousand people to undertake a project as large and as unnecessary as the Tower of Babel. We have estimated the population growth from after the Great Flood to see how long it would take to reach such a population. The estimate assumptions are: an average of eight children per woman, each three years apart. The first child is born when the mother is 28 and the middle child is born when the mother is 39 years old. It also assumes the average person lives 289 years. Finally, it assumes that Noah and his wife were too old to have more children (Graph 1).

Graph 1: The Expansion of Humanity After the Flood

The Bible places a maximum limit on how much time could elapse between the Flood and the Babel incident, when areas of the earth were allocated to various families:

To Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.12 Genesis 10:25

Then Genesis 11:10 to 19 give a detailed account of the time from the Flood to Peleg’s death. This allows a maximum of 340 years from the Great Flood to the Babel dispersion.

If we assume that God confused their languages a few years before Peleg’s death, say when he was 332 years old, the population living then could have been about 930,000 or more, as in Graph 1. This would correspond to a date of about 1990 After Creation, or 2014 BCE.

These calculations correspond reasonably well with the “Ancient Book of Jasher” which claims that they had six hundred thousand men (9:22) and that the languages were confused not long before Peleg died (10:1).13

Why Would God Want to Stop Them

From Developing These Technologies?

They were taking a path that was against God’s Instructions. God wanted mankind to develop civilisations that were dedicated to honesty, morality and caring for each other as can be seen in His Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 20:1-17). They had also been told to disperse throughout the world. Instead, they were developing a tyrannical dictatorship dedicated to self-importance, immorality and cruelty. By separating them through changing their languages, they were dispersed and it became impossible for Nimrod to subjugate them all. So Jehovah’s intervention at Babel was not a curse for mankind, but a way of freeing most of them from perpetual slavery and idolatry.

What was Nimrod’s New Religion?

His ‘new’ religion was masterminded by Satan.14 Like most of Satan’s religions, Nimrod offered what God would not offer: licentiousness and self-aggrandisement. His mother, Semiramus, helped him establish this religion, in which he became the Sun God and she became the Moon God. They sealed this arrangement by marrying each other, so Nimrod became both her child and her husband. Nimrod’s religion also promoted snake worship, debased sexual fertility rites, homosexuality and human sacrifice. There is evidence that their earlier temples, built in the hills overlooking their plain, became centers for brewing beer, as evidenced by the large stone vats found there with traces from fermented grain in them. Given the nature of Nimrod’s religion, this likely led to drunken orgies or worse. They also practised mutilation of human skulls at Gobekli Tepe. The skulls had the flesh stripped back and the bone was drilled or carved into, either just before death or shortly after.15 And as is common for Satan, they had many carvings of snakes on their pillars.16 See The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop for more details on their perverted religion, how it was spread to various parts of the world after the Babel dispersion and how it is still practised covertly by the Roman Catholic Church and her many offspring ‘churches’ today (also see Revelation 17:1-7).

The Confusion of the Languages

This is a misleading title, as each individual language was not confused. From a single language, suddenly there were over a hundred different languages, but each one was fully formed and distinct from each other.

This has proved to be a major problem for linguists as they believed on the basis of evolutionary theory that all human languages should be able to be traced back to one, or at most several, simple mother language(s). Instead, they now acknowledge that we have 141 distinct language families, which have since diversified into 7,097 extant spoken languages.17 From an evolutionary point of view, this means that 141 times, people independently invented their very own language from nothing. And what is even worse for evolutionary theory, the more ‘primitive’ the language, the more complex it is. Research has consistently confirmed that over time, languages tend to become simplified, and their pronunciation, grammar and structure less complex. So how could 141 complex and yet unrelated languages have sprung into existence from nothing?

Perhaps a good place to start is this: Where did Adam and Eve (Chavvah) get their language from? The Bible makes it clear in Genesis 2 that they were able to speak with God and understand each other immediately after they were created. The only reasonable option is that God gave them both their language, fully developed when they were created, and they were both given the same language.

As we have seen, the Bible tells us that until the ‘confusion’ of the languages at Babel, everyone still spoke that one same language. And the Bible, in Genesis 11:7, also tells us that Jehovah God directly created these new languages. The resulting confusion makes it clear that He altered the language processing centers of every one of these people so they no longer knew their original language, but only knew their new one. And this change was done within families. In order to preserve the integrity of the families, each wife and her children would receive the same new language as her husband. This is also in accord with God’s teaching that the husband and wife became one flesh when they married (Gen 2:24). If the change happened during the night, at breakfast everyone in the family would be speaking their new language, and probably did not know it was different. But when they left home and tried to interact with others, then they would discover that everyone from other family lines had all become incoherent babblers who could understand nothing (Figure 24).

This would also mean that those who were literate would no longer be able to read any documents that existed before that moment, as it would now be a totally foreign language to them.18 They would need to invent their own ways to record language.

Figure 24: Confusion at the Tower of Babel Worksite. (Getty Images)

But why 141 new languages? The answer to that is given in Genesis chapter 10. It contains a partial listing of Noah’s descendants, according to the male lines. Seventy descendants of Noah’s three sons are listed, all of those who are to become nations that are allocated land to occupy in or near the Middle East. The other descendants who are destined to occupy the more distant lands are not listed. It is not at all difficult to see that there would have been about 141 major family groups present by the time of the Babel incident. Chapter 10 also acknowledges that each of these male family lines received their own language.

As mentioned above, one consequence of the division by languages was the loss of access to all documents and to the expertise that was in other families. Now, each family would only have access to what they collectively remembered and the skills they had. The problem was made more extreme by their requirement to leave the Harran plain and move to their allocated area that was until then uninhabited. It is not surprising that many peoples dropped down into primitive stone age technology, and took quite some time to recover.

Nimrod Banished

It is likely that God waited to intervene until the true nature of Nimrod’s kingdom had been revealed, and many citizens realised that much of what they produced was swallowed up by his government. Even worse, it is possible that many of their older children were drafted into his army, forced to work on the Tower or used as ‘religious’ prostitutes.

The fact that Nimrod moved across Shinar all the way to the east side of the Tigris River, and set up a much smaller kingdom there, where he built Nineveh, Calah and Resen, suggests that he was driven out of the Harran plain as a result of God’s judgement on his kingdom (Figure 3).

Backfilling the ‘Temples’

I think another consequence of Jehovah moving against what was happening in Nimrod’s kingdom was that the people who remained in the Harran plain decided to make all of Nimrod’s mountain temples unusable. All of them were backfilled with broken rock, soil, rubbish, weapon heads and bones, some of them human. The backfill was so deep that the temples totally disappeared from sight for four thousand years. It seems that the sites were backfilled fairly carefully, to minimise damage (Figure 25). I wonder if that was done so that when the sites were finally reopened, they would be seen as a warning to us that we should not do as they had done.19 The deliberate disposal of the weapon heads in the fill shows the determination of those who filled it in to put an end to military activity.20 Sadly, we have still not achieved that goal.

Figure 25: Another T-pillar from Gobekli Tepe, partly excavated, which clearly shows the backfill that was deliberately placed around these items.

Conclusion

It seems likely that Nimrod’s first Kingdom was in the Harran Plain, and the Tower of Babel may have been at Harran, Turkey. Gobekli Tepe and the other T-pillar sites around the Harran plain are consistent with construction by skilled post-Flood settlers. The reality of our multitude of distinct language families and the backfilling and abandonment of all of the Gobekli style ‘temples’ is consistent with the judgement of God against this kingdom and against its religion.

Next Session: The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. What evidence is there that the Israelites were in Egypt? Where did they go when they left Egypt? Where was the Red Sea crossing?

And some extra video links related to this session:

Dramatisation of building tower and language confusion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZDfzArL42I (5 min- mediocre)

Smithsonian: tablet with Babylon Ziggarut: interesting, but not significant, as it is not the original Tower.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgksU2F18lg (3.7 min)

General Summary of Gobekli Tepe:

Good, watch to 5:20 in the presentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhUIHsZXDCo (9 min)

Gobekli Tepe and Australian Aboriginals? Interesting, but they move the people and the symbols in the wrong direction. The Australians took these symbols with them after the Babel dispersion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ8_qHZRu6o (9.9 min)

Bruce Armstrong

M App Sci

Revised 8 October

Published by

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Books of Moses: Fact or Fiction Series

Origin of the Universe and Our Earth—How did Earth and our Universe Originate? Both the Biblical and Big Bang Models are presented. Evidence for and against the models is also presented.

Origin of Life—How did Life Originate on Earth? Both the Biblical Special Creation and Evolutionary Neo-Darwinian Models are presented. The Biblical Model covers the creation of plants and aquatic and flying organisms, while the Evolutionary model investigates the Origin of the First Cell. Evidence for and against the models is also presented.

Mankind and Evolution of Life—How did complex life, including humans, originate on Earth? Both the Biblical and Evolutionary Models are presented. The Biblical Model covers the creation of land animals and the first man and woman, while the Evolutionary model investigates what is required for their First Cell to evolve into complex organisms. Evidence for and against the models is presented.

The Fall of Creation—What is the Fall of Creation on Earth, and what was its Impact? The Biblical Account is presented, including sin, death and the banishing of Adam and Chavvah (Eve) from the Garden of Eden. Evidence for and against this account is presented.

The Great Flood, Part 1—Was there a Great Flood during Noah’s life? The Biblical Account explains why there was a Great Flood, Noah’s role in it and the extent of the Flood. This session ends with Noah and the animals leaving the Ark after the Flood.

The Great Flood, Part 2—What events followed the Great Flood during Noah’s life? Where did the Ark land? It also looks at many of the objections to the Great Flood and shows evidence that it was a real event which shaped the world we live in.

Shinar, Nimrod and the Tower of Babel—What did mankind do after the Flood? Where is the Plain of Shinar and where was Nimrod’s first Kingdom, including the location of the Tower of Babel? Why did God intervene and create a myriad of new Languages?

The Exodus from Egypt—Historical and Scientific information relating to the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt is presented, analysing several proposed pathways to Midian, including crossing the Soph (Red) Sea.

To Mount Sinai and God’s Instructions—After crossing the Soph Sea, where did the Israelites go until their arrival at Mount Sinai, and where is this mountain? This article includes Jehovah God giving them His Instructions there. Historical and Geographical information is presented, some of it new and previously unpublished.

The Holy Bible CHCoG Translation—From the original Hebrew and Aramaic. It is accurate and readable, giving you a clear understanding of God’s message.

Endnotes

1 Dr. Lennart Moller, in his 4th edition of The Exodus Case, also places Shinar in this location, and he mentions local legends placing Nimrod as well as Abraham and his ancestors in the Harran plain.

2 As in the Hebrew. It seems likely that the phrase really means that Nimrod was “in Jehovah’s face” in the sense of defying Him. It also seems that he was actually hunting human souls more than animals.

3 Shinar means the “land of two rivers” in Hebrew (from shene nahar). The two rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates, the latter named after one of the most famous rivers in the Pre-Flood world. Shinar is likely the catchment of these rivers to the north of the Sinjar and Abd Al’Aziz mountains.

4 See Tower of Babel, Wikipedia for more details.

5 See www.answersingenesis.org/arj/v4/where-tower-babel.pdf

6 This BBC video points out that this is the area is where our wheat originates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JdAJpo6Lxk (9.5 min)

7 Though the Bible does not state that Nimrod actually built the tower, it says he built the city of Babel, and the Bible says they were building the city and tower together. There are also many legends and traditions which claim that Nimrod was instrumental in building the tower at Babel.

8 Among the many who have also identified this city as Erech is Jerome, on page 41 of his Hebrew Questions on Genesis, written in 390 CE (in the 1995 Hayward translation).

9 See turkisharchaeonews.net/site/harran and http://unchartedruins.blogspot.com/2012/07/harran-of-sabians.html

10 As discussed last session, radiocarbon dates become progressively older than they should be as one moves closer to the time of the Great Flood. But these ‘dates’ are consistent for structures from 2 or 3 centuries after the Flood.

11 See https://ancientexplorers.com/blogs/news/the-mystery-of-gobekli-tepe

12 Luke 3:34-36 Also note that Genesis 10:32 says that “the nations were divided on the earth” and Genesis 11:9 shows that this division was achieved by the confusion of the languages. This indicates that these events were prophesied at his birth and happened during Peleg’s life, just as Noah brought rest during his life.

13 The “Ancient Book of Jasher” is translated from a 16th century CE copy of the Sefer haYahar midrash. The midrash may be older than this, but it is not likely to be truly ancient and is not part of the Bible. So it is useful as a reference, but like most secular books, cannot be relied on for accuracy.

14 It is likely that Nimrod’s religion and style of ruling were both recycled from the worst of the pre-Flood institutions. Satan would be delighted to re-establish his anti-God empire.

15 See https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/evidence-earliest-skull-cult-activity-drilled-and-carved-skulls-found-world-021467

16 See https://www.dainst.blog/the-tepe-telegrams/2016/04/23/why-did-it-have-to-be-snakes/

17 See https://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/family. And the 7,097 languages does NOT include dialects.

18 It is quite possible that one family would have retained the original language. If so, it would make sense that God would choose the ones that were faithful to him, so they could retain their records of His dealings with mankind up to this point, His Instructions and His prophecies for the future. The Bible indicates that Shem, Abraham’s ancestor, was such a man. So it is likely that these records would have wound up in the hands of Moses, Abraham’s descendent, who used them to compile the Book of Genesis.

19 See https://ancientexplorers.com/blogs/news/the-mystery-of-gobekli-tepe. There is also some mystery as to why the lowest level had the largest and finest T-pillars. And it may be possible that the lowest level was backfilled when the languages were confused, then some unrepentent pagans rebuilt a crude copy on top of the original, which was then also backfilled at a later date.

20 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe. There were also some human bones in the fill, possibly the remains of the most corrupt priests of these ‘temples’.