Babel: History, Mythology, and Meaning

[@3olision]

This will be a much bigger channel one day. Great quality.

[@MyQuadell]

You'd mentioned the people built Babel "to make a name for themselves". This is probably more than just fame, as Genesis uses the term several times to mean something like "worthy of great respect" (as one might expect from a text that honors so many ancestors simply by naming them, in genealogies). In the very next chapter, God promises Abraham "I will bless you, and make your name great", emphasizing that it is God, and not human efforts, that will make you a great name. The Babel story could be, in part, a counter-example to Abraham.

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks for the comment, Michael. It's definitely interesting that the very thing the people of Babel want is a blessing that God gives to Abraham not long after.

[@peterkapinos277]

Excellent content and production quality. I would watch these all day. Keep it up!

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks I appreciate it!

[@tsemayekekema2918]

Rt

[@Iamwrongbut]

This stuff is so amazing!! Love the editing as well.

[@johnrallison1876]

Nicely done video. Thanks so much. Some interesting and well-researched things to consider.

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks for the nice comment, John.

[@StevenSmolak]

Superb! Thank You. I hope you endlessly have the desire and resources to create these informative, valuable videos, and that they remain available to us... thanks again 🙏🏻🌎❤️ Jumping on board as a subscriber btw 😇

[@ignaciogrial1872]

great video paul, your investigation its amazing

[@stevebeary4988]

Thank you.

[@piano9433]

Thank you so much, Paul. Great work!

[@janey4197]

Again, my friend. Mind-blowing. You have opened these stories up for me and they seemed so dry before. My only critique is that my audio sounds a bit like you had a computer reader the text instead of dictating yourself or it sounds really over-processed. You seem to have a nice, young voice so you want to make it shine to its best effect.

[@InquisitiveBible]

Voice narration is one of the many skills that I need to improve for this venture. I'm also still figuring out the best settings for cleaning up the audio. Hopefully it improves with each new video!

[@madProgenitorDeity]

I love these, they're my jam It's oviously not related, but Yahweh's concerns about the city and tower remind me of how Poseidon is said to resent wallmaking in the Iliad

[@carlmorrison9789]

I'm amazed at how often we have a very good video that's ruined by music in the background making it hard to hear the speaker

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks for the feedback. It seems to depend a lot on your audio setup (mine is not great), but I've tried to improve on that in subsequent videos.

[@LanceHall]

Fundamentalists misinterpreting texts? I'm shocked.

[@anok7449]

Excellent content, I am thrilled to have found your video series! One question I am having, regards the passage on Yahweh's response to Babel, in which he references himself alongside other deities. Wouldn't this date the story to an earlier henotheist or polytheist period in the emergence of Judaism? Thanks again for such a cool project.

[@InquisitiveBible]

Yes, but there is also evidence that the Israelites were still polytheist at a much later date than people used to assume. The Elephantine Papyri from the 500s BCE, for example, come from a Jewish community that was thoroughly polytheistic. I'll have more on that in later videos.

[@anok7449]

@@InquisitiveBible Wow, very interesting indeed! More content on this topic would be awesome thanks.

[@tsemayekekema2918]

​@@InquisitiveBiblemonotheisn is literally a post-enlightenment invention. ALL pre-modern Abrahamic Religions merely distinguished created gods from the Creator God-never denying the existence of created gods

[@danivedis]

Great info! what probram do you use to make the videos? they look really good.

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks for the comment. I mainly use After Effects, with the final edit made in Premiere Pro.

[@Emcee_Squared]

Great video and keeo up the great work! This channel has a lot of potential and will be huge one day! I find it fascinating about how the characters in the Abraham story are named after cities in mesopotamia and the anachronisms in the story referring to the Ur of the Chaldees. There are other anachronisms as well, such as Abraham meeting with Philistines when, according to the biblical narrative, Abraham is supposed to have been hundreds of years before Moses, and way before the Philistines arrived in that region according the Egyptian records (during the bronze age collapse and the arrival of the sea peoples). I would love to hear your thoughts or maybe a video about the origins of the Patriarch narrative vs the Moses narrative. It is believed that the Moses narrative was more central to the Kingdom of Israel, and the Patriarch narrative was more central to the kingdom of Judah, but perhaps since it was the kingdom of Judah that was expelled to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, that this patriarch narrative developed much later, after the Moses narrative already existed. This would explain the anachronisms too. I wonder if the Judahte/Israelite mixed community that was in Babylon already had a Moses narrative, with certain parts of the bible, such as deuteronomy and other stories already intact, maybe even some parts with the patriarch stories, but only later did they create an origin story for the patriarchs and include some of these mesopotamian aspects, only when they were in Babylon. It is also possible they received mesopotamian influence during their occupation by Assyria. What do you think?

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks for the nice comment. Yeah, the Philistines inhabiting Bronze Age Palestine is another anachronism we get in Genesis, particularly the Abraham narrative. Interesting idea about the Moses and patriarchal narratives. I think it might be the other way around…the Jacob tradition may have been a northern tradition about Aramean origins that competed with another northern tradition, that of a migration from Egypt. Whether Moses was part of that is hard to say. In the Samaritan Pentateuch, it's Joshua who really has a strong connection with Mt. Gerizim. (The Masoretic Text replaces Mt. Gerizim with Mt. Ebal in some of those passages.) Outside the Bible, Hellenistic historians seemed to think that Moses was the founder of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem temple is also linked with the Moses legend via the bronze serpent (Nehushtan) that they worshipped. I do think that a lot of the Mesopotamian literary influence originated with the Assyrian occupation. Legends like the Nimrod legend in particularly seem to be Assyrian in origin. There is some new and very interesting research in that area that I'd like to write about or make a video about before long.

[@Emcee_Squared]

@@InquisitiveBible ​ @The Inquisitive Bible Reader Thanks for the response! I learned about the separate origin stories from the channel UsefulCharts, in which he presents the hypothesis that the 3 patriarch story is from Judah (the south), and the Moses story is from Israel (the north). It is called "Who wrote the Bible? Episode 1: The Torah" if you want to check it out. The idea that there were two origin stories, one Aramean and one Moses is also plausible, given the geography and the importance of the Aramean trade city of Haran and how Abraham stays there and the wives of his son and grandson are from there. Fascinating stuff, mysterious and very cool to get a good picture of how it all came to be. Currently going through all your videos and learning a lot! Looking forward to more videos in the future!

[@carnsolus]

good stuff :)

[@nomesobrenome8505]

Hey! I read on Charles Berlitz's Languages of The World (book) that the word babble had indeed come from the hebrew word for Babel. :(

[@InquisitiveBible]

That's kind of funny. Since I didn't get into detail, the word can be traced to Middle Low German babbelen and has been reconstructed in Proto-Indo-European as baba. Most European language have a similar word, including ancient Latin and Greek, and they may simply originate as mimicry of baby sounds.

[@nomesobrenome8505]

​@InquisitiveBible thanks! I have been loving watching your stuff.

[@benjaminholm3374]

No mention of the similiar story found in Enmerkar ans the lord of Aratta? That must surely have some kind of connection

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks for the question, Benjamin. I looked into it quite a bit while I was doing research for the video, but the legend of Enmerkar seems to involve uniting the languages of men rather than confusing their languages. (The text is fragmentary, but this is how most scholars interpret it.) In the end, it didn't seem to be as relevant as I had hoped, so I omitted it.

[@benjaminholm3374]

@@InquisitiveBible But still... Uniting all mankind under the same language to build a ziggurat, sounds awfully similar. It's almost like the author shows the reader that God is different to the sumerian gods by then confusing their language. There must be a connection

[@js1423]

Some content on the Nephilim?

[@InquisitiveBible]

Thanks for the suggestion, J S. I am planning a video that will address who the Nephilim are in the Old Testament at some point, probably around Episode 8 or 9.

[@js1423]

@@InquisitiveBible I'm curious, since there are religious scholars (like Mike Heiser) who tackle them and the context (Watchers, apkallu, annunaki etc.), but a secular point would also be interesting, since some like Heiser reads story through a christian lease (spiritual warfare, God vs gods etc.)

[@InquisitiveBible]

@@js1423 Yes, and I know a lot of people are interested in it due to the Ancient Astronauts angle and related conspiracy theories. It will be a challenge to give it a thorough treatment. :)

[@js1423]

@@InquisitiveBible To be fair, Heiser is critical of the ancient aliens, but he still tackles it from a religious historical view which might be put off secular people. Still, interested to see what you will tackle in future chapters.

[@unclevlad3357]

If Abraham was a wanderer and the names are places, can the story be used like a songline or map?

[@didack1419]

Which passages? Could you tell me?

[@mcgeedarion]

No shit it wasnt called Babel.

[@harveywabbit9541]

Babel is two words of bab (gate) and el (ram). The ram gate is the entry to Aries (Ram constellation) which is assigned to Gawd/Gad/God. Aries is opposite Libra, the sign of Benjamin. Rachael (ewe) is the Egyptian Isis and this equates Benjamin to Horus the Younger. Her adopted son Anubis/Anpu became Joseph. See Egyptian short story of Anpu and Bata.