However, estimates of the world’s population at 3,000 BCE were between 14 and 45 million, growing to between 27 and 72 million by 2,000 BCE. Even assuming that about half of their offspring were women, you would still have about 150 people on the entire Earth to create the Tower of Babel. Using the Bible’s accounting of the children that came from Noah since the flood (Genesis 10), by the time of the Tower of Babel there were about 70 men born from the lines of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japeth. The belief was that the global flood wiped out all human life on Earth about 100 years earlier, and that all life descended from Noah’s family with one single, Adamic language. (Davies, G.I, "Introduction to the Pentateuch") Many scholars now believe that Genesis was not compiled until the 6th and, more likely, 5th century BCE. While Genesis was long believed to have been written by Moses himself during his lifetime, estimated to be 1391-1271 BCE, most biblical scholars now agree that the Pentateuch was not compiled until much later. These are the sons of Shem, after their families, after their tongues. These are the sons of Ham, after their families, after their tongues. ( List of Early Languages)įurthermore, Genesis itself confirms there were other languages before the Tower of Babel in Genesis chapter 10:īy these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands, every one after his tongue. Furthermore, written languages evolved after they were spoken in their community, meaning that they were developed long before their written dates.
Written records of the Sumerian language exists as early as 3500 BCE, Egyptian as early as 3300 BCE, Akkadian as early as 2800 BCE, and both Canaanite and Eblaite around 2400 BCE.
Most biblical scholars agree that the stories in Genesis are not historical, but with the Tower of Babel we can clearly point to many reasons why it simply cannot be historical as there was already a diversity of languages before the Tower of Babel would have taken place.
The Book of Mormon requires that the Tower of Babel be a historical event as it ties directly into not just the Jaredites coming to the Americas, but to their records in the Book of Ether, the Nephite interpreters, and the truth claims of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith as well.Īs hinted at above, the Tower of Babel cannot be a literal, historical event. Moreover, the Tower of Babel story is similar to other myths all over the world to explain the confounding of languages, and the Genesis account is likely heavily influenced by Sumerian and Assyrian myths. This story is considered by most biblical scholars and pretty much all secular scholars to be an etiological myth, which is a mythical story to explain the origin of differing languages. The Tower of Babel story is estimated to have happened, depending on the source, around the year 2400-2200 BCE, about 100 years after the global flood would’ve occurred. The Tower of Babel is the famous story in Genesis 11 that explains why different civilizations and communities in the ancient world spoke different languages.
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