How My View of Babel Ties in with "Defending Biblical Inerrancy"

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Does my Interpretation of Mahabharata and Ramayana Offend Hindoos? · If Tower of Babel was a Rocket Project, Why was it Called a Tower? · If Tower of Babel was a Rocket Project - What Else Can We Expect? · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Sin of Babel - Two Views · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica again: In case anyone missed this · Correspondence of Hans Georg Lundahl : With Mackey on Haman and on Babel · Creation vs. Evolution : Bricks at Göbekli Tepe or Close? · How My View of Babel Ties in with "Defending Biblical Inerrancy" · Ten Keys to my Idea of Göbekli Tepe as Babel and its Tower as a Rocket

It's a site which, this might surprise some who are really slow, defends - Biblical - inerrancy. It's overall layout involves a link per "problematic" Bible verse.

Genesis 11:28—How could Abraham’s family be from Ur of the Chaldees when elsewhere it says his ancestors came from Haran?

Problem: There is an apparent conflict as to where Abraham is really from. Genesis 11:28 says Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees (in southern Iraq), but Genesis 29:4 claims he is from Haran (in northern Iraq).

If Ur of the Chaldees is not Woolley's Ur but Urfa, also known as Edessa and Haran is the Haran on the frontier between Turkey and Syria, there is actually just 40 km - less than three full days' march with my speed back in 2004 (when I was younger), namely 15 km per day.

This solution is other than theirs, perhaps no better, but also no worse.

This is both of the places, while in Shinar (if we accept this means Mesopotamia), are close to Göbekli Tepe, which is, of course, my candidate for Babel.

Genesis 10:5 (cf. 20, 31)—Why does this verse indicate that humankind had many languages when Genesis 11:1 says there was only one?

Problem: Genesis 10:5, 20, 31 seem to suggest many dialects, which is an apparent conflict with Genesis 11:1 that clearly states, “the whole earth had one language and one speech.”

Solution: These texts speak of two different times. Earlier, while maintaining their tribal distinctions, the descendants of Ham, Shem, and Japheth all spoke the same language. Later, at the tower of Babel (Gen. 11), God punished their rebellious attempt by confusing their speech. As a result, tribes could no longer understand one another, though possibly the subtribes and clans were allowed a mutually understandable language so they could still understand one another.

The solution given would also admit geographical spread along with tribal distinctions.

We must not forget that the Book of the Taking of Land in Ireland, it says there was a pre-Flood inhabitant in Ireland, but it also says of the first post-Flood one, he arrived between Flood and Babel.

If we consider the Upper Palaeolithic as representative in its conditions for early post-Flood conditions, this means that geographic spread might have been needed to have sufficient food, as long as full scale agriculture had not yet reemerged?

Certainly there was some agriculture before Noah died, namely viticulture. He misjudged the dose he would need to be cheerful and got drunk instead. Drunk is not the purpose of wine, cheerful is. Since euphoria is another name for cheer, euphoria cannot count as drunkenness.

However, I don't think he needed a whole Napa Valley vineyard to get sufficient wine to get drunk. And if the vineyard was of the smaller kind, it may indeed carbon date to 20 000 BP if we ever find it, or to 15 000 BP, whatever is the case, but we have not found it, because it is small.

With Babel, we would have another problem, unless I am allowed to propose Göbekli Tepe.

You can certainly have Henoch in Nod East of Eden as a non-found city, my favourite hunch on it is, you might find it if you dug a huge tunnel under Mount Everest. Not meaning we should. Because, there was a very violent flood after Henoch was inhabited or at the very end of its inhabitation.

But you cannot have Babel covered in tons of sediments, and you do not have any city in Shinar (even counting all the way up to Turkey, which is still Shinar in its very East) that carbon dates to previous to 65 000 years BP, the earlier carbon dates for Shanidar cave which CMI or Robert Carter of CMI has considered to be post-Flood, since they consider Neanderthals as post-Flood. You also most definitely cannot have any preserved ruin of a Ziggurat, including that of Eridu, as a Tower of Babel. These are too recent.

But between the Ziggurat of Ur (Woolley's Ur) and the beginning of palaeolithic carbon dates, you do have one city in Shinar with no non-Hebrew language attested, right on the frontier between certain linguistic groups of the post-Babel world, and the carbon dates for Babel would be somewhat more than one half life older than the real dates, because the carbon 14 level was rising and somewhat lower than 50 %. Its name is Göbekli Tepe. That really was a city which the men stopped building, and it doesn't say the actually stopped building the tower.

My one problem with this, by now, is, bricks hardened in fire have not been found in Göbekli Tepe. So far.

I have been tempted to say, when Hebrews saw Etemenanki being built with bricks baked in fire and bitumen for mortar, they added a twist on the Genesis 11 account, just to spoof this.

But as I do believe Biblical inerrancy, I think it's wiser to take the line, where are the firebaked bricks at or near Göbekli Tepe.

Brick is a popular medium for constructing buildings, and examples of brickwork are found through history as far back as the Bronze Age. The fired-brick faces of the ziggurat of ancient Dur-Kurigalzu in Iraq date from around 1400 BC, and the brick buildings of ancient Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan were built around 2600 BC. Much older examples of brickwork made with dried (but not fired) bricks may be found in such ancient locations as Jericho in Judea, Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia, and Mehrgarh in Pakistan. These structures have survived from the Stone Age to the present day.

2600 BC? That is carbon dated only, and it's the carbon date for Djoser who was arguably Joseph's pharao, since Joseph is arguably remembered by Egyptians as Imphotep. This is then c. 1700 BC in real dates, which is about 900 years after the real 2602 BC in which Babel was beginning. Perhaps the mudbrick only brickworks of Jericho and Çatal Hüyük and Mehrgarh were a reaction to the city with fire baked bricks (or after these) getting cursed by the confusion of tongues.

So, I'd like archaeologists to take a look until they find bricks in or near Göbekli Tepe. Baked in fire.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Paul of Narbonne
22.III.2019