"The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which was the Tower of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two cubits, but he did not finish its head. During the lapse of time, it had become ruined; they had not taken care of the exit of the waters, so that rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing of burned brick had swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are scattered in heaps."
We can well understand how easily "the gods, assisted by the winds," as stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower thus built.
It may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth developed first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different form by the Hebrews, various other legends to explain the same diversity of tongues. The Hindu legend of the confusion of tongues is as follows:
"There grew in the centre of the earth the wonderful 'world tree,' or 'knowledge tree.' It was so tall that it reached almost to heaven. It said in its heart, 'I shall hold my head in heaven and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all men together under my shadow, and protect them, and prevent them from separating.' But Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth, when they sprang up as wata trees, and made differences of belief and speech and customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon its surface."
Still more striking is a Mexican legend: according to this, the giant Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a language of its own.
Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth. A well-known form of the legend, more like the Chaldean than the Hebrew later form, appeared among the Greeks. According to this, the Aloidae piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to reach heaven and dethrone Jupiter.
Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same language, but that Zeus confounded their speech because men were proud and demanded eternal youth and immortality.(413)
(413) For the identification of the Tower of Babel with the "Birs
Nimrad" amid the ruins of the city of Borsippa, see Rawlinson; also
Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, London,
1885, pp. 106-112 and following; and especially George Smith, Assyrian
Discoveries, p. 59. For some of these inscriptions discovered and read
by George Smith, see his Chaldean Account of Genesis, new York, 1876,
pp. 160-162. For the statement regarding the origin of the word Babel,
see Ersch and Gruber, article Babylon; also the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce
in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Colenso,
Pentateuch Examined, part iv, p. 302; also John Fiske, Myths and
Myth-makers, p. 72; also Lenormont, Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient,
Paris, 1881, vol. i, pp. 115 et seq. As to the character and purpose of
the great tower of the temple of Belus, see Smith's Bible Dictionary,
article Babel, quoting Diodorus; also Rawlinson, especially in Journal
of the Asiatic Society for 1861; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient
Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures for 1887), London, 1887, chap. ii and
elsewhere, especially pages 96, 397, 407; also Max Duncker, History
of Antiquity, Abbott's translation, vol. ii, chaps. ii, and iii.
For similar legends in other parts of the world, see Delitzsch; also
Humboldt, American Researches; also Brinton, Myths of the New World;
also Colenso, as above. The Tower of Cholula is well known, having
been described by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough. For superb engravings
showing the view of Babel as developed by the theological imagination,
see Kircher, Turris Babel, Amsterdam, 1679. For the Law of Wills and
Causes, with deductions from it well stated, see Beattie Crozier,
Civilization and Progress, London, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273. For
Plato, see the Politicus, p. 272, ed. Stephani, cited in Ersch and
Gruber, article Babylon. For a good general statement, see Bible Myths,
New York, 1883, chap. iii. For Aristotle's strange want of interest in
any classification of the varieties of human speech, see Max Muller,
Lectures on the Science of Language, London, 1864, series i, chap. iv,
pp. 123-125.
But naturally the version of the legend which most affected Christendom was that modification of the Chaldean form developed among the Jews and embodied in their sacred books. To a thinking man in these days it is very instructive. The coming down of the Almighty from heaven to see the tower and put an end to it by dispersing its builders, points to the time when his dwelling was supposed to be just above the firmament or solid vault above the earth: the time when he exercised his beneficent activity in such acts as opening "the windows of heaven" to give down rain upon the earth; in bringing out the sun every day and hanging up the stars every night to give light to the earth; in hurling comets, to give warning; in placing his bow in the cloud, to give hope; in, coming down in the cool of the evening to walk and talk with the man he had made; in making coats of skins for Adam and Eve; in enjoying the odour of flesh which Noah burned for him; in eating with Abraham under the oaks of Mamre; in wrestling with Jacob; and in writing with his own finger on the stone tables for Moses.
So came the answer to the third question regarding language; and all three answers, embodied in our sacred books and implanted in the Jewish mind, supplied to the Christian Church the germs of a theological development of philology. These germs developed rapidly in the warm atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of natural law which pervaded the early Church, and there grew a great orthodox theory of language, which was held throughout Christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all," for nearly two thousand years, and to which, until the present century, all science has been obliged, under pains and penalties, to conform.