I’ve given you all I care to give you on the subject, accept it, reject it, ignore it, or research it as you will.
I don’t think you know the proper use of the term “word salad”. It isn’t just a catch-all so that linear-concrete thinkers can simply dismiss arguments advanced by abstract global thinkers, if indeed this is the explanation for this outcome.
And now, on with my life. Good day.
Sure. Once God rained fire upon Sodom, and now his face appears on toast. Hasn’t the quality of miracles waned considerably? And really, the punishment for believing in Trump is the 2020 election result? This is reaching.
If not everyone has to be descended from Adam, there’s no point whatsoever to GAE.
If you read the story without theological preconceptions, it seems to reiterate the theme of Genesis 3: That God is very insecure and uncertain about his power and feels threatened by humans gaining knowledge and possibly challenging him. So he messes them up in various ways.
Faizal_Ali, you don’t have to use bad interpretation in order to decide you don’t like the story. Do the research to find out what the story is really doing and saying, and THEN decide you don’t like it. 
I think it’s a great story. I don’t know you would think I don’t.
Could you cite some of the research that have interpreted the original text of this story without any particular theological agenda or preconceptions, such as assuming that the Yahweh character has to be a good guy?
Me too.
Such an interpolation is nowhere in the text itself.
In fact the text seems quite clear. The humans are getting above themselves (literally), and God confuses their tongues to prevent them from further achievements. There do seem definite parallels to the expulsion from Eden, whose purpose seems to be to prevent Adam from becoming more like God; now that he has the godlike understanding of good and evil and has become “like one of us”, he can’t be allowed to eat from the tree of life and live forever also. This is apparently a jealous god who is concerned with his monopoly on power.
This is NOT a take “without theological preconceptions”. It is an attempt to portray a position which paints everything God does in the worst possible light as a “neutral” position.
When we shield our children from violence and pornography in media is it because we as parents are “insecure” about ourselves and feel “threatened” in our own position? How about handling firearms, or mixing chemicals? Is that due to our bad intentions? Or is it perhaps that we wish to protect the innocence of our children until they are provided with more of our guidance and wisdom and are better able to navigate these choices?
Is God acting from motives that are based on what is better for all of mankind, or acting on motives of what is better for Him personally? That is the question you must answer to discern motives, and Jesus has answered it to the satisfaction of any reasonable standard. But sin is not reasonable. Our desire to stay on the throne of our lives when it is clear we are meant to be in Him and under Him is not reasonable.
If by “the text” you mean only those few verses in Genesis, in complete ignorance of what we know from secular history about those times, then maybe not. But if you combine historical context of what such an endeavor meant in the ANE with what the rest of scripture says then it is. Revelation is a mysterious book, but chapters 17 and 18 ID “Mystery Babylon” as “the mother of harlots”. This is in contrast to the Bride which is portrayed as the true church. The text describes this harlot as “committing fornication with the kings of the earth”. Then it says “come out of her my people”. It isn’t hard to see that this is speaking about an unholy alliance of political and religious power.
But even merely using secular history, in an era where city-states were coming into their own, building your own city to make a name for yourself was the obvious path to obtaining state power, if you could pull it off. And building towers (later ziggurats) with a temple atop with your own state-controlled priests was a common way to convince people that the gods were on your side. Read excerpts from the recently discovered “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta” thought to have been lost in 2,000 BC and you, or the fair reader at least, can easily see that. The kings were competing with one another to claim the rights to build the temple for this god or that. They wanted that god as their mascot.
Add to it how Yahweh treats with Israel. He has no problem with them building cities, or a temple set on high. It just has to be in His name and not theirs. He isn’t going to be demoted to mascot for their own ambitions. Again, this is a tendency that humans have not gotten over, and it isn’t honest or healthy. We are not fit to be our own gods, or the maker of our own God.
So in context, not just of scripture but everything we know from the history of Mesopotamia at the dawn of city-states, the interpretation adds up.
I hate to tell you this Rev Cos, but the vast majority of people, for the vast majority of human history, worshiped gods other than Yahweh, usually with the imprimatur of the state. From the Mayan temple of Chichen Itza dedicated to Kukulcán (among other gods), to the Parthenon in Athens dedicated to Athena. So why did Babel merit Divine Intervention, but none of the myriad others? Your argument is nothing but an epic Special Pleading fallacy.
And what do Genesis 11, Revelations 17 & 18 and the account of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta have in common? Not Babylon, because the tradition of Enmerkar predates the founding of that city by several centuries (and the account appears to make no mention of that city). Not a tower, because Revelations 17 & 18 make no mention of one. Not a temple, because Genesis 11 and Revelations 17 & 18 make no mention of one.
The one commonality between them all is that they all make no mention of “the establishment of man-made religion merging worship with the state”.
This is not “abstract global think[ing]”, it is trying to thread these disparate passages together based upon the most tenuous and superficial of associations. This is, or is close to, what I believe is termed Apophenia.
If the text is not sufficiently clear to all people at all times from an omniscience outside of time Creator, then is that not an immense problem?
God could have chosen some future form of writing complete with logical preciseness, footnotes, references, I mean more humans exist now and will certainly so than before so why pander to that time period?
If outside knowledge, pre-conceived ideas and Holy Spirit guidance are required to interpret something “correctly”, and even then people cannot agree; perhaps the entire text is more of a mystic genre than anything else. Or it is literature created/edited/modified in its time.
Here is the text of the story, in its entirety:
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 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.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Now, show me how you support your claim that God acted in the interest of what was best for humankind, just from the text of the story.
I don’t care what the author of Revelation, who wrote in the second half of the first century CE, means when he/she talks about Babylon. What we want is the intent and purpose of the original author of the story of Babel.
The biblical authors often disagreed vehemently on a wide variety of topics and areas - ranging from intermarriage, to how Shechem, the capital of Israel, was founded, (ie bought according to the Israelite author, vs a product of rape according to the Judahite author) to Balaam being a prophet of God according to one author to an arch-heretic according to another.
What the author of Revelation intends about Babylon is thus irrelevant to what the author of Genesis 11 meant about Babel.
On closer reading of your comment, I realize there may not actually be all that much disagreement between us:
This seems little, if at all, different from the interpretation I believe best fits the story: That God is an egotistical tyrant who will not tolerate humans challenging his authority. It is not really consistent with the benevolent and concerned parent figure you describe him as elsewhere.
I noticed that you ignored my argument from history and then complained about the lack of sufficient historical connection between Revelation and Genesis. There are a couple on this thread that have demonstrated to me that they are not interested in truth discovery, but only in denying it to the smallest detail and regardless of how reasonable the case may be. I don’t bother to dialogue with those anymore, I just let them go, for life is too short. I am looking for dialogue with those who are willing to seek the truth, even if it means they were wrong about things. Are you one of those or shall I move on?
Not at all. It is extremely consistent with the God of scripture who in the OT said it was up to God to hide a matter and kings to find it. The truth is only for those of noble disposition. I say “truth is a lady”. It does not display itself to those with no real interest in knowing it. Jesus said He spoke in parables precisely SO that those with no real interest in the truth would NOT get it.
So what matters is the condition of your heart in hearing, not how blatantly obvious He makes the truth to those determined not to see it. Heck, that’s how the prophets got murdered. They spoke the truth to plainly to powerful people who did not want to hear it. It didn’t cause them to repent, it cause them to harm the prophets!
The conversation is moving out of what could be charitably characterized as “productive”. After some moderator discussion, we concluded that the thread should be closed.