The Tower of Babel

George, A. R.  “A Stele of Nebuchadnezzar II.”  Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Schøyen Collection (CUSAS 17), 153–169.  CDL Press.  2011.  Edition of the Schøyen stele (MS 2063) that shows Nebuchadnezzar II before a seven-storey Etemenanki, with an appendix translating his four-column foundation cylinder for the tower.  The king's own words on the materials, the unfinished top and the conscripted labour.  George is the leading authority on Babylon's topography and temples.

1. 1a.

   Page 167:  “whose four walls he raised in bitumen and baked brick to a height of thirty cubits on the outside, but which he did not finish (to) the top—I set to work on finishing E-temen-anki (to) the top so that it vied with the heavens.”  Nebuchadnezzar II speaking of his father Nabopolassar's work and his own, in the Etemenanki cylinder (Nbk 17). ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 167:  “all the teeming people of the world, whom my lord Marduk had consigned into my possession, I conscripted for labour in the building of E-temen-anki and imposed corvée-duty on them.” ↩

Speiser, E. A.  “Word Plays on the Creation Epic's Version of the Founding of Babylon.”  Oriental and Biblical Studies:  Collected Writings of E. A. Speiser, 53–61.  University of Pennsylvania Press.  Edited by J. J. Finkelstein and M. Greenberg.  1956 (edition of 1967).  Argues that the building scene of Genesis 11:3-4 answers Enuma Elish VI 60-62 point by point (the year of brick-making, the raising of Esagil's head), so the story's source was literary, not a sight of Etemenanki.  Speiser was the Anchor Bible Genesis commentator and a leading Assyriologist;  he treats the confusion of tongues as "purely speculative" ground.  Page numbers are those of the 1967 collected reprint;  the article first appeared in Orientalia 25 (1956): 317–323.

1. 2a.

   Page 59:  “Thus far, then, each item in the biblical narrative proves to have its appropriate Mesopotamian antecedent: the solemn preparation of the bricks (nilbᵉnā lᵉbēnīm), the building of the stage tower (ʿîr ûmigdal), and the reference to the 'head in the heavens' (wᵉrōʾšô baššāmayim).  So much detailed correspondence, and particularly the out-of-the-way reference to the bricks, adds up to convincing proof that the underlying source was textual as opposed to monumental.  To that extent at least biblical tradition cannot be charged with fanciful invention.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 55:  “It should be made clear, however, from the start that the statement just made applies only to the building of the tower and the purpose ascribed to that project.  The recorded consequence is a different matter entirely.  All suggestions offered on this latter count, including the one hazarded at the end of this paper, must be designated in all candor as purely speculative.” ↩

Sibley, Andrew.  “Dating the Tower of Babel events with reference to Peleg and Joktan.”  Journal of Creation 31(1):80–87.  2017.  The only young-earth journal paper devoted to the date of Babel.  Surveys Jubilees, Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, Ussher and recent creationist writers, and prefers the Masoretic text with Seder Olam's 340 years after the Flood, at Peleg's death, on the argument that Joktan's thirteen sons had to be grown men at the dispersion.  Does not test the date against archaeology.

1. 3a.

   Section Discussion:  “Ussher's later novelty mixes commentary from Jubilees and blends it with the MT timeframe, but it gives a minimum period estimated at 140 to 200 years, with a tentative hint of a preferred 160 years post-Flood. … Furthermore, it would appear from available evidence that no early Jewish commentators placed the Babel event as early as 101 years post-Flood, which suggests it is very unlikely.” ↩

Wenham, Gordon J.  “Genesis 1–15.”  Word Biblical Commentary 1:230–242.  Word Books.  1987 (edition of 2014).  The standard evangelical critical commentary.  Reads 11:1-9 as one tightly built composition (parallel panels and a palistrophe hinged on verse 5), takes "the whole earth" as all the inhabitants of the world, the chapter order as topical, and the story as mockery of Babylonian temple boasts rather than as dependent on Enuma Elish.  Wenham does not argue a young-earth chronology.  Page numbers are the 1987 edition's, which the 2014 reissue reprints.

1. 4a.

   Page 238:  “'The whole earth,' here, as in 9:19, denotes all the inhabitants of the world.” ↩ ↩

2. 4b.

   Page 238:  “'One kind of speech' is literally 'words, one.'  The plural of [ʾeḥād] 'one' occurs in only four other passages.  In 27:44; 29:20; Dan 11:20 it means 'a few' (days); in Ezek 37:17, 'one.'  The latter sense seems more likely here.  The narrative is not drawing attention to mankind's limited vocabulary, 'few words,' but to their unity of speech.” ↩

3. 4c.

   Page 238:  “the parallel with 13:11 suggests that 'eastward' would be an apt translation here.  This would be a possible rendering, if we suppose that mankind is seen as emigrating from Ararat to Mesopotamia (cf. 8:4), though in this case 'southward' would have been more exact geographically.” ↩

4. 4d.

   Page 234:  “As soon as the men of Babylon start speaking they use words that contain the consonants b and l, or p and m, phonetically close to b, e.g., nilbenah lebenim 'let us make bricks,' nibneh-lanu 'let us build for ourselves,' and nabelah 'let us mix up.'” ↩

5. 4e.

   Page 241:  “The Babylonians understood Babel to mean 'the gate of the god.'  The Hebrews liked to suppose it to mean 'mixed up, confused.'  Here, as often in the OT, it is clear that the etymology offered is a popular one … The same is probably true of the Babylonians' own etymology 'gate of the god' (so Gelb).” ↩

6. 4f.

   Page 236:  “v 5 stands right outside the parallel panels and constitutes the turning point in the palistrophe.” ↩

7. 4g.

   Page 240:  “having 'one language' makes this narrative prior to chap. 10, when the various nations of the world were established, each with their different tongue (10:5, 20, 31), a situation already intimated by the narrator in 11:1.” ↩

8. 4h.

   Page 237:  “So although Gen 11 is unlikely to be addressing Enuma Elish's account of the building of the Esagil, it may well be mocking Babylonian boasts about their temples.  Their fancy brickwork and their vaunted height are something to laugh at.” ↩

Augustine.  “The City of God, Book 16.”  Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series 2.  Translated by Marcus Dods.  c. 426 (edition of 1887).  The classic Christian reading of Genesis 10-11:  literal, historical, global, with seventy-two languages counted from the Table of Nations and Hebrew as the original tongue.  Augustine already saw that Genesis 10 lists languages before Genesis 11 explains them, and answered that the narrator doubles back.

1. 5a.

   Book 16, chapter 4:  “But though these nations are said to have been dispersed according to their languages, yet the narrator recurs to that time when all had but one language, and explains how it came to pass that a diversity of languages was introduced.” ↩ ↩

2. 5b.

   Book 16, chapter 6:  “From these three men, therefore, the three sons of Noah we mean, 73, or rather, as the catalogue will show, 72 nations and as many languages were dispersed over the earth, and as they increased filled even the islands.  But the nations multiplied much more than the languages.” ↩ ↩

Morris, Henry M.  The Genesis Record:  A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings.  Creation-Life Publishers / Baker.  1976.  The founding young-earth commentary on Genesis, by the co-author of The Genesis Flood and founder of the Institute for Creation Research.  Its Babel chapter makes the confusion a miracle that created new phonologies for about seventy family groups, dates the dispersion to Peleg's birth, and allows gaps in Genesis 11 of a thousand years or more.  It cites no linguist and no excavation.

1. 6a.

   Page 277:  “Likewise, another miracle of creation was required to create many new such phonologies all at once (presumably leaving the old intact, in the brain-nerve-tongue complex of those who did not participate in the Babel rebellion).” ↩ ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 282:  “Adding up the numbers in these verses, therefore, the record indicates that Peleg was born 101 years after the Flood. This probably was the year of the Babel Dispersion.” ↩ ↩

3. 6c.

   Page 273:  “the naive opinion of some commentators that the building of the tower was as a potential haven from some future flood is obviously erroneous.” ↩

4. 6d.

   Page 264:  “The Flood was worldwide in its effects, and so was the confusion of tongues of worldwide impact — at least as far as man was concerned.” ↩

5. 6e.

   Page 262:  “distinct family units, distinct languages (therefore, subsequent to Babel), distinct regions, and, finally, actual nations. A total of twenty-six such 'nations' is listed as coming from Shem, as compared with thirty listed from Ham … and only fourteen from Japheth. Thus a total of seventy such primeval nations is listed”. ↩

6. 6f.

   Pages 309–310:  “If Thiele's analysis is correct, this would place the Flood (assuming no gaps in Genesis 11) at 2459 B.C. and the Dispersion at about 2358 B.C. If gaps are allowed, however, these dates might conceivably be increased by, say, up to about one thousand years or more (possibly five thousand years at the very outside).” ↩

Sarfati, Jonathan.  Refuting Compromise:  A Biblical and Scientific Refutation of "Progressive Creationism" (Billions of Years) as Popularized by Astronomer Hugh Ross.  Master Books.  2004.  Creation Ministries International's book-length answer to Hugh Ross.  Its section on Babel and the days of Peleg holds that the confusion reprogrammed existing grammar and vocabulary to produce the major language families, that "earth" in 10:25 means the people of the earth, and that Babel may fall anywhere in Peleg's lifetime.

1. 7a.

   Page 302:  “The obvious effect was to produce the major language families, from which modern languages have developed.”  “And if Eber named Peleg prophetically, as with Methuselah, then Babel could have occurred late in Peleg's lifetime, allowing even more time for the population to increase.” ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 20:  “Some skeptics accuse the Bible of error here, because Babili means 'gate of the gods,' balal means confusion. But, there is no error at all — the word play was intentional.” ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 302:  “From Table 9.1 on page 290 we can calculate that Peleg was born 101 years after the Flood. Given the long life spans and large numbers of sons mentioned, there could have been 3,000 people by this time.” ↩

4. 7d.

   Page 302:  “This conclusively proves that the 'earth' that was divided was the same earth that spoke only one language, that is, 'earth' refers in this context to the people of the earth, not Planet Earth.” ↩

Answers in Genesis.  “Bible Timeline.”  answersingenesis.org.  n.d.  Retrieved Oct 10, 2026.  An unsigned table of dates with no method stated.  Its rows from Creation (4004 BC) to the divided monarchy (975 BC) are Ussher's dates, and its last three (722, 586 and 4 BC) are the conventional ones;  the Babel row, 2242 BC, is neither.

1. 8a.

   Section table:  “Tower of Babel”.  The row reads "Tower of Babel / 2242 BC", between "The Flood / 2348 BC" and "Abraham / 1996 BC". ↩

Lambert, W. G.  “Babylonian Creation Myths.”  Mesopotamian Civilizations 16.  Eisenbrauns.  2013.  The definitive edition of Enuma Elish and related texts by the scholar who spent his life on them.  Tablet VI gives the gods' building of Babylon and its ziggurat;  the volume also re-edits K 3657, the tablet George Smith once took for a Babylonian Tower of Babel.

1. 9a.

   Page 301:  “This text was first brought to public notice by George Smith and W. St. Chad Boscawen in 1876 as a possible parallel to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.  Since King in 1902 showed that this was a misconception, the text has been very generally neglected.”  “The work begins with dissatisfaction over 'the father of all the gods.'  One being in particular has cause for complaint, as the people of Babylon, burdened with hard labour, were preventing him from sleeping by their lamentation.”  On the tablet K 3657, which Lambert edits as "The Toil of Babylon". ↩ ↩

Woolley, C. Leonard.  Ur Excavations V:  The Ziggurat and its Surroundings.  British Museum and University Museum, Pennsylvania.  1939.  The excavation report on the ziggurat of Ur.  Measures Ur-Nammu's tower, records its burnt-brick casing laid in bitumen, and describes the older terraces beneath it, back to one Woolley assigned to the Uruk period.  Woolley's belief that the core holds a First Dynasty ziggurat is stated by him as an assumption.

1. 10a.

   Pages 98–99:  “The casing of the Ziggurat, the wall proper, is of burnt bricks … many of which are stamped on one face with the name of Ur-Nammu; the stamped face is always laid underneath. The mortar is bitumen.” ↩

Hiebert, Robert J. V.  “Genesis.”  A New English Translation of the Septuagint.  Oxford University Press.  2007.  The standard scholarly English of the Greek Genesis, translated from Wevers's Göttingen edition.  Used here for the three places where the Septuagint's Genesis 11:1-9 differs from the Hebrew.

1. 11a.

   Verse Genesis 11:1:  “And the whole earth was one lip, and there was one speech for all.” ↩

2. 11b.

   Verse Genesis 11:4:  “a tower whose top shall be as far as the sky, and let us make a name for ourselves before we are scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” ↩

3. 11c.

   Verse Genesis 11:9:  “Therefore its name was called Confusion, because there the Lord confused the lips of all the earth”. ↩

OpenScriptures.  “Westminster Leningrad Codex with lemma and morphology tags (morphhb), Genesis 10–11.”  GitHub, openscriptures/morphhb, wlc/Gen.xml.  2026.  The Hebrew text of Genesis with every word tagged by lemma, which is how the word counts and the lāšôn / śāpâ distinction below were read.

1. 12a.

   Verses Genesis 11:1, 4, 8, 9:  The phrase kol-hāʾāreṣ (lemma 3605 + 776) is tagged in 11:1, 11:4, 11:8 and twice in 11:9. ↩

2. 12b.

   Verse Genesis 11:9:  The Hebrew is śǝpat kol-hāʾāreṣ:  lemma 8193 (śāpâ, "lip") in the construct state, then 3605 ("all") and 776 (ʾereṣ) with the article.  "The lip of all the ʾereṣ" is this article's word-for-word rendering, not a published translation. ↩

3. 12c.

   Verses Genesis 11:3, 7:  Genesis 11:7 reads hābâ (lemma 3051, imperative) nērdâ (3381, yārad, cohortative, "let us go down") wǝnābǝlâ (1101, bālal, cohortative), then ʾăšer lōʾ yišmǝʿû ʾîš śǝpat rēʿēhû.  Genesis 11:3 reads hābâ nilbǝnâ (3835, cohortative).  The English renderings, "come, let us go down and mix" and "that they will not hear each the lip of his neighbour", are this article's word-for-word translations, not published ones. ↩

4. 12d.

   Verses Genesis 10:5, 20, 31; 11:1, 6, 7, 9:  Genesis 10:5, 20 and 31 carry lemma 3956 (lāšôn, "tongue");  Genesis 11:1, 6, 7 (twice) and 9 carry lemma 8193 (śāpâ, "lip"). ↩

Walton, John H.  “The Mesopotamian Background of the Tower of Babel Account and Its Implications.”  Bulletin for Biblical Research 5:155–175.  1995.  An evangelical Old Testament scholar's case that the tower was a ziggurat built as a stairway for a god, that the builders were not disobeying a command to scatter, and that the event happened in southern Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BC among a group that need not have been all mankind.  The most important Christian rival to the universal reading.

1. 13a.

   Page 173:  “The traveling group is not necessarily 'all the earth' from v. 1, but perhaps just the descendants of Shem, since the genealogy of all of the sons of Noah has already been treated in chapter 10. … The project would then result in different (Semitic?) languages being created, or perhaps would represent the differentiation of the Semitic languages from Sumerian. … This scenario would not require that all language groups were formed at this time or that all the languages were represented there.” ↩ ↩

2. 13b.

   Page 162:  “The ziggurat was a structure that was built to support the stairway (simmiltu), which was believed to be used by the gods to travel from one realm to the other. … The stairway led at the top to the gate of the gods, the entrance to the divine abode.” ↩

3. 13c.

   Page 166:  “Scattering is not to be equated with filling.” ↩

4. 13d.

   Page 171:  “1. Development of baked brick technology: Jamdet Nasr, ca. 3100 BC  2. Development of Ziggurat: Early Dynastic Period, ca. 2500 BC (earlier prototypes go back to the Late Uruk phase, ca. 3200 BC)  3. Development of Urbanization: Early Dynastic Period, ca. 2800 BC  4. Government by Ruling Assembly: Early Dynastic I, ca. 2900 BC”. ↩

Seely, Paul H.  “The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications.”  Westminster Theological Journal 63(1):15–38.  2001.  Dates the tower from five details in the text (Shinar, a city, baked brick, bitumen mortar, a ziggurat) to 3500-2400 BC on conventional archaeology, then argues that mankind was already dispersed and speaking many languages long before, so the story cannot be the origin of all languages.  Seely accepts that the text means all mankind;  his solution is divine accommodation.  The fullest archaeological dating of the tower in print, and the paper the young-earth side has to answer.

1. 14a.

   Page 20:  “there has been universal agreement from the beginning right up to the present that Gen 11:1 means that every human being on earth was speaking the same language until God 'confused the language' at the tower of Babel.” ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Page 19:  “There is a text saying that Sharkalisharri restored the temple-tower at Babylon c. 2250 B.C., and another text indicates that Sargon I destroyed Babylon c. 2350 B.C. This suggests that there was a city established at Babylon before 2350 B.C.; so, allowing a modest 50 years of city history, we can set 2400 B.C. as the terminus ante quem for the first ziggurat built in Babylon. We can thus date the building of the tower of Babel sometime between 3500 and 2400 B.C.” ↩

3. 14c.

   Page 28:  “in order for the tower of Babel to have been the starting point for the division of one human family into varying races and language groups as Gen 11:1-9 demands, even a very conservative interpretation of the archaeological and anthropological evidence indicates that the tower would have to have been built long before 10,000 B. C.” ↩

Charles, R. H.  The Book of Jubilees, or The Little Genesis.  A. and C. Black.  1902.  The standard English translation of the second-century BC Jewish retelling of Genesis, with Charles's marginal Anno Mundi dates.  Jubilees is the oldest datable reader of the Babel story.  Its chapter 10 gives the tower a building time, a height, a wind and a location that Genesis lacks;  its chapter 8 puts a division of the earth by lot at Peleg's birth.

1. 15a.

   Page 82:  “For they departed from the land of Ararat eastward to Shinar; for in his days they built the city and the tower, saying, 'Go to, let us ascend thereby into heaven.'”  Jubilees 10:19;  "his days" are Reu's, Peleg's son. ↩

2. 15b.

   Pages 82–83:  “And they built it: forty and three years were they building it; its breadth was 203 bricks, and the height (of a brick) was the third of one; its height amounted to 5433 cubits and 2 palms, and (the extent of one wall was) thirteen stades (and of the other thirty stades).”  Page 84:  “And the Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth, and behold it was between Asshur and Babylon in the land of Shinar, and they called its name 'Overthrow.'”  Jubilees 10:21 and 10:26. ↩

Westermann, Claus.  Genesis 1–11:  A Commentary.  Augsburg.  Translated by John J. Scullion.  1974 (edition of 1984).  The standard form-critical commentary (German original 1974).  Rejects Gunkel's two-source split but treats the story as three primeval motifs joined by one author, and supplies the fullest mainstream statement of its Mesopotamian setting.  Westermann accepted Kramer's past-tense reading of the Sumerian Spell of Nudimmud, which later Sumerologists reject.

1. 16a.

   Page 534:  “Many recent exegetes (e.g., B. Jacob) translate by 'eastwards'; against this is that all ancient versions understand [min] as 'from' (so too BrSynt).” ↩

2. 16b.

   Page 537:  “This almost desperate excision of individual words shows the weakness of the literary-critical analysis.” ↩

3. 16c.

   Page 535:  “It is precisely this, that Gen 11:1-9 hovers between primeval and historical event, that gives the narrative its own peculiar character.” ↩ ↩

4. 16d.

   Page 539:  “All the modern commentaries state that so far no parallel to the biblical narrative is known among Israel's immediate neighbors.  There has been no change in the situation insofar as the story as a whole is concerned.  However, there is now a Sumerian parallel for one of the motifs — confusion of languages.”  “The motif of the confusion of languages occurs in a Sumerian myth about the gods without any connection with the building of a tower.” ↩

Brown, Francis et al.  A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament.  Clarendon Press.  1906.  The standard Hebrew-English lexicon of the twentieth century, arranged by root, with every occurrence of most verbs listed.  Cited for the senses of bālal.

1. 17a.

   Page 117, section בָּלַל:  “mingle, mix, confuse, confound”.  “1. mingle, confuse (obj. שָׂפָה = speech, language, q.v.) Gn 11:7, 9 (J). 2. mix (cakes or flour, etc. always with oil) sacrificial techn. term, only P”. ↩

Skinner, John.  “A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis.”  International Critical Commentary.  T. & T. Clark.  1910.  The old documentary consensus on Genesis.  Follows Gunkel in splitting 11:1-9 into two legends, calls the story mythical, and collects the ziggurat and "parallel" evidence then known.  Valuable here for two negative findings:  the Hellenistic parallels are not independent, and K 3657 is not a Babel tablet.

1. 18a.

   Page 223:  “Gu. has apparently succeeded in disentangling two distinct but kindred legends, which are both Yahwistic … One has crystallised round the name 'Babel,' and its leading motive is the 'confusion' of tongues; the other around the memory of some ruined tower, which tradition connected with the 'dispersion' of the race.” ↩ ↩

2. 18b.

   Page 230:  “Parallels.—No Babylonian version of the story has been discovered … It is only in the literature of the Hellenistic period that we find real parallels to the story of the Tower of Babel; and these agree so closely with the biblical account that it is extremely doubtful if they embody any separate tradition.” ↩

3. 18c.

   Page 223:  “A mythical or legendary account of the breaking up of the primitive unity of mankind into separate communities, distinguished and isolated by differences of language.  The story reflects at the same time the impression made on Semitic nomads by the imposing monuments of Babylonian civilisation.” ↩

Longman, Tremper III.  “Genesis.”  The Story of God Bible Commentary.  Zondervan.  2016.  An evangelical, old-earth commentary by the co-author of The Lost World of the Flood.  Reads the Table of Nations as a later political map, the tower as a ziggurat, and the Sumerian Spell of Nudimmud as possibly a future wish.

1. 19a.

   Page 142:  “In terms of the story line, Genesis 10 is clearly not in chronological order with Genesis 11:1—9. Here, as mentioned, we have a primitive linguistic map, but according to the tower of Babel story to follow, there was only one language up to that point in time.” ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 150:  “The tower is described as one that 'reaches to the heavens.' What kind of structure would this be? The best answer is likely a ziggurat, a stepped pyramid, once again well-known for this region.” ↩

3. 19c.

   Page 143:  “This 'genealogy' is really a primitive linguistic, political map that reflects realties of a later time, certainly no earlier than the time of Moses.” ↩

Højgaard, Christian Canu et al.  Text-Fabric Dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch, version 7.1.3.  2023.  A machine-readable transcription of the Samaritan Pentateuch (MS Dublin Chester Beatty Library 751) from Schorch's critical edition.  Cited for the consonantal text of Genesis 11:1-9.

1. 20a.

   Verse Genesis 11:8:  The Samaritan reads "and they stopped building the city and the tower" (ויחדלו לבנות את העיר ואת המגדל), with the Septuagint and against the Masoretic text, which has only "the city". ↩

Josephus: Jewish Antiquities.  Translated by William Whiston.  Edited by Benedikt Niese.  1890.  Niese's Greek text, whose section numbers are used here, with William Whiston's English translation of 1737, quoted in its original spelling.  Book 1 chapter 4 is the oldest surviving expansion of the Babel story to name Nimrod as its builder and a second flood as his fear;  1.146 ties Peleg's name to the dispersion.  Section numbers are Niese's.  Mirror:  Penelope.uchicago.edu

1. 21a.

   Section 1.110:  “God also commanded them to send colonies abroad, for the through peopling of the earth; that they might not raise seditions among themselves … But they were so ill instructed, that they did not obey God.” ↩

2. 21b.

   Section 1.113:  “Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God.  He was the grand-son of Ham, the son of Noah: a bold man, and of great strength of hand.” ↩

3. 21c.

   Section 1.114:  “He also said, 'He would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again: for that he would build a Tower too high for the waters to be able to reach; and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their fore-fathers.'” ↩

4. 21d.

   Section 1.116:  “It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with morter, made of bitumen; that it might not be liable to admit water.” ↩

5. 21e.

   Section 1.117:  “he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages; and causing, that through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another.  The place wherein they built the Tower is now called Babylon: because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before: for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, Confusion.” ↩

The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, vol. 2:  Pseudepigrapha.  Clarendon Press.  Edited by R. H. Charles.  1913.  The standard English collection.  The Sibylline Oracles (translated by H. C. O. Lanchester) and 3 Baruch (translated by H. Maldwyn Hughes) are the two Jewish retellings of Babel cited here;  Lanchester's notes trace the later Greek "witnesses" back to the Sibyl.

1. 22a.

   Pages 379–380:  “(97) But whensoever the threatened vengeance of the Mighty God is brought to pass, (98) that vengeance with which once he threatened mortals when they made a tower (99) in the Assyrian land—Now all were of one tongue (100) and they desired to ascend into the starry heaven.  (101) But straightway the Eternal laid great stress (102) upon the blasts: then the winds dashed down the great tower from on high, (103) and incited mortal men to mutual strife.  (104) Therefore men named the city Babylon.  (105) But when the tower was fallen and men's tongues (106) divided off with divers kinds of sounds, then the whole (107) earth began to be filled with separate kingdoms.  (108) Then came the tenth generation of articulate men, (109) since the flood came upon the men of yore.”  Sibylline Oracles 3.97-109, Lanchester's translation;  the bracketed numbers are Geffcken's line numbers. ↩

2. 22b.

   Page 379:  “102.  The wind is not mentioned in Genesis, but the allusion occurs in Jubilees x. 26; Josephus, Ant. i. 4. 3”.  Lanchester's note. ↩

3. 22c.

   Page 534:  “And the Lord appeared to them and confused their speech, when they had built the tower to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits.  And they took a gimlet, and sought to pierce the heaven, saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron.”  3 Baruch 3:7-8, Hughes's translation. ↩

Eusebius of Caesarea.  Praeparatio Evangelica, Book 9.  Clarendon Press.  Translated by E. H. Gifford.  c. 315 (edition of 1903).  Eusebius's anthology of pagan and Hellenistic-Jewish writers, which preserves the only "Greek" accounts of the tower:  Abydenus, pseudo-Eupolemus and an anonymous fragment.  Each depends on the Sibyl or on Genesis.  Chapter numbers are the only locators the transcription carries.

1. 23a.

   Book 9, chapter 14:  “the men who first arose out of the earth, being puffed up by their strength and great stature, and proudly thinking that they were better than the gods, raised a huge tower, where Babylon now stands: and when they were already nearer to heaven, the winds came to the help of the gods, and overthrew their structure upon them, the ruins of which were called Babylon.  And being up to that time of one tongue, they received from the gods a confused language; and afterwards war arose between Cronos and Titan.” ↩

2. 23b.

   Book 9, chapter 17:  “the city Babylon was first founded by those who escaped from the Deluge; and that they were giants, and built the tower renowned in history.  But when this had been overthrown by the act of God, the giants were dispersed over the whole earth.” ↩

Morris, Henry M.  “The New Defender's Study Bible, notes on Genesis 11:1-9.”  Institute for Creation Research, icr.org.  World Publishing.  2006.  Morris's verse-by-verse notes as the Institute for Creation Research posts them.  The most specific young-earth statement of the mechanism (God altering each family's speech apparatus), the count (possibly seventy), the tower (the prototype of all ziggurats) and the aftermath (each family briefly a cave-dwelling hunter-gatherer band).

1. 24a.

   Verse 11:7:  “In some inexplicable manner, God altered the brain/nerve/speech apparati of the Babylonian rebels to give each family unit (possibly the seventy families of Genesis 10) its own distinctive vocabulary/phonology complex. With all this, however, they all remained truly human, unchanged in basic thought processes or moral character.” ↩

2. 24b.

   Verse 11:4:  “This tower became the prototype of all the great ziggurats (stepped towers) and pyramids of the world.” ↩

3. 24c.

   Verse 11:8:  “Probably all families except that of Nimrod himself departed from Babel, leaving him and his immediate family the burden of developing his own tribe at Babel as best they could. These probably became the Sumerians. … This account, originally written by Shem (Genesis 11:10), is reflected in somewhat distorted form in the legends of other nations, including a tablet excavated at Ur.” ↩

4. 24d.

   Verse 11:9:  “Each for a time would have to live by hunting and gathering, residing in caves or temporary shelters.” ↩

Lawrence, Paul J. N.  “Making some sense of Babel and afterwards.”  Journal of Creation 32(1):106–113.  2018.  A young-earth paper that accepts the linguists' count of about 420 families and isolates and proposes that their proto-languages arose at Babel.  The reading in the camp most open to a test, because every family's internal diversity must then fit the time since Babel.

1. 25a.

   Section introduction, point 3(b):  “When the Lord confused the language of the people, new languages were miraculously generated. What and how many of these new languages there were is unknown, but the result of the LORD's action was clear—confusion (11:9), the people were unable to understand each other and so scattered over the face of the whole earth.” ↩

2. 25b.

   Section Language families and isolates:  “surprisingly few of these features are shared with languages from another language family, suggesting that the protolanguages and progenitors of modern isolates arose at the original confusion of languages that the Book of Genesis records as happening at the Tower of Babel.” ↩

3. 25c.

   Section Language families and isolates:  “A total 136 language isolates are claimed, making up 32% of all the c. 420 language families known (figure 1).” ↩ ↩

4. 25d.

   Section introduction, point 3(c):  “The location of this incident is placed in Shinar which may be the land inhabited by the Sumerians, i.e. southern Iraq (11:1). The city, of which the tower was a part, was Babel ('confused'), the Hebrew word for Babylon (11:9).” ↩

Adamthwaite, Murray.  “The languages of Babel.”  Creation 42(1):52–55.  2019.  A popular article by a young-earth writer with a doctorate in ancient Near Eastern studies.  Argues that the unrelated languages of the ancient Near East all appear at about the same time and that this is what Babel predicts.  Cited here only for its location of Shinar.

1. 26a.

   Section From Shin'ar to the whole world:  “This undoubtedly refers to Lower Mesopotamia”. ↩

Whitcomb, John C.  “Babel.”  Creation 24(3):31–33.  2002.  A short popular article by the co-author of The Genesis Flood, reposted by Answers in Genesis.  Reads the tower as a Mesopotamian ziggurat temple-tower and Peleg's division as linguistic.

1. 27a.

   Section The Towers:  “But what happens when the Hebrew wording is translated literally? We then have 'a tower whose top [is] into heaven.' (cf. NKJV). And this is exactly what ancient Mesopotamian ziggurat temple-towers were for! The top compartment represented heaven. … The pyramids of Egypt and, much later, the great Mayan temples of Central America, reflected the design of the original Tower of Babel.” ↩

Matthews, Mike.  “The World in Revolt:  Understanding the Rebellion at Babel.”  Answers.  2008.  Answers in Genesis's magazine treatment from its 2008 Babel issue.  Dates the rebellion loosely from Ussher and treats the ziggurat identification as one suggestion among others.

1. 28a.

   Section on the tower:  “One recent suggestion is that, like ziggurats built in later cities of the region, the tower was a symbolic bridge between heaven and earth”. ↩

2. 28b.

   Section opening:  “After the Flood (about 2348 BC, according to Ussher) God had commanded Noah's descendants to 'be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth' (Genesis 9:1), but instead they took up permanent residence, with no apparent intention to spread out. This rebellion, which took place a century or two after Noah's Flood, was no surprise to God.” ↩

3. 28c.

   Section opening:  “At first, all people on earth were literally of 'one lip' and 'one words.' They had the same grammar and vocabulary. But as a result of God's judgment, their language was divided into several languages, according to 'families.' This is what we find today.” ↩

Answers in Genesis.  “What Did the Tower Look Like?”  Answers.  2008.  An unsigned magazine sidebar.  States the young-earth answer to the absence of any excavated Babel:  the work was stopped early, so nothing remains to find.

1. 29a.

   Section body:  “Studying the oldest buildings from the area, archaeologists assume the Tower at Babel looked like a ziggurat.”  “If the plans at Babel were so grand, why don't we find any remains today? It seems likely that God frustrated their work in the early stages, while they were still laying out the city and constructing brickworks.” ↩

Chaffey, Tim.  “Did Humanity Really Disperse from Babel?”  Answers 20.  Dec 3, 2025.  Answers in Genesis's current popular statement.  Estimates about seventy languages from the seventy names of Genesis 10, doubts that migdal implies a ziggurat, and warns readers against identifying Babel's tower with Nebuchadnezzar's Etemenanki.

1. 30a.

   Section Footnotes, note 5:  “Some researchers have argued that the word implies that the structure was a pyramid or ziggurat, but this is too strong of a statement. … It would be more accurate to assert that while there are no clear examples in Scripture where migdal refers to a pyramid or ziggurat, the word was likely flexible enough in meaning that it could be used to describe these structures.” ↩

2. 30b.

   Section Variety of Languages:  “Genesis 10 mentions 70 people groups descended from Shem, Ham, and Japheth, so it seems as if there were probably around 70 languages that resulted from Babel, although this is not explicitly stated in the text. … Many modern researchers believe there are a little over 100 language families today. Further research may reduce that number to get closer to a figure that would match Genesis 10”. ↩

3. 30c.

   Section Have We Found the Tower?:  “the stele shows a neo-Babylonian tower that was built more than 1,500 years after the original tower at Babel, so they are almost certainly not the same tower. … By equating the tower described in Genesis 11 with Nebuchadnezzar's tower constructed well over a millennia later, Bible-believing Christians may be unwittingly promoting a position developed by liberal critics on unbiblical assumptions.” ↩

4. 30d.

   Section Babel in History:  “Unfortunately, our archaeological knowledge of this period of human history is woefully lacking. Given the biblical narrative of events after the flood, this should be expected since humanity did not really settle anywhere until Babel.” ↩

Ham, Ken.  “How Many Languages?”  Answers with Ken Ham, radio transcript, volume 149.  Apr 26, 2023.  A one-minute broadcast script.  Cited because it is Answers in Genesis's most widely heard statement of how many languages Babel made, and because it gives a number its own writers contradict.

1. 31a.

   Section transcript:  “Well, language scientists say they came from fewer than one hundred original language families. … But, at Babel, he divided this language, creating about one hundred language families—and that's how many language families exist today!” ↩

Hodge, Bodie.  Tower of Babel:  The Cultural History of Our Ancestors.  Master Books.  2013.  The one book-length young-earth treatment.  Counts the names of Genesis 10 (14 from Japheth, 39 from Ham, at least 25 from Shem) as a minimum of 78 language families made at Babel, which have since grown into today's languages. ↩

Osgood, A. John M.  “The Ark Landing, the Migration, and the Early Settling of Noah's Sons.  Part 1:  The Beginning and the Sons of Shem.”  Answers Research Journal 16:501–528.  2023.  The only young-earth paper that names an archaeological horizon for the dispersion (the end of Ubaid 2) and a culture for Nimrod (Uruk).  Treats the Chalcolithic cultures of Mesopotamia as contemporary sons of Shem and lowers Ur III and Hammurabi by three to four centuries.  Osgood is a physician who has written on Near Eastern chronology for creationist journals since the 1980s.

1. 33a.

   Section The Dispersion:  “Genesis 10:25 indicates that the dispersion from Babel occurred in the fourth generation, suggesting that Babel occurred somewhere close to 100 years after the Flood. I am here using the figures of the Masoretic text of the Bible.”  Section How Many People?:  “I have previously calculated in Over the Face of All the Earth that the possible population by the time of Babel (using Masoretic text figures) was close to 8,000 people, allowing family units at the dispersion of around 130 individuals on average (Osgood 2015, 37–40).”  Section The Sons of Shem—Their Early Settlements:  “The Uruk culture is a later arrival and addition which I will identify as clearly Hamitic and an identifier leading to the beginning of the Babel dispersion.” ↩

Habermehl, Anne.  “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?”  Answers Research Journal 4:25–53.  2011.  Argues from geography, geology and the name Šanhar that Shinar was north-east Syria, that southern Iraq was under a post-Flood sea until the Ice Age ended, and that the tower lies in the Upper Khabur triangle near Tell Brak.  The one young-earth paper that asks whether Babylon's site was dry ground a century after the Flood.  Its archaeology is answered in the Neolithic article.

1. 34a.

   Section Abstract:  “an analysis of history, geography, and geology, shows that Shinar cannot have been in the south, but rather was a territory in what is northeastern Syria today; and that the remnants of the Tower must be located in the Upper Khabur River triangle, not far from Tell Brak, which is the missing city of Akkad.” ↩

Griffith, Ken, and Darrell K. White.  “An Upper Mesopotamian location for Babel.”  Journal of Creation 35(2):69–79.  2021.  Places Babel on the Çınar plain near Diyarbakır, Turkey, at the centre of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and of the wild founder crops, and reads a Babylonian chronicle as Sargon moving a northern "Babylon" south.  The third published young-earth location, and the one that compresses the most archaeology into the fewest years.

1. 35a.

   Section Sargon's conquest of a northern 'Babylon':  “Sargon of Akkad recorded his relocation of a city named 'Babylon' in the region of Diyarbakir, Turkey as part of his defeat of Subartu. … Given Pepi's place in the Memphite dynasties of Manetho, this places Sargon more than five centuries after the dispersion.” ↩

Ross, Marcus R. et al.  “Human History from Adam to Abraham:  Integrating Paleoanthropology with a Young-Age Creation Perspective.”  Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism 9:66–87.  2023.  Three young-earth scientists place every hominin fossil after the Flood and ask where Babel then falls.  The one young-earth paper that names Seely's objection, grants its force, and states the cost of each answer.

1. 36a.

   Page 76:  “We acknowledge here that these observations raise significant questions about the nature of the Babel description in Genesis, which appears to be firmly rooted in the architectural practices known from Mesopotamian city states (see Walton 1995, Seely 2001), and the relationship of these distant people (who are unquestionably not H. sapiens) to the Tower builders.” ↩

2. 36b.

   Page 76:  “One possibility is that the Tower of Babel may be a later innovation that took place only in Mesopotamia and involved only H. sapiens. The putatively earlier and globally distributed remains of non-sapiens people could be traces of pre-Babel dispersals of specific family groups or clans.”  “A second possible explanation is that all globally-distributed hominin remains are indeed post-Babel and that the setting of the Babel story is much more remote than archaeologists have considered.” ↩

3. 36c.

   Page 76:  “Thus, the peculiarly Mesopotamian building techniques of fired mud brick and asphalt mortar must have been rediscovered at a later period, and it is these subsequent civilizations that are the focus of currently archaeological investigation.” ↩

4. 36d.

   Pages 76–77:  “Given the importance of the biblical evidence of universality, both in Genesis 11 specifically and as a theme throughout chapters 1-11, we prefer the second explanation to the first. … The advantages of the first explanation are considerable, however, particularly in the possibility of accounting for the takeover of H. sapiens, and we therefore remain open to being corrected by future studies.” ↩

5. 36e.

   Page 76:  “The disadvantage of this model is its poor accounting of the seemingly universal description in the Babel account. … The biblical text certainly appears to present the circumstances as involving all the people in the world at that time.” ↩

Ross, Hugh.  Navigating Genesis:  A Scientist's Journey through Genesis 1–11.  RTB Press.  2014.  The Reasons to Believe founder's commentary.  Holds a local Flood that was universal to mankind because all people still lived in one region, and a Babel that scattered them tens of thousands of years ago.  Agrees with the young-earth side that the text means all mankind and that the confusion was a miracle;  does not discuss the bricks.

1. 37a.

   Page 149:  “We can deduce from these passages that humanity had remained firmly entrenched in only one geographical area. Not until many generations after Noah did humans begin to disperse and settle throughout the rest of the planet.” ↩

2. 37b.

   Page 186:  “So, God acted again. The text tells us He 'confused their language.' No longer did everyone understand the same words. … Amid the confusion, people were compelled to find and stay close to anyone with whom they could meaningfully communicate. Nations likely formed along language lines.” ↩

3. 37c.

   Page 191:  “Questions about how God introduced these changes, as well as questions about how He 'confused' the languages cannot be answered from the biblical data.” ↩

Ross, Hugh.  “New Research Confirms Postflood Dispersal of Humanity.”  Reasons to Believe.  Nov 5, 2023.  A web article giving Ross's current date for the Flood and Babel, and reading the peopling of Europe, Asia and Australia 50,000 to 40,000 years ago as the Babel dispersal.

1. 38a.

   Section Dispersal of Humanity:  “Genesis 10–11 makes clear that Noah's Flood predates— by at least several generations—humans' first efforts to colonize regions beyond East Africa, the Near East, and the Middle East. On this basis, it seems likely that Noah's Flood occurred prior to 40,000 years ago, most probably earlier than 45,000 years ago.” ↩

Hill, Carol A.  “A Time and a Place for Noah.”  Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 53(1):24–40.  2001.  An old-earth geologist places Noah in Jemdet Nasr Mesopotamia about 3000 BC and reads the one language of Genesis 11:1 as Sumerian before the rise of Akkadian.  The main old-earth "local Babel", stated in its own words.

1. 39a.

   Page 26:  “Noah's descendant, Nimrod (Gen. 10:8-12), was the founder of Babel, Erech, and Calneh, all cities in the land of Shinar (the biblical counterpart of the cuneiform 'Sumer'). The 'tower of Babel' was located on the plain of Shinar, and may have been the ziggurat of ancient Babylon.” ↩

2. 39b.

   Page 33:  “The possibility that before ca. 2500 B.C. all of Mesopotamia spoke one language (Sumerian) may have been the foundation for the statement found in Gen. 11:1 … After about 2500 B.C. (or about the time of Peleg and the tower of Babel), other languages such as Old Akkadian and Old Babylonian (Semitic languages), 'overtook' the ancient Sumerian, and by 2000 B.C., it had become dead as a spoken language.” ↩

3. 39c.

   Page 33:  Hill dates the first Semitic scribal names, at Fara and Abu Salabikh, to about 2600-2500 BC. ↩

Reimer, Steve.  “The Tower of Babel:  An Archaeologically Informed Reinterpretation.”  Direction 25(2):64–72.  1996.  An evangelical reading in a Mennonite Brethren journal that ties Genesis 11 to the rise and collapse of Uruk in the late fourth millennium BC and makes the confusion of tongues the growth of ethnic communities rather than of languages.

1. 40a.

   Page 65:  “I propose that the biblical account of the Tower of Babel recorded in Genesis 11:1-9, accurately reflects a series of prehistorical events which culminated in the fall of the Uruk 'empire.'”  Page 70:  “If language is understood to mean specific spoken languages or dialects then the Uruk paradigm doesn't fit. If on the other hand, the confusion of languages is understood as the development of ethnic communities, then the transition from Uruk to Early Dynastic fits very well.” ↩

George, A. R.  “The Tower of Babel:  archaeology, history and cuneiform texts.”  Archiv für Orientforschung 51.  2005.  A review article on Hansjörg Schmid's publication of the 1962 excavation of Etemenanki's core, by the leading authority on Babylon's temples.  Reconstructs the tower's three building phases, argues from Esarhaddon's own measurement that the 91 m tower stood by the early seventh century BC, and traces its history back into the second millennium and forward to its clearance under Alexander's successors.  Printed in AfO 51 (2005/2006): 75–95;  the page numbers cited here are those of the author's posted text, which is paginated differently.

1. 41a.

   Page 4:  “The decipherment of the E-sangil Tablet confirmed most commentators in the view that the mythical Tower of Babel was a memory of a real building, a staged temple-tower that the Babylonians knew by the Sumerian ceremonial name of E-temen-anki 'House of the Foundation Platform of Heaven and Underworld' (for a critique of this assumption see Uehlinger 1990).” ↩

2. 41b.

   Page 20:  “almost no original building inscriptions have yet been recovered from pre-Sargonid Babylon, not because disproportionately few were written but because the structures in whose foundations they were deposited lie mostly inaccessible beneath the water table.” ↩

Vanstiphout, Herman.  “Epics of Sumerian Kings:  The Matter of Aratta.”  Writings from the Ancient World 20.  Society of Biblical Literature.  2003.  Edition and translation of the four Sumerian epics of Enmerkar and Lugalbanda by the specialist who has written most on them.  He reads the Spell of Nudimmud as a wish that the whole Ur III state will speak Sumerian, and concedes in a note that the grammar would allow the older past-tense reading.

1. 42a.

   Pages 93–94, note 19:  “The interpretation of the Spell of Nudimmud is still in dispute.  An alternative reading, which puts it in the past, not in the (immediate) future, is not impossible.  Grammar and philology could bear such a reading.  Yet the style of the episode and certainly its meaning and function in the story argue strongly for my interpretation.  Putting it in the past cannot be of any use in the development of the narrative.” ↩

Frame, Grant.  “Sargon II 043 (the Dūr-Šarrukīn cylinder inscription).”  The Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II, King of Assyria (721–705 BC), RINAP 2, Oracc online edition.  Eisenbrauns.  2021.  The critical edition of Sargon II's account of peopling his new capital with deportees of many languages, with Frame's note on the idiom "one mouth" and K. Lawson Younger's literal reading of it.  The one Assyrian text whose vocabulary stands close to Genesis 11:1.

1. 43a.

   Lines 72–74:  “People from the four (quarters of the world), (speaking) foreign language(s) (and of) diverse speech, those who had dwelt in (both) mountain(s) and (low) land(s), as many as the 'Light of the Gods' (Šamaš), the lord of all, shepherded, whom I had carried off as booty by the power of my staff at the command of the god Aššur, my lord, I made act in concert and (re)settled (them) inside it (Dūr-Šarrukīn).  I commissioned native Assyrians, masters of every craft, as overseers (and) commanders to instruct (the settlers) in correct behavior (and how) to revere god and king.” ↩

Gelb, I. J.  “The Name of Babylon.”  I Studied Inscriptions from before the Flood:  Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1-11, 266–269.  Eisenbrauns.  Edited by Richard S. Hess and David Toshio Tsumura.  1955 (edition of 1994).  A short study of the city's name by a leading Assyriologist of the University of Chicago, first printed in the Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies in 1955.  It finds the oldest mention in a year name of Šar-kali-šarri, shows that the Ur III scribes read the name as Akkadian Bāb-ilim, and argues that "gate of god" is itself a popular etymology of an older Babil.  Reprinted in an evangelical reader on Genesis 1-11.

1. 44a.

   Page 268:  “Such a name as Bab-ilim "Gate of God," does not fit into our knowledge of ancient oriental onomastics, and consequently we must raise doubts as to whether Bab-ilim actually represents the oldest form of this city. It may be argued with some force that the name Bab-ilim represents a secondary form due to popular etymology of some pre-Akkadian and pre-Semitic form. For this earlier name I would suggest the form Babil attested 15 times in the following Ur III texts:”.  Page 269:  “the existence of the forest of Babil in the area of Lagas”. ↩

2. 44b.

   Page 269:  “In conclusion, we may say that the existence of the forest of Babil in the area of Lagas presupposes the existence of the element babil which was used for several geographic names in Sumer. That element, whatever its meaning and ultimate origin, may have lain at the basis of the name of the city, which through a process of popular etymology appears as Bab-ilim in the earliest extant written sources.” ↩

The count and the arithmetic are this article's own.  Levels:  the Eridu Temple Sounding has 19 numbered levels, XIX to I,⁵¹ grouped by pottery as Crawford summarises Oates,⁵² and above them lies at least one Early Dynastic building phase, the palace and probable earlier ziggurat that Amar-Sin levelled,⁵¹ for 20 levels in all.  Constructions:  nine Ubaid buildings (XVII-XV and XI-VI), five Uruk-period platform phases (V-I) and the Early Dynastic phase, for 15.  The years available, Y, are the Babel date minus 2112 BC, Ur-Nammu's accession on the Middle Chronology.  Years per level are Y / 20 and years per construction Y / 15.  Checks:  2358 - 2112 = 246, and 246 / 20 = 12.3, 246 / 15 = 16.4;  2247 - 2112 = 135, giving 6.75 and 9.0;  2242 - 2112 = 130, giving 6.5 and 8.67;  2178 - 2112 = 66, giving 3.3 and 4.4;  2500 - 2112 = 388, giving 19.4 and 25.9;  2707 - 2112 = 595, giving 29.75 and 39.7;  2767 - 2112 = 655, giving 32.75 and 43.7;  2428 - 2112 = 316, giving 15.8 and 21.1.  Seder Olam's AM 1996 on the traditional Jewish era, which puts creation in 3761 BC, runs from the autumn of 1766 BC to the autumn of 1765 BC;  Ussher's creation is 243 years earlier, at 4004 BC, which is why the same AM year is 2008 BC on his scale.  Osgood's horizon leaves levels XI to I and the Early Dynastic phase, 12 levels, after Babel, and 388 / 12 is about 32 years each.  The compression figure is rough.  About 3,500 years is a round conventional span for Eridu's sequence, from its first level in Ubaid 1 to the end of the Early Dynastic period about 2350 BC;  counted from the start of the southern Ubaid, about 6500 BC on radiometric dates, it is over 4,000.  Either way, fitting it into the Septuagint's 600 to 650 years is a compression by five or more.  The Babel dates in the first column are those printed by each writer, or computed from the begetting ages of each text as in When Was the Tower of Babel? ↩

The arithmetic is this article's own, from the begetting ages of Genesis 11:10-16.  Shem fathers Arpachshad "two years after the flood".  Masoretic:  Arpachshad 35, Shelah 30, Eber 34, so Peleg is born 2 + 35 + 30 + 34 = 101 years after the Flood, lives 30 + 209 = 239 years, and dies 340 years after it.  Samaritan:  135, 130 and 134, so 401;  Peleg lives 130 + 109 = 239, so 640.  Septuagint:  Arpachshad 135, Kainan 130, Shelah 130, Eber 134, so 531;  Peleg lives 130 + 209 = 339, so 870.  The 2166 BC anchor for Abraham's birth counts back from Solomon's fourth year, 966 BC:  480 years to the Exodus in 1446 BC (1 Kings 6:1), 430 years in Egypt to Jacob's arrival in 1876 BC (Exodus 12:40), then Jacob 130, Isaac 60 and Abraham 100 (Genesis 47:9, 25:26, 21:5).  From Peleg's birth to Abram's the begetting ages are 30, 32, 30, 29 and 130 on the Masoretic text, 130, 132, 130, 79 and 70 on the Samaritan, and 130, 132, 130, 79 and 130 on the Septuagint, taking Terah's age at Abram's birth as 130 from Genesis 11:32 and 12:4 where the text allows it.  That is 352, 942 and 1,132 years from the Flood to Abram, which puts the Masoretic Flood at 2518 BC, the Samaritan at 3108 BC and the Septuagint at 3298 BC, so Peleg's life runs 2417-2178, 2707-2468 and 2767-2428 BC.  The Samaritan text cannot take Terah 130, because its Genesis 11:32 gives Terah 145 years.  Ussher's anchor, Abraham born 1996 BC, puts the Masoretic Flood at 2348 BC and Peleg's life at 2247-2008 BC. ↩

“Seder Olam Rabbah.”  Sefaria.  c. 160 (edition of 1904).  The classical rabbinic chronology from creation to the Second Temple, traditionally attributed to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta of the second century AD, in the Hebrew of the Warsaw edition of 1904.  Chapter 1 counts 340 years from the Flood to the dispersion and argues from Joktan that "in his days" means the end of Peleg's life.

1. 47a.

   Chapter 1:  “מן המבול עד הפלגה ש"מ שנה, נמצא נח חיה אחר הפלגה עשר שנים, אבינו אברהם היה בפלגה בן מ"ח שנה, אמר רבי יוסי נביא גדול היה עבר שקרא שם בנו פלג ברוח הקודש, שנאמר כי בימיו נפלגה הארץ וגו' (שם י כה), אם בתחלת ימיו, והלא יקטן אחיו היה קטן ממנו והוליד י"ג משפחות ונתפלגו, ואם באמצע ימיו והלא לא בא לסתום אלא לפרש, הא אינו אומר כי בימיו נפלגה הארץ אלא בסוף ימיו”.  This article's literal English translation:  From the Flood to the Dispersion, 340 years.  It follows that Noah lived ten years after the Dispersion, and Abraham our father was 48 years old at the Dispersion.  Rabbi Yose said:  Eber was a great prophet, for he named his son Peleg by the Holy Spirit, as it is said, 'for in his days the earth was divided' (Gen 10:25).  If at the beginning of his days:  but was not Joktan his brother younger than he, and he begot thirteen families and they were dispersed?  And if in the middle of his days:  but Scripture comes not to obscure but to explain.  So it says 'in his days the earth was divided' only of the end of his days. ↩

“Manetho.”  Loeb Classical Library 350.  Harvard University Press.  Translated by W. G. Waddell.  1940.  The standard edition and translation of the fragments of Manetho's history of Egypt, with the Book of Sothis in an appendix.  Waddell explains that the Book of Sothis survives only through the ninth-century chronicler Syncellus and is not Manetho's work.

1. 48a.

   Page 239:  “the total of years from the first king and founder of Egypt, Mestraim, is 700 belonging to 25 kings, i.e. from the general cosmic year 2776, in which the Dispersion took place in the 34th year of the rule of Arphaxad and the 5th year of Phalec.”  Page 233:  “the 534 years from the Flood to the Building of the Tower, the Confusion of Tongues, and the Dispersion of the Peoples”.  Page xxviii:  “The Book of Sothis begins with the reign of Mestraim, Anno Mundi 2776 … i.e. 534 years after the Flood”. ↩

CDLI (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative).  “Year Names of Sharkalisharri.”  CDLI wiki.  2019.  The CDLI's list of the year formulas of the Akkadian king Šar-kali-šarri, from the data of Marcel Sigrist and Peter Damerow, each with its source tablet.  Formula j, on the tablet RTC 118, holds the earliest known mention of Babylon.

1. 49a.

   Section formula j:  “In the year in which Szarkaliszarri laid the foundations of the temples of the goddess Annunitum and of the god Aba in Babylon and took prisoner Szarlag(ab) the king of Gutium (RTC 118)”.  The transliteration writes Babylon ka2-dingir{ki}, "gate of god". ↩

Jeanson, Nathaniel T.  “Y-Chromosome-Guided Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA Lineages in the Americas.”  Answers Research Journal 18:347–375.  2025.  A young-earth geneticist's analysis of Native American mitochondrial lineages, read against his Y-chromosome tree.  Cited here for one sentence that states how his model maps radiocarbon ages onto the time after Babel.

1. 50a.

   Page 347:  “In YEC terms, "15,000 radiocarbon years ago" likely corresponds to the very early post-Babel time period, not more than a few thousand years ago.” ↩

Safar, Fuad et al.  Eridu.  State Organization of Antiquities and Heritage, Baghdad.  1981.  The final excavation report on Eridu by its Iraqi and British excavators.  Its Temple Sounding gives a sequence of superimposed temples from a one-room shrine on virgin sand to a Late Uruk temple, beneath the Ur III ziggurat.  Its absolute dates for the Ur III kings are about 60 years lower than the Middle Chronology now used.

1. 51a.

   Section front matter:  “The sequence of plans recovered from the Temple Sounding starting as a simple one-roomed shrine in Level XVII just above virgin soil and ending as a huge and elaborate temple of the protoliterate period in Level I provides a vivid illustration of the evolution of religious architecture in Mesopotamia. Nowhere else has such a complete architectural and ceramic sequence been recovered for this period.” ↩

2. 51b.

   Page 47:  “It was probably the kings of the first dynasty of Ur or an unknown governor a little earlier in the late Early Dynastic II Period who built that Palace, and very likely they built a Ziggurat and other constructions on the acropolis, which disappeared in the levelling of the surface undertaken by Amar-Sin.” ↩

Crawford, Harriet.  “The Term "Hajji Muhammad":  A Re-evaluation.”  Beyond the Ubaid:  Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East, 163–168.  Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.  Edited by Robert A. Carter and Graham Philip.  2010.  A chapter by a specialist in early Mesopotamia that re-examines the Ubaid 2 pottery style first defined at Eridu.  It restates Joan Oates's division of the Eridu levels into four Ubaid phases and notes the gap in the building sequence between levels XV and XI.

1. 52a.

   Page 164:  “According to Oates (1960), the pottery can be divided into four phases: levels XIX–XV = Eridu/Ubaid 1; XIV–XII = Hajji Muhammad/Ubaid 2; XII–VIII = Ubaid 3; and VII–VI = Ubaid 4. What is very clear is that there is an undoubted break in the architectural sequence. Three buildings of indeterminate status were recovered from levels XV, XVI, and XVII in the lower part of the sequence, and there is then an absence of building remains until level XI, where part of a monumental building, generally considered to be a temple, was recovered. This is the first of a series of six buildings so defined.” ↩