The literature

This page exists so that nobody has to take the article on trust.  Every source it rests on is listed here with what it shows, who wrote it, and which way it cuts.

A catalogue of the sources worked up in the article's research dossiers (research/text-and-parallels.md, research/archaeology-place-date.md, research/top-up.md) and in the Babel section of the language-families dossier (html/unpublished-ai/language-families-and-the-tower-of-babel/research/rates-attestations-creationist.md).  Each source is named by its library key.  Each is either cited in index.md or marked as considered and not used, with the reason.

How to read an entry

Direction.  Whether the source supports, undercuts or complicates the young-earth reading of Genesis 11:  a real, universal event at Babel a few centuries after the Flood.  Assigned by what the source shows, not by what its author believes.  Several critical scholars are tagged supports on a narrow point, and several young-earth writers are tagged undercuts.

Verified.  full means the text was read directly by this project;  abstract means only an abstract or summary;  citation means only a bibliographic record or another writer's report.

The text of Genesis 10-11

Westminster Leningrad Codex, Genesis 10-11 (morphhb)

openscriptures-2026c  Open Scriptures, morphhb, Genesis 10:1-11:9 with lemmas and morphology.

camp: mainstream method: text direction: background verified: full

The Masoretic Hebrew with word-level tags.  Used to count kol-hāʾāreṣ (five times in 11:1-9) and to show that Genesis 10 says lāšôn and Genesis 11 says śāpâ.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1.

Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon (1906)

brown-1906

camp: mainstream method: lexicon direction: background verified: full

The standard Hebrew-English lexicon.  Its entry for bālal (p. 117) gives "mingle, confuse" with śāpâ as object at Genesis 11:7 and 9, and "mix (cakes or flour, etc. always with oil)" as the priestly sacrificial sense.  Checked against the WLC lemmas for the parent's two word-for-word renderings of 11:7 and 11:9.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1.

Septuagint Genesis, Rahlfs (CATSS)

eliranwong-2017  Rahlfs' Septuagint as a word list with verse index.

camp: mainstream method: text direction: background verified: full

The Greek of Genesis 11:1-9, used to check the NETS renderings.  Status:  considered, not used:  the article quotes the Greek through the NETS translation, which renders the Göttingen text.

NETS Genesis

hiebert-2007  Robert J. V. Hiebert, A New English Translation of the Septuagint:  Genesis (Oxford, 2007).

camp: mainstream method: translation direction: supports verified: full

Shows the Septuagint's "one speech for all", "before we are scattered", and the city named Synchysis, "Confusion".  Supports the universal reading and shows the translator kept the pun at the cost of the name.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1.

Samaritan Pentateuch (Text-Fabric)

hojgaard-2023  Højgaard, Naaijer and Schorch, Text-Fabric dataset of the Samaritan Pentateuch.

camp: mainstream method: text direction: background verified: full

Shows that the Samaritan text, like the Septuagint, adds "and the tower" at 11:8.  Its begetting ages give the Samaritan window of When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1.

Dead Sea Scrolls

No library key.  Secondary lists of the Qumran Genesis manuscripts.

camp: mainstream method: text direction: background verified: citation

No scroll preserves Genesis 11:1-9;  4Q252 begins at 11:31.  Status:  stated in the parent's Part 1 without a footnote;  Tov 2010 should confirm it (Issues).

Ancient readers

Josephus, Antiquities 1 (Niese and Whiston)

niese-1890  Niese's Greek with Whiston's English, Perseus.

camp: ancient method: text direction: complicates verified: full

Josephus places the tower at Babylon, makes Nimrod its instigator and adds the flood-proof motive Genesis lacks.  He says Peleg was born at the dispersion, but his own numbers put that 411 years after the Flood.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Josephus, Antiquities 1 (Whiston, LacusCurtius)

josephus-antiquities-1  The same Whiston translation from another site.

camp: ancient method: translation direction: background verified: full

Status:  considered, not used:  duplicates the Perseus text cited under niese-1890.

Jubilees

charles-1902  R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees (1902).

camp: ancient method: translation direction: complicates verified: full

Reads Genesis 10:25 as the division of land by lot at Peleg's birth and puts the tower a generation later, built for 43 years and thrown down by a wind "between Asshur and Babylon".  Charles's margin for the dispersal (AM 1688) is one jubilee later than his own counting rule gives (AM 1639).  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Jubilees, Flood chapters

charles-1913b  Charles's 1913 Jubilees, the Flood chapters.

camp: ancient method: translation direction: background verified: full

Gives Jubilees's Flood year, used in the dossier to place its dispersal about 330 to 380 years after the Flood.  Status:  considered, not used:  the article states the interval from Peleg's birth on Jubilees's own clock instead.

Sibylline Oracles 3 and 3 Baruch

charles-1913  R. H. Charles (ed.), Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (1913).

camp: ancient method: translation direction: background verified: full

The Sibyl's wind-thrown tower and "divers kinds of sounds", and 3 Baruch's punished builders.  Shows how much the popular Babel picture owes to later Jewish writers.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1.

Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 9

gifford-1903  E. H. Gifford's translation (1903).

camp: ancient method: translation direction: undercuts verified: full

Preserves Abydenus and pseudo-Eupolemus, the Greek "witnesses" to Babel.  Both depend on Jewish sources, so they are not independent corroboration.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1.

Augustine, City of God 16

dods-1887b  Marcus Dods's translation (NPNF).

camp: ancient method: translation direction: supports verified: full

Solves the order of Genesis 10 and 11 as recapitulation, identifies the city with Babylon, and counts 72 languages while adding that "the nations multiplied much more than the languages".  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and in Objections.

Eusebius, Chronicle 1

eusebius-2005  English of the Armenian Chronicle, attalus.org.

camp: ancient method: chronology direction: complicates verified: full

Dates the tower only "in his time", Peleg's, on a Septuagint list without the second Kainan, which puts Peleg's birth 401 years after the Flood.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Jerome, Chronicle, prefaces

pearse-2005c  Roger Pearse and others, tertullian.org.

camp: ancient method: chronology direction: background verified: full

The canons begin with Abraham and Ninus and date nothing to Babel.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Seder Olam Rabbah 1

seder-olam-rabbah-sefaria-2026  Hebrew of the Warsaw 1904 edition, Sefaria.

camp: ancient method: chronology direction: supports verified: full

Puts the dispersion 340 years after the Flood, at Peleg's death, from the argument that Joktan's thirteen families had to be born first.  The classical Jewish date, and the main internal reason for a later Masoretic Babel.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Ussher, Annals (English 1658; modern rendering; Latin 1650)

ussher-1658, ussher-1654, ussher-1650

camp: ancient method: chronology direction: complicates verified: full

Ussher dates Peleg's birth to 2247 BC and ties the division to it only "if" Genesis 10:25 means the birth, then moves the colonies past Reu's birth, 2217 BC.  He never prints 2242.  The Latin was used to correct the 1658 OCR.  Status:  the 1658 and modern texts are cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1;  the Latin is considered, not used, because the English is quoted.

Mesopotamian texts

ETCSL, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta

etcsl-2006e, etcsl-2006d

camp: mainstream method: translation direction: complicates verified: full

The Oxford translation renders the Spell of Nudimmud as a future wish that all lands will address Enlil in one language.  Status:  the translation is cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1;  the composite Sumerian is considered, not used, because the grammar point it would support has not been checked against a standard grammar.

Vanstiphout, Epics of Sumerian Kings (2003)

vanstiphout-2003  No library row (in copyright, not stored).

camp: mainstream method: translation direction: complicates verified: full

The editor reads the spell as a wish for an Ur III world speaking Sumerian, and concedes that "Grammar and philology could bear" the past reading.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1 and Objections.

Kramer, "The 'Babel of Tongues'" (1968)

kramer-1968-babel-of-tongues  No library row (in copyright, not stored).

camp: mainstream method: translation direction: complicates verified: full

Reads the spell as a past age of one language that Enki ended, "beyond all doubt", on a restored school tablet, and treats Genesis as the derivative Hebrew version.  The strongest mainstream support for a Sumerian memory, and its author draws the opposite conclusion about priority.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1 and Objections.

Zólyomi, An Introduction to the Grammar of Sumerian (2017)

zolyomi-2017

camp: mainstream method: grammar direction: complicates verified: full

A university grammar by one of the ETCSL editors.  States the rule for the modal prefix ḫa-:  with the preterite stem it marks certainty "as a rule" (p. 243), and a wish on a transitive action verb takes the present-future stem (p. 244);  the preterite of "to speak" is dug₄, the present-future e (p. 129).  Line 146 of the Spell of Nudimmud has ḫe₂-en-na-da-ab-dug₄, so on the rule it states that the lands spoke in one tongue, which favours Kramer over the ETCSL and Vanstiphout wish.  The book does not discuss the line;  the application is the article's.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Summary, Part 1 and Issues.

Sargon II 043 (RINAP 2)

frame-2021c  Grant Frame, RINAP 2, Oracc.

camp: mainstream method: text direction: complicates verified: full

Sargon makes deportees of many tongues "one mouth" in his new city.  The basis of the imperial reading;  an eighth-century parallel of vocabulary, not evidence of the event.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1.

Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (2013)

lambert-2013

camp: mainstream method: text direction: complicates verified: full

Enuma Elish VI 57-64, the gods moulding bricks to build Babylon, and the re-edition of K 3657 as "The Toil of Babylon", not a tower story.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1.

George, "The Tower of Babel" (2005)

george-2005  Author's posted text of AfO 51.

camp: mainstream method: review direction: complicates verified: full

The key study of Etemenanki:  three structures, the 91 m tower standing by Esarhaddon, smaller towers back into the second millennium, the "top to heaven" phrase as "a common cliché", and early Babylon "beneath the water table".  Cuts against the critics' late-satire reading and against any early tower being visible, and makes the water table a fair young-earth point.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2, The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Objections.

George, "A Stele of Nebuchadnezzar II" (2011)

george-2011

camp: mainstream method: text direction: complicates verified: full

Nebuchadnezzar's own words:  bitumen and baked brick, an unfinished top finished "so that it vied with the heavens", "all the teeming people of the world" as labour.  The closest single text to Genesis 11:3-4, and sixth-century.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Herodotus 1.181-183

herodotus-1920b  Godley's Loeb text, Perseus.

camp: ancient method: text direction: background verified: full

Describes the eight-stage tower with no legend of its building.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1.

Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament 1 (1918)

frazer-1918

camp: mainstream method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full

Frazer's own verdicts:  the Cholula, Toltec, Karen and Admiralty Islands stories show biblical or missionary influence;  the stories recorded before contact lack the tower or the confusion.  Undercuts the use of world legends as independent corroboration.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1 and Objections.

Gelb, "The Name of Babylon" (1955)

gelb-1955  Reprinted in Hess and Tsumura (1994).

camp: mainstream method: lexical direction: complicates verified: full

The oldest mention is a Šar-kali-šarri date;  the Ur III scribes read the name as Bāb-ilim;  "gate of god" is itself a popular etymology of an older Babil.  Makes Babel, Babylon and Babil one name, which undercuts Habermehl's split and parallels the pun of 11:9.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and Objections.

George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (1992)

george-1992

camp: mainstream method: text direction: undercuts verified: full

Tintir gives Eridu as a name of Babylon, first certainly under Nebuchadnezzar I, written eri.du10, a spelling not found before the second millennium.  Settles that Babylon took Eridu's name late, which undercuts Rohl's Eridu Babel.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

CDLI, year names of Šar-kali-šarri

cdli-2019

camp: mainstream method: text direction: complicates verified: full

Formula j, the earliest mention of Babylon, as a place where an Akkadian king founds temples, about 2217-2193 BC.  Close to the popular Babel date and unused by young-earth writers;  it also shows an empire and old writing already in place.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Commentaries and critical readings

Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (1987)

wenham-1987

camp: evangelical method: commentary direction: supports verified: full

Reads "the whole earth" as all the inhabitants of the world, the chapter order as topical, the nine verses as one built composition, and the story as mockery of Babylonian temple boasts.  Reports both readings of the Spell of Nudimmud and prefers the Babel reading of Peleg.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2, The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (1974; English 1984)

westermann-1984

camp: mainstream method: commentary direction: complicates verified: full

The standard form-critical commentary.  Rejects the two-source split, reads Shinar as all Mesopotamia, notes the Akkadian equivalent of "let us brick bricks", and states that no full parallel exists among Israel's neighbours.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2, The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Objections.

Skinner, Genesis (ICC, 1910)

skinner-1910

camp: mainstream method: commentary direction: complicates verified: full

The older critical view:  two legends joined, a reflection of Babylonian monuments on Semitic nomads.  Also records that K 3657 contains no Babel story, that the "top to heaven" phrase is used by Tiglath-pileser I, and that the Greek parallels are not independent.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2 and The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1.

Speiser, "Word Plays on the Creation Epic's Version of the Founding of Babylon" (1956)

speiser-1956  Reprinted in his Oriental and Biblical Studies (1967).

camp: mainstream method: commentary direction: complicates verified: full

Argues that Genesis 11:3-4 answers Enuma Elish VI point by point, so "biblical tradition cannot be charged with fanciful invention";  treats the confusion as "purely speculative" ground.  His dating of Etemenanki's first mention is superseded by George.  Status:  cited in the pull quote and the parent's Part 2 and The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1.

Walton, "The Mesopotamian Background of the Tower of Babel Account" (1995)

walton-1995

camp: evangelical method: commentary direction: complicates verified: full

Reads the ziggurat as a stairway for the gods, the builders as not necessarily all mankind, and dates baked brick and ziggurat prototypes to the late fourth millennium.  The clearest scholarly statement of a partial Babel.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Seely, "The Date of the Tower of Babel" (2001)

seely-2001

camp: evangelical method: review direction: undercuts verified: full

Dates the tower from its materials to 3500-2400 BC, grants universal agreement on the meaning of 11:1, and argues that a Babel that produced all languages would have to be before 10,000 BC.  The fullest archaeological dating of the tower in print.  Its "temple-tower" for the Šar-kali-šarri year name is not what the formula says.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and Objections.

Longman, Genesis (2016)

longman-2016  No library row.

camp: old-earth-christian method: commentary direction: complicates verified: full

Reads Genesis 10 as not in chronological order with 11, the tower as likely a ziggurat, and the Table as a map of a later time;  warns against making much of the Enmerkar parallel.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2 and The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1.

Young-earth, old-earth and imperial readings

Whitcomb and Morris, The Genesis Flood (1961)

whitcomb-1961-genesis-flood  No library row (archive.org genesisflood0000john, printdisabled, read by search-inside;  pages from the scandata map, leaf - 34, anchored on the running heads at leaves 518 and 522).

camp: young-earth method: commentary direction: complicates verified: full

The founding young-earth book.  Its appendix on Genesis 11 allows genealogical gaps:  on a strict chronology with Abram born 2167 BC, Babel falls "between 2358 and 2119 B.C. (the lifetime of Peleg)" (p. 478);  with gaps, "not more than a millennium after the Flood", because the population was still in one small area (p. 486, with footnote 1:  "as much as 1,000 years").  It puts the Flood up to three to five thousand years before Abraham (p. 489).  Replaces the earlier citation of this position through Sibley.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 (young-earth dates table).

Morris, The Genesis Record (1976)

morris-1976c

camp: creationist method: commentary direction: supports verified: full

The founding young-earth reading:  a creative miracle of new phonologies, seventy nations, the dispersion probably at Peleg's birth, about 2358 BC on Thiele's date for Abraham, with gaps allowed.  Status:  cited in the Summary and the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Morris, New Defender's Study Bible notes (2006)

morris-2006c

camp: creationist method: commentary direction: complicates verified: full

ICR's standing position:  altered "brain/nerve/speech apparati", the tower as prototype of all ziggurats, Nimrod's family as the Sumerians, a tablet from Ur, and Borsippa "purportedly" the site.  The Ur tablet has not been identified.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Whitcomb, "Babel" (2002); Matthews, "The World in Revolt" (2008); Chaffey, "Did Humanity Really Disperse from Babel?" (2025)

whitcomb-2002, matthews-2008b, chaffey-2025

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

AiG's position moves from Whitcomb's ziggurat "exactly" to Chaffey's caution about both the ziggurat and the Babylon identification.  Chaffey's "humanity did not really settle anywhere until Babel" is a testable prediction, priced in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Objections.

AiG, "What Did the Tower Look Like?" (2008)

aig-2008g

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

God stopped the work "in the early stages", so no remains should be expected.  A fair point that also makes the site untestable.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Objections.

AiG, "Bible Timeline"

aig-2026f

camp: creationist method: popular direction: undercuts verified: full

Prints "Tower of Babel 2242 BC" with no method.  Every other row is Ussher's.  Status:  cited in the Summary and the parent's Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Ham, "How Many Languages?" (2023)

ham-2023d

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

About one hundred language families created at Babel.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2.

Hodge, Tower of Babel (2013)

hodge-2013  No library row.

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: citation

At least 78 families from the names of Genesis 10;  Babel 101 to 130 years after the Flood, preferring 120.  Known only through Sibley's summary and the language-families dossier's snippets.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1;  listed under Issues.

Sarfati, Refuting Compromise (2004)

sarfati-2004  No library row.

camp: creationist method: commentary direction: supports verified: full

Babel produced the major families, "earth" in 10:25 means the people, about 3,000 people by Peleg's birth, and Babel could be late in Peleg's life.  Stands in for The Genesis Account (2015), not obtained.  Status:  cited in the Summary and the parent's Part 1, the parent's Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Lawrence, "Making Some Sense of Babel and Afterwards" (2018)

lawrence-2018

camp: creationist method: review direction: complicates verified: full

New languages "miraculously generated", perhaps the ancestors of about 420 families and isolates;  Shinar is Sumer and Babel is Babylon.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and Objections.

Adamthwaite, "The Languages of Babel" (2019)

adamthwaite-2019

camp: creationist method: review direction: background verified: full

Shinar "undoubtedly refers to Lower Mesopotamia".  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2.

Sibley, "Dating the Tower of Babel Events" (2017)

sibley-2017

camp: creationist method: chronology direction: complicates verified: full

The only young-earth journal paper on the date:  340 years after the Flood with Seder Olam;  101 years "very unlikely".  Strengthens the young-earth case internally and undercuts 2242 BC;  does not test its date against archaeology.  Status:  cited in the pull quote and the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Objections.

Pierce, "In the Days of Peleg" (1999)

pierce-1999b

camp: creationist method: popular direction: undercuts verified: full

The source of 2242 BC:  Ussher's Peleg plus five years from "Manetho", in fact the Book of Sothis.  Also rejects a continental division in Peleg's day.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Objections.

Waddell, Manetho (Loeb, 1940)

waddell-1940

camp: mainstream method: text direction: undercuts verified: full

The Book of Sothis survives only through Syncellus, its letter "undoubtedly a forgery", and its own clock puts the dispersion 534 years after the Flood.  Undercuts the 2242 BC date at its one external witness.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Wise, "Egypt or Babel: Which Came First?" (2008)

wise-2008

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

Babel in Peleg's lifetime, "probably near the midpoint (around 2200 BC), give or take a century";  more cautious than AiG's timeline.  His claim that astronomy refutes the king lists belongs to the chronology article.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Habermehl, "Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?" (2011)

habermehl-2011

camp: creationist method: review direction: undercuts verified: full

Moves Shinar to the Khabur triangle on a drowned-south geology and a split of Babel from Babylon.  Gelb, whom she cites through Oates, argues the opposite on the name, and Osgood rejects the geology.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Habermehl, ziggurat and pyramid complexes (2023, abstract)

habermehl-2023b

camp: creationist method: review direction: complicates verified: full

The world's ziggurats and pyramids were patterned after the one begun at Babel.  Gives no account of the thousands of years and missing examples in between.  Status:  cited in The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts Part 1.

Osgood, "Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel? Comments" (2024)

osgood-2024

camp: creationist method: review direction: complicates verified: full

Shinar is Sumer, no geologist backs a drowned south, Babel no earlier than 2500 BC and near Babylon.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Habermehl, "A Further Reply" (2024)

habermehl-2024

camp: creationist method: review direction: complicates verified: full

Holds that all southern structures post-date the Ice Age whatever Babel's date;  Osgood's rejoinder says Snelling does not share her geology.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Osgood, "The Ark Landing, the Migration, and the Early Settling of Noah's Sons", part 1 (2023)

osgood-2023

camp: creationist method: review direction: complicates verified: full

The one young-earth correlation of Babel with a stratum:  the end of Ubaid 2, with Ubaid 1-2, Samarra, Halaf and Hassuna before it and Nimrod as Enmerkar.  Its strength is that it can be tested;  its cost is a compression of about 3,600 conventional years into about 600.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and Objections.

Osgood, "A Better Model for the Stone Age" (1986) and Part 2 (1988)

osgood-1986, osgood-1988

camp: creationist method: review direction: undercuts verified: full

Babel about 2200 BC, every culture outside lower Mesopotamia after it, and about 25,000 people at Babel.  Read through the Neolithic article's dossier.  The 2023 paper abandons the rule.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and Issues.

Griffith and White, "An Upper Mesopotamian Location for Babel" (2021)

griffith-2021b

camp: creationist method: review direction: undercuts verified: full

Babel near Diyarbakır at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic horizon, from a chronicle line that does not say what they need, at a tell with no ziggurat.  Rejects Habermehl's Khabur.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2, When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and Issues.

Ross, Brummel and Wood, "Human History from Adam to Abraham" (2023)

ross-2023

camp: creationist method: review direction: complicates verified: full

The one young-earth answer to Seely:  either a late, local Babel among H. sapiens, or a Babel before every hominin fossil with brick and bitumen "rediscovered" later.  They prefer the second for the text's universality.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2 and Objections.

Ross, Navigating Genesis (2014) and "New Research Confirms Post-Flood Dispersal" (2023)

ross-2014b, ross-2023b

camp: old-earth-christian method: commentary direction: undercuts verified: full

Hugh Ross keeps the universal reading and puts the Flood before 45,000 years ago, which places fired brick and bitumen 40,000 years before any is found.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2.

Hill, "A Time and a Place for Noah" (2001)

hill-2001

camp: old-earth-christian method: review direction: complicates verified: full

Noah about 3000 BC;  the one language of 11:1 as Sumerian before about 2500 BC;  the tower perhaps Babylon's ziggurat.  Her own evidence of Semitic scribes about 2600-2500 BC is the two-languages problem of When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.  Her "two or three stories" ziggurats in the Jemdet Nasr period have no support in the excavation reports.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1, Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Reimer, "The Tower of Babel: An Archaeologically Informed Reinterpretation" (1996)

reimer-1996

camp: evangelical method: review direction: undercuts verified: full

Ties Genesis 11 to the fall of Uruk and concedes that the Uruk model fails if "language" means languages.  Status:  cited in the parent's Part 2 and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2 and Objections.

Uehlinger, van der Kooij, Giorgetti, Boyd, Younger

No library rows.

camp: mainstream method: commentary direction: complicates verified: citation

The imperial and mock-building readings.  Uehlinger 1990 is known through George's citation and the Sargon text;  the others by abstract or citation.  Status:  named in the parent's Part 2;  listed under Issues.

Jeanson, "Y-Chromosome-Guided Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA Lineages in the Americas" (2025)

jeanson-2025

camp: creationist method: review direction: background verified: full

One sentence:  15,000 radiocarbon years "likely corresponds to the very early post-Babel time period".  Status:  cited in Issues.

Excavations and the archaeological record

Woolley, Ur Excavations V: The Ziggurat and its Surroundings (1939)

woolley-1939

camp: mainstream method: excavation direction: complicates verified: full

Ur-Nammu's ziggurat, 62.50 by 43.00 m, cased in burnt brick, "The mortar is bitumen";  older terraces below it back to the Uruk period.  Supports the text's Mesopotamian detail and places the first true ziggurat after every Masoretic Babel.  Status:  cited in the Summary and Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Safar, Mustafa and Lloyd, Eridu (1981)

safar-1981

camp: mainstream method: excavation direction: undercuts verified: full

The Temple Sounding:  a one-room shrine on virgin sand rebuilt level by level to a Late Uruk temple, each temple levelled to make the next one's platform, under an Ur III ziggurat.  A count of building levels that binds without radiocarbon.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Crawford, "The Term 'Hajji Muhammad': A Re-evaluation" (2010)

crawford-2010  No separate library row;  a chapter in carter-2010.

camp: mainstream method: review direction: background verified: full

Restates Oates's division of the Eridu levels into Ubaid 1-4 and the gap in buildings between levels XV and XI.  Corrects the popular "eighteen temples".  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Carter and Philip, "Deconstructing the Ubaid" (2010)

carter-2010

camp: mainstream method: review direction: background verified: full

The conventional Ubaid, about 6500 to 3800 BC in the south and about 5300 to 4300 BC in some northern areas.  Gives the conventional date of Osgood's horizon.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East (1988)

nissen-1988

camp: mainstream method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full

Uruk's high terrace existed in the Ubaid and was repaired and raised from then on, then buried by a Late Uruk terrace that took 1,500 people five years.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Issues.

Charvát, Mesopotamia Before History (2002)

charvat-2002-mesopotamia-before-history  No library row.

camp: mainstream method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full

Fourteen phases of the Anu terrace at Uruk, the White Temple in phase B.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

ZRS Ingenieure, Emergency Conservation of the White Temple (2023)

zrs-2023

camp: mainstream method: survey direction: complicates verified: full

Bitumen mortar in the Anu terrace and the White Temple "built around 3500 BC";  the Eanna ziggurat about 4,200 years old.  A conservation report, not an excavation report.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Koldewey, The Excavations at Babylon (1914)

koldewey-1914

camp: mainstream method: excavation direction: complicates verified: full

Etemenanki as a robbed ruin with an unexcavated core;  the water table stopped every attempt to reach levels older than Hammurabi's.  The basis of the young-earth side's fair point about access.  His BC dates are about 700 years too high.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

Rohl, Legend: The Genesis of Civilisation (1998)

rohl-1998

camp: independent method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

The Tower of Babel as the Uruk-period platform at Eridu, the name explained as a confusion of Eridu with Babylon.  George's Tintir shows the name went the other way, and late.  Status:  cited in Where Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Algaze, The Uruk World System (2005)

algaze-2005

camp: mainstream method: survey direction: undercuts verified: full

The Uruk expansion of the second half of the fourth millennium BC:  colonies into lands already holding complex societies, lasting centuries, then withdrawn.  The wrong shape for Genesis 11.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Weiss and colleagues, "The Genesis and Collapse of Third Millennium North Mesopotamian Civilization" (1993)

weiss-1993

camp: mainstream method: excavation direction: complicates verified: abstract

Abrupt aridity at 2200 BC emptied the Khabur plains and brought down Akkad.  The date matches Osgood's and Wise's Babel;  the direction is a contraction, not a dispersal.  Its proposed volcanic trigger was not checked against later work.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Weiss, "Global Megadrought, Societal Collapse and Resilience at 4.2-3.9 ka BP" (2016)

weiss-2016b

camp: mainstream method: review direction: complicates verified: full

Synchronous collapse across west Asia and the retreat of people from the rain-fed plains to the rivers.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 2.

Carter, review of Jeanson's Traced (2022)

carter-2022

camp: creationist method: review direction: background verified: full

Led the research to Griffith and White.  Does not give Jeanson's Babel date.  Status:  considered, not used:  nothing in it bears on the article's claims.

Jones, Chronology of the Old Testament (1999)

No library row.

camp: creationist method: chronology direction: background verified: full

Searched for a dispersion date;  none found.  Status:  considered, not used:  it gives no date for Babel.

Peleg

Fouts, "Peleg in Gen 10:25" (1998)

fouts-1998

camp: evangelical method: lexical direction: complicates verified: full

Three readings:  the traditional division of peoples, which Fouts keeps;  continental drift, "untenable";  and canals, from peleg "watercourse" and Akkadian palgu.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1 and Objections.

Lanser, "Making Sense of the Days of Peleg" (2014)

lanser-2014

camp: creationist method: popular direction: undercuts verified: full

The continental reading, five generations after the Flood on the Septuagint, after Babel.  Rejected by young-earth scholars Pierce, Fouts and Walt Brown.  Status:  cited in When Was the Tower of Babel? Part 1.

The language-families dossier: sources on what happened at Babel

These entries come from html/unpublished-ai/language-families-and-the-tower-of-babel/research/rates-attestations-creationist.md.  The language counts, family ages and rates belong to that article.

Wieland, "Towering Change" (1999)

wieland-1999b

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

Babel made a few dozen stem languages, one per clan.  Status:  considered, not used:  the number and kind of languages made at Babel is the language-families article's subject;  this article reports the range through Morris, Chaffey, Ham, Hodge and Lawrence.

Duursma, "Tower of Babel Affirmed by Linguistics" (2002)

duursma-2002

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

Status:  considered, not used:  its linguistic argument belongs to the language-families article.

Taylor, "What Happened at Babel?" (1983) and "The Origin of Language" (1997)

taylor-1983, taylor-1997

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

Status:  considered, not used:  their accounts of the mechanism of the confusion belong to the language-families article;  this article reports Morris's and ICR's as the standing young-earth position.

Oller, "More than PIE" (2008)

oller-2008

camp: creationist method: review direction: complicates verified: full

Status:  considered, not used:  about Proto-Indo-European, which the language-families article owns.

Ham, "How Many Languages?" (2022)

ham-2022b

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

About seventy languages at Babel.  Status:  considered, not used:  the 2023 script, which gives about one hundred families, is cited instead to show the range.

Tomkins, "Out of Babel, Not Africa" (2015), checked against Creanza and colleagues (2015)

tomkins-2015e, creanza-2015

camp: creationist method: popular direction: complicates verified: full

Status:  considered, not used:  the phonemic and genetic gradients belong to the language-families and Out of Africa articles.

Campbell, "How Many Language Families Are There?" (2018)

campbell-2018

camp: mainstream method: review direction: background verified: full

Status:  considered, not used:  the family count belongs to the language-families article.

Sources not obtained

Each was sought and not read.  None is quoted in the article.

• Uehlinger 1990, Weltreich und "eine Rede" (OBO 101); Boyd 2019, JNES 78:87-111; Younger 1998, JBL 117; Giorgetti 2014, VT 64:1-20; van der Kooij 2006; Hiebert 2007, JBL 126:29-58. The imperial and mock-building readings.
• Kramer 1943, JAOS 63:191-194; Alster 1973, RA 67; Vanstiphout 1994, RA 88; Jacobsen 1992; Klein 2000; Mittermayer 2009. The Spell of Nudimmud.
• Thomsen 1984 and Jagersma 2010, Sumerian grammars, to check the modal-prefix rule.
• Kikawada 1974 and Fokkelman 1975 on the literary structure; known through Wenham.
• Gunkel 1910, Genesis; known through Skinner and Westermann.
• Tov 2010, Revised Lists; VanderKam 2018, Jubilees (Hermeneia); Wevers 1974, Göttingen Genesis.
• Durán 1867 and Ixtlilxochitl (Kingsborough, vol. 9), the Mexican primaries; King 1902, Seven Tablets, on K 3657.
• Hodge 2013 chapter 7; Jeanson 2022, Traced; Sarfati 2015, The Genesis Account; Hill 2019.
• The printed AfO 51 pages of George 2005.
• Grayson 1975, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, for ABC 20; Peters 1921, JAOS 41, for the Borsippa cylinder; Benjamin of Tudela (Adler 1907); Pedersén 2021, Babylon: The Great City.
• Eichmann 2007, Uruk: Architektur I, and Crüsemann and colleagues 2019, for the White Temple.
• Simplicius, In De caelo 2.12 (Heiberg), for the 1903 years.
• The full text of Weiss and colleagues 1993.