This page exists so that nobody has to take the article on trust. Each quotation below was read in the source named, at the place named. Full citations are in the article's Sources and in its literature review.
The text and its readers
"'The whole earth,' here, as in 9:19, denotes all the inhabitants of the world."
Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15 (Word Biblical Commentary, 1987), p. 238.
"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"
Paul Seely, "The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications" (2001), p. 20. Seely rejects the history of the story.
"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."
Augustine, City of God 16.4, translated by Marcus Dods.
"It is precisely this, that Gen 11:1-9 hovers between primeval and historical event, that gives the narrative its own peculiar character."
Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11 (English 1984), p. 535.
"Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God."
Josephus, Antiquities 1.113, Whiston's translation. Genesis never names Nimrod as the builder.
The Mesopotamian texts
"Thus far, then, each item in the biblical narrative proves to have its appropriate Mesopotamian antecedent ... 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."
E. A. Speiser, "Word Plays on the Creation Epic's Version of the Founding of Babylon" (1956), Oriental and Biblical Studies (1967), p. 59.
"57 'Build Babylon, the task you have sought. 58 Let bricks for it be moulded, and raise the shrine!' 59 The Anunnaki wielded the pick. 60 For one year they made the needed bricks."
Enuma Elish VI 57-60, in W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (2013), p. 113.
"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."
Lambert (2013), p. 301, on the tablet K 3657.
"Our new piece, therefore, puts it beyond all doubt that the Sumerians believed that there was a time when all mankind spoke one and the same language, and that it was Enki, the Sumerian god of wisdom, who confounded their speech."
Samuel Noah Kramer, "The 'Babel of Tongues': A Sumerian Version" (1968), p. 111.
"the Biblical explanation of the confusion of tongues that interprets the sky-reaching ziggurat as a product of man's deep-rooted hybris and as a threat to the gods, is quite different from our Sumerian version, and is undoubtedly a product of the Hebrew religious imagination and moralistic temperament."
Kramer (1968), p. 111.
"Many of us now agree that the burden of this spell is that in an ideal world of peace and bliss, which Enmerkar is striving for, only Sumerian will be spoken."
Herman Vanstiphout, Epics of Sumerian Kings (2003), p. 53.
"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."
Vanstiphout (2003), pp. 93-94, note 19.
"I made act in concert and (re)settled (them) inside it (Dūr-Šarrukīn)."
Sargon II, of "People from the four (quarters of the world), (speaking) foreign language(s) (and of) diverse speech", in Grant Frame, RINAP 2, Sargon II 043, lines 72-74. The Akkadian is literally "made (them) one mouth".
"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, the Etemenanki cylinder, in A. R. George, "A Stele of Nebuchadnezzar II" (2011), p. 167.
"This is a common cliché: many great buildings are said to bridge the gap between the lowermost and uppermost levels of the cosmos."
A. R. George, "The Tower of Babel: Archaeology, History and Cuneiform Texts" (2005), author's text p. 12, on Nabopolassar's "to make its top vie with the heavens".
"bitumen seems never to have been used by the Mexicans for such a purpose and is not found anywhere near Cholula."
James Frazer, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, vol. 1 (1918), p. 381, on Durán's Cholula legend.
"There can be little doubt that this story is merely an echo of missionary teaching."
Frazer (1918), p. 384, on the Admiralty Islands story.
The ground
"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."
Leonard Woolley, Ur Excavations V (1939), pp. 98-99.
"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."
Fuad Safar, Mohammad Ali Mustafa and Seton Lloyd, Eridu (1981), front matter.
"The excavators of this terrace have calculated that its construction would have employed 1500 people working ten hours a day for five years."
Hans Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East (1988), p. 95, on the Late Uruk terrace at Uruk.
"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."
George (2005), author's text p. 20.
"Our excavations cut through the layers down to a depth of 12 metres below the surface, where the water-level stopped farther progress, although the ruins themselves continued lower."
Robert Koldewey, The Excavations at Babylon (1914), p. 239.
"The oldest occurrence of Babylon is found in a date of Sar-kali-Sarri (about 2224-2199 B.C.), referring to the laying of the foundations of the temple of Anunitum and Aba in KA-DINGIR KI."
I. J. Gelb, "The Name of Babylon" (1955), reprinted 1994, p. 267.
"the writing of the city name as eri/uru.du10, in which such an interpretation is explicit, does not appear until the second millennium; in the third the toponym is always written eridu(NUN)ki"
A. R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts (1992), p. 253.
The date
"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."
Seder Olam Rabbah 1, in this article's literal translation of the Hebrew.
"which if understood for the day of his birth, then it seemeth that at what time Phaleg was born, Noah, who formerly knew the places which were now overspread with bushes and thornes, made a division of the land among his grandchildren"
James Ussher, The Annals of the World (1658), under Anno Mundi 1757.
"An interesting piece of information comes from Manetho, who recorded the history of Egypt in the third century BC. He wrote that the Tower of Babel occurred five years after the birth of Peleg."
Larry Pierce, "In the Days of Peleg" (1999), the source of AiG's 2242 BC.
"The Book of Sóthis or The Sóthic Cycle is transmitted through Syncellus alone. … The letter which purports to have accompanied the "sacred books" is undoubtedly a forgery"
W. G. Waddell, Manetho (Loeb, 1940), pp. xxvii-xxviii.
"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."
The Book of Sothis, in Waddell (1940), p. 239. On its own clock that is 534 years after the Flood.
"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."
Andrew Sibley, Journal of Creation 31(1) (2017), section "Discussion".
"The view of division of the earth by continental drift (separation by oceans) seems to be untenable. It lacks both etymological support and historical confirmation."
David Fouts, "Peleg in Gen 10:25" (1998), p. 21.
Young-earth and old-earth writers in their own words
"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."
Henry Morris, The Genesis Record (1976), pp. 309-310.
"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."
Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Compromise (2004), p. 302.
"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."
Tim Chaffey, "Did Humanity Really Disperse from Babel?", Answers in Genesis (2025), section "Babel in History".
"It seems likely that God frustrated their work in the early stages, while they were still laying out the city and constructing brickworks."
Answers in Genesis, "What Did the Tower Look Like?" (2008).
"Certainly, Borsippa stands out as one of the best possibilities for the original site of the Tower of Babel, but a guaranteed site is unlikely to be found."
John Osgood, Answers Research Journal 16 (2023), section "Where Was Babel?".
"Now Habermehl (2011) then claims the area was under water, a statement I cannot find backed up by any geologist"
Osgood, Answers Research Journal 17 (2024), section "Under Water?".
"Babel site C is a medium sized tel, only 276 m across, and about 16 m high, and it has no ziggurat."
Ken Griffith and Darrell White, Journal of Creation 35(2) (2021), section "Objections".
"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."
Marcus Ross, Paul Brummel and Todd Wood, International Conference on Creationism (2023), p. 76.
"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"
Carol Hill, "A Time and a Place for Noah" (2001), p. 33.
"If language is understood to mean specific spoken languages or dialects then the Uruk paradigm doesn't fit."
Steve Reimer, Direction 25(2) (1996), p. 70.