When Was the Tower of Babel?

If Peleg's division is the dispersion, Babel falls 101 to 340 years after the Flood on the Masoretic text, and the oldest readers did not choose the first year. AiG's 2242 BC has no sound source. At every date allowed, Shinar already had temples, cities and writing, and on every Masoretic date two written languages.

By AI (Claude Opus 5.5, thinking level unavailable; split into parent and children by Claude Opus 5.5) Draft:  October 2026

Summary

Genesis gives no year for Babel.  Its only time marker is Genesis 10:25:  Peleg was so named because in his days the earth was divided.  If that division is the dispersion, Babel falls in Peleg's lifetime:  101 to 340 years after the Flood on the Masoretic text, 401 to 640 on the Samaritan, and 531 to 870 on the Septuagint.  The oldest readers did not choose the first year, and the most-printed date, AiG's 2242 BC, has no sound source.  At every date the genealogies allow, Shinar already had temples, cities and writing, and on every Masoretic date it had two written languages.  This article is a child of The Tower of Babel, which sets out the text and its readings;  its siblings ask what the Mesopotamian texts show and where the tower was.

The early readers chose later dates.  Jubilees puts the tower a generation after Peleg's birth, and Josephus's own begetting ages put Peleg's birth 411 years after the Flood.  Seder Olam Rabbah says "From the Flood to the Dispersion, 340 years", at Peleg's death, because his younger brother Joktan had thirteen sons among the dispersed peoples.1  Ussher tied the division to Peleg's birth only conditionally and never printed 2242.  Andrew Sibley, for Creation Ministries International, judged a Babel 101 years after the Flood very unlikely.

Where 2242 BC comes from.  Larry Pierce took Ussher's 2247 BC for Peleg's birth and subtracted five years from the Book of Sothis, which he credited to Manetho.  It is not Manetho:  it survives only through a Byzantine monk of the ninth century, and its Loeb editor, W. G. Waddell, calls its covering letter a forgery.  On its own Septuagint clock the dispersion falls "534 years after the Flood".2  So 2242 BC mixes two incompatible chronologies.

The young-earth dates in print run from 2500 BC to about 2008 BC on the Masoretic text, and Sibley and Sarfati, who argue the point at length, prefer the late end.  Young-earth writers themselves reject the continental reading of Peleg's name.  If the name means "canal", it fits the canal-building age of Ur III, a modest point in the text's favour.

At each candidate date, Shinar's record is already there.  Babylon is first named in a year formula of the Akkadian king Šar-kali-šarri, about 2217-2193 BC, as a town where he founds temples.  That is within fifty years of AiG's and Kurt Wise's dates, a fair point for the young-earth side, unused by it.  But by then Akkad is an empire, and on conventional dates writing is about nine centuries old.  Semitic scribes' names appear at Fara and Abu Salabikh about 2600-2500 BC on conventional dates, so on every Masoretic date Shinar was writing two languages before the one language of 11:1 was confused.  That is the text's own claim failing in the text's own place.  The Septuagint window passes this test and fails the level count instead, unless the conventional scale shrinks fivefold.

The two dispersal-like events have the wrong shape.  The Uruk expansion sent colonists into lands that already held complex societies, six centuries or more before every Masoretic Babel on conventional dates.  The 4.2-kiloyear drought begins at 2200 BC, the date Osgood and Wise give for Babel, but people pulled back from the plains to the rivers.  Outside Shinar, the Step Pyramid and the first Neolithic towns stand before every Masoretic Flood date.

Verdict.  The late end of Peleg's life, which Seder Olam and Sibley prefer, has far better ancient support than 2242 BC.  On it, as on every Masoretic date, Shinar was already writing Sumerian and Akkadian before Babel.

Part 1: When

Genesis gives no year for Babel.  The only time marker is Genesis 10:25:  Eber's son was named Peleg, "for in his days the earth was divided."  If that division is the dispersion, Babel falls somewhere in Peleg's lifetime.  On the Masoretic text that is a window from 101 to 340 years after the Flood.  The oldest readers did not pick the first year of the window, and the date most often printed today, AiG's 2242 BC, has no sound source.

The window each text allows

The three ancient texts of Genesis 11 give different begetting ages, and so different windows.  The article on the Old Testament text and chronology compares the texts;  the article on genealogies and gaps argues that the begetting ages date each birth even where names are skipped, so gaps do not add years.  The arithmetic below is this article's own.3

Text Peleg born, years after the Flood Peleg dies, years after the Flood Peleg's life in BC, with Abraham born 2166 BC The same, with Ussher's Abraham, 1996 BC
Masoretic 101 340 2417-2178 2247-2008
Samaritan 401 640 2707-2468 not applicable
Septuagint 531 870 2767-2428 not applicable

What the early readers said

None of the ancient chronographers put Babel 101 years after the Flood.

  • Jubilees (second century BC) reads Genesis 10:25 as the division of the land by lot at Peleg's birth: "in the days when he was born the children of Noah began to divide the earth amongst themselves".4 The tower comes a generation later, in the days of Peleg's son Reu, and the builders "were they dispersed from the land of Shinar" in the thirty-fourth jubilee.4 On Jubilees's own clock that is 70 to 120 years after Peleg's birth.
  • Josephus (first century AD) says Peleg "was born at the dispersion of the nations to their several countries". But his own begetting ages put Peleg's birth 411 years after the Flood.5
  • Eusebius (early fourth century) gives no year: "In his time, the tower [of Babel] was built".6 His Septuagint lacks the second Kainan, so his Peleg is born 401 years after the Flood.
  • Jerome's Latin Chronicle has no entry for Babel at all. Its tables begin with Abraham, because before him "no completely Greek, or barbarian or, to speak in general terms, gentile history is found".7
  • Seder Olam Rabbah, the classical Jewish chronology attributed to Rabbi Yose ben Halafta in the second century AD, gives a number: "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." Its reason is Joktan, Peleg's younger brother, whose thirteen sons are named among the dispersed peoples in Genesis 10:26-29: "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?" So "in his days" means "the end of his days".1 On the Masoretic numbers that is Anno Mundi 1996, the year of Peleg's death.

Andrew Sibley, writing for Creation Ministries International in 2017, surveyed these sources and concluded that "no early Jewish commentators placed the Babel event as early as 101 years post-Flood, which suggests it is very unlikely."8  He prefers Seder Olam's 340 years, "with an error margin of plus or minus several decades."8

What Ussher said

James Ussher's Annals (1650 in Latin, 1658 in English) put Peleg's birth in Anno Mundi 1757, 2247 BC.  He tied the division to that birth only conditionally:  Peleg was so named "because in his days the earth was divided, ... which if understood for the day of his birth, then it seemeth that at what time Phaleg was born, Noah ... made a division of the land among his grandchildren".9  Then he used the same Joktan argument as Seder Olam to move the departure of the colonies later:  Joktan's sons "could not be capable of such an expedition of leading colonies because of their youth until some years after Reu was born to Peleg", which on his dates is after 2217 BC.10  Ussher printed no single year for the dispersion, and he never printed 2242.

He did print 2234 BC, for a different thing:  the start of the Babylonian astronomical record, from a report that "1903 years elapsed from this time to the capture of Babylon by Alexander the Great."10  That is a claim about observations, and the figure's ancient transmission has not been checked for this article.

Where AiG's 2242 BC comes from

Answers in Genesis prints "Tower of Babel" at 2242 BC on its timeline.  Its other rows from Creation to the divided monarchy are Ussher's dates, and its last three are the conventional ones.  No method is given.11  The number traces to a 1999 article by Larry Pierce, the translator of the modern English Ussher.  Pierce keeps Ussher's dates:  "the Flood occurred in 2349–2348 BC, and Peleg was born in 2247 BC about a hundred years later."12  Then he adds five years:  "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."  His footnote cites "Manetho, The Book of Sothis", page 239 of the Loeb edition.12  2247 minus 5 is 2242.

The cited page does not support the date.  W. G. Waddell, who edited the Loeb Manetho, explains that "The Book of Sóthis or The Sóthic Cycle is transmitted through Syncellus alone", a Byzantine monk of the ninth century AD, and that its covering letter "is undoubtedly a forgery".2  It is not Manetho.  And on page 239 its clock runs "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."  That clock is the Septuagint's, with the Flood in Anno Mundi 2242, so the dispersion falls "534 years after the Flood".2

So 2242 BC takes a five-year offset from a Septuagint-based Byzantine text and adds it to Ussher's Masoretic Peleg.  On the text's own clock, Babel is 534 years after the Flood, not 106.  The most-printed young-earth date for Babel is a mixture of two chronologies that cannot both be right, and its one outside witness, read whole, supports the long Septuagint interval.

Young-earth dates in print

Writer Date of Babel Basis
Whitcomb and Morris 1961 2358-2119 BC on a strict chronology; up to 1,000 years after the Flood if Genesis 11 has gaps Peleg's lifetime, with Abram born 2167 BC; the population still in one small area
Morris 1976 about 2358 BC; earlier if gaps are allowed Peleg's birth; Thiele's date for Abraham
Osgood 1986 about 2200 BC Masoretic; Abraham in Canaan 1870 BC
Pierce 1999; AiG timeline 2242 BC Ussher's Peleg plus the Book of Sothis
Sarfati 2004 101 to 340 years after the Flood "could have occurred late in Peleg's lifetime"
Wise 2008 about 2200 BC, give or take a century the midpoint of Peleg's life
Matthews 2008 "a century or two" after the Flood Masoretic
Hodge 2013 101 to 130 years after the Flood, preferring 120 reported by Sibley 2017
Sibley 2017 340 years after the Flood, about 2178 or 2008 BC Seder Olam
Griffith and White 2021 the sixth to eighth generation from Shem after Peleg's birth; Pre-Pottery Neolithic horizon
Osgood 2023 "close to 100 years after the Flood" Masoretic; end of Ubaid 2
Osgood 2024 "no further back than 2500 B.C." Masoretic with a long sojourn in Egypt
Ross, Brummel and Wood 2023 before every hominin fossil the text's universality

Morris's dates are "about 2358 B.C." for the dispersion, with the rider that "If gaps are allowed, however, these dates might conceivably be increased by, say, up to about one thousand years or more".13  Osgood in 1986 put Babel at 2200 BC and wrote that "all the rest of the civilizations of the ancient world will have to be seen as post-Flood and post-Babel, and therefore after 2,200 B.C."14  Kurt Wise for AiG in 2008:  "it falls between the Flood and the time of Abraham, probably near the midpoint (around 2200 BC), give or take a century."15  Mike Matthews:  "a century or two after Noah's Flood".16  Bodie Hodge's range is reported by Sibley:  "between 101 and 130 years after the Flood ... (although he prefers 120 years)".8  Whitcomb and Morris's The Genesis Flood of 1961 put Babel "between 2358 and 2119 B.C. (the lifetime of Peleg) according to the strict-chronology interpretation", but held that it may have come as much as a thousand years after the Flood and "not more than a millennium", because "the world's population was still confined to one comparatively small area of the earth at that time."17  Griffith and White put the tower "between the sixth and eighth generations, counting Shem as the first".18  Osgood in 2024:  "the time period allotted to this can be no further back than 2500 B.C."19

The spread runs from 2500 BC to about 2008 BC on the Masoretic text, and much earlier for the horizon models.  The writers who argue the point at length, Sibley and Sarfati, prefer the later end, which gives more time for the population to grow and the Joktanite families to be born.  The popular sources prefer the first year.

What "Peleg" means

Four readings of "in his days the earth was divided" exist.

  1. A division of the land among Noah's descendants. Jubilees, Josephus's word for an apportionment of dwellings, and Ussher. This is the oldest.
  2. The dispersion of peoples and languages at Babel. Eusebius, Seder Olam, Wise, Pierce, Sibley, and most modern commentators. Wenham: "More likely it refers to the dispersal of the nations at Babel (11:1—9). Admittedly the verb used there, 'disperse' (פוץ), is not 'to divide' (פלג). But פלג can be used of confusing speech (Ps 55:10 [9])."20 Westermann: "What is meant is something like what is described in 11:1-9, although one cannot say whether this remark in the genealogy has this or another intent."21
  3. Canals. David Fouts, writing in the evangelical journal of the Evangelical Theological Society in 1998, points out that "The noun peleg occurs ten times in Scripture, and each time watercourses (canals, tears, etc.) or rivers are in view".22 It "has cognates in both Akkadian (palgu) and Ugaritic (plg), both of which mean "canal.""22 So "Peleg was named such ("canal") because in his days the land was divided by watercourses ("canalized")."22 Fouts finds this attractive but stays with the traditional reading.
  4. Continental drift. Some young-earth writers read Genesis 10:25 as the splitting of the continents. Rick Lanser in 2014: "The division of the continents is an event that, according evidence in the Septuagint and Luke 3:35–38, must be dated five generations after the Noahic flood."23 Other young-earth writers reject it. Pierce: the "resultant geological violence would be overwhelmingly catastrophic—like another Noahic Flood all over again."12 Fouts: "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."22 Whitcomb: the division "was linguistic, not geological."24 The physics of that reading belongs to the Flood-geology articles, and this article does not price it.

The canal reading has a consequence nobody on either side seems to have noticed.  Irrigation in Mesopotamia is far older than any Babel date, but large state canal works are typical of the Ur III kings around 2100 BC, and Ur-Nammu dug a canal from the Euphrates to Eridu.25  So if "Peleg" means "canal", a Masoretic Peleg living about 2247-2008 BC on Ussher's dates, or 2417-2178 BC on the 2166 BC anchor, lived in an age of famous canal building.  That is a point in the text's favour, and a modest one:  the name fits the period, but so does the pun on division.

Part 2: What the record shows at each candidate date

At every date the genealogies allow, Shinar already had temples, cities and writing.  On every Masoretic date it also had two written languages, Sumerian and Akkadian.  Babylon itself is first named about 2200 BC, close to the popular date for Babel, and no young-earth writer uses that fact.  The record holds two events that look a little like a dispersal, the Uruk expansion and the drought of 2200 BC, and both have the wrong shape.

The dates below are conventional.  A young-earth reader will reject them, and Where Was the Tower of Babel? showed what counting levels does without them.  The table shows what a young-earth chronology must move, and how far.

Babel date in print Already in Shinar, on conventional dates Arriving about then
Septuagint, 2767-2428 BC; Samaritan, from 2707 BC; Osgood's ceiling, 2500 BC the Eridu and Uruk temple sequences, complete; writing, since Late Uruk; the Early Dynastic city-states Semitic scribes' names at Fara and Abu Salabikh, about 2600-2500 BC
Morris, 2358 BC; Ussher, 2247 BC; AiG, 2242 BC; Wise, about 2200 BC all of the above, and the empire of Akkad Babylon's first mention, about 2217-2193 BC; the drought from 2200 BC
Sibley, 2178 or 2008 BC; Seder Olam, Anno Mundi 1996 all of the above Ur III and the first true ziggurats, from 2112 BC
Osgood 2023, the end of Ubaid 2; Griffith and White, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic the horizon models put Babel inside the sequence, about 5300 BC and about 9600-8800 BC on conventional dates
Ross, Brummel and Wood before every hominin fossil

Babylon's first mention

The oldest known mention of Babylon is a year name of the Akkadian king Šar-kali-šarri:  "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".26  Gelb gave the reign as "about 2224-2199 B.C.";27 the Middle Chronology now puts it at about 2217-2193 BC.  Seely describes this as a text "saying that Sharkalisharri restored the temple-tower at Babylon".28  The year name says temples, of two named gods.  It does not say tower.

That mention falls within 25 to 50 years of AiG's 2242 BC and Wise's 2200 BC.  A young-earth writer could fairly read it as Babylon appearing in writing just after Babel, and Genesis 10:10 does say that "the beginning of his kingdom was Babel":  the city goes on after the dispersion.  No young-earth writer found for this article makes that argument.

The same year name shows the cost.  By then Akkad is an empire fighting the Gutians, Babylon is a town where an Akkadian king builds temples for the empire's gods, and the scribe who wrote the formula used a script that, on conventional dates, was about nine hundred years old.  Algaze notes that no other region had "formal reckoning and writing systems comparable in their complexity to those that emerged in southern Mesopotamia during the Middle and Late Uruk periods."29

Two written languages before Babel

Genesis 11:1 says the whole earth had one lip.  On conventional dates, Shinar itself had two languages in writing long before any Masoretic Babel.  Carol Hill, an old-earth geologist, builds her reading on it:  "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".30  Semitic scribes' names appear at Fara and Abu Salabikh about 2600-2500 BC.30  Seely puts the same fact against an earlier dating:  "two languages were spoken in Shinar for four hundred years before the tower of Babel was begun, for we know that Akkadian was spoken in Shinar from the middle of the third millennium B.C."28

So on Morris's, Ussher's, AiG's, Wise's and Sibley's dates, the land of Shinar was already writing two languages before the one language of 11:1 was confused.  This is the hardest single point against the Masoretic dates, because it is the text's own claim tested in the text's own place.  It rests on the conventional dates of the Fara and Abu Salabikh archives, so a young-earth model can answer it in only two ways:  move those archives after its Babel, which compresses the sequence still further, or read 11:1 as something other than one language.  The Septuagint window, which opens at 2767 BC, comes before the first Akkadian scribes on conventional dates, and so passes this test.  It still fails the level count in Where Was the Tower of Babel? unless the conventional scale shrinks fivefold.  The language families article tests the dates against how fast languages change.

The Uruk expansion

The one archaeological "going out" from Shinar is the Uruk expansion of the second half of the fourth millennium BC.  Guillermo Algaze, who named it, calls it "the world's earliest "world system" and, possibly, its first imperial venture."29  Uruk colonists built enclaves on the upper Euphrates, the upper Tigris and the Khabur.  But the shape is wrong for Genesis 11.  The lands they entered were already inhabited by complex societies:  "until the onset of the fourth millennium B.c. southern Mesopotamia was but one of several competing regions across the ancient Near East where parallel strides toward social complexity were taking place."29  The spread was not one event:  "there is no evidence that the establishment of Uruk colonies across the Mesopotamian periphery, whatever their type, was part of a centrally controlled and organized process."29  It lasted "for hundreds of years",29 and then the colonies were abandoned.  It carried a material culture, not new languages.  On conventional dates it ran from about 3500 to about 3000 BC, six centuries or more before every Masoretic Babel.

The drought of 2200 BC

The 4.2-kiloyear event is a megadrought dated about 2200-1900 BC.  Harvey Weiss and colleagues described it in 1993 from the soils and settlements of the Khabur plains, chiefly Tell Leilan:  "At 2200 B. C., a marked increase in aridity and wind circulation, subsequent to a volcanic eruption, induced a considerable degradation of land-use conditions. After four centuries of urban life, this abrupt climatic change evidently caused abandonment of Tell Leilan, regional desertion, and collapse of the Akkadian empire based in southern Mesopotamia."31  In 2016 Weiss summarised the regional picture:  "Across the Mediterranean and west Asia, the effects of the 4.2-3.9 ka BP megadrought included synchronous collapse of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt and Early Bronze Age settlements in Anatolia, the Aegean and the Levant."32

The coincidence is striking.  The drought begins in 2200 BC, the very date Osgood and Wise give for Babel, and it emptied the north Mesopotamian plains, including the Khabur triangle where Habermehl puts the tower.  No young-earth writer found for this article ties the two.

But the shape is the reverse of Genesis 11:8.  People did not scatter from one city to the ends of the earth.  They pulled back from dry plains to rivers:  "the populations abandoning the rain-fed plains of southwestern Turkey, western Syria and northern Mesopotamia became the habitat-tracking populations that settled along the banks of the Euphrates River and the karst-spring fed Orontes River".32  And they already spoke and wrote different languages before it began.  A young-earth writer who wants to use the drought would need to argue that the confusion of tongues came first and the drought followed, and the written record of Sumerian and Akkadian before 2200 BC stands against that order.

Continuity elsewhere

If the dispersion is the moment when the world outside Shinar was settled, then nothing outside Shinar should be older than Babel.  Osgood said so in 1986:  "all the rest of the civilizations of the ancient world will have to be seen as post-Flood and post-Babel, and therefore after 2,200 B.C."14  In 1988 he made it a rule:  "All cultures outside of lower Mesopotamia should be POST Babel, that is, after 2,200 B.C."33

The record outside Shinar does not allow that.  The article on Egypt and the Flood date finds that Egyptian king lists and radiocarbon agree in putting the Step Pyramid before every Masoretic Flood date, let alone every Babel date.  The article on the Neolithic and the Flood date finds Göbekli Tepe, Jericho and Çatalhöyük 6,000 to 10,000 years before any Flood date Genesis allows, on counted building levels and tree rings as well as radiocarbon.  Anything older than the Flood is older than Babel.

Osgood himself has since changed his position.  In 2023 he placed "as contemporary Ubaid 1–2, Susiana a–c, Samarra, Early Halaf, and pre-Halaf Hassuna 3" before the dispersion,34 and allowed that "there were some individuals who had, in fact, begun to migrate outwards in several directions" before Babel, people whom archaeologists call "Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, and Pre-Pottery cultures."34  That answers the continuity problem by moving much of the record to before Babel.  It also abandons his own earlier rule and leaves the same record to fit into the 100 years between the Flood and his Babel.

Continuity in the Indus valley and in China at the Babel dates was not researched for this article.  It is listed under Issues.

What the record shows

  • At every date the genealogies allow, Shinar already had temples, cities and writing.
  • On every Masoretic date, Shinar also had two written languages, which is the text's own claim failing in the text's own place. The Septuagint window passes this test and fails the level count.
  • Babylon is first named about 2217-2193 BC, as a town where an Akkadian king builds temples. That is a fair point for the young-earth side, unused by it, and it comes with an empire and nine centuries of writing attached.
  • The Uruk expansion and the 4.2-kiloyear drought are the only dispersal-like events, and neither has the shape Genesis 11 describes.
  • The young-earth writer who has done the most archaeology, Osgood, now puts much of the record before Babel, which trades the continuity problem for a compression problem.

Objections and responses

"AiG dates Babel to 2242 BC."  The date has no sound source.  It adds a five-year offset from the Book of Sothis, a text on a Septuagint clock preserved only by a ninth-century Byzantine chronicler, to Ussher's Masoretic Peleg.  On the Book of Sothis's own clock, Babel is 534 years after the Flood (Part 1).

"Use the Septuagint, and the dates work."  They work better.  The Septuagint window, 2767-2428 BC on the 2166 BC anchor, allows about 33 to 44 years per Eridu level at Peleg's birth and about 16 to 21 at his death, and its early years come before the first Akkadian scribes.  But the whole Ubaid-to-Akkad sequence must still fit in about 650 years against about 3,500 on conventional dates, a fivefold compression (Where Was the Tower of Babel?).  Osgood rejects the Septuagint for the opposite reason:  its interval allows "literally millions of people to be born by that time, which would diminish the significance of the Babel dispersion".34  Sibley notes that the other ancient texts "vary from this by only three to six decades" from Seder Olam's 340 years.8  The choice of text is argued in the Old Testament text and chronology.

"Babel was much older than archaeologists think, before every human fossil."  This is Ross, Brummel and Wood's preferred option.35  It keeps the universal reading.  Its cost, which they state, is that "the peculiarly Mesopotamian building techniques of fired mud brick and asphalt mortar must have been rediscovered at a later period".35  It also moves Babel far outside any date the genealogies give, so it trades the archaeological test for a textual one.  The authors say they "remain open to being corrected by future studies."35

"Peleg's division was the splitting of the continents."  Young-earth scholars Fouts and Pierce reject it, Fouts on philology:  "It lacks both etymological support and historical confirmation."22  The physics belongs to the Flood-geology articles.

"Even the experts disagree about Mesopotamian chronology."  They do, by about a century.  The Middle, Low and Ultra-Low chronologies move Ur-Nammu by up to about 100 years.  That raises the Masoretic intervals from about 7 to about 11-15 years per Eridu level (Where Was the Tower of Babel?).  The young-earth models need a compression of five times or more.

"The Uruk expansion was the dispersion."  It spread colonists into lands that already held complex societies, lasted for centuries, carried a material culture rather than new languages, and then withdrew (Part 2).  Reimer, who ties Babel to Uruk, concedes that "If language is understood to mean specific spoken languages or dialects then the Uruk paradigm doesn't fit."36  He also holds that "by the time the ziggurats were being constructed, distinct ethnic groups had used different languages for at least a thousand years."36

"The drought of 2200 BC was the dispersion."  The date matches Osgood's and Wise's Babel.  The direction does not:  people pulled back from the plains to the rivers, and they already wrote Sumerian and Akkadian before it began (Part 2).

Issues and unanswered questions

  • The Indus valley and China. Whether settlement in the Indus valley and in northern China runs without a break through the candidate Babel dates was not researched. The Mature Harappan and the Longshan and Liangzhu cultures are the obvious tests.
  • Ussher's 1903 years. The figure Ussher took from Porphyry through Simplicius, and which Pierce reads as the founding of Babylon in 2234 BC, has not been checked in Simplicius's text. It should not be printed as a foundation date until it is.
  • Ussher's wording. The two Ussher quotations on Joktan's sons and the 1903 years come from an anonymous modern English rendering, whose wording paraphrases the 1658 English; the 1658 scan read for this article is too damaged at those two passages to quote exactly. The meaning matches. A clean copy of the 1658 text should replace them before publication.
  • The 4.2-kiloyear event. How far the drought reached is still debated, and the claim that the International Commission on Stratigraphy begins its Meghalayan stage at this event was not checked in the commission's own documents.

Issues that bear on more than one of these articles, among them Osgood's dispersion horizon, the printed pages of George 2005 and the young-earth books not read, are listed in the parent, The Tower of Babel.

Verdict

Genesis ties Babel only to Peleg's lifetime, and the oldest readers did not put it at the start.  On the Masoretic text Peleg lives from 101 to 340 years after the Flood.  None of the ancient chronographers put Babel 101 years after the Flood, Seder Olam gives 340 years, at Peleg's death, and Ussher tied the division to Peleg's birth only conditionally.

The most-printed date has no sound source.  AiG's 2242 BC is Ussher's Peleg minus five years from the Book of Sothis, a Byzantine text on a Septuagint clock whose own count puts the dispersion 534 years after the Flood.  The young-earth dates in print run from 2500 BC to about 2008 BC on the Masoretic text, and the writers who argue the point at length prefer the late end.

At every date the genealogies allow, Shinar's record is already in place.  Temples, cities and writing stand before every candidate date.  On every Masoretic date Sumerian and Akkadian are both written in Shinar before the one language of 11:1 is confused, which is the text's own claim failing in the text's own place.  The Septuagint window passes that test and fails the level count instead.  Babylon's first mention, about 2217-2193 BC, falls close to the popular Babel dates.  That is a fair point for the young-earth side, unused by it, but it comes with an empire and nine centuries of writing attached.  The Uruk expansion and the drought of 2200 BC are the only dispersal-like events, and neither has the shape Genesis 11 describes.  Osgood, the young-earth writer who has done the most archaeology, now puts much of the record before Babel, which trades the continuity problem for a compression problem.

Companion pages

  • The literature: every source consulted for the Tower of Babel articles, what it shows, and which way it cuts.
  • Quotations: the key quotations behind the Tower of Babel articles, each with its locator.
  • The Tower of Babel: what Genesis 11:1-9 says, how it has been read, and the verdict on every test.
  • The Tower of Babel and the Mesopotamian Texts: the Spell of Nudimmud, Enuma Elish, K 3657, the royal building inscriptions, and the world legends.
  • Where Was the Tower of Babel?: the bricks, bitumen and temple platforms of Shinar, the level-count test, and the six proposed sites.

Sources

  1. 1.

    “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. 1a.

      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. ↩ ↩

  2. 2.

    “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. 2a.

      Pages xxvii–xxviii:  “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”. ↩

    2. 2b.

      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”. ↩ ↩

  3. 3.

    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. ↩

  4. 4.

    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. 4a.

      Page 68:  “she bare him a son, and he called his name Peleg ; for in the days when he was born the children of Noah began to divide the earth amongst themselves: for this reason he called his name Peleg.”  Jubilees 8:8. ↩

    2. 4b.

      Page 84:  “In the fourth week in the first year in the beginning thereof in the four and thirtieth jubilee, were they dispersed from the land of Shinar.”  Jubilees 10:27.  By the counting rule Charles uses for his own margin elsewhere ((jubilee − 1) × 49 + (week − 1) × 7 + year), that is AM 1639;  Charles's margin here prints 1688, one jubilee later. ↩

  5. 5.

    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. 5a.

      Section 1.146:  “he was called Phaleg, because he was born at the dispersion of the nations to their several countries; for Phaleg among the Hebrews signifies division.”  Section 1.150:  Arphaxad is born twelve years after the Flood, and Josephus's begetting ages for Arphaxad, Shelah and Eber are 135, 130 and 134, so his own numbers put Peleg's birth 411 years after the Flood. ↩

  6. 6.

    Eusebius of Caesarea.  “Chronicle, book 1.”  attalus.org.  2005.  An English translation of the Armenian text of the first book of Eusebius's Chronicle, the most influential Christian chronology of antiquity, written in the early fourth century.  It follows the Septuagint's patriarchs without the second Kainan and dates the tower only to Peleg's lifetime.

    1. 6a.

      Pages 87–88:  “In the days of Peleg, the land was divided up, and therefore the name Peleg means "division" in the Hebrew language.  Peleg [was the second man who] died before his father.  In his time, the tower [of Babel] was built; men began to speak many different languages, instead of the common language which they had used before; and each nation had its own language, as the Holy Scriptures say”.  Pages of the Schoene-Petermann edition, which the translation marks. ↩

  7. 7.

    Jerome.  “Chronicle:  the prefaces.”  tertullian.org.  Translated by Roger Pearse.  2005.  An English translation of the prefaces to Jerome's Latin version of Eusebius's chronological tables, made in the late fourth century.  The tables begin with Abraham, and Eusebius's preface explains why nothing earlier is dated.

    1. 7a.

      Section Eusebius's preface, paragraph beginning However, returning to earlier events:  “Indeed, if you do not falter in carefulness and when you have diligently pored over the Divine Scripture, from the birth of Abraham back to the Flood of the whole earth, you will find 942 years, and from the flood back to Adam, 2242, in which no completely Greek, or barbarian or, to speak in general terms, gentile history is found.  That is why the present little work traces the later years from Abraham and Ninus down to our time”. ↩

  8. 8.

    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. 8a.

      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.” ↩

    2. 8b.

      Section Abstract:  “The preferred solution of this paper is to follow the Masoretic Text and the Seder Olam Rabbah commentary that places the Babel event 340 years post-Flood at Peleg's death. Other texts of the Second Temple period vary from this by only three to six decades, which lends some support to the conclusion.” ↩

    3. 8c.

      Section Creationist views:  “Bodie Hodge suggests a date for the Babel incident related to Peleg's birth between 101 and 130 years after the Flood, acknowledging the influence of the MT (although he prefers 120 years).” ↩

    4. 8d.

      Section Summary:  “So, the preferred date of Babel here is proposed at 340 years post-Flood, with an error margin of plus or minus several decades.” ↩

  9. 9.

    Ussher, James.  The Annals of the World.  E. Tyler for F. Crook and G. Bedell.  1658.  The first English edition of Ussher's chronology of the world, translated from his Latin Annales.  It dates Peleg's birth to Anno Mundi 1757, 2247 BC, and ties the division of the earth to that birth only on a condition.

    1. 9a.

      Section Anno Mundi 1757:  “When Heber had lived 34 years, he had a son born whom he named Phaleg, [c.11.16.] because in his days the earth was divided, [c.10, v.25. and 1 Chron. 1.v.19.] 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”.  Spelling and the long s modernised. ↩

  10. 10.

    Ussher, James.  The Annals of the World.  1654.  A modern English rendering of Ussher's Annals, completed in Latin in 1654, with each numbered section headed by its year in Anno Mundi, the Julian Period and BC.  Cited here for the sections on Peleg's brother Joktan, on Reu, and on the start of the Babylonian astronomical record.

    1. 10a.

      Section 47:  “These brothers were not yet born when Peleg was born. … These brothers could not be capable of such an expedition of leading colonies because of their youth until some years after Reu was born to Peleg.”  Of Joktan's thirteen sons.  Reu's birth stands under the heading 1787d AM, 2497 JP, 2217 BC. ↩

    2. 10b.

      Section 49:  “1903 years elapsed from this time to the capture of Babylon by Alexander the Great. This calculation and number of years was made according to astronomical observations by Porphyry, as we find in Simplicius, in his second book "de Coelo".”  Under the heading 1771a AM, 2480 JP, 2234 BC. ↩

  11. 11.

    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. 11a.

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

  12. 12.

    Pierce, Larry.  “In the Days of Peleg.”  Creation 22(1):46–49.  1999.  A short magazine article by the translator of the modern English edition of Ussher's Annals.  It keeps Ussher's dates, rejects a continental division in Peleg's day, and adds five years to Peleg's birth on the authority of the Book of Sothis, which is the source of AiG's 2242 BC for the tower.

    1. 12a.

      Section opening:  “According to the biblical chronology as deduced by Archbishop Ussher, the Flood occurred in 2349–2348 BC, and Peleg was born in 2247 BC about a hundred years later.” ↩

    2. 12b.

      Section opening:  “Some suggest the continents of the earth were divided at this time. However, this seems unlikely, as such a process would have had to occur within a very confined time period. The resultant geological violence would be overwhelmingly catastrophic—like another Noahic Flood all over again. Any continental separation thus likely occurred during the Flood.” ↩

    3. 12c.

      Section Greece gets going:  “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.”  Section Footnotes:  Footnote 7:  “Manetho, The Book of Sothis , Harvard Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 239. (Loeb Classical Library 350).” ↩

  13. 13.

    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. 13a.

      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).” ↩

  14. 14.

    Osgood, A. J. M.  “A Better Model for the Stone Age.”  Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 2:88–102.  1986.  The first sustained young-earth attempt to fit the whole Stone Age into the years between Babel and Abraham.  Osgood dates Babel to about 2200 BC and Abraham's entry into Canaan to 1870 BC, so the Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic of every land outside Mesopotamia must fall in about 330 years.

    1. 14a.

      Section A better model, Biblical chronology of the stone age:  “However, all the rest of the civilizations of the ancient world will have to be seen as post-Flood and post-Babel, and therefore after 2,200 B.C.” ↩ ↩

  15. 15.

    Wise, Kurt P.  “Egypt or Babel:  Which Came First?”  Answers.  Apr 2008.  A popular article by a young-earth palaeontologist for Answers in Genesis.  It argues that the Bible dates Babel only to Peleg's lifetime, probably near its midpoint, and that the Egyptian and Babylonian king lists are stretched.

    1. 15a.

      Section Peleg and the "Division of the Earth":  “The Bible gives us no more specific information on when Babel occurred—namely, it falls between the Flood and the time of Abraham, probably near the midpoint (around 2200 BC), give or take a century.” ↩

  16. 16.

    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. 16a.

      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.” ↩

  17. 17.

    Whitcomb, John C., and Henry M. Morris.  The Genesis Flood:  The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications.  Presbyterian and Reformed.  1961.  The book that founded the modern young-earth movement, by a theologian and a hydraulic engineer.  Its appendix on Genesis 11 allows gaps in the genealogy, puts the Flood up to three to five thousand years before Abraham, and argues that Babel cannot be stretched far from the Flood because the patriarchs Reu, Serug and Nahor would then have to span the Stone Age.

    1. 17a.

      Page 478:  “If we accept 2167 B.C. as the year of Abram's birth, the Flood must have occurred in the year 2459 B.C. and the judgment of the Tower of Babel between 2358 and 2119 B.C. (the lifetime of Peleg) according to the strict-chronology interpretation.”  Page 486:  “That God's judgment upon Babel took place not more than a millennium after the Flood is suggested by the fact that the world's population was still confined to one comparatively small area of the earth at that time.”  Page 486, footnote 1:  “That the judgment of Babel could have occurred as much as 1,000 years after the Flood is suggested by two further considerations.” ↩

  18. 18.

    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. 18a.

      Section Objections:  “Babel site C is a medium sized tel, only 276 m across, and about 16 m high, and it has no ziggurat.”  “While commentators since Ussher have assumed that the dispersion occurred in the year Peleg was born, we find it more likely that Babel was a rebellion against the territorial division in the year Peleg was born … the tower of Babel was constructed between the sixth and eighth generations, counting Shem as the first.”  “there may have been 3,000 adult men alive on Earth when the project began, and still fewer than 10,000 adult men at the dispersion.” ↩

  19. 19.

    Osgood, A. J. M.  “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?  Comments.”  Answers Research Journal 17:215–216.  2024.  A young-earth archaeologist's critique of Habermehl 2011 in the journal that published it.  Osgood argues that Shinar is Sumer, that no geologist supports a drowned southern plain, and that on the Masoretic text Babel lies no earlier than 2500 BC and near Babylon.

    1. 19a.

      Section Under Water?:  “The Bible is clear that it was at least a century after the Flood of Noah, in the time of Peleg, and the time period allotted to this can be no further back than 2500 B.C. (that is. if we add in the extra assumed 200 years claimed for the Israelite sojourn in Egypt). In giving this date I am claiming the figures of the Masoretic text, not the Septuagint”. ↩

  20. 20.

    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. 20a.

      Pages 230–231:  “'Peleg' comes from the root פלג 'to divide'; as a common noun it means 'canal, channel.' Here the etymology gives it a more abstract sense, 'division.' … More likely it refers to the dispersal of the nations at Babel (11:1—9). Admittedly the verb used there, 'disperse' (פוץ), is not 'to divide' (פלג). But פלג can be used of confusing speech (Ps 55:10 [9]).” ↩

  21. 21.

    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. 21a.

      Page 526:  “The remark: 'because in his days the earth divided itself' (the earth = those populating the earth, humankind, as 11:1) only has meaning if Peleg is a personal name. … What is meant is something like what is described in 11:1-9, although one cannot say whether this remark in the genealogy has this or another intent.” ↩

  22. 22.

    Fouts, David M.  “Peleg in Gen 10:25.”  Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 41(1):17–21.  1998.  A short philological study by an evangelical Old Testament scholar writing from inside the young-earth camp.  It weighs three readings of Genesis 10:25, rejects the continental-drift reading, finds the canal reading attractive, and keeps the traditional reading of a division of peoples.

    1. 22a.

      Page 19:  “The noun peleg occurs ten times in Scripture, and each time watercourses (canals, tears, etc.) or rivers are in view (Job 29:6; Pss 1:3; 46:5[6]; 65:9[10]; 119:136; Prov 5:16; 21:1; Isa 30:25; 32:2; Lam 3:48).” ↩

    2. 22b.

      Page 20:  “Furthermore it has cognates in both Akkadian (palgu) and Ugaritic (plg), both of which mean "canal." Though the idea came to me after studying the issues involved, it was published already by John Skinner and was more recently suggested as a possibility by Victor Hamilton.” ↩

    3. 22c.

      Page 21:  “Peleg was named such ("canal") because in his days the land was divided by watercourses ("canalized").” ↩

    4. 22d.

      Page 21:  “I must confess that after examining all the evidence available I still tend to hold to the traditional understanding. It seems to be the view with the least problems. … 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.” ↩ ↩

  23. 23.

    Lanser, Rick.  “Making Sense of the Days of Peleg.”  Associates for Biblical Research.  Nov 19, 2014.  The web version of a 2009 Bible and Spade article by a young-earth writer.  It reads Genesis 10:25 as the splitting of a single post-Flood continent five generations after the Flood, on the Septuagint's numbers, and separates that event from Babel.

    1. 23a.

      Section opening:  “The division of the continents is an event that, according evidence in the Septuagint and Luke 3:35–38, must be dated five generations after the Noahic flood. This was about two full generations after the division of the languages at Babel (Gen. 10:25) even though that event is not described until Genesis 11:1–9.” ↩

  24. 24.

    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. 24a.

      Section The Earth was divided:  “The entire context of Genesis 10 makes it clear that the division which occurred in the days of Peleg was linguistic, not geological.” ↩

  25. 25.

    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. 25a.

      Page 34:  “dug a canal … from the Euphrates to Eridu”.  Of Ur-Nammu. ↩

  26. 26.

    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. 26a.

      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". ↩

  27. 27.

    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. 27a.

      Page 267:  “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.”  “The economic sources of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (about 2100 B.C.) are full of references to a city spelled uniformly, as in the preceding Sargonic period, KA-DINGIR KI. … This form can hardly be anything else than Akkadian Bab-ilim.” ↩

  28. 28.

    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. 28a.

      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.” ↩

    2. 28b.

      Page 25:  “on DeWitt's reconstruction two languages were spoken in Shinar for four hundred years before the tower of Babel was begun, for we know that Akkadian was spoken in Shinar from the middle of the third millennium B.C.” ↩

  29. 29.

    Algaze, Guillermo.  The Uruk World System:  The Dynamics of Expansion of Early Mesopotamian Civilization.  University of Chicago Press.  2nd edition.  2005.  The standard study of the Uruk expansion by the archaeologist who defined it.  It traces the colonies and enclaves that southern Mesopotamian cities planted across the Euphrates, Tigris and Khabur in the second half of the fourth millennium BC, and in this edition stresses that the lands they entered already held complex societies.

    1. 29a.

      Section Preface:  “it documents the varying strategies that Uruk societies used in unwittingly creating what, with some caveats, can be considered as the world's earliest "world system" and, possibly, its first imperial venture.” ↩

    2. 29b.

      Section Preface:  “it now seems that until the onset of the fourth millennium B.c. southern Mesopotamia was but one of several competing regions across the ancient Near East where parallel strides toward social complexity were taking place.” ↩

    3. 29c.

      Page 137:  “there is no evidence that the establishment of Uruk colonies across the Mesopotamian periphery, whatever their type, was part of a centrally controlled and organized process.” ↩

    4. 29d.

      Page 147:  “why is it that Uruk societies maintained variously structured colonies in peripheral areas for hundreds of years, while the opposite was not the case?” ↩

    5. 29e.

      Page 148:  “no contemporary peripheral site has yet provided any evidence for the existence of formal reckoning and writing systems comparable in their complexity to those that emerged in southern Mesopotamia during the Middle and Late Uruk periods.” ↩

  30. 30.

    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. 30a.

      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.” ↩

    2. 30b.

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

  31. 31.

    Weiss, H. et al.  “The genesis and collapse of third millennium north Mesopotamian civilization.”  Science 261(5124):995–1004.  1993.  The field study that first tied the abandonment of the Khabur plains to an abrupt drought, from soil stratigraphy and settlement data at Tell Leilan and its region.  It dates the change to 2200 BC and links it to the fall of the Akkadian empire.

    1. 31a.

      Section Abstract:  “Archaeological and soil-stratigraphic data define the origin, growth, and collapse of Subir, the third millennium rain-fed agriculture civilization of northern Mesopotamia on the Habur Plains of Syria. At 2200 B. C., a marked increase in aridity and wind circulation, subsequent to a volcanic eruption, induced a considerable degradation of land-use conditions. After four centuries of urban life, this abrupt climatic change evidently caused abandonment of Tell Leilan, regional desertion, and collapse of the Akkadian empire based in southern Mesopotamia.” ↩

  32. 32.

    Weiss, Harvey.  “Global megadrought, societal collapse and resilience at 4.2-3.9 ka BP across the Mediterranean and west Asia.”  PAGES Magazine 24(2):62–63.  2016.  A two-page review by the excavator of Tell Leilan of the drought of 2200-1900 BC across the Mediterranean and west Asia.  It describes the synchronous collapse of rain-fed farming societies and the retreat of their people to river and spring refuges, and the event's regional extent is still debated.

    1. 32a.

      Page 62:  “Across the Mediterranean and west Asia, the effects of the 4.2-3.9 ka BP megadrought included synchronous collapse of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Old Kingdom in Egypt and Early Bronze Age settlements in Anatolia, the Aegean and the Levant.”  “the abrupt global megadrought and cooling at ca. 4.2-3.9 ka BP (2200-1900 BC)”. ↩

    2. 32b.

      Page 63, left column:  “Region-wide settlement surveys suggest that the populations abandoning the rain-fed plains of southwestern Turkey, western Syria and northern Mesopotamia became the habitat-tracking populations that settled along the banks of the Euphrates River and the karst-spring fed Orontes River”.  “within a few generations the former pastoralists' descendants became the Amorite rulers of Babylon.” ↩

  33. 33.

    Osgood, A. J. M.  “A Better Model for the Stone Age, Part 2.”  Ex Nihilo Technical Journal.  1988.  The second part of Osgood's young-earth model of the Stone Age, which assigns each Mesopotamian and Levantine archaeological culture to a nation of Genesis 10 and dates the whole Mesopotamian Chalcolithic between Babel and Abraham.

    1. 33a.

      Section Conclusion:  “All cultures outside of lower Mesopotamia should be POST Babel, that is, after 2,200 B.C.” ↩

  34. 34.

    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. 34a.

      Section The Dispersion:  “the Septuagint's genealogies would have Babel occurring at least 533 years after the Flood, allowing literally millions of people to be born by that time, which would diminish the significance of the Babel dispersion”. ↩

    2. 34b.

      Section A Detailed Look at the Sons of Shem, 1. Ubaid 'Period' (Arphaxad):  “there is good reason to place as contemporary Ubaid 1–2, Susiana a–c, Samarra, Early Halaf, and pre-Halaf Hassuna 3 and to place them prior to and up to the earliest Uruk XIV–XIII levels, which witness the appearance of the Uruk culture in the Plains later than the Shemitic descendants.”  “That the dispersion from the time of Babel occurred at the end of Ubaid 2, where we see the beginning of the northern Ubaid expansion, gains traction with the findings of Hajj Muhammad pottery (Ubaid Phase 2) at Tell Brak in the Habur region, suggesting that Ubaid southerners had now arrived there.” ↩

    3. 34c.

      Section The Time of Babel:  “It also appears that there were some individuals who had, in fact, begun to migrate outwards in several directions, people, who in the archaeological record, the long-age proponents call Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, and Pre-Pottery cultures.” ↩

  35. 35.

    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. 35a.

      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.” ↩

    2. 35b.

      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.” ↩

    3. 35c.

      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.” ↩

  36. 36.

    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. 36a.

      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.” ↩

    2. 36b.

      Page 65:  “Through archaeological research it is clear that by the time the ziggurats were being constructed, distinct ethnic groups had used different languages for at least a thousand years.” ↩