Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel (2242 BC) was a post-Flood rebellion against God by Noah’s descendants. God judged them by dividing the single language into multiple language families. As these groups spread out and became isolated, certain features (e.g. skin shade, eye shape) became dominant in certain groups.

From Six Days & Other Biblical Perspectives: Enhanced edition

Was There a Real Tower of Babel?

There exist a great many confirmations of the Bible’s account of the Tower of Babel and what happened as a result. Language changes, ziggurats, names of Noah found throughout the world, and tower legends are excellent confirmations of the events at Babel.

What Happened at the Tower of Babel?

God’s gentleness in judging the rebels at Babel is a lesson for us today. By changing one language into many, He separated nations more effectively than any Wall of China. God stepped in to prevent the human race from falling under the sway of a single, absolute tyrant over all the earth.

Evolution and Languages

In their efforts to explain the multitude of languages, secular theories come up empty. They are upstaged by the biblical narrative, which credits God with the gift of language and the vast diversity of different language families. The words language, tongue, speech, and word appear in the Bible at least 1,401 times.

Diversity of Languages Started at Babel

“Why do intellectually superior humans have around 7,000 distinct languages?” queries evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel. Pagel heads a team searching for an evolutionary explanation for our many languages. The biblical history of the dispersion from the tower of Babel indicates that diversity of language emerged from the area of “a plain in the land of Shinar.”

Articles About Tower of Babel

• Technical Research Paper

  Blessed Be Assyria

  Dec. 14, 2016 from Answers Research Journal

  Judgment in Nahum follows the pattern of Babel. God would come down, incapacitate a rebellion, and scatter rebels. This contradicts a widely-held belief.

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• Magazine Department Article

  How Many Races Did God Create?

  

  Feb. 15, 2015 from Answers Magazine

  Some people think the Bible justifies their racist attitudes. Yet when we examine what the Bible says about the origin of different people groups, we find a different story.

• Magazine Article

  Setting Up Camp After Babel

  

  Nov. 3, 2013 from Answers Magazine

  Did the various families who left Babel leave any trace of their journeys?

• Magazine Department Article

  Tower of Babel—Clearing Up the Confusion

  

  July 1, 2013 from Answers Magazine

  The account of the Tower of Babel is under attack like the rest of Genesis 1–11.

• Evolutionary Language Search Lands at Babel

  Jan. 5, 2013 from News to Know

  Search for evolutionary explanation of languages falls short and lands at Babel.

• Intertwining Evolution and Linguistics Breeds Controversy

  Nov. 26, 2011 from News to Know

  Linguists lobbying against evolutionary oversimplifications refuse to yield to the authority of statistics

• Semi-Technical In-Depth Article

  Babel: How to Pronounce It

  Aug. 17, 2011 from Answers in Depth

  Bodie Hodge provides an answer to a surprisingly often-asked question.

• The Mother Tongue?

  April 23, 2011 from News to Know

  Two separate linguistics studies provide findings consistent with a biblical worldview.

• Technical Research Paper

  Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?

  March 23, 2011 from Answers Research Journal

  This biblical story is believed by many to be the record of a real historical event that took place after the worldwide Flood, at a time when the earth’s population still lived together in one place.

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• Will You Help Us Defend the Truth of God’s Word?

  Jan. 24, 2011 from Letter from Ken

  The building of Noah’s Ark is a way to challenge people to accept the truth of God’s Word, and just as important are the other exhibits of the Ark Encounter.

• Book Chapter

  Was the Dispersion at Babel a Real Event?

  Aug. 19, 2010 from The New Answers Book 2

  In this chapter, we’ll examine the fascinating answers to questions about what happened on the plain of Shinar.

• Magazine Article

  More Than PIE

  

  Aug. 8, 2010 from Answers Magazine

  Were people separated at Babel because God miraculously changed the common language?

• Magazine Article

  The World in Revolt

  

  June 13, 2010 from Answers Magazine

  Nations that once feared God now ignore Him and despise His Word. Not much has changed in the lst four thousand years, since Babel.

• Native Americans and the Bible

  May 28, 2010

  How did Native American peoples get to North America after the Flood reduced mankind to eight people in the mountains of Ararat?

• How is Language Driven?

  Jan. 24, 2009 from News to Know

  “But if universal grammar did not evolve by natural selection, how could it have arisen?” That’s one question posed by a recent study—one we can certainly answer!

• Magazine Department Article

  Babble at Babel

  April 1, 2008 from Answers Magazine

  We all have communication challenges from time to time.

• Magazine Department Article

  Babel Explains Our Differences

  April 1, 2008 from Answers Magazine

  View a chart illustrating how Babel explains our differences.

• Magazine Article

  What Did the Tower Look Like?

  

  March 18, 2008 from Answers Magazine

  The simple answer is that the Bible does not tell us. All we know is that God intervened before the construction project was completed.

• Answers Magazine Preview: Vol. 3, No. 2

  March 11, 2008

  The special “Tower of Babel” issue of Answers magazine covers some fascinating aspects of the Babel account as recorded in Genesis 11.

• Magazine Article

  Tongue-Twisting Tales

  Feb. 18, 2008 from Answers Magazine

  Stories about a time when there was only one language do exist.

• Research Supports Biblical Description of Language Development

  Feb. 9, 2008

  New research on the “evolution” of language supports the Bible’s description of all languages having appeared recently.

• Feedback Article

  Did People Groups form Before Babel?

  Oct. 13, 2006 from Feedback

  What we have in Genesis 10 is a general overview of what happened, but then Genesis 11 goes into more detail of why and how the nations were divided according to their languages.

• Feedback Article

  From Ararat to the Americas—In a Few Thousand Years?

  Sept. 22, 2006 from Feedback

  A reader from Arizona asks about how the people spread out over the world after the Flood and about Ussher’s date of creation.

• Magazine Article

  Apes, Words, and People

  June 1, 2003, pp. 50–51

  Many years ago a friend of mine said, in response to my biblical challenge to his theistic evolutionary ideas, ‘If God didn’t evolve us from apes, why did He make us to look so much like them?’ I didn

• Magazine Article

  Babel

  June 1, 2002, pp. 31–33

  God’s judgment of the Tower of Babel was one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of the world. In one moment, a massive, highly complex building project, involving the entire human race, came

• Magazine Article

  Talking Point

  March 1, 2001, pp. 42–45

  One of the great mysteries of life is the origin of language. We use it every day to communicate with each other, but how did it begin?

• Overcoming Babel!

  Sept. 7, 2000

  Praise the Lord we are able to take the creation/gospel message into other languages to restore the truth they once had and preach the true history of the world.

• Technical Research Paper

  The Development of Languages is Nothing Like Biological Evolution

  Aug. 1, 2000, pp. 31–40

  The changes that have occurred in the Indo-European language family, for example, demonstrate that languages follow a 'downhill' simplification in inflections, etc. by natural processes.