The Tower of Babel as Satire

A couple of posts about the Tower of Babel story have appeared in the blogosphere recently. Terri discussed telling her children that it is not literally true, while DoOrDoNot shared a humorous story about a child being offered a possible literal interpretation.

In the past I’ve mentioned the story briefly, such as in a parody of the use of the story by young-earth creationists to oppose mainstream linguistics, and also mentioned Judy Klitsner’s treatment of the story in her book Subversive Sequels in the Bible. I was surprised to find that I’ve never discussed it more directly or in more detail.

The only thing I would add at present is that the story has a strong element of satire. It is poking fun at the Babylonians, reinterpreting the name of their capital city Babylon (turning the “Gate of God” into “confusion”), and offering an etiological story about their great ziggurat Etemenanki – so grandiose was it that it is possible that they never managed to finish it, perhaps thus inspiring the story in Genesis.

And related tangentially to the title of this post and the topic of this blog more generally, the blog Bible Babel has a post on the Bible in the sci-fi series Firefly.