Also, that a city would have done what cities do, attract people from all over, from an array of cultures and languages.
It’s literally an allegorical warning against diversity, and the perils of not hiring an engineer.
Comment on Just an idea
Etterra@discuss.online 1 week ago
The Tower of Babel was probably just a ziggurat that suffered a structural failure and the proto-Hebrew goat herders were like “haha that’s what you get for building cities, assholes.”
hansolo@lemmy.today 6 days ago
BigBenis@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I bet you can’t prove that it wasn’t a fully operational space elevator built by the same aliens who built the pyramids that they then sabotaged when they left/integrated into human society in order to prevent humans from becoming a space-fairing civilization and competing with/drawing attention from our advanced intergalactic neighbors.
Etterra@discuss.online 6 days ago
Are those the same aliens that turned the earth flat?
drmoose@lemmy.world 6 days ago
From what I gathered in non-fiction: they were building a giant 9 story ziggurat that was so big and such culture blend of people that it was named “Babel” which just roughly means “confusion”.
The fictional religious story seems to twist this into some xenophobic shit as always.
Etterra@discuss.online 6 days ago
It probably just fell down because nobody had made one that big before so they didn’t know that it even could collapse because material science hadn’t even been invented yet.
drmoose@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Which apparently happened a lot, like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidenae - 20,000 people died, insane. That was quite normal in the ancient architecture sadly.
Etterra@discuss.online 6 days ago
Well I mean when you haven’t invented geometry yet, you kinda have to just learn as you go. “Oh if I don’t brace these walls it could collapse and kill us all” was something people had to learn the hard way.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 1 week ago
Funnily enough, something similar is probably the truth behind the “Exodus” and “Conquest of the Promised Land”
Tl;Dr the Israelites were just rural Canaanites
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
I think Abraham was originally from Ur, which was near Sumer…
But then again, nothing was written down until the time of Moses, so it really depends on how much you want to trust oral tradition.
The early Hebrew script was directly related to the Phoenician alphabet and Egyptian hieroglyphs though, so it does seem they at least had more than cursory contact with those civilizations
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yeah but Phonecians and Egyptians were in a shared trade sphere with Canaan. Phonecians were some of the primary traders of the Mediterranean and their city of Tyre is now in Lebanon. Ramesses II like many Pharoahs went on campaign in Canaan.
Canaan was a borderland between the spheres of influence of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It was a nice spot on the Mediterranean that never got powerful enough to challenge either for more than independence or mild incursion, and was far enough from each that it was hard to hold and different enough to contain exotic goods.
Abraham being from Ur makes sense. There’s a lot of Mesopotamian influence in Judaism. Sure it’s far, but the Hebrews saw themselves as people who left civilization after it became too corrupt to go be shepherds in the desert. All of that maps to things we know happened in various Mesopotamian cities at various times (and is common in all ancient cities). From there we have schismogenetic counterpoints with Mesopotamia, especially in the form of sexual mores (they aren’t calling Babylon a whore because they think it’s cool that Mesopotamians had sacred prostitution).
The bit I’m far more doubtful of is the long term enslavement in Egypt. Especially the stories of Joseph and Moses.
Etterra@discuss.online 1 week ago
When you read the old testament there’s a lot of stuff about how cities are bad and don’t offer hospitality. That’s a big deal with nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, and was even the key sin in their description of Sodom and Gomorrah. It all harkons back to the early bronze age and that transition into sedentary lifestyle, with a lot of oral traditions sticking around as scripture once it got written down.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
Even in Genesis, God supposedly preferred the sheep herder over the agrarian