Вавилонское столпотворение
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Pandemonium of Babel. The Bible tells about the construction by post-Flood people of a tower in Babylon, which, according to the builders, was supposed to reach the sky (Gen. 11: 1–9). According to the biblical story and later Jewish traditions, the culprit of the enterprise was Nimrod. Having founded a strong state, he became proud of his first success and planned to found a world monarchy, contrary to the will of God, which determined the descendants of Ham (to which Nimrod belonged) to be slaves of others. And so, for this purpose, as a sign of their power and as the center of world power, the Hamites decided to build a “tower as high as the heavens.” The enterprise, therefore, was not only insane and impracticable, but also contrary to divine destiny. Therefore, when work began to boil, bricks were fired and earth resin was prepared, the Lord decided to punish the builders. He confused their language so that they ceased to understand each other and were unable to continue building, and then, little by little, they scattered throughout the entire earth.
From an archaeological point of view, the biblical story has been the subject of many studies to determine which of the Babylonian ruins most closely resembles the Tower of Nimrod. There are several such ruins near the city of Gillt, located on the site of ancient Babylon. The first serious researcher of Babylonian ruins, Rawlinson believed that the remains of the Tower of Babel should be sought in Niffer, versts 140 to the south-east. from Gilla, where there is a mass of bricks cemented with earthen resin, just as the Bible says. But this opinion, which does not find confirmation in the authoritative evidence of ancient writers, was abandoned, and now the opinions of researchers are divided between two other ruins, which have much more right to be identified with the Tower of Babel. One of these ruins is located north of ancient Babylon and is still known among local Arabs under the name Babil, and the other to the southwest. from it, on the right bank of the Euphrates, and is called by the Arabs Birs-Nimrud, i.e., the Tower of Nimrod.
Both ruins are grandiose and show that an unimaginable amount of labor and millions of bricks went into the construction of these structures. The last one is especially majestic, and since its Arabic name directly coincides with the biblical reference to Nimrod, most researchers are inclined to identify this particular ruin with the Tower of Babel. The same opinion is supported by one wedge-shaped inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, which states that the king, having found the ruins of the tower of the seven luminaries in Borsippa (a suburb of Babylon), restored it. At present, Birs Nimrud is an exposed hill 235 feet high. At first glance it appears to be a simple earthen mound, but excavations have revealed that it is the remains of a brick-built building. On the top of the hill, in the shape of a dilapidated castle, stands the remains of a tower, projecting 40 feet above the general mass of ruins. According to the description of Herodotus (I, 181), Birs-Nimrud (the church of Bel) had at its base a stage in width and length (more than 600 feet), and according to Strabo, the same height.
According to Rawlinson's rough calculations, such a construction should have required at least 35 million. bricks of the largest size. The enormity of the ruins can be judged by the fact that Alexander the Great, in order to restore the building, used 10,000 people for two months to remove only the rubbish that fell from it during his time.
According to the biblical view, at first all people spoke the same language. This was a great blessing, as it made mutual relations between them unhindered; but they abused this blessing, and as punishment God confused their languages, so that they ceased to understand each other, and from their different dialects, heterogeneous languages were subsequently formed. Diversity of languages, according to the biblical view, is, therefore, a punishment of God imposed on people in order to complicate their relations with each other, since, due to the sinful inclination of the human heart, people primarily use such relations for evil. In connection with the biblical view, there is a New Testament legend that when, in order to spread Christianity, it was necessary to remove the obstacle presented by multilingualism for preaching to different peoples, the apostles were given the gift of tongues, i.e., the ability to understand the common human language, which had once been taken away from people, was restored (Acts 2:2-11).
The legend of the Babylonian pandemonium, with its accompanying consequences, was preserved in the traditions of other peoples - and above all among the Babylonians themselves. This could already be judged from the testimony of two Greek writers who drew their information about Babylonia from native sources - Polyhistor and Abydenus, of whom the first conveys the Babylonian tradition in a form very close to the biblical legend. But recently, authentic Babylonian tablets have been discovered, now located in Britannia. museum. Although these slabs are badly damaged, the cuneiform writing has been preserved to such an extent that the general meaning of the text can be reproduced. It says that Babylon was inclined towards sin, the great and small in it began to build some kind of stronghold, but God decided to bring fear to them, made their language strange and thereby made the further success of the work difficult (Records of the Past, VII, 131 and 132).
Echoes of the same legend were preserved among the Egyptians, who attributed the dispersion of peoples to the indignation of wicked people against the gods, among the Greeks, who preserved the legend of the Akkadians, who once had the proud idea of using the great tower to penetrate into the dwelling of the gods, and even in the New World - among the Mexicans and various Indian tribes.
Wed. Lücken, "Traditionen des Menschengeschiechts" (1869); Lenormant, "Origines de l'histoire"; in Russian literature: A. Lopukhin, “Biblical history in the light of the latest research and discoveries” (vol. I, 214–230); N. Astafiev, “Babylonian-Assyrian antiquities” (p. 57 et seq.).