Proofs The Tower Of Babel Account Is True Series

PROOFS THE TOWER OF BABEL ACCOUNT IS TRUE

Gen. 11:1-9

INTRODUCTION

A. HUMOR: Husbands & Wives don’t speak same language!

1. Peter was reading an article out loud to his wife. “Did you know that women use about 30,000 words a day, whereas men only use 15,000 words?”

2. Victoria replied, “The reason has to be because a woman has to say everything twice.” Peter turned to Victoria and asked, "What?"

3. Wife : Do you want dinner? Husband : Sure, what are my choices? Wife : Yes and no.

4. That’s the topic of tonight’s message – the confusion in the world by us not all speaking the same language!

B. TEXT

“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.” Gen. 11:1,4,6-9.

C. THESIS

1. Tonight we’re continuing our series on “Proof the Bible is True.” Last week we covered the reality of Adam and Eve.

2. Skeptics have openly scoffed at the account of the Tower of Babel. The Wikipedia article on it starts out, “The Tower of Babel as told in Genesis 11:1-9 is an ORIGIN MYTH…”

2. Another skeptic classified this narrative as a “nonsensical legend.” So is this Bible story a bunch of made-up nonsense or does history, archeology, and science prove it to be true?

3. Tonight our study is entitled: “Proofs the Tower of Babel Account is True.”

I. THE FINDINGS OF PHILOLOGY

A. SKEPTICS DENY THERE WAS EVER A UNIFIED LANGUAGE

The skeptic (Allen 1990; 43-44) who said this narrative as a “nonsensical” legend, also declared: “It’s highly unlikely that the human inhabitants of the whole earth have ever spoken only one language.”

B. COMMON ORIGINAL LANGUAGE VERIFIED

Language studies have led many scholars to the conclusion that the varied human tongues ultimately can be traced to a common source.

1. Max F. Muller (Oxford Univ.) in Science of Language writes: “We have examined all the possible forms which language can assume, and we now ask, can we reconcile…one common origin of human speech? I answer decidedly, Yes” (Muller 46-47).

2. Sir William Jones compared Sanskrit, Greek & Latin and found the roots and syntax so similar … “that no philologer could examine all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source which no longer exists” (Quoted in A. T. Roberston, A Grammar of the Greek N.T.).

3. G. C. Aalders discovered clear connections between some languages in Central and South America, Egyptian, and ancient Sumerian [the oldest known language]. “This scholar, who formerly had considered the account in Genesis 11:1-9 to be no more than a myth, came to the conclusion that the biblical narrative is more credible than had been supposed” (1981, 254).

4. Dr. Harold Stigers likewise observed such similarities of syntax and vocabulary that he said they “indicate that one must posit a common ancestor” (1976, 130).

5. Secular journalists discussing the work of certain linguistic scientists using computers to compare languages, speculate a mother tongue existed, which they call “proto-World.” One writer went so far as to say: “Maybe the Bible is right, and there really was a Tower of Babel. Or at least, maybe there really was once a single human language, before we were all cursed with a confusion of tongues” (Dyer).

II. HISTORICAL CONFIRMATION

1. Abydenus (a Greek historian of the mid-fourth century B.C.), as quoted by Eusebius, spoke of a great tower at Babylon which was destroyed. The record notes: “[U]ntil this time all men had used the same speech, but now there was sent upon them a confusion of many and divers tongues” (quoted in Rawlinson 1873, 28).

2. Plato in one of his works, tells of a golden age when men spoke the same language, but an act of the gods caused them to be confounded in their speech (see M’Clintock and Strong 1968, 590).

3. In his book, Chaldean Account of Genesis (1880:29) George Smith of the British Museum—the scholar who translated the Gilgamesh Epic—published another fragment telling of an ancient ziggurat. “The building of this temple offended the gods. In a night they threw down what had been built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange their speech. The progress they impeded.”