Myth #43:

God confused the common language of humanity and scattered the people about the world.

The Myth: And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. (Gen. 11:1–9)

The Reality: The children of Noah’s sons spoke different languages and lived in different nations long before the events described in this account.

The biblical story of the Tower of Babel begins with the claim that the entire world spoke one language. It then says, “they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar.” Who is this “they” mentioned in the story?

Presumably, “they” refers back to the last mentioned group of people to precede the reference. That would be the “generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth” (Gen. 10:1). Genesis 10 divides the descendants of Noah into three branches, each associated with one of his sons, and, according to the account, these descendants founded numerous nations and spoke different languages. About the sons of Japheth, for example, the Bible says, “By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations” (Gen. 10:5).

Between the genealogy of Noah and the claim that “they journeyed form the east,” we have no other antecedent defining who “they” refers to. Since Genesis 10 reports that the world had already been divided into nations and spoke many languages before we get to the story of the Tower of Babel, it contradicts Genesis 11:1, which claims that the entire world spoke one language. The Noah genealogy, which divides his family into several nations, also contradicts the claim that humanity was scattered around the world after the attempt to build the tower to heaven.