The Great Tower and the Confounding of the Languages

[Fair Dinkum]

Quote

Mosiah 28:17

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/28.17?lang=eng&clang=eng#p17

17 Now after Mosiah had finished ^atranslating these ^brecords, behold, it gave an account of the people who were ^cdestroyed, from the time that they were destroyed back to the building of the ^dgreat tower, at the time the Lord ^econfounded the language of the people and they were scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth, yea, and even from that time back until the creation of Adam.

Quote

Ether 1:3, 33

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/ether/1.3,33?lang=eng&clang=eng#p3,33

3 And as I suppose that the ^afirst part of this record, which speaks concerning the creation of the world, and also of Adam, and an account from that time even to the great ^btower, and whatsoever things transpired among the children of men until that time, is had among the Jews—

 

So what exactly was this "Great Tower" referred to in the Book of Mormon?

[kllindley]

Genesis 11:1-9

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/ot/gen/11?lang=eng

And the whole earth was of one ^alanguage, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of ^aShinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and ^aslime had they for mortar.

4 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 ^aname, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 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.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their ^alanguage, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the ^acity.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there ^aconfound the ^blanguage of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord ^cscatter them ^dabroad upon the face of all the earth.

[cinepro]

1 hour ago, Fair Dinkum said:

 

So what exactly was this "Great Tower" referred to in the Book of Mormon?

I'm pretty sure 99.999% of readers understand that to be the Tower of Babel.

The only ones who don't understand it to be that are the ones that see that as creating huge timeline and geographic troubles for the BoM (usually in relation to the presence of people on the American continent long pre-dating the traditionally assumed date for the Tower of Babel).

For example:
 

Quote

The account of the Jaredites begins with Jared and his brother seeking the Lord’s compassion and guidance for their families and friends when the Lord confounded the languages of the people at the Tower of Babel (see Genesis 11).

LDS Seminary Manual

Edited August 6, 2021 by cinepro

[Metis_LDS]

7 hours ago, kllindley said:

And the whole earth was of one ^alanguage, and of one speech.

And will be again.  This refers to the Millennium.  Old Testament Zephaniah 3:9                           

9: For I will then restore

pure speech to the peoples

so that all of them may call

on the name of Yahweh

and serve Him with a single purpose. 

[Fair Dinkum]

On 8/6/2021 at 1:00 AM, Metis_LDS said:

And will be again.  This refers to the Millennium.  Old Testament Zephaniah 3:9                           

9: For I will then restore

pure speech to the peoples

so that all of them may call

on the name of Yahweh

and serve Him with a single purpose. 

Ok so the Tower is a myth.  What does that imply about the BoM?

[smac97]

2 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Ok so the Tower is a myth. 

It is?  How do you know that?

2 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

What does that imply about the BoM?

Not much.  The miracles in the Bible can also be called myths.  What does that "imply abou the BoM"?

Thanks,

-Smac

[Fair Dinkum]

31 minutes ago, smac97 said:

It is?  How do you know that?

Not much.  The miracles in the Bible can also be called myths.  What does that "imply abou the BoM"?

Thanks,

-Smac

If you want to own the myth that the earths languages were confounded at the tower of Babel, be my guest.  But even BYU linguists accept that languages evolved over 10's of thousands of years and certainly not at a central point in the middle east/Asia minor.  Towers were certainly built, but was there a tower where the languages of the earth were confounded per Biblical claims?  Nope didn't happen.

 

Edited August 10, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[mfbukowski]

47 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

If you want to own the myth that the earths languages were confounded at the tower of Babel, be my guest.  But even BYU linguists accept that languages evolved over 10's of thousands of years and certainly not at a central point in the middle east/Asia minor

We go over this issue daily. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

 

Quote

 

Christianity[edit]

Main article: Christian fundamentalism

Christian fundamentalism has been defined by George Marsden as the demand for a strict adherence to certain theological doctrines, in reaction against Modernist theology.^[12] The term was originally coined by its supporters to describe what they claimed were five specific classic theological beliefs of Christianity, and that developed into a Christian fundamentalist movement within the Protestant community of the United States in the early part of the 20th century.^[13] Fundamentalism as a movement arose in the United States, starting among conservative Presbyterian theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century. It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations around 1910 to 1920. The movement's purpose was to reaffirm key theological tenets and defend them against the challenges of liberal theology and higher criticism.^[14]

The concept of "fundamentalism" has roots in the Niagara Bible Conferences that were held annually between 1878 and 1897. During those conferences, the tenets considered fundamental to Christian belief were identified.

"Fundamentalism" was prefigured by The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, a collection of twelve pamphlets published between 1910 and 1915, by brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart. It is widely considered to be the foundation of modern Christian fundamentalism.

In 1910, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church identified what became known as the five fundamentals:^[15]

• Biblical inspiration and the infallibility of scripture as a result of this
• Virgin birth of Jesus
• Belief that Christ's death was the atonement for sin
• Bodily resurrection of Jesus
• Historical reality of the miracles of Jesus

In 1920, the word "fundamentalist" was first used in print by Curtis Lee Laws, editor of "The Watchman Examiner," a Baptist newspaper.^[16] Laws proposed that those Christians who were fighting for the fundamentals of the faith should be called "fundamentalists."^[17]

Theological conservatives who rallied around the five fundamentals came to be known as "fundamentalists". They rejected the existence of commonalities with theologically related religious traditions, such as the grouping of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism into one Abrahamic family of religions.^[3] By contrast, while Evangelical groups (such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) typically agree with the "fundamentals" as they are expressed in The Fundamentals, they are often willing to participate in events with religious groups which do not hold to the essential doctrines.^[18]

 

 

Edited August 10, 2021 by mfbukowski

[bOObOO]

On 8/5/2021 at 4:24 PM, Fair Dinkum said:

 

So what exactly was this "Great Tower" referred to in the Book of Mormon?

Here's a picture:  

 

Later I think some of the early Egyptians converted it into one of the pyramids.

Edited August 10, 2021 by bOObOO

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, bOObOO said:

Here's a picture:  

 

Later I think some of the early Egyptians converted it into one of the pyramids.

That's actually a photo found in the blueprints for construction inside a pyramid.

The claims the picture was painted by Bruegel in the 16th century made by atheist art historians have been proven false

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by mfbukowski

[OGHoosier]

Jeffrey Bradshaw has some interesting thoughts on this, drawing from broader Christian scholarship. Robert Boylan summarizes here. Basically, the Genesis account doesn't make much of a fuss of the plurality of language after the Confounding. It's not written as an origin story for the plurality of languages - rather, the focus is on the destruction of language as a method of communication between diverse peoples. Bradshaw, following the lead of other scholars, argues that the Babel pericope refers to the destruction of a Sumerian, Akkadian, or (at a stretch) Aramaic lingua franca among the builders of Babel. No need for a massive proliferation of languages if they already existed beside the now-defunct lingua franca. 

I'm open to the Babel narrative having been inflated over time after originating with a somewhat smaller scale event. I'm also frankly okay with Moroni reading later Israelite stories into the book of Ether: I think Grant Hardy's arguments that Moroni forcibly Christianizes the Jaredite history have some merit. 

Edit: I've always been intrigued by the book of Ether's reticence in actually naming the "great tower". It doesn't attach the name Babel to it. Moroni just says that it was "the great tower of which hath been spoken." To me that indicates that we should probably consider the name Babel to be a later name attached to it for poetic/polemical purposes. This opens a volume of plausible interpretations of the chronology in my mind. 

Edited August 11, 2021 by OGHoosier

[katherine the great]

On 8/5/2021 at 6:33 PM, cinepro said:

The only ones who don't understand it to be that are the ones that see that as creating huge timeline and geographic troubles for the BoM (usually in relation to the presence of people on the American continent long pre-dating the traditionally assumed date for the Tower of Babel).

Does it create problems though? If the Jaredites predated Lehi’s people by over a thousand years, is it inconceivable that they brought earlier versions of some OT/Sumerian mythology with them?

[Hamba Tuhan]

7 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Ok so the Tower is a myth.  What does that imply about the BoM?

Of course the tower is a myth! It is categorically so. From the principle definition found in the Oxford English Dictionary:

Quote

A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon.

Myths are important aspects of both understanding and communication ... and seem to have been for as long as people have existed. The absence of shared, common myths in the Book of Mormon would be genuinely anachronistic.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan

[Ipod Touch]

2 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Myths are important aspects of both understanding and communication ... and seem to have been for as long as people have existed. The absence of shared, common myths in the Book of Mormon would be genuinely anachronistic.

In my experience, folks tend to read myths too literally.  But myths are not meant to describe history.  They are meant to convey a message or meaning.  In the case of the Tower of Babel, we do get an explanation for the diversity of human language.  But the point of the story is twofold, IMO.  1) It is dangerous for humans to imagine they can exalt themselves to deity. And 2) communication between peoples is difficult and creates arbitrary divisions.  

ETA: I often think about how some modern Christians interpret Genesis far more literally than the Israelites who originally told these stories.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Ipod Touch

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, katherine the great said:

Does it create problems though? If the Jaredites predated Lehi’s people by over a thousand years, is it inconceivable that they brought earlier versions of some OT/Sumerian mythology with them?

The story in fact is that they came to the west from Babel.

Ether 1:33

Edited August 11, 2021 by mfbukowski

[Navidad]

On 8/6/2021 at 1:00 AM, Metis_LDS said:

nd will be again.  This refers to the Millennium.  Old Testament Zephaniah 3:9                           

9: For I will then restore

pure speech to the peoples

so that all of them may call

on the name of Yahweh

and serve Him with a single purpose. 

There certainly are those who interpret this as speaking of the millennium as you say. I prefer a simpler interpretation. Zephaniah was a direct descendant of Hezekiah, a very righteous king of Judah and man. Zephaniah's world was Jerusalem during Josiah's reign, but prior to his reforms/restoration. I think it is reasonable to assume that verse 9 is talking about a post-restoration Jerusalem. Verse 9 has the Hebrew words for two body parts in it. The first is the word for lips and the second is the word for shoulder. They are translated in the version you are using as speech and purpose respectively. The word for lips more commonly refers to the concept of clean or unclean - pure or impure speech. I think it is better to consider this as referring to the day when the Jews and Jerusalem have pure speech returned, during the reforms (restoration) when the people will praise God instead of using the foul language of idol worship. The last phrase of the verse refers to serving Yahweh with a single "shoulder." That is a clear metaphor for folks joining together to "shoulder" a task. They are going to have clean lips of praise and serve God with a single shoulder. I think those are both beautiful metaphors. Of course, prophecy can also sometimes have a secondary purpose of some grand event way out in the future, but I think Zephaniah was practical and Jerusalem-focused. I think it is a stretch to think these verses refer to the millennium and to language instead of speech. Just my two cents. As someone else here says, FWIW!

[Navidad]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

We go over this issue daily. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism

 

 

I am not real sure what you are saying in the use of this quote about fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe in the principles of Biblical interpretation. It would be a mistake to say that they believe that everything in the Bible is to be taken literally. They understand the concepts of metaphors and similes, and to some degree of myths and parables as a truth bearing story or account. There is diversity among fundamentalists just as there is among members of the LDS church and especially among the broader Mormon community. I am sure we could come up with a fancy definition for fundamentalist Mormons, but it might not include the Fundamentalists within the COJCOLDS. I often hear interpretations in our ward that are as Fundamentalist as anything said by a Fundamentalist Baptist. 

[Fair Dinkum]

9 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Of course the tower is a myth! It is categorically so. From the principle definition found in the Oxford English Dictionary:

Myths are important aspects of both understanding and communication ... and seem to have been for as long as people have existed. The absence of shared, common myths in the Book of Mormon would be genuinely anachronistic.

Separating myth from reality is the real trick.  Can an individual that claims to have come from a mythical place be considered a real person? How much credibility would you today give to someone claiming to have recently moved to your town from Gotham and also claiming to be a close personal friend of Batman.  I'm guessing that you would tilt you head to the side, take 3 steps back, turn and walk away or if feeling compassionate, call in the men with white jackets as back up support.

And yet due merely to the passage of time since Joseph uttered words to Oliver and had them put to paper, you immediately accept that the Brother of Jared, who came allegedly from a mythical place that did not exist, was once a real breathing human being.

[SteveO]

37 minutes ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Separating myth from reality is the real trick.  Can an individual that claims to have come from a mythical place be considered a real person? How much credibility would you today give to someone claiming to have recently moved to your town from Gotham and also claiming to be a close personal friend of Batman.  I'm guessing that you would tilt you head to the side, take 3 steps back, turn and walk away or if feeling compassionate, call in the men with white jackets as back up support.

And yet due merely to the passage of time since Joseph uttered words to Oliver and had them put to paper, you immediately accept that the Brother of Jared, who came allegedly from a mythical place that did not exist, was once a real breathing human being.

Ether, is not a first hand account.  It is an abridgment of an abridgment that encompasses a history of what, 1500 years?  BoM laments that it contains the errors of its authors.  I’m wondering why you insist that it should not?

Edited August 11, 2021 by SteveO

[SteveO]

You know, I’ve always had a guilty pleasure for the movie “300”, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller.  There are some serious exaggerations, flat out fabrications and complete works of fiction contained in there.  Would it be reasonable to conclude that the Battle of Thermopylae never happened?  That Sparta and King Leonidas never existed? 
 

Would it be reasonable to conclude Troy never existed based on the obvious fabrications contained in “The Iliad”?

[Kevin Christensen]

Then there was Nibley's discussion, originally published as a series in The Improvement Era for the church, currently available in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley.

Quote

IN REPLY to my sustained blast of the 17th inst. you tax me with "a naive and gullible acceptance of the Tower of Babel story." I knew you would. Most people believe quite naively that Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address, but their totally uncritical acceptance of the fact does not prevent it from being true. You may accept any story naively or you may take it critically. What would you say if I were to accuse you of being very simple and gullible in rejecting the story of the tower? The cornerstone of "sound scholarship" in our day is the comfortable doctrine that the answer no can never be quite as wrong as the answer yes, a proposition which to my knowledge has never been demonstrated. Excuse me if I seem recalcitrant, but I find it odd that the one skill most appreciated and rewarded in those circles where one hears everlastingly of "the inquiring mind" and the importance of "finding out for one's self" is the gift and power of taking things for granted. Even our Latter-day Saint intellectuals are convinced that the way to impress the Gentiles is not to acquire a mastery of their critical tools, (how few even know Latin!), but simply to defer in all things to their opinions.

Think back, my good man, to the first act of recorded history. What meets our gaze as the curtain rises? People everywhere building towers. And why are they building towers? To get to heaven. The tower was, to use the Babylonian formula, the markaz shame u irtisim, the "binding-place of heaven and earth," where alone one could establish contact with the upper and lower worlds. That goes not only for Babylonia but also for the whole ancient world, as I have pointed out at merciless length in my recent study on the "Hierocentric State." The towers were artificial mountains, as any textbook will tell you, and no temple-complex could be without one. The labors of Dombart, Jeremias, Andrae, Burrows, and others shall spare us the pains of showing you these towers scattered everywhere throughout the old world as a means of helping men get to heaven. 1 2 The legends concerning them are legion, but they all fall into the same pattern: In the beginning an ambitious race of men tried to get to heaven by climbing a mountain or tower; they failed and then set out to conquer the world. A thoroughly typical version of-the story is a variant found in Jewish and Christian apocryphal writers in which the sons of Seth (the angels, in some versions), eager to regain the paradise Adam had lost, went up on to Mt. Hermon, and there lived lives of religious asceticism, calling themselves "the Watchers" and "the Sons of Elohim." It was an attempt to establish the heavenly order, and it failed, the embittered colony descending the mountain to break the covenant, marry the daughters of Cain, and beget a race of "men notorious for murders and robberies." Determined to possess the earth if they could not possess heaven, the men of the mountain denied that they had failed, faked the priesthood, and forced the inhabitants of the earth to accept the kings they put over them. 3 This story you will recognize as an obvious variant of the extremely ancient and widespread Mad Hunter cycle, which I treated in an article on the origin of the state. 4 The Mad Hunter, you will recall, claimed to be the rightful ruler of the universe, challenged God to an archery contest, and built a great tower from which he hoped to shoot his arrows into heaven. Sir James Frazer has collected a large number of American Indian versions of the story to illustrate Old World parallels, for the tale is met with among primitive hunters throughout the world. 5

In Genesis X we read that Nimrod, "the mighty hunter against the Lord," 6 founded the kingdom of Babel, and in the next chapter that Babel was the name of the tower builded to reach to heaven. This Nimrod seems to be the original arch-type of the Mad Hunter. 7 His name is for the Jews at all times the very symbol of rebellion against God and of usurped authority; he it was "who became a hunter of men," established false priesthood and false kingship in the earth in imitation of God's rule and "made all men to sin." 8 A very early Christian writing tells how Noah's descendants waged bitter war among themselves after his death, to see who should possess his kingship; finally one of the blood of Ham prevailed, and from him the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians derive their priesthood and kingship. "From the race of Ham," says the text, "came one through the magical (as opposed to the holy) succession named Nimrod, who was a giant against the Lord . . . whom the Greeks call Zoroaster and who ruled the world, forcing all men by his false magical arts to recognize his authority." 9 The Chronicon Paschale reports a widespread tradition that this giant who built Babylon was not only the first king of Persia, the earthly Cosmocrator, but also the first man to teach the killing and eating of beasts, 10 a belief also expressed in the Koran. 11 There is another common tradition that Nimrod's crown was a fake, and that he ruled without right "in the earth over all the sons of Noah, and they were all under his power and counsel," while he "did not go in the ways of the Lord, and was more wicked than all the men that were before him." 12 The antiquity of these stories may be judged from an early Babylonian account of a wicked king who first "mingled small and great on the mound" and caused them to sin, earning for himself the title of "king of the noble mound" (cf. the tower), "god of lawlessness," "god of no government." 13 In the very earliest Indo-European traditions this person is Dahhak, "the type of the dregvant, the man of the Lie and the king of mad-men," who sat on the throne for a thousand years and forced all men to subscribe their names in the Book of the Dragon, thus making them subject to him. 14

In the Book of Ether the name of Nimrod is attached to "the valley which was northward," and which led "into that quarter where there never had man been" (II:2, 5), which suits very well with the legendary character of Nimrod as the Mad Hunter of the Steppes. The name of Nimrod has always baffled philologians, who have never been able to locate it, 15 but at the end of the last century the explorer and scholar Emin found that name attached to legends (mostly of the Mad Hunter variety) and place names in the region of Lake Van, the great valley due north of upper Mesopotamia. 16 Now I am not insisting for a minute that the legendary Nimrod ever existed. As I told you before, I am only interested in the type of thing that happened, and after having examined hundreds of legends from all parts of the ancient world, all telling substantially the same story, I think that anyone would find it difficult, in view of the evidence, to deny that there was some common event behind them. It seems to have been a single event, moreover. How so? I said above that we find mounds and towers scattered throughout the whole ancient world; now I will go further and say that they are not independent local inventions but actually imitations derived ultimately from a single original. Every great national shrine of antiquity had a founding legend of how in the beginning it was brought through the air from some mysterious faraway land. And this faraway land always turns out to have been in Central Asia. Our Norse Othinn came from the giants' land to the east, the Greek national cult from the land of the Hyperboreans, far to the northeast of Greece; people of the Near East looked to a mysterious white mountain of the North as the seat of their primordial cult, the Chinese to the paradise or mountain of the West, and so forth. 17 You may list the various founding legends and trace them back at your leisure to a single point of origin. Is it not strange that the founding father and summus deus of each nation of antiquity is somewhere declared to be a fraud and an impostor, a wandering tramp from afar whose claims to supreme authority cannot stand a too careful examination? Think of Prometheus' challenge to Zeus, of Loki's blackmailing of Othinn, of the dubious "Justification" of Osiris," of the terror of all-mighty Anu when Tiamat challenges his authority, and so forth. 18 Run down these legends, and you will find in every case that the usurper comes from Central Asia. Even Isaiah (XIV:12ff) recalls that in the beginning the adversary himself set up his throne "upon the Mountain of the Assembly in the regions of the North," and there pretended to be "like the Most High." For all this a single origin is indicated; whether historical or ritual makes little difference.

http://boap.org/LDS/Hugh-Nibley/The_World_of_the_Jaredites.html

Then regarding the Book of Ether (which never uses the term "Tower of Babel"), and the confounding of languages:

Quote

The Book of Ether, depicting the uprooting and scattering from the tower of a numerous population, shows them going forth not individually but in groups and not merely family groups but groups of friends and associates: "thy friends and their families, and the friends of Jared and their families." (I:41.) There was no point in having Jared's language unconfounded if there was to be no one he could talk to, and his brother cried to the Lord that his friends might also retain the language. The same, however, would apply to any other language: If every individual were to speak a tongue all of his own and so go off entirely by himself, the races would have been not merely scattered but quite annihilated. 35 We must not fall into the old vice of reading into the scripture things that are not there. There is nothing said in our text about every man suddenly speaking a new language. We are told in the Book of Ether that the languages were confounded with and by the "confounding" of the people: "Cry unto the Lord," says Jared (I:34), "that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words." The statement is significant for more than one thing. How can it possibly be said that "we may not understand our words"? Words we cannot understand may be nonsense syllables or may be in some foreign language, but in either case they are not our words. The only way we can fail to understand our own words is to have words that are actually ours change their meaning among us. That is exactly what happens when people, and hence languages, are either "confounded," that is, mixed up, or scattered. In Ether's account, the confounding of people is not to be separated from the confounding of their languages; they are, and have always been, one and the same process: the Lord, we are told (I:35-37), "did not confound the language of Jared; and Jared and his brother were not confounded . . . and the Lord had compassion upon their friends and their families also, that they were not confounded." That "confound" as used in the Book of Ether is meant to have its true and proper meaning of "to pour together," "to mix up together," is clear from the prophecy in XIII:8, that "the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built upon this land . . . and they shall no more be confounded," the word here meaning mixed up with other people, culturally, linguistically, or otherwise.

Yet another important Biblical expression receives welcome elucidation from our text: though Ether says nothing about "the whole earth" being "of one language and one speech" (Gen. XI:1), he does give us an interesting hint as to how those words may be taken. Just as "son" and "descendant" are the same word in Hebrew and so may easily be confused by translators (who in fact have no way of knowing, save from the context, in which sense the word is to be understood), so "earth" and "land" are the same word, the well-known eretz. In view of the fact that the Book of Ether, speaking only of the Jaredites, notes that "there were none of the fair sons and daughters upon the face of the whole earth who repented of their sins" (XIII:17), it would seem that the common "whole earth" (kol haaretz) of the Old Testament need not always be taken to mean the entire globe. Certainly it is quite as legitimate to think of the days of Peleg as the time when, as the old Jewish writers describe it, "the children of Noah began to divide the earth among themselves," 36 as, without the least authority, to visualize the drifting of the continents or the rending apart of the terrestrial globe. A reader's first reaction to an ancient and fragmentary text usually becomes a lifelong credo, though research and revelation have combined in latter days to discredit this obvious and easy solution of the mysteries. The Book of Ether, like First Nephi, is, when we come to examine it, heavily weighted in the direction of sober and factual history and was never meant to be a springboard for the imagination; for example, our record does not attribute the scattering of the people, as one might innocently suppose it does, to the confusion of tongues. After the brother of Jared had been assured that he and his people and their language would not be confounded, the question of whether they would be driven out of the land still remained to be answered: that was another issue, and it is obvious that the language they spoke had as little to do with driving them out of the land as it did with determining their destination. It was something else that drove the reluctant Jaredites from their homes. What could have forced them to leave? History to be sober and factual need not deal with the dull, normal, and everyday. The confounding and scattering of the people of the tower was no slow working out of the historical process. It was sudden and terrible, and the Book of Ether gives the clearest possible indication of what caused it.

There is a huge difference between "seeking to make a man an offender for a word" and "Seeking out of the best books words of wisdom,"  a difference between inquiry as to "whether things things are so," and looking for leverage.  Part of what makes any bit of information, or any particular interpretation "key" to a person, is the door they that want to open.  Do we want expanded understanding, enlightenment of our minds, or, simply, self justification for making an exit.

The World of the Jaredites remains a very interesting and valuable read, despite it being neglected by those unnamed people who produce seminary and Sunday school textbooks.  The D&C does not recommend that we seek out of approved books words of orthodoxy, but from the best books words of wisdom.  They may not be the same.  It would be nice if they were the same, but there is no formal guarentee. In any case, the final responsibility falls to the individual to seek and ask, not to the institution to provide.

Besides Nibley's excellent The World of the Jaredites, and There Were Jaredites, we also have the more recent volume from Jeff Bradshaw and David Larsen on In God's Image and Likeness vol 2. Enoch, Noah, and the Tower of Babel.  

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited August 11, 2021 by Kevin Christensen

[JAHS]

17 hours ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Ok so the Tower is a myth.  What does that imply about the BoM?

I knew he was setting us up for this🤨

[Fair Dinkum]

37 minutes ago, SteveO said:

Ether, is not a first hand account.  It is an abridgment of an abridgment that encompasses a history of what, 1500 years?  BoM laments that it contains the errors of its authors.  I’m wondering why you insist that it should not?

Ok so allegedly, Ether made an abridgment of the Jaredites 1500 year history onto 24 Gold Plates, Mosiah translated them with the aid of a magic rock into the Nephite language and this story was passed down and formed part of Mormon's later abridgement that we have today as the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon.  Seems completely reasonable.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Fair Dinkum

[SteveO]

1 minute ago, Fair Dinkum said:

Ok so allegedly, Ether made an abridgment of the Jaredites 1500 year history onto 24 Gold Plates, Mosiah translated them with the aid of a magic rock into the Nephite language and this story was passed down and formed part of Mormon's later abridgement that we have today as the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon.  Seems completely reasonable.

So….we discussing something else now?

[Fair Dinkum]

33 minutes ago, SteveO said:

You know, I’ve always had a guilty pleasure for the movie “300”, based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller.  There are some serious exaggerations, flat out fabrications and complete works of fiction contained in there.  Would it be reasonable to conclude that the Battle of Thermopylae never happened?  That Sparta and King Leonidas never existed? 
 

Would it be reasonable to conclude Troy never existed based on the obvious fabrications contained in “The Iliad”?

Fair question.  So your contention is that despite the obvious use of myth in the story of the Brother of Jared, we should conclude that the over arching story is based in realty?  But then I ask, how do we separate the myth parts from the reality parts?  Did the Brother of Jared really have Jesus touch stones to make the glow?  Did the Jaredites really build barges that submerged and floated to America?  Where do we separate the myth from the reality?

Edited August 11, 2021 by Fair Dinkum