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THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Satans are unbelievers, teaching men magic— and that which was revealed to the two angels in Babil, Harut, and Marut. They do not teach any one until they say, We are nothing but a temptation, so he not an unbeliever.' The people learn from '

them

that by which they may divide between man and wile, yet they injure none thereby, save by the permission ol God they learn that which hurts themselves and pronts them not."

Here all that is left of the Babel story is the name and the idea that there separation may be brought about. As to Harut and Marut, the Moslem commentators explain that they were two angels sent down by God to teach men magic, in order to try them and to show them the difference between magic and miracle. It is a story of the Jews, continues the commentator Baidawi {in loco), but to be rejected, that they assumed flesh, were seduced by a

woman Zuhara into

lust

and rebellion against God,

and taught her how to ascend up into the heavens. But later Islam embraced this Jewish legend in its full extent, and exhausted its, imagination in portraying the well at Babil with the rebellious angels hung in it by the heels and giving lessons in magic to whomever would come to them (see Lane's "Arabian Nights," chap, iii., note 14, and Al-Tha'labi's "Kisas al-Anbiyya," pp. 43 et seq.; compare Cairo ed.,1298). "With so vague a reference in the Koran and with a fundamental confusion like this to contend against, the stories of the Tower and of the confusion of tongues have left little or no mark on popular Islam the " Arabian Nights " know nothing of them. Some of the historians know of the confusion of tongues only. Thus in Yakut (i. 448 et seq. ) and the "Lisan al-'Arab" (xiii. 72) God brought mankind into the plain afterward called "Babil," by means of winds sweeping them together. There He assigned to each his separate speech, and the winds again scattered them to their appointed lands. In one place Tabari (" Annales,"ed. de Goeje, i. 220) gives a tradition that Nimrod ruled at Babil and his people were Moslems. But he seduced them to idolatry, and in a single day God confused their speech, which had been Syriac, and they became of seventy-two tongues. In another place (p. 224) Tabari tells the story practically as in Genesis. Ibn Wadih (i. 17) has a longer narrative on the same lines. Abu Tsa, the astronomer quoted by Abu al;

Fida ("Hist. Anteisl.,"

ed. Fleischer, p. 18), also tells

the Biblical story of the Tower and the confusion. He adds that Eber alone, because he did not join the others in their impious attempt, was permitted to This is in retain the original Hebrew language. curious contrast with the other narratives, which view Syriac as the original tongue. It is possible that the belief, current in all the Moslem world, that Syriac was the original language, is to be traced to the influence of the Syriac " Cave of Treasures " and the Arabic "Kitab al-Majall," with their an ti- Jewish polemics. j.

jk.

fi

.

D B. M.

Critical "View: According to the modern analysis of the Pentateuch, the section Gen. xi. 1-9 is derived from J, or the Jahyistic writer. The name is there explained as from a stem-word " balal " (conThis is probably a folk-etymology founded found). upon the similarity of the proper name to the Hebrew

Babel,

Tower of

stem or to the event that occurred at Babel. The Babylonian language, probably indigenous to this region, gives the true etymology of "Babel." It is compounded of " bab " (gate) and " ili " (God), literally, " the gate of God. " It should be noticed, too, that this name was given to both the Tower and the city, and that the cessation of building

Ety-

operations is referred to in connection with the city only, the tower not even being mentioned. The records of Gen. of God." x. give a picture of the settlement of mankind upon various portions of the earth's surface. This " table of the nations " is an ethnographical map of the ancient Oriental world. The exact time of its preparation can not, with the present data, be fixed. The location of the great majority of the peoples has been determined. It has been noted, too, that the inhabitants of these communities, districts, provinces, and cities spoke different languages. The questions, how men were scattered from one common center to all these sections of the ancient world, and how they happened to speak diverse tongues, are answered by the insertion, after ch. x., of Gen. xi. 1-9. Up to the present time no ancient documents, giving a parallel legend, such as those of the Babylonian accounts of the Creation and the Deluge, have been discovered. But another class of facts may point in the direction of answering the above question. Philologists have not yet solved the question as to the common origin of all the languages of mankind; but scientists agree that the physiognomy, the physiology, the psychology, and the religious nature of man are practically the same all over the world. This is not an absolute proof of the unity of the race but it points to a dispersion of men from a common center, and as the descendants of a common

mology "Gate





stock.

There is general agreement that the Tower of Babel was in lower Babylonia, not far from the River Euphrates. Two principal locations are given in the

Position of Babel,

literature of the subject: (1) the ruins of Birs-Nimrud at old Borsippa, south

of the site of old Babylon and (2) the ruins within the circuit of ancient Babylon itself. In the first case, Nebuchadnezzar

(in his Borsippa inscription, cols. i. and ii.) tells how he repaired and finished a "zikkurat," or tower, which had been left unfinished, at a height of 42 ells, by a former king. This tower, dedicated to Nebo, was called "E-zida" (Enduring Temple or House), and consisted of seven stages or stories. The conspicuous character of the present-day remains of this Tower has attracted attention since the time of Benjamin of Tudela (about 1160) and many scholars have found in this mass of ruins the remains of the Tower of Babel of Gen. xi. The latest expositor of

view is John P. Peters ("Jour. Biblical Literature," 1896, xv. 106 et seq.). The second view is that the ruins of old Babylon this

include the site of the Tower of the record. The narrative itself speaks of a city and a tower; and, as stated above, the cessation of labor is mentioned with regard to the city only. The name " Babel " would most naturally connect this event with the city Nebuchadnezzar, too (in his Borsippa of Babylon.