The Dispersion at Babel Really Happened

Although many people reject the Bible in its entirety, most attacks on it involve the first eleven chapters of Genesis. Biblical creationists present apologetics in both theology and various sciences regarding recent creation and the global Flood. Another subject that gets attacked is the tower of Babel.

Many folks know the basics of the tower of Babel, but there is a bigger picture involved. (Again we see the importance of reading the context.) It was not that God was angry because people built a big tower.  People were in rebellion against God's command to spread out.

Tower of Babel by Lucas van Valckenborch, 1594

While the Bible is an excellent historical record, I'll allow that details going so far back are a bit sparse. Even so, there is corroborating evidence from historical records and archaeology. The various languages testify to the dispersion at Babel.

Study on this a spell: Think of "telephone game." You know, where someone has a description, quietly tells another who tells another and so on, then the final product is far afield from the original. There are distorted stories around the world of the Flood that have been passed down over the years, yet they have some commonality with the account in Genesis. Many of these stories contain the Fall of Man, the Flood, and Babel. This helps point to the fact that the original account is in the Bible.

Critics of the Bible frequently dismiss the historicity of important events recorded in its pages. This is particularly true with the first 11 chapters of Genesis. We are told that the creation account contradicts settled scientific research, that man came from apelike ancestors instead of being created by God from the dust of the ground, and that there is no evidence that a worldwide flood ever occurred on the earth. Another key incident in those chapters dismissed by these critics is the Babel event recorded in Genesis 11:1–9.

To read the rest of this very interesting in-depth article, see "Did Humanity Really Disperse from Babel?" Also of interest is an article about how some people have an untenable view that only some people went to Babel, but this is unsupported biblically. To see that, click on "Did the Whole Earth Settle at Shinar (Babel)?"