Weird Stuff in the Bible

What was the big deal about building a tower to heaven? A Theory about Babel and Genesis 11.
Genesis 11

Introduction
OK so my brother Ben sent me this comment over the summer:
Why did God have a problem with the Tower of Babel but not us going to the moon?
That’s because we never went. That’s Biblical. Put that in your library and smoke it.
Now that’s actually a really smart question Ben. I don’t really know what the library part meant but you got my gears turning with the first part. A lot of us hear the story of the Tower of Babel as kids, the story about a group of people who tried to build a tower that reached heaven.
And God said He wasn’t going to allow mankind to do this. It’s a really fascinating comment God makes
In Genesis 11:6
…this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
God slapped this down pretty hard. He confused the speech of the peoples, which means He switched up all their languages, and therefore they couldn’t finish the project so they all went their separate ways, and now that’s why now we have to take 4 semesters of French class to get a Bachelor of Arts degree.
So why did God have such a strong reaction to this? Why did He literally say that if the Tower of Babel was constructed, mankind would truly become capable of anything? I mean, just because of a tall building?
If the problem with the Tower of Babel was just about altitude, then yes, space travel raises a lot of theological questions for us.
But what if the Tower of Babel is not what we thought? What if the problem with the Tower of Babel was not how high it reached, but what it was capable of doing?
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Genesis 11, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

The Full Story
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about what the Tower of Babel actually was.
My theory, anyway. Because I do actually believe we went to the moon. Ben does not. I’m not here to prove that point today, though, but I do think Ben has raised a very interesting issue. Why does God tolerate space exploration and space travel if He didn’t even want to let a bunch of ancient hardhats build a skyscraper?
This story happened in like 2200 BC. How tall of a building could those guys have actually made anyway?
Well I’ve had a theory for a while now that the Tower of Babel was not really about height at all, but that something else was going on in this story. And I’ll share that theory here today. And you don’t have to agree at all. Or agree that we went to the moon. Or even agree that the earth is round. I’m just glad you’re here. Let’s look at the whole story of Genesis 11 in context.
Genesis 11:1
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
Just a note right here: a tower with its top in the heavens. We’ll come back to that.
Now, this is where most of us modern people shake our head. Tsk tsk. They actually thought you could get to heaven by building a structure tall enough to reach it. Us modern sophisticated people would never even bother to try such things. It’s such a primitive way of thinking.
And yet, God objects very strongly to this. You even get the idea from God’s response that these stone age visionaries had some likelihood of success.
Vereses 5-6
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
God says, “Not only will would it be bad for mankind to build a tower to heaven, but if they can do that, they can do anything.” Why would God say that? In the thousands of years since then, mankind has made a wide variety of architectural feats. The world’s tallest building is half a mile in height. We’ve got the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pyramids of Giza. We’ve embarked on travel to space. OK, allegedly we’ve embarked on space travel. We’ve created electron microscopes that can see atoms. Planes and jets that can fly around the whole world in a day and a half. Vaccines that have eradicated smallpox and polio. Colonel Sanders invented Kentucky Fried Chicken with 11 herbs and spices.
And most of those things were only created in the past hundred years. Heck, Elon Musk has done half of them all on his own. Now are you trying to tell me that a group of cavemen from 4,000 years ago were able to make a tower so tall that God considered it a threat to heaven itself?
I don’t think so, scooter. I think something even more sinister was going on here than just a really tall prehistoric skyscraper.
So here is what God does to put a stop to this:
VERSES 7-8
7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.
God switched up the languages. This was the origin story of all the human languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, pig latin….and whatever Ozzy Osbourne spoke…
So just FYI if you ever had to call customer service for AT&T and couldn’t understand the dude’s accent, you can thank the kind folks at Babel for that. They’re the ones who messed all this up.
Now, notice that God says “let US go down there and confuse their language.” What does God mean by “us”? And who is God talking to?
Many have said, “Oh, this is the members of the Trinity speaking amongst themselves.” And that’s possible, that would be my first thought as well.
But it’s highly irregular for God to speak in plural form like that. Typically, when God speaks, He says “I am going to do this” or “I will do that.” He doesn’t say “we” or “us.”
So here’s another idea: that perhaps this is God speaking to members of the Divine Council. The Divine Council is God’s board of directors for conducting the affairs of the world. It’s referenced in Psalm 82, among other places. It’s made up of a group of spiritual beings called the Sons of God. We also see them gathering for meetings in Job 1-2 and I Kings 22.
So we don’t have it stated within Genesis 11 that God is speaking to His Divine Council right here, but I do think there’s a big hint that He does in:
Deuteronomy 32:8
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.
Well we know that this is talking about the Tower of Babel incident, because as we just read, this is where God dispersed the peoples throughout the world and they all went to form their own nations based on the languages.
And it also said that they were divided according to the Sons of God. The members of this divine council who rules the world. The divisions of the earth were split up according to how many Sons of God were able to be placed in charge of each region.
So basically, God said to one member of the council: you are responsible for watching over this nation of mankind in this region, and other member of the council was told, “you will watch over this region in that region,” and God fixed the borders according to not just their languages, but what spiritual being was responsible for each people group.
So if there were, say, 70 nations, I would guess that it means 70 members of the Divine Council. I can’t prove that, but that’s how I understand it.
Let’s finish the story and then we’ll talk about it.
Genesis 11:9
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
This is the same place known as Babylon. This is really the origin story of Babylon, the city of rebellion against God. But originally it was called Babel, which is defined as “confusion” in Hebrew. It’s where we get the modern word “babble,” which is defined as speaking gibberish.

What did Babel’s Tower Do?
Now with the full context of this story understood, let’s return to
verse 4
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
The statement is that they wanted this tower to have its top in the heavens. What is meant by that phrase “the heavens”? Did they actually expect that they could reach God’s home by building their way up to it?
I suppose if they were going for that, God could have just let them go for it. I mean, theoretically, if they were able to build a tower larger than any skyscraper today, they could have gone so high that eventually they ran out of air and suffocated. It certainly wouldn’t have posed any threat to God.
But the word “heavens” can mean different things. As we discussed in an episode recently, the ancient Jewish cosmology had the idea of three heavens. The first was the sky. The second heaven was space. And the third heaven was God’s home, where we go when we die.
Then as we looked at in another episode from a few months ago, Ephesians refers to the spiritual realm as “the heavenly realms.” Which, even though it sounds like the heaven that is God’s home, it really refers more to the spiritual battlefield between earth and heaven, the alternative plane of existence where angels and demons travel and do battle.
This would be like what we see in Daniel 10 when an angel of God and a principality spirit get into a wrestling match in the skies above Daniel’s head as he is praying.
Another example I’d point to is where Ephesians 2 refers to Satan as “the Prince of the power of the air.” This is in the heavenly realms, or the spiritual realm.
This is actually what I think was meant by a tower that reaches to the heavens. I don’t think this was a structure that, if they built it high enough, would actually reach God’s home. I don’t think the people were that dumb, and even if they were, I don’t think God would have been that threatened by them that He said, “We need to put a stop to this, because if they can accomplish this, they can accomplish anything.
Here’s my theory on what was actually going on with the Tower of Babel. I think they were attempting to create some kind of spiritual gateway, AKA a portal, to the spiritual realm. The tower was going to create this gateway not because of its height, but because of something in the architecture that created conditions for a spiritual portal to be opened.
I’ll give some reasons I think this. If you remember from episodes 61-64, which I did near the start of this year, a spiritual gate is a portal that spiritual beings use to pass between our earthly realm and the spiritual realm. I used to believe angels or demons could just pop into existence whenever and wherever they want, but after more carefully studying Scripture, I no longer believe that’s the case. They have to use these gates. We see gates of heaven and gates of hell in Scripture. Again, episodes 61-64 if you want a longer breakdown and explanation of this.
Something else as you notice scripture is that locations where people meet with evil spirits- either in witchcraft, or pagan/idol worship- is often in what’s called a high place. A place that’s literally on a mountain, hill or tall structure, and that’s where worship of false gods would often take place. And if we bring in historical testimony, there are lots of stories of godlike beings who would manifest at these high places.

Ziggurats and Pyramids
Perhaps you’ve seen something called a ziggurat before. This is a pyramid-like structure that we observe in cultures all over the world. You might associate them with the Mayans and Aztecs, as we’ve found some of them in Mexico and Central America. And we also see them over on the other side of the world. Ziggurats are like pyramids with these giant staircases on the sides leading up to the top.
The Ziggurat of Babylon, which is called Etemenanki, was claimed to be a place where the god Marduk would come down and interact with mankind.
The Ziggurat of Ur was dedicated to the moon god Nanna, and said to be a place where Nanna would manifest. This was also in Babylon- aka Babel.
Here on the Western hemisphere, the Myan pyramid called Kukulkan creates a serpent-shaped shadow during the equinox, and they claim that a feathered serpent god once descended to the earth here.
At an Aztec pyramid called Teotihuacan, there was this record: “At Teotihuacan, the gods gathered together… They said:
‘Who will take it upon himself to be the sun?’
One god stepped forward, and leaped into the fire.
And thus the sun began to shine.”
They believed the gods descended to this spot at the top of the ziggurat.
The Greeks also used to build mountain-shaped temples where they believed the Greek gods would manifest at the top.
The Egyptian pyramids were temples and tombs where they believed that the Pharaohs buried there would ascend to the gods using this pyramid structure to do it. In fact, here is a writing from the Unas Pyramid, believed to be written in 2400 BC, actually close to the time of the Tower of Babel incident:
“The sky is clouded, the stars are darkened,
the bows of the sky tremble,
the bones of the earth-god quake,
the planets are stilled,
for Unas has arisen as a god,
living on the horizon,
the sun’s rays guide him,
Ra takes his hand,
and the doors of heaven open for him.”
In other words, the pyramid was imagined by the Egyptians to be a launching platform where Ra, the sun god, would appear and guide the Pharaoh.
So my theory with the Tower of Babel is that it was not a circular fortress as is often depicted in a lot of Christian artwork, but I think the Tower of Babel was more of a ziggurat structure.
I am not the only person who thinks everything I’m saying today, so I’m not pretending I’ve discovered anything by any means. Perhaps everything I’m saying today is stuff you’ve heard from other people before. But I’m sharing it because these are conclusions I’ve arrived at on my own, I haven’t read someone else’s theories. I’m just postulating this based on my research, and you can take what I’ve said and pair it with what others have said and arrive at whatever conclusion makes the most sense to you.
Some other stuff I did find, though: Babel means “Gate of the Gods” in Akkadian.
What is Akkadian? It’s the language of Mesopotamia, which is where Babel was. Which means, in this region at the time that Genesis 11 happened, the people who were stayed there after the Tower of Babel incident spoke Akkadian. In their language, they referred to Babel as the Gate of the Gods.
Something else I wondered about was whether Dr. Michael Heiser had any thoughts on this. So I checked and he actually believes that the “Gate of Heaven” that Jacob saw in Genesis 28 was a ziggurat structure with a portal at the top.
If you remember from Genesis 28, Jacob had this dream and saw a ladder or staircase going to heaven with angels going up and down on it. You’ve probably heard it in different translations before where some said ladder, some said staircase. It’s kind of vague or could be translated in different ways. Furthermore, get this: ancient ziggurat staircases were called ladders.
Michael Heiser believes that perhaps what Jacob saw was a ziggurat, which would look a lot like a staircase.
So with this in mind, perhaps now we can understand what the people meant in
Genesis 11:4
“Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens
Perhaps what they meant was NOT that they were building it into the stratosphere, but that a portal or gateway to the heavenly realms would open at the top.

Gaps in my Pyramid
I’ll get to some holes in my thinking in a minute, things I don’t quite understand. But I believe there’s something significant about the shape or structure of a ziggurat/pyramid that makes it an ideal structure for these spiritual portals.
That’s why we see so many of them around the world; it’s something that demonic forces are always trying to create more of. I don’t quite understand how they work, but I’d assume there’s some kind of altar at the top where sacrifices or pagan rituals take place to open the gate.
Now, what I don’t understand is what made Babel so significant that God had to stop it so dramatically. It seems that there were other ziggurats and pyramids throughout the earth over the years; maybe Babel was just much much bigger? Maybe Babel’s portal would have been impossible to close? I have no idea.
I think it’s very interesting that God said “if we let mankind build this, mankind will be able to do anything they want.”
That’s a very shocking statement to me, and so basically God had to prevent mankind from working together as easily going forward, and that’s why the languages were scattered.
I don’t quite have any answers on that, but if you do, I invite you to send it my way: weirdstuffinthebible@gmail.com
I’d love to get some listener feedback on this today because if we can put our heads together and come to some conclusions on what exactly was going on in Babylon, perhaps we can do a followup episode down the line.

Mailbag
Some other listener feedback we got recently:
Shoutout to Demi, a new official weirdo. In case you don’t know, an official weirdo in these parts is someone who has listened to 25 or more episodes of this podcast. Demi commented recently:
Luke, have you ever explained the difference between demons and fallen angels and their influences? I cant remember that in your podcasts. I may have missed an episode. Going to check out your Nephilim info next.

Thanks so much!

And so yes, I think the episode where I go into that the most is called The Origin of Demons. It’s from last year. This has been one of the most intriguing things I’ve learned through the process of this podcast, that fallen angels perhaps didn’t become demons but instead created the demons. If anyone wants to learn the basis for that idea, check out episode 25
Also was happy to hear from Terry in TX this week, who says he is finding more and more odd things in Scripture after listening to this podcast. I tell you what guys, there is something weird on just about every page of the Bible. I will never run out of ideas for episodes because there’s just so much in there.
When I first started this podcast I used to be afraid of what I’d do when I couldn’t think of anymore episode ideas. I have not had that fear for a long time. Even just reading about Jesus in the Gospels; pay close attention, just about everything Jesus does is weird. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully; Jesus almost always reacts to things differently than how a normal person would react. He will never cease to surprise you.
So everyone, read your Bible like Terry. Pay close attention to the details.
One more interesting message I got this week, once again from Ben: Alright, God took a day of rest in Genesis, he tells us to in the 10 commandments, do you think he still takes a day off each week? What day is it and do our prayers get stuck on an answering machine for that day?
OK, this might be a good time to let you all know that Ben is actually my brother-IN-LAW.

Closing Thoughts
Next week everyone, I want to start a miniseries on Old Testament laws. Some of the laws of the Old Testament can sound a little kooky. I want to spend at least a week or two talking about them. So make sure you’re subscribed so you can get that episode.
As we wind down, some closing thoughts here. [Skip to bolded part below if out of time]
just something very interesting I saw this month. Apple has unveiled the latest version of their AirPods. These are the ear buds that Apple makes. And every September is when Apple reveals the newest versions of a lot of their products. New iPhones, new operating systems, new ways to make Luke poor.
And the newest version of AirPods, the AirPods Pro 3, feature something called LIVE Translation. It can hear someone speaking in another language, and instead of you hearing a foreign tongue in your hears, you hear a translation of what they’re saying. It’s not launching with all languages just yet- only English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. By the end of the year, they expect to add Italian, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.
I find it really fascinating because I know the people creating this technology don’t have bad intentions, but it is kind of undoing what God did at Babel over 4,000 years ago. It’s leading us toward that society that the mixing up of languages was trying to prevent. It seems that as we approach the end times, we see a lot of parallels with some of these earlier chapters of Genesis.
And on that note of the end times, one more interesting thought. On pyramids. The final two chapters of Revelation speak of a heavenly city descending from heaven to earth, the New Jerusalem, and this city is place Jesus went to prepare for us, the mansion of God’s house with many rooms, and a room for me and a room for you, and it’s in this city that we will live in for eternity.
And one very interesting tidbit about this city is the dimensions in which it will be shaped.
Revelation 21:16
16 The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal.
What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it will be massive. 12,000 stadia is over a thousand miles. But the shape is a little mysterious; if it’s length, width and height are equal, scholars say it could be one of two shapes.
One is a cube, which is what I’ve always thought it would be. But the other shape it could be under those dimensions is a ziggurat or pyramid-like structure. And after what we’ve studied today, suddenly I’m starting to lean a bit more in that direction.
And if the idea of a pyramid being a place to visit a cosmic being sounds weird, then I hope you’re ready for a weird eternity, because it sounds like you’re gonna be in one.
Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.