Qur’an And Torah On Termites, The Tower Of Babel And Language Variety – OpEd
Scientists in South Africa have been stunned to discover that termite mounds that are still inhabited in an arid region of the country are more than 30,000 years old, meaning they are the oldest known active termite hills in the world. What does this have to do with the Biblical Tower of Babel. Read on!
Anyone who studies the Hebrew Scriptures from a Rabbinic Bible is struck by the number of different commentaries that surround the few lines of the Biblical text on each page. Most religions that have a sacred scripture, have editions that come with a commentary. Occasionally, some religions have an edition with two or three commentaries. The standard Jewish study Bible, Mikraot Gedolot, usually comes with at least 5-10 different commentaries.
All of this traces back to a verse in the Book of Psalms: "One thing God has spoken; two things have I heard" (Psalms 62:12) and its gloss in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 34a). In other words, the rabbis asserted that multiple interpretations of each verse of Scripture can be correct, and the word of God, even if they contradict one another. The term for this concept of pluralistic interpretation is; Shivim Panim LaTorah (each verse of Torah has 70 different faces-facets)
The conventional understanding of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) is that humanity arrogantly challenged God 's space by invading-by building- a "tower; with its head reaching up to the heavens". Thus the Qur'an says that Pharaoh, mockingly and arrogantly asks his associate Haman to build a lofty tower. Pharaoh said: "O Haman! Fire up (a kiln to bake bricks) of clay, and build me a lofty tower, that I may mount up to the God of Moses: but as far as I am concerned, I think (Moses) is a liar!" (Qur'an 28:38)
However, a careful reading of the Torah text shows that what the people built was an entire city made out of manufactured uniform bricks (Genesis 11:3); and the reason they built the city and the tower was not to challenge God, but to "make a name for themselves, lest they be dispersed over the whole earth."
Pharaoh knows this, but since he thinks he is the son of the God Horus, he sees the Prophet Moses challenge in terms of a lowly human who is invading Pharaoh's own domain. Pharaoh will counterattack the God of Moses first.
The Qur'an informs us that the multiplicity of human languages is one of several signs of God's power and planning: "And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth; and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge." (30:22) so multiple languages is not a punishment, but an act of mercy, as I will show below.
In the aftermath of a catastrophically destructive flood in the days of Noah, many generations of humans were fearful and anxiety ridden. They felt very weak and vulnerable; and they only wanted to huddle together in one place. Humanity did not want curiosity to lead people to explore other locations and thus promote change and development (going against God"s blessing to "fill up the earth"); and they did not want to expand their knowledge and vocabulary because that promotes non conformity and diversity. Humans were proud that every single human being spoke the same language, and that their one language had only "a few words" (Genesis 11:1 literal translation from Hebrew).
When the post flood humans said "to one another; come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." (11:3) they were doing much more than discussing building methods. Bricks are one of the first building materials created by human beings. (Sun dried bricks made of mud and straw, are called adobe'. They were used in the famous ziggurat temples of Mesopotamia. But over time rain and flood water dissolve sun dried mud and straw bricks, and cause them to crumble and break apart.
Ancient brick makers learned to "burn" bricks by baking them in a very hot oven called a kiln. Then the bricks became very hard and durable. Manufacturing hundreds of thousands of bricks for very large building projects produced the first mass production factories.)
When the post flood humans said "to one another; come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." (11:3) they wanted to build their city with uniform manufactured bricks, instead of natural unhewn stones. They did not want each stone to be a different shape and color from all the other stones because they wanted to unify themselves by highly organized, conformist, teamwork, factory behavior, as well as an all encompassing common purpose.
Also. the use of uniform bricks made it easier to build giant building projects with much higher buildings, even a skyscraper temple tower; for they thought that if another flood occurred, perhaps they could survive on the roofs of their tall buildings, or on top of their temple tower.
Torah opposition to the use of baked bricks in a ritual/spiritual context may also be connected with our interpretation of the sin of the city builders. Immediately after the giving of the ten commandments the Torah says, "An altar of earth you shall make for me...(Exodus 20:21) and "If you make me an altar of stone, do not build it of hewn stone, for if you use a tool on it, you pollute it. (20:25). Thus, an altar of natural unshaped building materials are preferred by the Torah to manufactured materials.
The fear of dispersal and the need to make a name for themselves shows that the generations following the flood lacked both a self-confident individual identity and an established positive group identity. Their polytheistic account of the flood, found in the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, relates that the gods decided to destroy humanity because humans made too much noise, and kept the gods from sleeping. These early humans believed that violence was natural, normal and thus inevitable. Widespread human and animal violence would not be punished by the gods because, in polytheistic myths, the gods themselves spend a lot of time fighting and killing each other.
Finally, they believed that one language would guarantee co-operation, so they would not have to learn to respect social or personal differences because there would be no differences between individuals or groups of people. There would be only one group of people, with one and the same language for all humanity. This seemed to them to be an ideal way for humans to create harmony; and avoid strife and violence.
Their plan for the city might have been modeled on bee hives or termite mounds: lots of close contact, with a high degree of conformity and common purpose. When God sees what they are scheming to do, and what effects that master plan will have on the future of humanity; God confounds their language as a blessing, and disperses them all over the surface of the earth.
This geographical expansion will promote linguistic, cultural and religious diversity which in turn will greatly enrich humanity's cultural, artistic and spiritual productivity. High rise city apartments are not like termite mounds because God does not want humans to be like termites.
Indeed, there are 6,909 known spoken languages today, although about half are endangered, and will very likely no longer be spoken in another two to four generations. Although globalization will lead to the disappearance of many languages and cultures; new religions seem to still be growing rapidly. How long they will last is not yet known, but it is hard to argue that we should or will ever go back to the days when humanity had only "one language with a few words."
This is why the One God blesses us with human diversity. Our Rabbis taught: "If one sees a crowd of Israelites say, Blessed is the One who is a sage of enigmas, for the mind of each (person) is different from that of another, just as the face of each is different from that of another." (Talmud Berakhot 58a)