Sacred Observations, Book One

C. VITRINGA

...[God] had commanded the dispersion of the human race, from which arose domestic evils, wars, slaughter, the lust for power, and the alienation of spirits and property? Nevertheless, the commentaries that follow are full of such fables: “it took on height more quickly than anyone would have expected because of the many hands; however, its thickness was so great that to those who saw it, the height seemed less than its breadth.” Vitringa is quoting Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 1.4.3. Original Greek: ἐλάμβανε δὲ θᾶττον ὕψος ἢ προσεδόκησεν ἄν τις ὑπὸ πολυχειρίας: τὸ μέν τοι πάχος ἦν ἰσχυρὸν τοσοῦτον, ὡς ὑπ' αὐτῷ μενόντων τοῖς ὁρῶσι τὸ μῆκος Josephus indeed cites the Sibyl The Sibylline Oracles, a collection of prophecies often cited by early writers to find pagan "confirmation" of biblical events, as she said that, “after winds were sent, the Gods overturned this tower,” and “gave a distinct language to each person,” original Greek: καὶ ἰδίαν ἑκάστῳ φωνὴν; Latin: propriam unicuique linguam dedisse but this Sibyl contains nothing except pagan traditions received from the Jews, drawn from a distorted understanding of the Holy Scriptures. She says: “certain people built a very high tower, as if they would ascend into heaven by it.” original Greek: πύργον... ᾠκοδόμησαν τινὲς ὑψηλότατον, ὡς ἐπὶ οὐρανὸν ἀναβησόμενοι δι' αὐτοῦ; Latin: Altissimam quidam ædificarunt turrim, tanquam in cælum per eam ascensuri Abydenus A Greek historian who wrote a history of the Chaldeans has similar accounts in the works of Eusebius.

However, the most learned Bochart Samuel Bochart (1599–1667), a French scholar famous for his works on biblical geography and animals demonstrates most skillfully that this fiction took its origin from the fact that these daring mortals had proposed to build a tower whose top was in the heavens (Genesis 11:4). original Hebrew: וראשו בשמים (ve-rosho va-shamayim) This most learned man also deduces the other legends of various nations from this source quite easily. I would, however, like it noted here that almost none of the pagan historians besides Abydenus—who remembered that most foul crime of the giants Referring to the mythological Gigantomachy, or war of the giants against the gods, often conflated with Babel in ancient scholarship derived from here—recorded the confusion of languages.

Indeed, the other Hebrew commentators (who are believed to be the oldest of all) acted no more wisely here. They attempted not to illuminate the words of Moses—heavens no!—but rather to obscure them, relying not on the certainty of truth itself, but on the inventions of their ancestors and also on the stories of the pagans,