The Babel Delusion

THE BABEL DELUSION:
A 4000+ YEAR RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL FANTASY

Charles Clough

INTRODUCTION

This paper arose because of two subjects that came to my attention this year. First, in my so-called “framework” approach to aid new Christians to quickly gain a grasp of the big picture of the Bible, I realized I had left out the importance of the Babel event. Second, in trying to contextualize the current political situation in our nation within the Bible’s dispensation of human government, I came to a new appreciation of the effect of Babel on world history.

Therefore, in the following discussion I will explore the geophysical, populational, and theological context of the Babel project and God’s far-ranging judgment upon it. Then I will conclude by suggesting how this event, when integrated with the other key events in the framework approach, provides us with a helpful tool with which to understand human history for at least the last 4000 years.

THE GEOPHYSICAL CONTEXT OF THE BABEL PROJECT

Why discuss the geophysical environment at the time of Babel? Because the actors in the project all lived in a real post-flood environment. Why did they fear spreading outward from the Mesopotamian valley? Since the Bible doesn’t go into this geophysical matter, we are left to consider non-verbal general revelation using as many inferences as we can from what verbal revelation is available. Thankfully, over the past 60 years the creation-science movement spawned by The Genesis Flood book published in 1961 by Whitcomb and Morris has made many advances in understanding the post flood world. Before his death, Dr. Morris wrote in a volume dedicated to Dr. Whitcomb:

“It has long seemed anomalous to me, as a professional scientist and non-professional Bible reader, that the modern revival of literal biblical creationism has been led mostly by scientists rather than theologians.

"It is true that there are many good scientific evidences pointing to special creation, a young earth, and the global Flood, and these have been persuasively advanced by creationist scientists in debates, seminars, and conferences for many years and with great results. But the compelling and definitive evidences are biblical, not scientific. Science and the scientific method do support creation, but can never prove creation or disprove evolution. Nor can it determine the age of the earth or prove there was a worldwide deluge in the prehistoric past.

"The Bible is explicitly clear on these issues, however. There is not even a hint of evolution or the long ages implied by evolution in the Bible. Neither is there any biblical intimation that the Genesis Flood was a local flood. . . .One does not have to be a theologian or a Bible scholar to see this. It is quite evident to anyone who simply reads the Bible and believes it to be the inerrant Word of God.[1] (Emphasis original)

Sadly, much of the scholarly evangelical world remains seduced by the old-earth view begun in the late 1700s and early 1800s when the new discipline of “historical science” arose. Evangelicals were fooled into thinking that “historical science” was merely an extension of everyday operational science when it clearly wasn’t. There were, and still are, no real-time, on-scene observations or geological measurements with which scientific theories could be formulated or falsified. Nevertheless, Charles Lyell (1797-1875) worked carefully and successively to get Church leaders to abandon the Mosaic cosmology of the Bible. [2]

POST-FLOOD EARTHQUAKE AFTER-SHOCKS

Creation-believing scientists following Whitcomb and Morris have collected much new data of global dimensions. They now have begun to formulate theories on the flood event as well as post-flood environmental conditions. Through much on-site fieldwork as well as computer modeling done within the observational perspective of Genesis 1-8, it has been concluded that the flood of Noah’s time was global and earth transforming just as Peter indicated in 2 Pet 3:5-7. Apparently, sub-continent & sub-ocean tectonic plates separated and drove the South American continent westward from Africa as well as shaping the rest of the planet’s land surface that we know today—all within the year of the Flood.

Confirmation of this biblical description of high-speed geophysical events never seen by Lyell and his uniformitarian followers occurred in at least two recent happenings that were extensively observed and scientifically measured. The first event was the explosion of the volcanic Mount St. Helens in Washington State on May 18, 1980. Beginning with a magnitude 5.1 earthquake and the subsequent explosion, a mixture of water, mud, and rocks slid down the mountain in videoed high speed in what is called a “slurry mix”. Instead of depositing a chaotic mess of disorganized debris as one would expect, the slurry mix strangely deposited itself in neat laminar layers that within only two or three years hardened into was observers have described as a miniature “Grand Canyon.”

The second catastrophic event that also was scientifically observed and measured was the widely reported tsunami that greatly damaged the eastern coast of Japan caused long-lasting damage to the Fukushima nuclear reactor at 2:46 pm, March 11, 2011. The cause of this magnitude 9.0 earthquake was the tectonic plate underlying Japan lurched over 100 feet underneath the tectonic plate underlying the Pacific Ocean and forced it 33 upward. This collision of tectonic plates occurred deep in the earth’s mantle some 18 miles below the bottom of the ocean. Japanese news media pointed out that as a result Japan was moved 8 feet eastward, enough of a movement to require adjustments in GPS mapping![3] A global flood of the Genesis dimensions would have been accompanied by serious geophysical disturbances for many years afterward.

POST-FLOOD UNPRECEDENTED CLIMATE CHANGE

Besides after-shocks from the violent separation of the continents, another feature of the post Flood geophysical environment faced the population of the Babel era: climate change. For over the past 30 years several Bible-believing atmospheric scientists have built up a physically consistent model of a post-flood ice age. Dr. Jake Hebert explains:

“Most creationists think that during the Flood the original ocean floor was rapidly subducted into the earth’s mantle and was replaced by new seafloor at the mid-ocean ridges. The heat from the newly formed seafloor significantly warmed the world’s oceans, resulting in greatly increased evaporation from the sea’s surface. This dramatically increased the moisture in the atmosphere and led to greater precipitation, including more snowfall at high latitudes and on mountain tops.

Subduction zone volcanoes continued to erupt for centuries after the Flood, gradually decreasing in number and intensity. They ejected aerosols (tiny dust particles) into the atmosphere that reflected significant amounts of sunlight, resulting in cooler summers that prevented winter snow and ice from melting. As the snow and ice accumulated year after year, thick ice sheets formed (see Hebert Figure 1). Recent volcanic eruptions have demonstrated that large, explosive, sulfur-rich eruptions can cause noticeable global cooling, particularly during the summer and autumn months. . . . It would take an enormous amount of energy to significantly warm the world’s oceans. . . but the Genesis Flood is an ideal candidate for such ocean warming (see Hebert, Figure 1).” [4]

Creation scientist Michael Oard has proposed the following chronology of Flood caused ocean warming. Immediately after the Flood there would have been continuing submarine volcanic activity due to the earth’s tectonic plate movement. Then, as this activity subsided, the oceans would cool off eventually reaching today’s average ocean temperature. See a graph below of hypothesized ocean temperatures in Oard, (Figure 6.1).[5]

Figure 1. Post-Flood ocean temperatures in Oard’s model of Post-Flood climate

Climate change was accompanied by another related phenomenon that affected the geophysical environment of Babel: the resulting changes in sea level. The vast amounts of frozen water in ice age glaciers ultimately came from the ocean which means that the sea-level had to decline significantly until most of the ice melted and the water returned to the ocean from which it came. The following diagram shows what creationist scientists have calculated sea levels using known thermodynamic equations with estimates of the volume of water involved and isostatic changes in the earth’s crust. Depending upon when dispersion from Babel occurred, such a radical lowering of sea level around the earth could have created land “bridges” to North America and Australia that would have been Exodus-like pathways through what was once oceans waters. It would have facilitated movement of available animal herds and might be an explanation of why marsupial mammals seem never to have inhabited other continents. Conceivably, tribes dispersing to the Australian subcontinent could have preferred available marsupial herds and taken all or most of them along. A land bridge would have been an easier option than trying to take them in whatever boats would have been available. (Explaining the unique distribution of Marsupials in Australia has always been a challenge to Darwinians.)

Figure 2. Post-Flood sea-level in Oard’s model of post-flood climate

Michael Oard explains his model of sea-level changes during the ice age shown in Figure 2 above:

“Immediately following the Flood, sea level begins about 40 meters higher than at present, since the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets had not yet formed. . . . The lowest glacial sea level, of course, occurs at glacial maximum, when the largest volume of water is locked up as ice, on land. . . . After maximum glaciation, the Laurentide and Scandinavian ice sheets would melt rapidly. . . Immediately after they melted, sea level should have been a little higher than today, because the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would not yet have reached their present size. Sea level would then slowly descend to near the current value.”[6]

Creation science has done a good job at using biblical data about the Flood and using it to interpret the likely geophysical implications. Now where in this geophysical history did the Babel event occur? That question ultimately depends upon the matter of whether there are gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 because the answer depends upon the Bible’s chronology of the dates of the Flood, Babel, and the call of Abraham.  Travis Freeman uses 30 pages of extensive references as he discusses both the Non-Chronogenealogy View shared by earlier historical-critical scholars and shared in a milder version by evangelical scholars today and the Chronogenealogy View held by conservative scholars who hold to a no-gap view of Genesis 5 and 11:

“Since the 19^th century, Old Testament scholars have generally expressed the opinion that the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 contain generational and chronological gaps. Thus, they cannot be used, as James Ussher did, for chronological purposes.

“Such a view, however, is troubling to some conservative Bible scholars who insist that Genesis 5 and 11 clearly present a continuous and no-gap genealogy and chronology from Adam to Abraham. . . . Thus, they say, Ussher justifiably used them to help date creation at about 4000 B.C. and modern scholars would do well to follow suit.”[7]

Freeman’s discussion centers on the importance of genre within the overall class of biblical genealogies. Yes, gaps and stylistic designs do occur in ancient genealogies, but this general pattern has many exceptions. Genesis 5 and 11 are two such exceptions. Other such exceptions occur in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles where chronologies are intended and are often used to establish dates of important events. He then answers five arguments put forward by followers of the Non-Chronogenealogy View: (1) similarities of the Genesis 4 and 5 lists, (2) symmetrical ten-generation form of Genesis 5 and 11, (3) overlapping lives of the Genesis 5 and 11 patriarchs, (4) regular repeated formulae in Genesis 5 and 11, and (5) extra-biblical theories of the antiquity of man that developed after Lyell. He concludes:

“The main arguments for gaps due to fluidity in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 suffer from lack of evidence. While all parties readily acknowledge fluidity in some ancient genealogies, no party has yet presented sound evidence of fluidity in the Sethite and Shemite lists. As far as the biblical evidence is concerned, no omissions or additions have been made to the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. There are no gaps there. This conclusion leads to two obvious and important implications for those who trust the Bible. First, the numbers supplied in Genesis 4 and 5 can and should be used for chronological purposes. Second, mankind is only about 6,000 years old.”[8]

Freeman adds an Addendum concerning mention of Cainan in Luke 3. He shows that the manuscript evidence for the Lukian reading dates no earlier than the fourth century A.D. As for the Septuagint, critics cited by Freeman point to how the Jewish LXX translation project seems intended to make it fit the Manetho’s then previously published inflated Egyptian king list. Both Manetho and the LXX translators lived under the auspices of the same Egyptian king (Ptolomy Philadelphus II. The Septuagint added 586 years between creation and Flood, and another 880 years between the Flood and Abraham by increasing the procreation ages in both Genesis 5 and 11 and making Cainan’s numbers exactly the same as his son, Seth, an unlikely occurrence.

Returning to the question when in the proposed geophysical environmental history did the Babel event occur? If the linguistic chaos of Babel occurred in the days of Peleg (Gen 10:25), then the event probably occurred between 300 and 400 years after the Flood (assuming a no-gap view of the Genesis 11 genealogy and the discussion on population growth in the next section of this paper). That would place it halfway to the glacial maximum when ice sheets were near their maximum at latitudes north of the Middle East resulting in significant lowering of sea-level, including that of the Mediterranean and the Bering Land Bridge between northeast Asia and northwestern America (see Figure 2 above). Transcontinental dispersion from Asia to North America was becoming easier and possibly also easier via a similarly-exposed land bridge from Malaysia and the Indonesian islands to Australia.  

BABEL DISPERSION STARTED AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH’S LAND AREAS

It’s interesting to note that a dispersion of human population from the Mediterranean site of Babel would have involved the least travel distances to sites all over the earth. This optimal location was calculated by a student of Henry Morris about 50 years ago using the computer technology then available. Here is the calculation sequence:

1. He divided land areas of the earth into 449 small equal unit areas;
2. For each such land unit area, he calculated the distance from it to every other land unit area over the whole earth;
3. From the results of (2), he added up all the distances calculated and divided by the number of individual distance calculations to get the average distance from the reference block used in (2) to all the other land unit areas around the world;
4. He repeated steps (2) and (3) for each one of all the 449 land unit areas created by step (1);
5. Finally, he compared the average distances calculated for each reference land unit area to find the land unit area with the lowest distance which is the earth’s geographical center.

His conclusions were as follows. The exact geographical center of the earth is at latitude 39° and longitude 34° which is near Ankara, the present capital of Turkey. Latitude 39° passes through Ararat. Longitude 34° is close to Jerusalem with its longitude of 32°.  Morris comments:

“The most significant conclusion, of course, is that the geographical center of the earth is, indeed, located in the so-called ‘Bible lands’. . . .If we consider the Bible lands to be bounded roughly by Memphis (the capital of ancient Egypt) on the south and west (latitude 30°, longitude 31°), and Ararat on the north and east (latitude 39°, longitude 44°), this will include Babylon (latitude 33°, longitude 44°) and Jerusalem (latitude 32°, longitude 35°), as well as practically all the cities in which the events narrated in the Old Testament took place. . . .The probability that the earth’s center would happen to fall in these Bible lands is only one chance out of 450.”[9]

One cannot help to admire God’s providential direction of history. Exactly on “the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat” (Gen 8:4). In spite of the worldwide turmoil of the great Flood, God brought the ark to the location from which its occupants could disembark into the very region which would be the center of God’s redemptive program for the rest of history.

SUMMARY OF THE GEOPHYSICAL CONTEXT OF THE BABEL PROJECT

I have discussed the geophysical environment within which the Babel event occurred so we can gain some insight into why the people feared spreading outward from the Mesopotamian valley. Necessarily, I have had to rely upon non-verbal revelation—known physical laws and discoveries—interpreted within available verbal revelation in the Bible.

First, the earth was quieting down from the global-sized, quick earth shocks as the deep plates underlying both land and ocean became more stable. At first, therefore, man-made architectural structures had to be built with large bases gradually decreasing in size with height in order not to topple over with the periodic earth shocks.  Moreover, they had to be built of stone materials since it would have taken a couple of centuries after the Flood for useful sized forests to form. Wood was not available in any quantity.

From Figures 1 and 2 it is clear that for those who were born after the Flood unprecedented climate change was occurring during the seven centuries of the post-deluge era.  Job, for example, appears to have lived during the age of the early patriarchs when lifespans were still high (Job 42:!6).[10] Surprisingly for someone who appears to have lived east of Jordan at the southern latitude of Edom, the book of Job has more references to snow and ice than any other book in the Bible (Job 6:16; 9:30; 24:19; 37:6,10; 38:29). According to recent research the Sahara Desert was once filled with lakes and swamps which by biblical dating occurred in the early ice age centuries. Evidence shows that freshwater fish were caught and eaten by humans there. Elephants, hippos, and rhinos lived in the central Saharah.[11] Presumably, Egyptian civilization began then.

However, shortly after arriving in the promised land, Abraham was forced to move to Egypt because of a severe famine (Gen 12:10). In Isaac’s time a second famine occurred (Gen 26:!0). Finally, a third famine is mentioned that eventually brought all of Jacob’s family to Egypt (Gen. 41:20). These famines occurred in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which would have been shortly after the peak in the Ice Age (Figure 2 above) when the climate would have begun to warm turning the Middle East into a more arid climate.

Post-Flood earth shocks and climate change posed threats to the Babel population, but there were also two blessings. First, God’s command to fill the earth given twice to mankind (Gen 1:28; 9:1) was more easily accomplished from their location, especially with lowered sea levels. Besides this providential blessing the Lord had established His ecological contract with both mankind and the animals in Noah’s day that specifically promised the geophysical disturbances were to be strictly limited (Gen 9:9-17). How would the Babel population decide: to fear earth shocks and climate change or to trust the Lord’s contract that promised limits on geophysical threats?

Throughout history fear has been a great motivator and tool of political tyrants seeking to control their people. Josephus claims it was Nimrod who led the rebellious project. In Gen 10:8-9 he is called a mighty one (Heb: gibbor) like the angelic/human giants of Gen 6:4. Josephus says Nimrod changed the government into a tyranny to make the people dependent upon himself. He openly defied God by urging the people to build the tower so high, it would reach above any flood that God might send. The bitumen mortar would keep out any water. Nimrod, according to Josephus, claimed that he would pay God back for destroying their antediluvian fathers.[12]

The geophysical environment played into his hand. Fear seemed to have triumphed over faith. They must have wondered if God’s ecological contract with Noah was valid. Was God in control, or was the environment an inherent chaos from which mankind must use its available technology to protect itself? The Babel leadership certainly had ripe ground to crush the faith taught to them by Noah’s family.

THE POPULATIONAL CONTEXT OF THE BABEL PROJECT

The Flood separated two distinctly different civilizations living within two different geophysical environments. Questions arise about the physiology of this new civilization’s people. First, how was their physiology different from that of the antediluvians? What would have been the likely population growth from the eight Ark survivors to the time of Babel?  

DECLINING HUMAN LONGEVITY

Ancient documents like the Sumerian King List claim that before the flood, their kings lived many thousands of years. Randal Price comments:

“The Sumerian King List records the names of ten Sumerian kings who ruled before the flood. The unrealistically long lifespans for these kings ranging in the tens of thousands of years (the longest is 43,200 years) might suggest that this is a fictional account. . . . However, some of these names are known from other inscriptions and appear to be historical figures. . . . For this reason , the majority of scholars accept the Sumerian King List as an historical record and explain the extreme reigns as epochs named after dynastic rulers or as intentional literary hyperbole to enhance the prestige of the ruler. . . . With respect to this text in Genesis, what is significant is the same pattern in both accounts with longer lifespans for the prediluvian kings and shorter lifespans for the postdiluvian kings, whose number parallels the ten historical kings in Genesis 10.[13]

Whereas the Sumerian material claims that kingship was divinely bestowed before the Flood, the Genesis record knows of no human government until the Noahic or Ecological Covenant after the Flood (Gen 9:5-6). No human kings are mentioned between Genesis 3 and 9. The only government involving lethal force was that of the angelic guard around the perimeter of Eden (Gen 3:24).

Beyond the fact of the Sumerian antediluvian reign lengths being some 50 times longer than the Genesis 5 list, there is another remarkable contrast with Genesis.  The Sumerian King List portrays a sudden drastic decline after the flood whereas Genesis preserves a smooth decline. Not only does the Genesis data show a smooth decline, it has a particular form. When a mathematical curve fit trendline is done, the data fit an exponential decay curve which occurs in many physical systems when they pass from one equilibrium state to another equilibrium state (e.g., electrical discharge, substance response to changing temperature, etc.).

Figure 3. Decline in human longevity by postdiluvian generation with an exponential curve fit.

Could the exponential decline be an elaborate mathematic product of early postdiluvian scribes? While it is true that scribes in the Old Babylonian period had tables of exponential functions which they used to compute compound interest[14], the data in Figure 1 are not exactly exponential. They scatter about such a function thereby attesting to naturalness rather than artificiality.

What might have been the causes of such a longevity decline? The human body interacts with its physical environment through at least three channels: the skin (e.g., ultra-violet radiation), the lungs (e.g., oxygen, ozone), and the stomach (e.g., diet). We can only guess at changes in radiations upon the skin or in gases breathed into the lungs. We know from Genesis that God authorized meat-eating after the Flood, perhaps to compensate for nutrients no longer available from the flora compared to the antediluvian biosphere. Or perhaps there was a theological dimension to the dietary switch to meat. It provided a universal witness to the idea of substitutionary atonement—for man to live, an animal must die.

The data, however, do show two large longevity drops: a 350-year drop between Noah and Shem and a 225-year drop between Eber and Peleg. The longevity drop from Noah to Shem could be because Noah had already lived 600 years within the prediluvian environment so the change from that environment to the postdiluvian environment caused proportionally less damage to his body than the longevity declines for those born after the Flood who had no previous exposure to the prediluvian environment.

Then how do we explain the unusual longevity drop between Eber and Peleg? Eber out lived Peleg his son by 191 years! Assuming Peleg lived in the immediate generation after Eber, something affected Peleg’s physiology in a similar fashion as the change from pre-Flood to post-Flood environment caused the physiological difference between Noah and his son Shem. If we believe that the Babel event occurred in Peleg’s days (Gen 10:25), perhaps the subsequent judgment upon Babel that drove humanity outward from the Mesopotamian area led to more severe living conditions. Whatever diminished human longevity in Peleg’s generation, human physiology never recovered since. Longevity continued to weaken after Peleg to present levels.

Imagine what it must have been to see your great grandparents living longer than your parents. Each successive generation was forced to face an increasingly undeniable mortality. In addition to fear-provoking unprecedented geophysical phenomena, there was also this unprecedented human health crisis—another challenge to faith!

HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH FROM EIGHT

How many people could have been involved in the Babel project if it occurred in Peleg’s lifetime? Chart One gives the years since the Flood that the immediate postdiluvian patriarchs died.

Patriarch	Years after the Flood of death  (running totals)	Scripture
Noah	350	Gen 9:28-29
Shem	2 + 500 = 502	Gen 11:10-11
Arphaxad	2 + 35 + 403 = 440	Gen 11:10,12-13
Salah	2 + 35 +30 + 403 = 470	Gen 11:12, 14-15
Eber	2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 403 = 531	Gen 11:14, 16-17
Peleg	2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 30 + 209 = 340	Gen 11:16, 18-19
Reu	2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 30 + 32 + 207 = 370	Gen 11:18, 20-21
Serug	2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 30 + 32 + 30 + 200 = 393	Gen 11:20, 22-23
Nahor	2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 30 + 32 + 30 + 29 + 119 = 341	Gen 11:22, 24-25
Terah	2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 30 + 32 + 30 + 29 + 205 = 427	Gen 11:24, 32
Abraham	2 + 35 + 30 + 34 + 30 + 32 + 30 + 29 + 70 + 175 = 467	Gen 11:26; 25:7-8

Chart 1. Years after the Flood that Noah and the following 10 postdiluvian patriarchs died

Chart 1 shows that Abraham died 467 years after the Flood. Dates, therefore, for the Flood can be estimated assuming an Exodus date of 1440 BC and the time between Abraham and the Exodus. But to do so, we must consider the two different views of Israel’s bondage in Egypt—the 215-year view and the 430 year view.  If one supposes that Israel spent 215 years in Egypt, the time from Abraham to the Exodus would be 430 years implying a Flood date of 2337 BC. On the other hand, if one supposes that Israel spent 400 years in Egypt, the time from Abraham to the Exodus would be 615 years implying a Flood date of 2517 BC.

Chart 1 can be used for second matter. It shows that Shem and Eber outlived Abraham.  It also shows that within a century of Abraham’s death 467 years after the Flood (367 years) all the post diluvian patriarchs except Shem, Eber, and Peleg died within the century before Abraham’s death. It looks like a curtain of historical amnesia dropped down, cutting off nearly all oral contact with the past. Was this a stimulus to begin written chronicles? After Abraham died, only Shem and Eber were left as eye-witnesses to post-Flood history before Abraham.

Chart 1 can be used for a third matter: to estimate human population growth from the eight survivors of the Flood to a Peleg date for Babel. Henry Morris derived an equation that accounts for the average number of children per family growing to maturity and marriage (c boys and c girls for a total of 2c children per family living to the point of being able to procreate the next generation) over any given number of family generations (n). The total number of people born over n generations would be:

S_n = 2 (cⁿ⁺¹ – 1) / (c -1)

For broad applicability throughout human history Morris also compensated for the number of people who would die during this many generations. For our purposes we can ignore this factor. If Babel occurred during Peleg’s lifetime and he died 340 years after the Flood, none of the previous postdiluvian patriarchs would have died and presumably their children, being younger than they, would not have either. [15]

Patriarch	Number of Sons  Mentioned in Genesis 10
Japheth	7
Ham	4
Shem	5
Cush	6
Mizraim	6
Canaan	11
Eber	2
Joktan	13
Average	6.75

Chart 2. The reported number of sons inferred from Genesis 10

To apply this equation for estimating a reasonable value for the population during “the days of Peleg” (Gen 10:25), we need to derive values for c, and n. For c, the average number of boys in families from Shem’s generation to Peleg’s generation based on notices in Genesis 10 is 5 (see Chart 1). Assume c, therefore, is 6.75 which means each family would produce between 12 and 14 boys and girls (13.5 children on average) beginning with the firstborn.

What about a value for n? Let’s begin with the time of the firstborn child. In Genesis 11 the first mention of children for Arphaxad is his 35^th year, the first mention of children for Selah is his 30^th year, and the first mention of children for Eber is his 34^th year. These are all the data we have whether the first born are spoken of or the Messianic seed is spoken of. We know at least that reproduction began at an average of 33 years. The rest of the children would have been born later. Assuming that the first born are spoken of, the children born to every patriarch would reach their first year of reproducing children at 33 years according to this reasoning. And these children then would begin producing their families and grandchildren.

Given that nursing took two years or more, the lowest duration of having 13.5 children one at a time would be 27 years. The average childbirth date would then be 58 years (33 + 27 - 2). Assume that “in his days” (Gen 10:25) means that Babel occurred at the height of Peleg’s life about two-thirds of the 209 years after his son, Reu, was born, i.e., his 167^th year or the 268 years since the Flood. How many 58-year durations would occur in those 268 years? The answer is 4.62. Every 4.62 years on average another complete set of children averaging 13.5 in number would be added to the post-diluvian population each pair of which would already be starting to have their children. Thus n = 4.62 in Morris’s equation.

The human population at the time of Babel would then be 15,920—a small enough figure to support the assertion in Genesis 11:1 that “the whole earth had one language. . . . and found a plain in the land of Shinar.” It was also small enough that most people should have been able to recognize known leaders especially those early in the messianic line—of Noah and Shem who were still living when the Babel project occurred.

Such a situation raises the important question of what happened to their spiritual influence on the population that followed Nimrod? Granted, the population at this time faced frightening geophysical phenomena never before seen and a strange decline in their longevity. But had at least some of them not learned of God’s publicly declared ecological contract back in Noah’s day? Was the Word of God not handed down from Shem either through families or directly from Shem? For the Babel scheme to succeed, this contract either must not have been disseminated throughout the population, or it was suppressed. We know that tyrants inevitably suppress or distort the historical memory of their subjects. Do we see here an early version of “cancel culture” by the dominating power of unbelievers to “advance” political and religious beliefs for a “new age” and to simultaneously suppresses the Word of God and those still loyal to it?[16]

THE THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF THE BABEL PROJECT

Most scholars agree that the tower was a ziggurat. Dr. Price succinctly summarizes what is known about Mesopotamian beliefs connected with ziggurats that followed Babel. He points to the religious nature embedded in both the architecture of the tower and the politics of the city:

“[Ziggurats] consist of states of towers stacked one upon another and decreasing in size as they progressed upward (similar to the early form of the step pyramid, such as that of Djoser at Saqqara in Egypt). . . . The ziggurat was dedicated to the city’s patron deity. . . .and topped by the figure of a god or goddess. . . .The temple of the ziggurat had both a cultic function and a cosmic function ‘linking heaven and earth’ or ‘heaven and the netherworld.’ . . .Texts also associate the sanctuary and its ziggurat with a cosmic mountain, which is typically identified in this mythology with the divine abode. The stairway. . .supported by the structure of the ziggurat was the access point for the gods to travel between heaven and earth.

“The biblical text states that the purpose of the [Babel] structure was to prevent the people from being scattered abroad (in contrast to the original divine mandate in Gen 1:28 and its restatement in 9:1,7). In other words, this verse describes an urbanization project to keep the population together around a single administrative complex with the temple at its center. . . . This urbanization process contributed to the deification of human rulers who maintained control over the temple-state. . . . The problem in [Gen 11:1-6] is not the construction of a city but the purpose of the city and its cultic center that deified humans and thus degrade the nature of God. Once this concept took hold, mankind would alter its entire relationship with the Creator, a thought reflected in the words of Genesis 11:6: ‘If as one people speaking the same language, they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.’ The wording is similar to that in Genesis 3:22: ‘The man has now become like one of us. . . . He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take from the tree of life. . . and live forever.”^[17]

We now come face to face with the spiritual tragedy that doomed what could have been a flourishing second civilization. We will see in a subsequent discussion that the religious and political character of Babel described by Dr. Price has continued for over 4,000 years as generation after generation tries to restore an Eden-like utopia. Babel was a classic revolt against their knowledge of God.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

Chart 3. The two worldview alternatives available to mankind

Mankind in both the first and second civilizations have faced only two realities: either the true one implied by Genesis 1-2, or the delusional one implied by Genesis 3. Both alternatives provide the metaphysical basis for discerning truth (epistemology) and for determining proper conduct (ethics). Genesis 1-2 implies a two-level metaphysic—an eternal existence of the infinite, self-contained, self-sufficient omniscient, omnipotent, personal loving Triune God and a temporal existence of creatures with immutable boundaries: spirit beings, man, nature. On the other hand, Genesis 3 implies a single-level metaphysic—a cosmos of finite objects:  gods & goddesses, man, and nature in a continuum without any immutable boundaries.

The left side of Chart 3 attempts to show the implications of Genesis 1-2. The Creator reveals himself to his creation through works and words—a historic “show-and-tell” form of revelation. Theologians label these two categories of revelation as mute and verbal or general and special. General revelation comes to every person through their sense of deity (SD). Special revelation comes to those recipients of whatever is available of Word of God.

THE UNIVERSAL SENSE OF DEITY

It should not surprise us that there was widespread knowledge of the Creator. All people are born with a capacity to see His “invisible attributes by the things that are made. . .so that they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). This passage extending through Romans 1:18-2:16 clearly shows that every person in every age is ultimately responsible for their choices before God. The Babel generation does not differ in this regard from us. Oliphant summarizes this kind of inborn epistemology:

“We know God, not because we have reasoned our way to him, or have worked through the necessary scientific procedures, or have inferred his existence from other things we know; we know him by way of his revelation. . . . We have the sense of deity (SD), because we are God’s image and because as image, God implants the knowledge of himself within each of us. . . . Paul regards SD as knowledge itself that comes directly and repeatedly from God himself through the things that God made and sustains.”[18]

This inborn epistemology reinforces the responsibility for everyone in the Babel population to have sensed something was amiss with the project. Rushdoony neatly summarizes the implications of an SD epistemology: “Cultural conditioning is real, but basic to man’s every state is the fact of his creation in the image of God. This prior and ultimate reality cannot be effaced by the tyranny of man and his philosophies.” [19]

THE NOAHIC BIBLE

Fragments of God’s special revelation in Genesis 1-9 (the “Noahic Bible”) continued to exist after the Babel dispersion as is apparent from pieces of truth surviving within pagan myths and in the following symbols from ancient China. Like Egyptian hieroglyphics, these Chinese signs were pictographic. This reliance upon pictures most likely testifies to attempts to communicate in a world of post-Babel linguistic diversity just as today the restroom signs are used in airports around the world. If people after Babel knew these truths, then the people participating in the Babel project also knew them.

Chart 4. Ancient Chinese symbols depicting Genesis 1-6 truths[20]

Besides the written reflections of the Noahic Bible in Chart 4, even today in tribes around the world who have lived many years in total isolation from the civilized world, one can find oral traditions of biblical truths. In the early years of the 20^th century Father Wilhelm Schmidt undertook to refute the evolutionary idea that monotheism slowly evolved from earlier animism and polytheism. His extensive research was published in 1931. He focused only on tribes that had lived in consistent isolation to learn their theological beliefs that had continued from the earliest times without influence from surrounding societies. In the following quotes below Father Schmidt uses the term “primitive” for these tribes rather than the clearer term “isolated”:

“Comparing primitive cultures with the later ones we may lay down the general principle that in none of the latter is the Supreme Being to be found in so clear, so definite, vivid and direct a form as among the peoples belonging to the latter. . . . We can establish (the Supreme Being’s) existence among all the Pygmy tribes . . . in the Asiatic and in the African groups. . . . For the Negritos of the Philippine Islands. . . Father Vanoverbergh has discovered a nocturnal liturgy addressed to the Supreme Being and couched in a sacred language no longer intelligible to the natives themselves. . . . In the primitive culture of the Arctic regions the Supreme Being is everywhere recognized and worshipped. . . . He appears among the three groups of primitives whose culture is related to the Arctic regions. . . In particular, the idea of creative activity is in force here in its highest form, amounting even to definite creation ex nihilo. . . . A belief in the Supreme Being is an essential property of this, the most ancient of human cultures, which must have been deeply and strongly rooted in it at the very dawn of time, before the individual groups had separated from one another.^[21] [Emphasis added]

Setting Schmidt’s conclusions within the framework of this paper, his work shows that at Babel there was general knowledge of Creator’s existence that was carried away from the center of the earth, Mesopotamia, by the dispersion outward to every continent. If this was so, then all segments of Babel people knew special revelation from whatever of the Word of God they received from Shem and his progeny. Shem and his children did have at least some influence. We conclude that Nimrod could only have succeed in forging ahead with his city and tower project by shaming into silence most of the community.

THE SUPPRESSION OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD

As the right side of Chart 3 shows, when man turns from the unavoidable knowledge of God, his only option is to try to suppress it as Adam and Eve tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves (Gen 3:7). The Satanic delusion was two-fold: (1) God either never really spoke, or if He did, He lied—His Word makes false claims about reality; and (2) the eating from the forbidden tree will convey total knowledge, i.e., give man a divine epistemology. These false assertions underlie all attempts to suppress the knowledge of God.

What do these efforts entail? The Creator/creature distinction establishes the only basis of true revelation. His revelation alone is sufficient for every situation that man could ever face including encounters with members of the divine council (e.g., see I Kings 22:19-23; Job 1-2).

The Satanic delusion comes from a fellow creature who is finite in every way. Satan neither fully knows himself nor can determine his future. He cannot control that of which he himself is a product. Nor can he avoid the implications of his lie. He must replace the two kinds of existence metaphysic with only one kind of existence. All objects whether gods, goddesses, man, animals, rocks, etc., must then belong to Nature as a continuum—a continuity of being.

This idea of continuity is seen in Dr. Price’s description of the ziggurat architecture being a picture of a mountain reaching into the domain of the gods, a virtual pathway for the gods and men to travel toward each other. Such a religious viewpoint was common in the pagan world. If we think about the Babel project’s architecture, we can see a false kind of mediatorship. The ruler of the city-temple community is for all practical purposes their mediator between them and their god.

Figure 4. Column from Mortuary of King Sahure[23]

Here, for example, is a column in Egypt depicting the pharaoh as a link between heaven and earth. Frankfort comments: “The Egyptian state was not a man-made alternative to other forms of political organization. It was god-given, established when the world was created. . . The word ‘state’ was absent from the language because all the significant aspects of the state were concentrated in the king. He was the fountainhead of all authority, all power, and all wealth. The famous saying of Louis XIV, l’etat c’est moi, was levity and presumption when it was uttered, but could have been offered by Pharaoh as a statement of fact in which his subject concurred.”[22]

The Egyptian column in Figure 4 has the name of Pharaoh Sahure inside two vertical lines that symbolize the scepters of his political authority. The symbol at the top of his name is the symbol of heaven. The symbol at the bottom is the symbol of earth. Here again we see the pagan view of reality as a continuum of being. Presumably, the ziggurat at Babel was designed to honor this doctrine of continuity between the gods and the ruler of the city-temple complex. The gods and man united in the ruling king which deified him as Price noted.

In his commentary on Daniel chapter 3, Rushdoony addresses Nebuchnezzar’s distortion of Daniel’s dream interpretation in chapter 2:

“History was in Nebuchadnezzar’s hands and derived its meaning from him. The priestly role  of  the Chaldean king, as the great mediator, had been reinforced by the dream (Dan 2), and as Nebuchadnezzar held sway, he was the hand, head, power and mind of God for his day. To by-pass him in worship was to despise both God and God’s incarnate glory; other and peripheral worship of lesser powers was permissible only when Nebuchadnezzar’s image and his glory were first acknowledged. Polytheism was thus permissible and a part of religious toleration, provided the religion of state was given its due; to all other gods, the left-overs only belonged.”[24]

“Daniel’s three friends quickly found themselves as traitors to Nebuchadnezzar. The king had hoped to have integrated these potential Jewish leaders into Babylonian culture through their three-year state-funded re-education course. Nebuchadnezzar sought to show his empire was for all nations including Israel but demanded their ultimate allegiance would be to him.”[25]

What, then, were the key features of the theological context of Babel? Why was God’s judgment so radical?  At least two reasons are obvious. First. the project deliberately intended to suppress the clear knowledge of God then available so it would be no longer available to subsequent generations. Second, the project also intended to fundamentally change God’s design of the second civilization (Gen 11: 6). Centuries before Babel just after the Flood God had introduced the authority of state to prevent a repeat of the first civilization’s anarchy. This new institution of civil government with its lethal power was divinely designed to restrain murder and other evil behavior (Gen 9:5-6; Rom 13:3-4). As a form of self-government for mankind it was to suppress evil acts enough so that God could fulfill His promise to Eve. In other words, it was to preserve enough room in the second civilization for the saving work required to fulfill the gospel and defeat Satan and the other rebels from the divine council. The Babel project intended to change the state function from preservation of civilization to redeeming it.

Waltke summarizes the situation: “As Adam and Eve transgressed the limits of human wisdom and sought to be like God (Gen 3:22) and as the sons of God transgressed the boundaries of marriage (Gen 6:1-2, 4), the tower builders seek meaning by transgressing into the dwelling place of God.”[26] These are the three gothic tragedies that have shaped our contemporary civilization!

GOD’S FAR-REACHING JUDGMENT OF THE BABEL PROJECT

In only four verses the Word of God tersely summarizes God’s judgment upon the Babel project (Gen 11:6-9).  He accomplished two things upon the Babel population: He confused their speech (balal), and He scattered them over all the earth (puwts). Just as God altered the physiology of subsequent mankind through Adam and Eve for the rest of history, at Babel He altered the sociology of post-Babel mankind separating it into tribal groups based upon different languages that eventually formed separate nations living in different locations for the rest of history.

CONFUSION OF SPEECH

A fascinating paper by James Strickling argues that the confusion of speech and the diversity of languages did not occur together. The confusion happened instantaneously and promptly ended construction of the city and its tower.

“The text states that the builders’ speech was confounded. Judging from the name of the place (Babel), their speech became a babble. This was not just a ‘collective babble’ of the individuals speaking different languages but a babble on the part of each individual affected. In other words, they apparently lost the power of coherent speech! They could only babble.!”[27]

Stickling cites neurolinguistics research into the effects of extremely low frequency and very low frequency of electrical and magnetic fields on neurons in the brain:

“vocalization can be evoked by electrical stimulation. . .but these vocalizations are never words. Spontaneous language has not been evoked from cortical stimulation. Rather cortical stimulation seems to act on such complex behavior as language as though it was introducing noise into the system. . . . The period of disruption is, in large measure, temporary.”[28]

There is a Jewish legend that Strickling cites that the tower experienced some sort of pyrogenic assault: “As for the unfinished tower, a part sank into the earth, and another part was consumed by fire; only one-third remained standing.”[29] He then speculates that just as the Lord sent fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, he might have struck the tower with a massive lightning bolt which of course is a source of electromagnetic radiation. Moreover, such a bolt could have ignited the bituminous pitch that Nimrod thought would have saved the tower if God sent another flood.

DISPERSION AND THE DIVERSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES

As the people dispersed from the Mesopotamian area outward, their average journey length to any other land location on earth was about 4615 miles thanks to God’s providential grounding of Noah’s Ark in the Ararat region and subsequent settlement in the Mesopotamian areas or “Bible lands.”[30]

Unfortunately, linguists offer us little help in explaining how diverse languages developed. Tracing any given language backwards gets very complicated. To illustrate I cite recent correspondence with a student trained in linguistics who was in my Christian Framework class at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been exploring the origins of the Korean and Japanese languages. He tells me that these two languages are considered “orphan” languages because they don’t seem to have a clear lineage to any nearby Asian languages such as Chinese.

“The script used for Japanese is not native to the proto-japonic language. It has been dislocated from whatever former writing scheme it used prior to adopting the foreign Chinese character system. It appears as though proto-japonic underwent an extended period of illiteracy (not unusual for nomadic or traveler peoples). Once they settled in the Ryukuan islands, they began to mix with Ryukyuan and Ainu native languages (this is likely where they gained their similarities to the Native American Hopi language). As the culture developed, the upper classes began to adopt the near-by Chinese script to encode what was primarily a spoken japonica-ryukyuan hybrid. What remained intact was primarily their GRAMMATICAL structures. . . .

“I would be skeptical of similarities between the shape of any given letter. What would be more telling is the grammar structure and the available phonetic range of the language (what sounds are and are not represented in the spoken language). The grammar structure bears intriguing similarities; the phonetics not so much, but their concept of phonetic packaging perhaps (consonant rather than vowel centric syllables, vocal reduction in conjugation, etc.).”[31]

His particular interest is the similarities in the grammatical structures with Hebrew. He responds to a recent author’s work on using linguistic similarities to claim a connection between the Japanese people and the Hebrew people of biblical times:

“The customs more than the language are the best evidence. The annual ritual of an interrupted sacrifice on Moria-san (mount Moriah) in Japan. And the Tori gates (red painted doorframe-like structures) as gates of safety from spirits that wish one harm.”[32]

The annual ritual of an interrupted sacrifice bears striking similarities to Genesis 22, and the Tori gates to Exodus 12.

However the diversity of languages arose after Babel, God’s judgment upon the Babel project was a “second fall” that shaped our civilization as the first fall shaped the previous civilization. In both cases unnecessary suffering has ensued. The breakup of a globally unified community into separate nations has facilitated misunderstanding and wars. Yet as with deciding on medical therapy we have to weigh the benefits against the risk, God in both cases has decided his judgments’ long range redemptive benefits outweigh the horrifying risks of not judging and thus allowing his redemptive program to be thwarted.

THE BABEL FANTASY FRAMES THE LAST 4000+ YEARS OF HISTORY

In my introduction to this paper I wrote that besides exploring the Babel event itself, I was trying to contextualize the current political situation in our nation within the Bible’s dispensational framework. How does the Babel event connect with our current place in the history of God’s plan? Between Babel and the Millennium the Babel fantasy plays out over and over. Let’s renumerate features we observed in the previous discussion:

• Geophysical threats: earthquakes, climate change
• Population health threats
• Theological departure from biblical revelation making the state transcendent, political leaders into redeeming mediators between heaven and earth
• Changing the purpose of the state from restraining evil behaviors to bringing about a revived global Eden-like utopia, and repressing all influence from believers

THE RECURRING DREAM OF ATTAINING A GLOBAL UTOPIA

Each of the four kingdoms in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream feature the “king of kings” theme of globalism. Neither Nebuchadnezzar nor Cyrus nor Alexander were content to rule over one nation. They sought to conquer, dominate, and absorb surrounding nations. The Roman Empire was just that, an empire over most of Europe and parts of Africa and the Middle East to bring about protection from barbaric invasion. The medieval Roman Catholic Empire followed with the Pope as the supreme ruler of all Europe to bring redemption throughout its domain.

Modern political movements followed suite. Mark and Lenin tried to deal with the economic threats brought about by the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America. Their “solution” was a global revolution of the “oppressed” proletariat against the “oppressive” capitalists to bring about a workers’ paradise. Hitler took advantage of Germany’s post-World War 1 economic troubles to promote his messianic vision of the Third Reich. He sought hegemony over the surrounding European nations to purge the presence of gypsies, the handicapped, and Jews as well as taking the land of Poland for German living space.

Each such movement suppressed all genuine biblical influence to make the state transcendent and the chief redemptive tool. Each made use of absorbing people from the nations conquered and re-educating them as Nebuchadnezzar did with the three young men. Education became a tool of the state rather than training youth in truth and how to think.

Today the environmental movement seeks world dominance supposedly to deal with the threat of climate change. Leaders within it admit that global dominance is the ultimate goal rather than realistically solving any genuine threat of climate change. For example, Dr. Mike Hulme, leading climate scientist in the internationally renowned Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK wrote:

“The function of climate change . . . really is not about stopping climate change. Instead, we need to see how to use the idea of climate change to rethink how we take forward our political, social, economic and personal projects over the decades to come.”[33]

German economist Ottmar Edenhofer when he was co-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said,

“One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. . . One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”[34]

The memory of Babel clearly remains as seen in this picture of the European Union Parliament building that was deliberately designed from an older painting of the Tower of Babel. Nearby is the EU building where translating work is done. It is as though the EU planners are saying through modern technology we will overcome God’s judgment on Babel.

American public education, unlike that of Europe where education was explicitly anti-Christian, from its beginning presented itself as a fulfillment of Christianity. The early work of Horace Mann (1796-1858) greatly influenced this messianic vision. Though very religious, Mann was a Unitarian who believed in the perfectibility of man by human effort rather than the need for regeneration from man’s depravity. In his study of American education, Rousas Rushdoony argues that it was Mann, not John Dewey a century later, who endued American public education with a messianic character. “The parenthood of the state was a familiar idiom in Mann’s thinking.”[35]

A rising tide of parental reaction against the lack of classic education for, and sexualization of their children as early as elementary school, plus the neo-Marxist indoctrination’s revival of racial segregation has angered those who follow Mann. Read this quote by a law professor:

“This essay explores the choice many traditionalist Christian parents (both fundamentalist and evangelical) make to leave public schools in order to teach their children at home, thus in most instances escaping meaningful oversight. . . .Society need not and should not tolerate the inculcation of absolutist views that undermine toleration of difference. . . .If a parent subscribes to an absolutist belief system premised on the notion that it was handed down by a creator, that it (like the Ten Commandments) is etched in stone and that all other systems are wrong, the essential lessons of a civic education. . .often seem deeply challenging and suspect. . . .Such ‘private truths’ have no place in the public arena, including the public schools.” (Emphasis supplied)[36]

The war against Shem and the loyal postdiluvian fathers by Nimrod’s forceful administration of his city and temple cultus continues today.

A GOSPEL-CENTERED STRATEGY OF RESISTENCE

First step: Last year at the 29^th Annual Pre-Trib Study Group Conference, we were given a well-written book by Erwin Lutzer entitled We Will Not Be Silenced: Responding Courageously to Our Culture’s Assault on Christianity. In each chapter he provides a model prayer to help us personally submit to the authority of our Lord. Included in this step is the ministry of the local church as a training site in biblical revelation, prayer support, and as a general support group.

Second step: In his chapter entitled “Freedom of Speech for Me, but Not for Thee” he directs our attention to Acts 4:1-31. Here we see an uncompromisable right—the right of free speech. We see from the Babel narrative that somehow believers in that community either were physically excluded by state power or were intimidated into silence by social opposition. Thankfully, in America we have the first amendment to our Constitution by which to appeal any abridgement of our basic right to share the gospel and its implications. Religious free speech is the heart of all other free speech rights as the first sentence of the First Amendment makes clear. Several legal ministries stand ready to help such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty, and others.

Third step: Experience of believers who have lived under oppressive regimes shows that the family is our most effective social unit of resistance. Following Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1974 essay, “Live Not by Lies”, Rod Dreher has published a book which documents how Christian families protected the faith of their children under Communist rule. He devotes an entire chapter to this matter entitled “Families Are Resistance Cells”. He writes:

“The loosening of family ties and of traditional commitments to marriage has left Americans without the kind of refuge in the home that anti-communist dissidents had. US Christians, alas, are not especially different from unbelievers.”[37]

He goes on to point out what I cited in the last section about increasing legal assaults on parents’ rights:

“The assault on traditional marriage and family. . . continues today by law professors advocating legal structures that dismantle the traditional family as an oppressive institution. More ominously, it comes from policies, laws, and court decisions that diminish or sever parental rights in cases involving transgender minors. . . . With the advance of consumerism and individualism, we have built a social ecosystem in which the function of the family has been reduced to producing autonomous consumers, with no sense of connection with anything greater than fulfilling their own desires. Conservative parents are often quick to spot threats to their family’s values from progressive ideologues, but they can be uncritically accepting of. . . mindlessly surrendering their children’s minds to smartphones and the Internet.”[38]

Fourth step: Exercise our citizenship responsibilities. In America every citizen has responsibilities since the Constitution grounds the state on the citizenry. Note in this regard how Paul—writer of Rom 13—exercised his Roman citizen rights when he refused to leave jail until the local government officials came to publicly plead with Paul and his companions (Acts 16:35-39). Encourage believers in the churches to run for office in local elections for school boards, and town & country executive offices and vote to support those who do. Local elections are usually decided by a few handfuls of votes.

We don’t know the rights of the Babel population, but surely their elders were available to advise them on their responsibilities toward the state.

 

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[1] Foreword in Coming To Grips With Genesis, ed. Terry Mortenson and Thane H Ury. (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2008), 5-6.

[2] Lyell was concerned that when he published his massive three-volume work, The Principles of Geology, it would upset English clergy and create a public backlash.  In 1830 when Lyell’s work was to be published, he warned his friend who had influence with the new geology journal, Quarterly Review: “If you don’t triumph over them but compliment the liberality and candor of the present age, the bishops and enlightened saints will join us.” In 1832 he clearly saw the implications of his uniformitarian approach to geological strata and the age of the earth. During a lecture at King’s College, London, he agreed with a previous writer that “the physical part of geological inquiry ought to be conducted as if the Scripture were not in existence.” Citations from Terry Mortenson, The Great Turning Point (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2004), 225—27.

[3] In spite of this progress in understanding geophysical phenomena and interpreting the data within the perspective of Genesis, evangelical Old Testament scholars continue to use the opposite methodology of interpreting the Bible within the perspective of Lyellian historical science and ancient pagan literature. The latest example is Dr. John Walton, an Old Testament theologian at Wheaton College and an advisor at the theistic evolutionary organization BioLogos. Walton starts with ancient Near Eastern pagan literature and then interprets Genesis using his interpretation of that literature. Therefore, according to Walton suffering and death did not begin with the fall and original sin; they are merely the way God created the world. Genesis 6-8 do not describe a global flood and the end of the first civilization; it was a mythical story perhaps inspired by a local flood. See  J. H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009 and Tremper Longman III, and J. H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018).

[4] Jake Hebert, “The Bible Best Explains the Ice Age,” Acts & Facts 47, no. 11 (November 2018): 10-13. This creation model using Genesis 6-9 to guide interpretation of known atmospheric physics happens to be the only available, self-consistent scientific explanation of how an ice age could possibly form. Nowhere else can one find a solution to the problem of getting enough frozen precipitation accumulated during the winter and simultaneously keeping the snow and ice from melting the following summer.

[5] Michael J. Oard, An Ice Age Caused By The Genesis Flood (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1990), 112.

[6] Ibid., 173-76.

[7] Travis Freeman, “Do the Genesis 5 and 11 Genealogies Contain Gaps?” in Coming To Grips With Genesis: Biblical Authority and the Age of the Earth, ed. Terry Mortenson, and Thane Ury (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2008), 283.

[8] Ibid., 308. There seems to be an error in this quote since Freeman is reasoning with Genesis 5 and 11 a few sentences just before mention of Genesis 4 and 5.

[9] Henry M Morris discussion in Andrew Woods, “The Center of the Earth,” (ICR Technical Monograph No. 3, Institute for Creation Research, San Diego,1973), 4-5.

[10] See discussion that follows concerning the longevity of the antediluvian patriarchs and the exponential longevity decline in early postdiluvian patriarchs.

[11] Reported by Dr. Tim Clary, “Ancient Sahara Was Wetter Than Expected,” Acts & Facts 49, no. 4 (April 2020): 15.

[12] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews. Book 1, Chap 4, Paragraphs 2-3.

[13] Randall Price with H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archeology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 55.

[14] O. Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. 2^nd ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1969), 34.

[15] Henry M Morris, Biblical Cosmology and Modern Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1970), 73. This book is and expanded version of The Griffith Thomas Memorial Lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary in 1967.

[16] For a fascinating, imaginative novel of intrigue going on in earth’s population faced with the challenges just discussed during Peleg’s lifetime, see Jon Sabol, The Days of Peleg (Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, 2007).

[17] Randall Price with H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archeology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 71.

[18] K. Scott Oliphint, Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the service of Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2006), 137.

[19] Rousas John Rushdoony, Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and Revelation (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 1970), 29.

[20] Symbols with discussion of the method of interpretation can be found in an earlier book C. H. Kang and Ethel R Nelson, The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese Language (St. Louis, MO: 1979) and a later book Ethel R Nelson and Richard E Broadberry, Genesis and the Mystery Confucius Couldn’t Solve, rev. ed. (St. Louis, MO: 1994).

[21] Wilhelm Schmidt. The Origin and Growth of Religion Facts and Theories. Translated by H.J. Rose. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1931. 257-261.

[22] Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation (New York, NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 30f.

[23] Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religions as the Integration of Society & Nature (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), Fig 19 after page 212.

[24] Ibid., 21,23.

[25] The term “king of kings” is used three times in the Old Testament for Gentile empire leaders (Ezr 7:12; Eze 26:7; Dan 2:37). The term reveals their global ambitions to absorb independent nations into their dreams to create a one-world empire.

[26] Bruce K Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 177.

[27] James E Strickling. “The Tower of Babel”. Creation Research Society Quarterly 16, no, 4 (March 1980), 222.

[28] Ibid., 223.

[29] Ibid., 233. Citation from Ginsberg, Louis, 1913. Legends of the Jews. The Jewish Publication Society of America. No page given.

[30] Henry M Morris discussion in Andrew Woods, “The Center of the Earth,” (ICR Technical Monograph No. 3, Institute for Creation Research, San Diego,1973), 5-6. Morris points out that the probability of locating the Bible lands in this region is only one chance out of 450. Compare the average travel length of 4615 miles from this part of the Mesopotamian area to the location with the greatest average travel length to all the earth’s land area of 7813 miles—“a point east of the southern tip of New Zealand and west of the southern tip of South America.”

[31] Correspondence from the student, November 11, 2011.

[32] Ibid., My Japanese daughter-in-law has also spoken to me about the ritual of the interrupted sacrifice as well as of an annual ritual of Buddhist priests carrying a rectangular shaped box about the size of the Old Testament ark through the streets of a major city.

[33] Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 329, 362

[34] Interview with Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 14 November, reporter Bernard Potter.

[35] Rousas J Rushdoony, The Messianic Character of American Education (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1968), 24.

[36] Catherine Ross, “Fundamentalist Challenges to Core Democratic Values: Exit and Homeschooling”, William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 18 (May 2010) (She is professor at George Washington Law School)

[37] Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies: A Manual For Christian Dissidents (New York: Sentinel, 2020), 129.

[38] Ibid., 132-133.