The Stupidest Story in the Bible

I know, I know. There are a LOT of stupid stories in the Bible. The competition is fierce. That said, make no mistake. I fully intend to stake out a claim that the very stupidest story in the entire Bible, with no close second, is the story of the Tower of Babel.

And while I'm sure some folks will downvote out of distaste for the topic, I challenge the rest of you who downvote to comment the Bible story you contend is dumber than this one. I'm convinced there is none, but it's never a bad time to learn!

Can't go wrong starting with the original text. Ok, not the "original" original text. We'll get back to that. Anyway, from the King James Bible, Book of Genesis, Chapter 11, Verses 1-9:

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Let's start by acknowledging one of the major purposes of religious stories - to explain why things are the way they are. This is the whole, "Let there be light," kind of thing, trying to explain why there is dark and light. Maybe we're all riding on the back of a giant turtle. Maybe there's a giant dude holding the sky on his shoulders. We get these ideas from religious stories written for this purpose.

From this perspective, the purpose of the story of the Tower of Babel is fairly clear. The story intends to explain how it came to be that people from different places speak different languages. It apparently wasn't lost on the people in the audience that different people existed who spoke foreign tongues, and this story addresses how that happened.

Let's get a few things out of the way. First, few modern linguists would agree with the idea that there existed, at any historical moment, a single universal language among Homo sapiens. There are still proponents of the idea, but such a linguistic monogenesis is broadly considered a familiar but unsupported and even fringe hypothesis. In short, modern scholars of language consider the opening premise of the story to be factually untrue.

Second, another thing that people had noticed at the time of this writing was that the sky is blue. Well, earlier in the book of Genesis, a notion was put forward that we refer to as the firmament. If you stand at the boundary between the land and the sea, what bounds the land is water. The idea of the firmament is that the boundary of the sky is also water, that land and air are pressed in together, with water all around. Hence the blue color.

Yeah, like the dome in the Simpsons movie, but with water above and all around the dome. In the famous story of the flood of Noah (presented in Genesis chapters 5-9, preceding the Tower of Babel story), the flood was not understood to be caused by a really outsized rainstorm. Rather, Biblegod opened the firmament, which allowed the water outside the firmament to come pouring in, causing a flood. Having a clearer notion of the assumed structure of the Earth will be important to plumbing the depths of the Babel story.

Let's return to the story of the Tower of Babel. At the start, mankind was all hanging out, loving life on the plain of Shinar. We all spoke the same language, so we got to talking. Naturally, the conversation turns to religion and the people decide, "You know what? What if we settled this whole thing once and for all by building a tower that reaches Heaven? We could check it out for ourselves!"

So, they start piling up the stone and the slime, building a tower intending to reach to the firmament and beyond, to view the Kingdom of Heaven. Biblegod gets so peeved by this intrusion into his domain that he comes down, scatters the people, and curses them to speak different languages so that mankind will never again conspire to visit Heaven again.

The Soviets started launching objects into space in 1957. It was around this time that mankind first collected direct observations about the actual structure of Earth, confirming what many had suspected for a while. No, there is no firmament. No, there is no body of water surrounding Earth. The sky is blue for reasons unrelated to the supposed presence of the firmament. The Kingdom of Heaven isn't up there. We are now able to confirm that these Bronze-Age peoples had absolutely zero chance of constructing an edifice of brick and mortar capable of reaching Heaven.

That's the end of the story from the "explanatory" perspective. Stupid, yes, but no more idiotic and wrong than lots of other Bible stories. But religious stories often have other or multiple purposes, beyond attempting to explain the natural world. Another common purpose is to explain the nature of god. And it's here where the story gets more interesting.

On the get-to-know-your-god count, we've subsequently sent men to the Moon and back, with nary a peep from Biblegod, the entity that purportedly created the entire universe and should therefore know better about how the whole shebang is strung together. Definitely hard to figure why he felt so threatened by a building but is apparently ok with the Apollo Program.

But what I want to highlight here that I don't think gets enough attention is how the supposedly all-seeing Biblegod, in his fury over a few dudes making a pile of rocks on the plain of Shinar, reacts to their audacity. He could have chosen any number of ways to punish mankind. He definitely could have just reached into our brains and magicked out the "build tall shit" impulse or the "explore the heavens" impulse. But that's not how he rolls. He could have zapped off our hands. I think that would have set us back for a good long time. But no. What he does is stir up our ability to faithfully transmit information amongst ourselves. This is a very odd punishment, especially coming from an entity that purports to have the long game in mind.

Who loses from this? Obviously, it's quite the curveball for us. Thousands of years pass before we get Google Translate, and the barrier Biblegod put up starts to really diminish, as communication among the peoples of the Earth, while still far from perfect, is nevertheless possible. We work together with colleagues around the world on projects and language is a hindrance, but we overcome.

But let's look at what Biblegod loses. See, back in the day, he used to come down to check out the buildings we were making, sort of like the city inspector. But he doesn't really do that anymore. The primary testament we have to the existence of Biblegod is ... a written work, the Bible. Originally written in a language that the majority of the world does not have access to. Thanks to his own hissy fit over a building that was ... well, definitely not in any danger of letting men directly observe Heaven.

The 5th Commandment illustrates the problem. Some translations say, "Thou shalt not kill." Others say, "Thou shalt not murder." Well, which is it? Thou shalt not kill could conceivably cast a pretty wide net. On the other hand, thou shalt not murder is a tautology, as murder is defined as unlawful killing. If it's unlawful, you needn't restate that it's bad. The key question really is what kinds of killing are ok and which should be prohibited? Well, on that point, the Commandment isn't especially helpful. We can try to piece it together from other context, but that's not the point. The point of having a concise listing of important rules is to provide clarity to the people about what is and is not ok. Ambiguity like this strikes a deep wound against that central purpose, and where this ambiguity comes from honest best efforts of translating the book, the Tower of Babel story proudly claims this to be the direct result of a willful act of punishment by Biblegod against mankind. This is totally insane. People's souls are at risk here; if it's not important that the text stay true to its original message, then why bother at all with a written testament? The Bible and its originator are the first and foremost beneficiaries of an enduring human society that leaves no room for interlingual translational errors. What possible benefit is there behind inventing this entirely new way for people, in good faith, to get their religious beliefs wrong? This act is a totally unforced error, he's putting out his own eye, out of spite, because mankind had the audacity to want to glimpse Biblegod's kingdom while still being alive.

I see absolutely no way to resolve this question intelligently. A good amount of the stupid shit in the Bible can be fairly resolved by, "A wizard did it," but not this. If your lasting testament with your creation is in writing and it's important and you give it because you want them to read it and understand you, to then go and deliberately inflict mankind with thousands of languages is supremely nihilistic. It undercuts everything about the Bible as a project. Anyone reading the Bible with a fair eye should hit this story in the 11th chapter and just take off their reading glasses, put them back in their case, and chuck the book in the trash. Obviously, Biblegod doesn't give two shits if you actually read and understand the book. The omnipotent creator of the universe and the self-same author of the book has decided to interpose his will between you and your ability to access the content. The book cannot be read for comprehension. So fuck it.