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The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 may mean more than you think. It has an eerie connection to events in our day...

The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11:1-9

Jacob Michael King

What is the meaning of the story of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11:1-9? It is such a strange tale, and so much happens in just a few verses. Is it historical? Is it an allegory designed to teach us to live in accordance with God’s laws? Maybe the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 is something else entirely. The passage is often read as a cautionary tale about hubris and the perils of defying the divine order.

Let’s begin by reading through the text. The Biblical narrative states:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 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. 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; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

how to interpret scripture

Since most of us don’t know the original language, and we live thousands of years after the text was written, we should try to put the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 in context. Of course, on this side of eternity, we’ll never fully grasp what the original author had in mind when composing it.

But we have commentaries and spiritual works that stretch back thousands of years. These texts, by both Jewish and Christian writers, give us a sense of how people interpreted this story through the centuries. We will see, if we read enough of these older authors, the way a tradition developed around a particular passage of scripture.

Several traditions, in fact, seem to have predicted developments occurring today. Perhaps there is something prophetic in these extra-Biblical texts, or perhaps their writers had insight into human nature, and knew that there is nothing new under the sun.

Are there towers of babel today?

If we look to tradition and current events, we can arrive at a far deeper understanding of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9. Maybe the builders of the tower weren’t merely guilty of common pride, but of something far more sinister.

In an earlier article, we began a discussion about the connection between science and the occult. We explored some conspiracy theories about CERN, “one of the largest and most respected centers for scientific research.” In our exploration of these conspiracy theories, we discovered a strange and remarkable blog post, “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened.”

This post suggests that CERN is another Tower of Babel. In fact, it says that the scientists there are trying to open up a portal into other dimensions, and that their experiments will trigger the apocalypse.

In an effort to discover the meaning of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9, we’ll continue our analysis of this strange blog article. We’ll examine some statements that might seem preposterous at first glance, and show that both science and ancient religious texts have explored very similar ideas.

Scattered abroad

The author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” observes that, in the millennia following this calamity, language barriers barred humans from unified, global communication. But the internet has changed matters. Anyone with a phone is a polyglot. We’re even more powerful than these ancient builders, since we can send a message across the globe in an instant.

A scientist working at CERN even invented the World Wide Web. So if you’re enjoying this article, you’ve got CERN to thank.

Developments at CERN have helped restore some of the conditions before the Great Flood. CERN’S Large Hadron Collider doesn’t pierce the clouds (in fact, it’s underground), but, if we’re able to follow our author’s reasoning, it’s easy to interpret this device as another Tower of Babel.

Readers unfamiliar with ancient cosmological models might not see it, but the story in Genesis does relate an attempt to break into forbidden realms. In many of these models, heavenly spheres existed above the firmament, populated by divine (and sometimes demonic) creatures.  

“The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” states:

The people of Babel did not want to be scattered. They sought to build a tower whose top reached into heaven. Now everyone knows a building cannot be built so high that it reaches heaven. No, this tower was something else. With this tower they would be able to reach up and open up a bridge or doorway into a spiritual realm (dimension) that cannot normally be accessed. By using teaching from Satan and the occult, this tower would be used to open that gateway. It was even placed in the “right” location for best access into another spiritual dimension. […]

I don’t know the science behind the tower of Babel. I just know they were on the pathway to success in opening a door into another realm or dimension.[…]

God Himself said that they would be able to do it. Just building a tower by itself would never reach heaven. There had to be something they did with the tower. Something was planned that was occult related that would have given them the success they desired. The Lord had to take action to stop and halt their plans. This doorway would not be opened until the appointed time during the judgment and wrath of the Lord being poured out upon the wicked. We are quickly coming to the beginning of those days also known as the day of the Lord. This is happening in our time now.

The Tower of Babel and 3 Baruch

This interpretation of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 isn’t without precedent. Let’s look, for example, at the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, a text which could be as old as the first or second century. The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, or 3 Baruch, is a kind of angel-guided tour through the cosmos. The angel Phamael leads Baruch into higher and higher celestial realms, passing from one heaven to another. In the first heaven, he sees a plain whose inhabitants, identified as men, have “the faces of oxen, the horns of stags and the feet of goats, and the haunches of lambs.” The angel tells him, “These are they who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them.”

As Baruch ascends to the second heaven, he finds men who look like dogs, with the feet of stags. Phamael tells him that these men “gave counsel to build the tower.” After the tower was built “to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits,” God appeared and “confused their speech.” But these men weren’t deterred, in fact “they took a gimlet and sought to pierce the heaven saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest.”

Biblical Antiquities and the Talmud

According to The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, God smote the builders for trying to breach the heavens. In the Biblical Antiquities, a text formerly attributed to the Jewish philosopher Philo, it’s stated that God changed the likeness of those who built the tower and condemned them to live “like beasts of the field.” And a Talmudic passage suggests that a faction of builders sought to storm heaven. As punishment, God transformed them into apes, spirits, and demons.

We could, if we were reading absolutely literally, and imposing the language of modern science on centuries-old visionary texts, see the actions of the builders as an attempt to create a doorway into another dimension. In the words of one scholar, “We deal here not with the problem of forbidden knowledge, but rather with the esoteric limitation of access to this knowledge: celestial mysteries are forbidden for the wicked but revealed to the chosen pious.”

There is, then, a line of interpretation, common to several ancient exegetes, proposing that the builders sought to effect an opening between one sphere and another. But was this activity actually demonic, or merely the bad behavior of some prideful, stupid men? There’s another element introduced, the metamorphosis of men into inhuman creatures, common to all these ancient readings. God turned men into beasts for their impertinence. If we again impose modern terminology, we might view this as a kind of genetic mutation. The author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” takes up this theme, and offers a frightening vision of the future.

The Tower of Babel and the nephilim

The author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” identifies Nimrod, mentioned in Genesis 10, as the leader of this ill-fated attempt to build the Tower. The post continues:

Lets start at the beginning at the first attempt to bridge the gap or open the doorway to another realm or dimension. There was once a very great and evil man by the name of Nimrod. He was a evil man who hated God. He also had the goal of building a bridge or doorway into another realm or dimension for the purpose of unleashing evil. Here is a description of his birth.

Gen 10

8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.

First Nimrod was born into this world. But something happened to him after his birth. See the ‘mighty one’ in verse 8 above. Nimrod began to be a ‘mighty one’ on earth. This means he was not a mighty one until he began to be one. What does this mean?

Somehow his human DNA was changed and he literally became a hybrid, giant, or a nephilim. In the days that led up to Genesis 6, there was a genetic war against God. Genes of humans, animals, and plants were changed. This is true with Nimrod and it is true today. In our days godless scientists brag how they can change the DNA of humans and animals.

The author is claiming that Nimrod is one of the Nephilim. The word “Nephilim” occurs a few times in the Hebrew bible, and there are differing interpretations as to its meaning. But many ancient and modern readers believe the Nephilim to be a race of giants, the product of interbreeding between human women and fallen angels. The story of the Nephilim is a fascinating one, and the legends about them are worthy of study. There’s a tradition dating back many centuries that identifies those who built the Tower with the Nephilim. The early Christian historian Eusebius, citing another ancient writer, states:

The city Babylon was first founded by those who escaped from the Deluge; and […] they were giants, and built the tower renowned in history. But when this had been overthrown by the act of God, the giants were dispersed over the whole earth.

chimeras

“The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened,” though, seems to be making a different claim—namely, that Nimrod wasn’t born a giant, but became one. And the author connects this to “godless scientists” changing the DNA of humans and animals. The development of human-animal hybrids is a favorite talking point for so-called conspiracy theorists. Most notable among them, perhaps, is Alex Jones, who has long maintained that such experiments are central to the elites’ plan to dominate, and ultimately exterminate, humanity.

But what the author of the blog post is saying, and what Jones is howling about, isn’t paranoid fantasy. The journal Nature, for example, reported on a 2017 study in which a team of researchers “injected more than 1,400 pig embryos with one of three types of human induced pluripotent stem cell.”

There has been a host of other studies along these lines. Those performing them, I’m sure, would say they have good intentions. The hope is that animals will grow human organs, and that we’ll be able to transplant these organs into patients. But many bioethicists and religious groups oppose the creation of human-animal chimeras. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, hardly a fringe organization, condemned practices like these as “grossly unethical.”

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to see how the creation of human-animal hybrids could snowball into something truly monstrous. The very attempt is an affront to nature.

Science and Babalon

“The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” may follow a tenuous chain of reasoning, but it’s a pretty clear one: medical researchers developing chimeras and scientists at CERN attempting to open an interdimensional portal are warping creation in diabolical ways. According to the author, prophecy foretold this wicked behavior, and such transgressions will lead to the destruction of the world.

Those at CERN and the medical researchers creating human-animal hybrids both state the purposes of their research explicitly. But the author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” doesn’t buy it.

Is this, then, simply a gross misunderstanding? Distrust of the media and of “official sources” can be healthy. They could all be lying. A chunk of the scientific community might be covering up a truly nefarious plot. I doubt it, and so should you. But while our author gets some specifics wrong, his general suspicions, when applied to other cases, are quite accurate.

To find a scientist who wanted to marshal demonic forces in a kind of war against God, we don’t have to look far. Jack Parsons, the rocket engineer mentioned in my previous article, the man whose pioneering work allowed human beings to breach the heavens, sought to incarnate an occult goddess and usher in the reign of the Antichrist.

NOTE: This series of articles is based on a documentary I made, called Funny How The World Ends. Watch it below:

Reruns.

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 may mean more than you think. It has an eerie connection to events in our day...

The Tower of Babel: Genesis 11:1-9

Jacob Michael King

What is the meaning of the story of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11:1-9? It is such a strange tale, and so much happens in just a few verses. Is it historical? Is it an allegory designed to teach us to live in accordance with God’s laws? Maybe the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 is something else entirely. The passage is often read as a cautionary tale about hubris and the perils of defying the divine order.

Let’s begin by reading through the text. The Biblical narrative states:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 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. 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; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

how to interpret scripture

Since most of us don’t know the original language, and we live thousands of years after the text was written, we should try to put the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 in context. Of course, on this side of eternity, we’ll never fully grasp what the original author had in mind when composing it.

But we have commentaries and spiritual works that stretch back thousands of years. These texts, by both Jewish and Christian writers, give us a sense of how people interpreted this story through the centuries. We will see, if we read enough of these older authors, the way a tradition developed around a particular passage of scripture.

Several traditions, in fact, seem to have predicted developments occurring today. Perhaps there is something prophetic in these extra-Biblical texts, or perhaps their writers had insight into human nature, and knew that there is nothing new under the sun.

Are there towers of babel today?

If we look to tradition and current events, we can arrive at a far deeper understanding of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9. Maybe the builders of the tower weren’t merely guilty of common pride, but of something far more sinister.

In an earlier article, we began a discussion about the connection between science and the occult. We explored some conspiracy theories about CERN, “one of the largest and most respected centers for scientific research.” In our exploration of these conspiracy theories, we discovered a strange and remarkable blog post, “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened.”

This post suggests that CERN is another Tower of Babel. In fact, it says that the scientists there are trying to open up a portal into other dimensions, and that their experiments will trigger the apocalypse.

In an effort to discover the meaning of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9, we’ll continue our analysis of this strange blog article. We’ll examine some statements that might seem preposterous at first glance, and show that both science and ancient religious texts have explored very similar ideas.

Scattered abroad

The author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” observes that, in the millennia following this calamity, language barriers barred humans from unified, global communication. But the internet has changed matters. Anyone with a phone is a polyglot. We’re even more powerful than these ancient builders, since we can send a message across the globe in an instant.

A scientist working at CERN even invented the World Wide Web. So if you’re enjoying this article, you’ve got CERN to thank.

Developments at CERN have helped restore some of the conditions before the Great Flood. CERN’S Large Hadron Collider doesn’t pierce the clouds (in fact, it’s underground), but, if we’re able to follow our author’s reasoning, it’s easy to interpret this device as another Tower of Babel.

Readers unfamiliar with ancient cosmological models might not see it, but the story in Genesis does relate an attempt to break into forbidden realms. In many of these models, heavenly spheres existed above the firmament, populated by divine (and sometimes demonic) creatures.  

“The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” states:

The people of Babel did not want to be scattered. They sought to build a tower whose top reached into heaven. Now everyone knows a building cannot be built so high that it reaches heaven. No, this tower was something else. With this tower they would be able to reach up and open up a bridge or doorway into a spiritual realm (dimension) that cannot normally be accessed. By using teaching from Satan and the occult, this tower would be used to open that gateway. It was even placed in the “right” location for best access into another spiritual dimension. […]

I don’t know the science behind the tower of Babel. I just know they were on the pathway to success in opening a door into another realm or dimension.[…]

God Himself said that they would be able to do it. Just building a tower by itself would never reach heaven. There had to be something they did with the tower. Something was planned that was occult related that would have given them the success they desired. The Lord had to take action to stop and halt their plans. This doorway would not be opened until the appointed time during the judgment and wrath of the Lord being poured out upon the wicked. We are quickly coming to the beginning of those days also known as the day of the Lord. This is happening in our time now.

The Tower of Babel and 3 Baruch

This interpretation of the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:1-9 isn’t without precedent. Let’s look, for example, at the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, a text which could be as old as the first or second century. The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, or 3 Baruch, is a kind of angel-guided tour through the cosmos. The angel Phamael leads Baruch into higher and higher celestial realms, passing from one heaven to another. In the first heaven, he sees a plain whose inhabitants, identified as men, have “the faces of oxen, the horns of stags and the feet of goats, and the haunches of lambs.” The angel tells him, “These are they who built the tower of strife against God, and the Lord banished them.”

As Baruch ascends to the second heaven, he finds men who look like dogs, with the feet of stags. Phamael tells him that these men “gave counsel to build the tower.” After the tower was built “to the height of four hundred and sixty-three cubits,” God appeared and “confused their speech.” But these men weren’t deterred, in fact “they took a gimlet and sought to pierce the heaven saying, Let us see (whether) the heaven is made of clay, or of brass, or of iron. When God saw this He did not permit them, but smote them with blindness and confusion of speech, and rendered them as thou seest.”

Biblical Antiquities and the Talmud

According to The Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, God smote the builders for trying to breach the heavens. In the Biblical Antiquities, a text formerly attributed to the Jewish philosopher Philo, it’s stated that God changed the likeness of those who built the tower and condemned them to live “like beasts of the field.” And a Talmudic passage suggests that a faction of builders sought to storm heaven. As punishment, God transformed them into apes, spirits, and demons.

We could, if we were reading absolutely literally, and imposing the language of modern science on centuries-old visionary texts, see the actions of the builders as an attempt to create a doorway into another dimension. In the words of one scholar, “We deal here not with the problem of forbidden knowledge, but rather with the esoteric limitation of access to this knowledge: celestial mysteries are forbidden for the wicked but revealed to the chosen pious.”

There is, then, a line of interpretation, common to several ancient exegetes, proposing that the builders sought to effect an opening between one sphere and another. But was this activity actually demonic, or merely the bad behavior of some prideful, stupid men? There’s another element introduced, the metamorphosis of men into inhuman creatures, common to all these ancient readings. God turned men into beasts for their impertinence. If we again impose modern terminology, we might view this as a kind of genetic mutation. The author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” takes up this theme, and offers a frightening vision of the future.

The Tower of Babel and the nephilim

The author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” identifies Nimrod, mentioned in Genesis 10, as the leader of this ill-fated attempt to build the Tower. The post continues:

Lets start at the beginning at the first attempt to bridge the gap or open the doorway to another realm or dimension. There was once a very great and evil man by the name of Nimrod. He was a evil man who hated God. He also had the goal of building a bridge or doorway into another realm or dimension for the purpose of unleashing evil. Here is a description of his birth.

Gen 10

8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.

First Nimrod was born into this world. But something happened to him after his birth. See the ‘mighty one’ in verse 8 above. Nimrod began to be a ‘mighty one’ on earth. This means he was not a mighty one until he began to be one. What does this mean?

Somehow his human DNA was changed and he literally became a hybrid, giant, or a nephilim. In the days that led up to Genesis 6, there was a genetic war against God. Genes of humans, animals, and plants were changed. This is true with Nimrod and it is true today. In our days godless scientists brag how they can change the DNA of humans and animals.

The author is claiming that Nimrod is one of the Nephilim. The word “Nephilim” occurs a few times in the Hebrew bible, and there are differing interpretations as to its meaning. But many ancient and modern readers believe the Nephilim to be a race of giants, the product of interbreeding between human women and fallen angels. The story of the Nephilim is a fascinating one, and the legends about them are worthy of study. There’s a tradition dating back many centuries that identifies those who built the Tower with the Nephilim. The early Christian historian Eusebius, citing another ancient writer, states:

The city Babylon was first founded by those who escaped from the Deluge; and […] they were giants, and built the tower renowned in history. But when this had been overthrown by the act of God, the giants were dispersed over the whole earth.

chimeras

“The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened,” though, seems to be making a different claim—namely, that Nimrod wasn’t born a giant, but became one. And the author connects this to “godless scientists” changing the DNA of humans and animals. The development of human-animal hybrids is a favorite talking point for so-called conspiracy theorists. Most notable among them, perhaps, is Alex Jones, who has long maintained that such experiments are central to the elites’ plan to dominate, and ultimately exterminate, humanity.

But what the author of the blog post is saying, and what Jones is howling about, isn’t paranoid fantasy. The journal Nature, for example, reported on a 2017 study in which a team of researchers “injected more than 1,400 pig embryos with one of three types of human induced pluripotent stem cell.”

There has been a host of other studies along these lines. Those performing them, I’m sure, would say they have good intentions. The hope is that animals will grow human organs, and that we’ll be able to transplant these organs into patients. But many bioethicists and religious groups oppose the creation of human-animal chimeras. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, hardly a fringe organization, condemned practices like these as “grossly unethical.”

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to see how the creation of human-animal hybrids could snowball into something truly monstrous. The very attempt is an affront to nature.

Science and Babalon

“The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” may follow a tenuous chain of reasoning, but it’s a pretty clear one: medical researchers developing chimeras and scientists at CERN attempting to open an interdimensional portal are warping creation in diabolical ways. According to the author, prophecy foretold this wicked behavior, and such transgressions will lead to the destruction of the world.

Those at CERN and the medical researchers creating human-animal hybrids both state the purposes of their research explicitly. But the author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” doesn’t buy it.

Is this, then, simply a gross misunderstanding? Distrust of the media and of “official sources” can be healthy. They could all be lying. A chunk of the scientific community might be covering up a truly nefarious plot. I doubt it, and so should you. But while our author gets some specifics wrong, his general suspicions, when applied to other cases, are quite accurate.

To find a scientist who wanted to marshal demonic forces in a kind of war against God, we don’t have to look far. Jack Parsons, the rocket engineer mentioned in my previous article, the man whose pioneering work allowed human beings to breach the heavens, sought to incarnate an occult goddess and usher in the reign of the Antichrist.

NOTE: This series of articles is based on a documentary I made, called Funny How The World Ends. Watch it below:

Reruns.