Babel, tower of A monumental tower built a few generations after the great flood by people whose pride and false worship prompted the Lord to confound their language and scatter some of them abroad (Gen. 11:1-9). In the Book of Mormon it is called “the tower” or “the great tower” (Ether 1:5, 33; Mosiah 28:17). Several points in the account in Genesis 11 indicate this episode occurred in the region of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). “Shinar” where the tower was built (Gen. 11:2) is a Hebrew term designating central and southern Mesopotamia (Bible Map 9). The tower was most likely a Mesopotamian stepped temple-tower known as a ziggurat, which consisted of multiple platforms and had a temple on the top as well as one at the bottom. Ziggurats were typically located in major cities and were made of mud bricks; bitumen (KJV, “slime”) was often used as mortar (Gen. 11:3). Although their symbolism is not completely understood, the ziggurats focused attention heavenward and are thought to have represented, among other things, a holy mountain, representing the connection between heaven and earth, as true temples are meant to do. The attempt to build “a tower whose top may reach unto heaven” (Gen. 11;14; cf. Title Page; Hel. 6:28) indicates not that these people were foolishly attempting to climb to heaven but rather that they wanted to build a prominent tower that rose high into the sky (Hebrew shamayim means “sky” and “heaven”). Unfortunately, there are no contemporary historical accounts of this episode, and the brevity of the biblical account leaves many questions unanswered. For example, the people involved are never named, nor can a precise date be given. The city in which the tower was being built is generally accepted as Babylon (known to exist by at least 2400 B.C.), based on Genesis 11:9: “Therefore is the name of it called Babel [Hebrew babel]; because the Lord did there confound [balal] the language of all the earth.” (Babel is the standard Hebrew name for Babylon; the Babylonian word is bab-ili, sometimes bab-ilani, “gate of the god(s).” Postbiblical Jewish traditions that Nimrod built the tower developed from the note in Genesis that Nimrod founded several cities in Mesopotamia, including Babylon (Gen. 10:9-10). One Babylonian tradition credits the god Marduk with founding and naming the city.

All six references to the tower of Babel in the Book of Mormon occur in relation to the Jaredites, whom the Lord directed to leave the area of the tower and to travel to the Americas (Ether 1:38043). The tower was mentioned in a Jaredite inscription (Omni 1:22) and in Ether’s record of the Jaredite people (Mosiah 28:17). Moroni said that as he edited Ether’s record, he dispensed with the portion that dealt with the creation of the earth “even to the great tower” (Ether 1:3), but provide a partial account of what was available “from the tower down until [the Jaredites] were destroyed” (Ether 1:5). Although the Book of Mormon references corroborate the basic account in the Bible, they do not provide any significant additional historical information. One consequence of constructing the tower was that “the Lord confounded the language of the people” (Title Page; Omni 1:22; Mosiah 28:17; Ether 1:33; cf. Gen. 11:7, 9). As one result of this confounding, some “people . . . were scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth” (Mosiah 28:17; Ether 1:33; cf. Gen. 11:8-9). Helaman 6:28 contains the theological observation, not specified in the Bible, that Satan motivated the people to built this tower.