DE-CONSTRUCTING & RE-CONSTRUCTING THE TOWER OF BABEL: PENTECOSTAL & PNEUMATOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS
Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Tower of Babel.
Introduction
Many biblical stories have been subjected to what I call the ‘Sunday School treatment’: We draw a glossy, often erroneous interpretation that leaves people with an over-simplified lesson. Not only can this flatten the text’s rich meaning, it can also elicit harmful conclusions about what God is doing in the text, what God seeks among readers today, and (equally important) what God does not seek among people today.
Genesis 11:1-9, often nicknamed “The Tower of Babel,” is a prime example. When I recall how this story was illustrated to me in childhood, a recurring three-step cadence was used: 1) Humans wanted to be like God, so they tried to build a tower, 2) God stopped that, 3) This is why humans are scattered and speak different languages today. It’s almost too easy to boil that down further to say “Humans did a bad thing, and God punished it. The end.”
Is it possible to give this story a more nuanced assessment? Could such a re-assessment help us find new riches not only within this text but also in our interpretation of other scriptural accounts?
Deconstructing Genesis 11:1-9
As mentioned above, many people have taken God’s response in this story to mean the scattering and diversity was a punishment for humans’ previous actions. As God banished humanity after they ate the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:23), and as God banished Cain after he murdered Abel (Genesis 4:16), and as God sent a flood after the collective display of human wickedness in the days of Noah (Genesis 6:12–13 & 7:4), so here are God’s actions a direct response to human activity; a response which presumably would not have happened if humanity had not pursued their stated plans of Genesis 11:4 in the first place.
It is clear God resists at least some part of the humans’ activity. However, in pursuit of a more nuanced assessment, let's delineate the humans’ plans of Genesis 11:4 into three sections:
1) “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens”
2) “and let us make a name for ourselves;”
3) “otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
From my time reading this text, and reading what other people have to say about it, I submit that the likely crux of the issue is part #2 and only part #2. Humans did not embark for the glory of God or even for service of fellow humans. Rather, their stated aim was to make a name for themselves. John Strong notes the clear way ancient readers would have interpreted this to mean making a name as a replacement to the name of God. (1) Just one chapter later, readers of scripture behold a promise of Abram’s name being made great by God (Genesis 12:2); this emphasis on God’s name-making, rather than human name-making, is further enforced by the fact that Abram’s literal name gets changed to Abraham not long thereafter. In stark contrast, the humans in Genesis 11:1–9 speak — with supposedly one unified language, no less (Genesis 11:1)! — of a desire to be their own deciders of when and how they might receive glory.
Even the people who attempt to defend this part of humans’ actions have acknowledged that the name making was in hopes of perpetuating a single culture, one marked by homogeneity and uniformity, (2) all to find “safety and security in their own closed world.” (3) This further sharpens the human-centric (rather than God-centric) posture of this specific initiative.
Reconstructing
It seems there are two caveats to attach to our aforementioned Sunday School lesson on God’s punishment. One: Just because God expressed disapproval later does not mean every facet of the original human activity was bad. Two: Nor does this mean every part of God’s response was a punishment.
That second caveat specifically means that geographical scattering and linguistic diversity are not necessarily bad, but could very well be a blessing. Regarding languages in particular, many people have noted that each language, with its own unique etymological contours and expressions, helps bear forth a fuller expression of human living — and, thereby, a fuller expression of God’s creation — than any monolingual reality could. (4) With differing languages come greater collective ability to articulate inner thoughts and experiences.
Differing languages are also intrinsically linked with differing cultures, which help promote a richer assortment of ideologies and interpretations among humanity today. While Genesis 11:1–9 posits that differing languages emerged in resistance to a poor human desire, this does not preclude the diversity from being a God-pleasing development.
Preaching Impact
In this biblical story, humans wanted to be the key controllers of the narrative. They wanted to be the ones making a name for themselves. They wanted to be able to see and comprehensibly control the uniformity. Does this sound familiar? Have you ever found yourself in a story of that sort?
God’s response to this human desire does not exist solely as a deterrent to the previous human activity. Rather, it is a method of getting humans to break away from the unhelpful habits and underlying thinking they had been clinging to. Humans were trying to trust themselves when they needed to (re)establish trust in God. Humans wanted to have the full locus of control, but that is simply not a path towards holy, Godly living.
When humans lean into diversity instead of uniformity, they are innately taking themselves out of the place of total control and understanding. They are courageously making space for God to be re-centered as the one who makes names for people and who is the source of unity among peoples.
Leaning into diversity can be an incredibly brave thing. As O’Connor points out in a different work, “Uniformity is a shield against unspecified dangers.” (5) The perceived ability to protect oneself and one’s community even against the threats you are currently ignorant of can provide a level of comfort which has tempted many. However, this re-assessment of Genesis 11:1–9 reveals that such protection and power is at surface-level at best. Taking the brave step of de-centering one's own cultural or linguistic norm is the way to achieve true depth to the care and community people tried to seek in the first place.
Preaching Impact: Pentecost
For places that use the Revised Common Lectionary, this portion of Genesis only appears in two services within the three-year cycle: Vigil of Pentecost (a service which might be the least known and least utilized worship service in this entire lectionary) and the Day of Pentecost C. (6) This means that if such a gathered community hears this text in a worship service, they will almost certainly hear the Pentecost account of Acts 2:1-21 soon thereafter.
There is a clear surface-level connection of language between this pericope of Genesis and the Pentecost reading. It may be tempting to call the Holy Spirit’s movement in Acts 2:1-21 an “undoing” or “reversal” of Babel. However, much like the Tower of Babel has more depth than the surface-level assessment reveals, so might the comparison between Babel and Pentecost warrant further probing.
A modern Pentecost service might ask for members of the congregation to read a portion of scripture in different languages. I have seen this play out in two possible ways: either the readers take separate turns reciting the scripture verse (English speaker, then German speaker, etc.), or they all read simultaneously in their different languages.
In either case, I suggest that the result is not an undoing of Babel but is rather a continuation of Babel (and not in a good way), given the fact that most other members of the congregation will not suddenly understand each and every language that is spoken. This positions the congregants to experience something akin to the people who were subjected to the confusion of Genesis 11:9 in the first place.
One remarkable aspect of the Pentecost account, which gets lost when we try to emulate this reading of various languages, is that the Holy Spirit enabled people to understand in their own language even though diverse languages were still present. The Holy Spirit did not suddenly revert people back to a state of one language; rather, the Holy Spirit facilitated clear comprehension across these apparent linguistic barriers.
The Tower of Babel leaves humans in linguistic disunity. In Pentecost, we see that the Holy Spirit does not undo such disunity; rather, it transforms by bringing “unity in the presence of the Spirit rather than in uniformity of language or culture.” (7) The transformative work of the Holy Spirit does not aim for visible, surface-level unity; rather, it affords communities an anchor at a deeper level, over against any previously-supposed need for surface-level unity at all.
This is further remarkable when we recall the aforementioned diversity across languages, not only in actual sounds and words but also in their unique ability to carry meaning. We are used to translations being imperfect, even causing “some part of the soul [to die],” (8) yet here is the Holy Spirit, dissolving this difference precisely through the diversity.This is a tremendous opportunity for preachers around Pentecost, along with any Sunday School teachers, bible study leaders, coffee-hour talkers, etc. For one thing, it can help illustrate O’Connor’s astute observation that the people of Babel were not fully united in the first place despite the apparent unity from their human perspective. (9) Furthermore, it is a chance to highlight a depth of connection beyond the apparent differing perspectives and any surface-level goals. The preacher could use these text pairings to show that when we trust God, there is the capacity for Spirit-prompted oneness to come precisely from diverse connectedness. Hopefully this can liberate the congregation to be even more open, not only to diverse community members joining the congregation and taking on leadership (which is already a good and holy thing!) but also to novel ministry ideas as they all sojourn together as a community of the gathered faithful, united by the Holy Spirit.
John T Strong, “Shattering the Image of God: A Response to Theodore Hiebert’s Interpretation of the Story of the Tower of Babel.” Journal of Biblical Literature 127, no. 4 (2008): 625–34. https://doi.org/10.2307/25610146.
Theodore Hiebert, “The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World’s Cultures.” Journal of Biblical Literature 126, no. 1 (2007): 29–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/27638419. (40, emphasis added)
Kathleen M. O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A. Macon, Georgia: Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Incorporated, 2018. (175, emphasis added)
O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 182.
“Reverse Lectionary.” https://www.lectionarypage.net/ReverseLectionary.html#Genesis.
O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 184, emphasis added.
O’Connor, Genesis 1-25A, 182.
O’Connor, Genesis, 183.
Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Let All the Peoples Praise You: Biblical Studies and a Hermeneutics of Hunger.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72, no. 1 (2010): 1–14 (6). http://www.jstor.org/stable/43726684.
