How The Jews Built The Tower Of Babel

According to some undisclosed Iraqi “experts,” the reason Israel is trying to obtain ancient, priceless Jewish manuscripts stolen by Saddam Hussein’s regime from Iraqi Jews and later smuggled out of Iraq by US troops, is to falsify history by claiming it was the Jews who built the Tower of Babel!

The Arabic version is even nuttier (as expected) but I’ll get to that later.

16th century artist's rendition of the Tower of Babel

Israel suspected of seeking to ‘steal’ ancient Iraqi manuscripts transferred to U.S.The Iraqi minister of culture has said that the United States is delaying the return of original copies of ancient manuscripts that were illegally smuggled out of Iraq and reportedly sold to Israel.

The manuscripts are part of the Jewish archive that was found in the basement of the Iraqi intelligence building following the 2003 American invasion.

 The archive was reportedly transferred to the United States for “maintenance purposes” provided that it would be returned to the Iraqi government by mid-2006. The archive, however, has not yet been transferred back to the Iraqi Archeology and Heritage Association.

Iraqi media reports suggest that Israel was behind the stalling of the delivery of the archives and that the Jewish state was planning to obtain the historic manuscripts from its ally the United States.

Arab League Deputy Secretary General Ahmed ben Helli has confirmed attempts by Israel to steal ancient Iraqi archives.

“Iraq has been subjected to the biggest theft of its manuscripts and historic treasures,” he said. “Israel is accomplice to this.”

According to archeologists, the Iraqi Jewish archive contains almost 3,000 documents and 1,700 antiques that chronicle the eras in which Jews were enslaved in Iraq during the first and second eras of Babylonian captivity. The collection also comprises belongings of Jews who lived in Iraq.

Among the most important items in the collection are the oldest copies of the Talmud and the Old Testament. That is why, experts argue, the former Iraqi regime kept the collection guarded in the intelligence building.

Experts add that Israel is keen on obtaining the manuscripts in order to prove their claim that the Jews had built the Tower of Babel as part of its attempt to distort the history of the Middle East for its own interests.

According to Saad Bashir Iskander, head of the Iraqi Books and Manuscripts Authority, the United States intentionally transferred ancient manuscripts that date back to several eras from Iraq.

“The manuscripts filled 48,000 boxes and containers,” he said. “The United States has 90 percent of Iraq’s historic archives in its possession. American researchers and universities use it illegally.”

Deputy Minister of Culture Taher al-Hamoud said that United States was delaying whenever asked by the Iraqi government to bring the collection back.

“Based on the information we have at the ministry of culture, 70 percent of the archive is in Hebrew, 25 percent in Arabic, and 5 percent in other languages,” he told Al Arabiya.

Several Iraqi bodies, like the parliament’s Cultural Committee, are calling upon the Ministry of Culture to exert its utmost effort to return the country’s stolen heritage.

The architectural element known colloquially as the “Tower of Babel” is in all probabilities a Ziggurat, a massive brick-stepped pyramid found in Mesopotamia. The connection of the Hebrew Bible to the geography and mythology of Mesopotamia is undoubted (Ninveh, Ur Kasdim, Babylon, Aram Naharaim, just to name a few), and thus the description of such a massive cultic building is not improbable. Actual experts claim that the Tower of Babel is the Etemenanki, built by King Nebuchadnezzar II as a temple for Marduk, in the 6th century BCE. The Jewish exiles from Jerusalem after the destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE, probably saw it with their own eyes and incorporated into the Biblical narrative.

So did the Jews built the Tower of Babel? No. There’s a very informative description of the Tower in Genesis of who and why it was built. But even if some object to the historical accuracy of Genesis, no one is claiming Jews existed in the time frame it is depicting. Furthermore, you can’t ignore the arcaeological and historical evidence of the Jewish elite being transported to Babylon and seeing this mighty kingdom’s capital in all it’s glory, with the already built Ziggurat included in it’s skyline.

So why would Al-Arabia publish such an idiotic statement? I’ll let the Arabic version tell (and do forgive the auto-translation).

Israel steals across the United States Iraq Archive: The documents include the oldest manuscript of the “Talmud” and “Torah”

Experts have confirmed that Israel’s quest to get the archive [of the] Jews in Iraq is to confirm the premise that claim that the Jews were the builders of the Tower of Babel, as were the builders of the pyramids in Egypt, as some say that Israel is seeking to falsify history in order to serve its interests in the region.

I’ll have to break a few myths here. The Pyramids of Egypt were built during the “Old Kingdom” of Egypt, during the later part of the 3rd millennium BCE, roughly 1500 to 1000 years before the Iron Age arrived and the first notion of what will later be the Israelites and Judaism came into being. The Arabs know that.

Unfortunately, not all Jews do. The insistence of some to still claim it was (Pithom and Raamses were cities, not Pyramids) is purposely used as a propaganda tool against Israel and Jews. The idea is that if we are claiming the Pyramids were built by the Israelites – which they weren’t  – that means other such claims of former achievements must also be lies. The next step to denying the Jewish history, Jerusalem and the land of Israel included, is a very short one.

And Babel? it’s obviously just a Zionist plot to claim back the rightful belongings of the Jewish refugees. In the Iraqi state of mind, a mythical claim of Jewish presence in Babylon is just the excuse they needed. For as with the Pyramids, this serves their claim that Jews have no history or connection to Iraq, and the Talmud is some nefarious plot. So who exactly is trying to falsify history?

27 thoughts on “How The Jews Built The Tower Of Babel”

  1. Interest article, although I can’t agree with your assertion that “The Jewish exiles from Jerusalem after the destruction of the first temple in 586 BCE, probably saw it with their own eyes and incorporated into the Biblical narrative.” I believe the Bible is from G-d, and not some man-made up document.

    1. Not to mention, his timeline is completely wrong; the Torah already existed at the time of the Babylonian exile, thus, so did the story of the tower of Babel. It wasn’t added on later as some sort of footnote.

      1. The oldest written version of the Torah we have is from 2300 years ago. We believe that the Torah is much older than that. But that’s a far cry from being able to say that it is “completely wrong” to say otherwise.

        Obviously the Jewish exiles saw the building with their own eyes. And very obviously it must have occurred to them that it is the same building they knew about from Israelite legend. So yes, they incorporated what they saw into the Biblical narrative. That’s exactly what they did.

        1. Andrew Brehm says:
          June 9, 2012 at 3:48 am

          The oldest written version of the Torah we have is from 2300 years ago.

          And this claim is based on what source?

        2. “So yes, they incorporated what they saw into the Biblical narrative.”

          The traditional, i.e. Orthodox belief of Judaism is that the Torah was verbally dictated by HaShem to Moses, except perhaps for the last verses of Deuteronomy, where Joshua may have taken over, but the Author is the same. Therefore, all talk of “incorporating” something into the “Biblical narrative” is to be rejected. Jews must maintain the chain of belief that goes back to Mount Sinai and are not to sell this birthright for any pottage of “modern Biblical scholarship.” We are on a mission and we must stick to it.

          1. I could be wrong, but I think that what Andrew is saying is that when the Jewish exiles saw the building, they realised that it corresponded to the description of it and it’s location in the Torah. That is, I din’t think he is saying they invented or authored that part of the Torah, but that they mapped it, or placed it. In addition, accepting that the Torah was dictated by Hashem to Moshe, it does describe events that took place for centuries before, from creation. It’s not inconceivable that many of those events were told of and handed from generation to generation, prior and even parallel to them being recorded in the Torah. I don’t think Andrew’s and your comments necessarily contradict each other.

  2. Jim from Iowa

    Can you blame some Arabs for coming up with such an explanation as to why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003? The reasons given by the Bush Administration (non-existent WMD; Saddam’s alledged connection to Al Qaeda; the Iraqi people were yearning to create a pro-Western democracy, etc.) are at least as outlandish reasons as the US was doing Israel’s bidding.

    1. I was in Iraq in 2009. I spoke to people who were there when Saddam tried out his chemical weapons in 1988. Neither I nor the locals found the idea ridiculous that Saddam Hussein, who had refused to prove that he had destroyed his stockpiles of chemical weapons, had indeed destroyed his stockpiles of chemical weapons.

      As for Iraqis not wanting a pro-Western democracy… if they didn’t, why would they have voted for this guy in 2010:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayad_Allawi

      That was the very guy who gave the west the reports that Saddam still had his chemical weapons. And no, that’s not something only I and Wikipedia know. It’s known in Iraq too.

      The Shiites certainly didn’t resent the invasion, they just didn’t want the US to stay for so long.

      And Al-Qaeda did indeed have a base in Iraq during Saddam’s rule. Saddam never did anything against them. There were finally routed by Kurdish and American troops in 2003.

      But general wisdom is that everybody knew Saddam had no chemical weapons any more, than Al-Qaeda was not in Iraq and that Iraqis, despite how they now vote, didn’t support the invasion; so maybe it’s better we leave it at that.

      1. Jim from Iowa

        I have never visited Iraq, nor do I have any plans to, but your personal experiences notwithstanding, I would suggest you hold a rather novel point of view on Iraq. There is a wealth of information contained in a vast array of books on the subject that the war in Iraq was unjustified. Here’s just a short subset of books on the subject:

        The Forever War
        Fiasco
        Imperial Life in the Emerald City
        War Plan Iraq
        The Pretext for War

        I suspect we’ll be discussing the Iraq War for some years to come. Even today, there are some who still believe Vietnam was a noble cause, as Reagan liked to say, instead of the tragic miscalculation that it was.

          1. Jim from Iowa

            You are consistently wrong on everything. The Clinton Administration knew Saddam was a threat to his neighbors and dealt with him by successfully containing him, not invading his country. You don’t have to be a liberal or a Democrat to know that Bush’s war on Iraq was a fiasco for us, our allies and the Iraqi people. Mushroom cloud, indeed.

            1. You are a consistent Bozo and fact denier.

              Simply follow the video, including who said exactly what re Iraq and the dates they were filmed.

              “Good luck, Jim.”

              1. Jim from Iowa

                Facts really are stupid things, in your hands and Dubya’s. If Saddam had WMD when Dubya said he did (and fantastically posed a threat to Americans at home) why didn’t they find them? And where is all that Iraqi oil money to pay us back for the cost of the war like Cheney said would happen? Bozo yourself if you continue to follow this sad clown show.

                1. Use the video and figure out the answer for yourself.

                  If necessary, I can enroll you in a “YouTube 101” class to help you with your video comprehension disability.

        1. “There is a wealth of information contained in a vast array of books on the subject that the war in Iraq was unjustified.”

          I agree the war in Iraq was unjustified, though not for the reasons the Left says it was. Not immoral as the Leftists say, but a waste of men and money, an expenditure of American blood and treasure that has ended in the setting up of yet another Islamic state—the exact opposite of what the goal following 9/11 should have been. But it’s not like George W. “Islam is a religion of peace” Bush could get the big picture right. In that, he led America to basically a different form of appeasement than the direct one the Left wishes to pursue.

          GWB was not so different from you as you’d like to imagine, Jim. Like you, he believed in the enemy’s gentlemanliness and their sharing of the “common humanity” of the same material, live-and-let-live, non-imperialistic dreams as any Westerners. He was wrong just as you are wrong (in any post of yours calling for “an agreement between the two sides” in the Jewish–Arab Conflict), and we’re all paying the price, to this very day.

          1. Jim from Iowa

            You should have your keyboard taken away for comparing me to Dubya. Read my lips: “No new Texans.”

  3. The Torah doesnt even say we built the pyramids. It says we built bricks. Theres no mention of pyramids at all in Exodus.

    1. Not accurate. First of all, all the way at the beginning of Exodus, 1:11, it states:

      “And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.”

      The bricks are discussed only later on in punishing Israel for Moshe’s message to Pharaoh to let us go. Pharaoh’s response was that the slave must maintain the same production quotas but from here on in, they must also gather the straw from the fields, a task which until then was done by others, farmers or laborers.

      In any case, hard labor construction was not the only field of slavery Israel was put to work in.

      1. Pithom and Ramses were cities, not pyramids. No doubt plenty of Jews out there claiming that we were the architects behind them, not just that we built them.

          1. Jim from Iowa

            I built my house of straw.
            I built my house of hay.
            I toot my flute;
            I don’t give a hoot.
            And play around all day.

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