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Here I am, over four months since my last post, and I’m way overdue on publishing a next post. There are several reasons for my tardiness—a 79th birthday and the minor health issues that go with that; income taxes to submit; spring yard work to complete; but most of all, as usual, mission creep! It’s now time to cull some of the bloat that has crept into this post, including sections on Melchizedek, Isaac and Jacob, the prophets, Revelation, and several more interesting but unnecessary subtopics. Each of those may become one or more new article stubs.
In that last post, After the Flood: Globalism and World Conflict, I presented the Biblical record in Genesis 11 of the Tower of Babel, and its result in the proliferation of languages, the Dispersion of mankind, and the assignment of lesser “gods” (angelic “princes”) to shepherd all but the not-yet-formed Nation of Israel.
My intention for this post is to elaborate on Babel, and then to show how Paul referred to Babel’s effect on humanity when he wrote Romans 1.
My goal in a blog post is seldom to be brief and simple, because in-depth Biblical understanding is never simplistic. I don’t write for an academic audience, but I do target serious, thinking Christians who want to go beyond homiletic rhetoric, Sunday School platitudes and medieval Church tradition.
Babel
Babel, as I explained last time, was probably the city we now know as Eridu, not the distant city of Babylon as most people, including many archaeologists and other scholars, assume. Therefore, though the Tower of Babel was probably a ziggurat, it was not the Etemenanki Ziggurat found at Babylon.
I have come to believe that Genesis 11 is one of the most pivotal passages in the Bible, because it introduces three elements that define pretty much all of human history:
- The genealogy of Abraham, the father of Godly notables including Joseph, Moses, David, and Jesus.
- Babel, the point of origin of all subsequent political systems on earth, dominated by false gods and, today, mostly godless human leaders.
- Nimrod, the first of many empire builders, a group which will culminate in Antichrist.
The gods
In Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel story records the point of time at which Almighty God declared to His Divine Council,
“I have had enough of this! Thanks to the Free Will that I granted mankind when I created their forefathers, and despite the Paradise that I let them enjoy for a time and the responsibility that I gave them as my Imagers on earth, and despite the drastic culling of their number that I did with the Great Flood, their sin and rebellion have been without end!
“Now I am going to destroy their city and their Tower, set them at odds against each other by severing their communication and fellowship and scattering them across the face of the planet.
“Some of your own number, you Sons of God, are just as rebellious, so those I am setting free from previous obligations and reassigning as guardians of the nations. The mortal humans will look on you, immortal spirits, as their gods.“
—Imagined address by Yahweh to His Divine Council gathered around His Heavenly throne.
The monologue above is fictional, but the result is not. The first paragraph above paraphrases what the Bible records from Genesis 3 to the end of Revelation!
Most of you are familiar with the Tower of Babel story and will immediately recognize that event in the second paragraph.
Paragraph 3 will be new to most of you, though I’ve written about it before. In this post, I’ll examine that part of the story a bit more exegetically and demonstrate its importance to all of human history.
God/gods defined
There are many verses in both the Old Testament and the New which state that there is only one God!
Well, yes, that is certainly true, but language is a funny thing… what does the English word, “god”, mean? I’ve used Merriam Webster my whole life, and here is what that dictionary says:
1 [when] capitalized: the supreme or ultimate reality: as, the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe
2: a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically: one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
3: a person or thing of supreme value
4: a powerful ruler
—Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate dictionary, ©2008
Breaking that down by the numbers:
1. I think that’s an excellent definition of the God I worship! There is only one God, with a capital “G”; that is, Elohim, with a capital “E.” Yahweh is the only preexistent being, the Creator of all else that exists.
2. But that one and only Elohim, Yahweh, created a host of lesser immortal spirit beings, the elohim with a lower case “e”. Some of these, so-called “fallen angels, evidently began claiming to be “gods” very early in prehistory. Others were angelic beings that He placed in authority over the nations He established at Babel. These either were already corrupt or became corrupt by association with corrupt humans, demanded worship, and thus fulfill the second definition from the dictionary listing above.
3. We’ve all heard the homiletic theme that anything one allows to come between himself or herself and God in reality become that person’s idol; i.e., his god. Definition 3. Well, there is obviously some truth in this, but I don’t like the concept. I think it trivializes the reality and danger of the definition 2 gods!
4. This definition acknowledges the ancient practice of some kings and emperors of claiming deity for themselves.
My philosophical journey
As a child in Sunday School and children’s church, I was bothered by the idea of Egyptian magicians being able to duplicate some of Moses’ demonstrations to Pharaoh of his legitimacy as God’s representative. It soon dawned on me that since Moses’ power came from God, surely the magicians’ power came from Satan. Then when I learned about “fallen angels”, it seemed an obvious jump to conclude that maybe the Egyptian gods, and by extension the gods of the other regions, were “those guys.”
Eventually, I read in Daniel about “the prince of Persia” and in Paul’s letters about “principalities and powers.” So, for most of my life I’ve believed that behind every pagan stone idol there was a real god—small “g”, definition 2.
Unpacking Scripture
More recently, I learned that each “nation” (however God, Himself defines that term) is overseen by an angelic prince, and that as a group they are under judgement by God.
Judging the judges
0 A Psalm of Asaph.
1 God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
2 “How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
3 Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;
maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
4 Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”5 They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk about in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
7 nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”8 Arise, O God, judge the earth;
for you shall inherit all the nations!
— Psalm 82:0-8 (ESV)
From verses 1–5 alone you would conclude that God has convened His Divine Council to prosecute wicked human judges, but verses 6 and 7 of this song identifies them as immortal princes, who God can nevertheless destroy just as He can their mortal counterparts. Once that happens, God will reclaim the principalities they rule.
The origin of the princes
The question is, how did all that come about? How did the lesser gods get their principalities in the first place? The answer to that is found in Deuteronomy 32:
8 When the Most High divided the nations, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the nations according to the number of the angels of God. 9 And his people Jacob became the portion of the Lord, Israel was the line of his inheritance.
— Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (LXX-B)
Using another translation:
8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
9 But the LORD’S portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
— Deuteronomy 32:8-9 (ESV)
And, from the familiar King James:
[8] When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.
[9] For the LORD’S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.
—Deuteronomy 32:8–9 (KJV)
For the most part, these English translations of this passage are fairly compatible. Of these three, I favor the ESV and KJV in the top half of verse 8, because they seem to me to follow the original Hebrew better. For example, the Septuagint (LXX) has God
/ Dividing the nations / and / separating the sons (descendants) of Adam /
— which seems to be a redundancy, while ESV says of God
/ (when He) divided the inheritance / and / (when He) divided mankind (again the descendants of Adam) /
— so, two separate things are divided, which I think is truer to the Hebrew.
In Hebrew, words and the letters comprising them are both read right to left; in general, the sentence syntax is ordered verb-subject-object; and elements like prepositions, case, tense and number are tacked onto the verb as either a prefix or a suffix.
In the following interlinear diagram of verse 8, the same passage could be read,
/ The Most-High (God) / when He divided their inheritance to / the nations /
/ When He separated / the sons / of Adam /.
All three of these renditions of verse 8ab can best be explained as a description of what God did at Babel. God separated the nations and presumably gave each of them an inheritance—which is not mentioned in Genesis 11. But a territorial inheritance is implied in verse 8c by mention of boundaries or borders.
The basis of division
That makes perfect sense until the basis of the division and the borders is mentioned. The Masoretic Text (MT), which is a compendium of trusted later manuscripts and the primary basis of most modern translations, says, “He set the boundaries according to the number of the sons of Israel.” That is the literal meaning of “bene yisra’el” in the interlinear above.
But what does that mean? Why would God assign non-Jewish territorial boundaries based on any count of the Jews? And what count of Jews would that even be, since there were no Jews at the time of Babel? And while Moses was writing the text, there were only the Israelites who were preparing to cross the Jordan.
The Samaritan Pentateuch (SamPent), which is very old, also says “sons of Israel.” But the LXX, very old, using an unknown older Hebrew manuscript, translated it, “ἀγγέλων θεοῦ”, which means “angels of God.”
Most modern English translations, including the Interlinear above, ignore the Masoretic “bene Yisrael” and go with the seemingly more logical “sons of God.” So, who are these sons of God?
- NT references to the sons of God usually refer either to Jesus (but there is only one of Him, so those references are singular), or to Christians, usually Christians after their future resurrection.
- Some say that the Masoretic text is correct after all, and it means “sons of Israel” in the sense of “Jews.” Either physical Israel or spiritual Israel. That would make the passage a prophetic utterance, probably referring to apportionment of the conquered Canaanite lands. The added layer of abstraction reduces its probability, in my opinion.
- Most often in the OT it means angels.
- Whether speaking of humans or angels, it is often translated into English as “saints.”
The seeds of Israel
To understand the background of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, it is helpful to first understand the origins of Israel as it emerged from the pagan world system that came out of Babel during the lifetime of Peleg. I’ve covered Babel fairly extensively in recent posts. In this post I’m going to expand that history to emphasize the part emergence of Israel.
Patriarchal timeline
In order to show how Israel appeared out of the Genesis 11 milieu, I need to break down the Patriarchal timeline as well as I can.
Conservative Christian and Orthodox Jewish scholarship in general insist on a strict acceptance of all the genealogies as written in our modern English translations. By choosing a known Biblical date and working back through the genealogies, Archbishop Ussher, in the 17th century BC, placed Genesis 1 and 2 in 4004 BC. A Jewish scholar, Rabbi Yossi ben Halafta, did the same thing in the 2nd century BC using some slightly different interpretations to come up with 3761 BC (see below), which is the basis for the modern Hebrew Calendar.
Unfortunately, neither of those men accounted for problems with the text. Problems, not with its authority, but with the copying process and, particularly, with interpretation.
Textual ambiguity
In a section titled “Why Ancient Biblical dates are unreliable” in my last post, I pointed out several factors that cast doubt on precise Biblical timelines:
- Virtually all English translations of Genesis are ultimately based on the MT. The SamPent and the LXX, both much earlier (and thus presumably better) texts, were ignored.
- The data in the genealogies of Genesis are almost surely rounded off, using an obscure logic in some cases.
- My table, below, shows the age of each post-Flood Patriarch when his first son was born. In each case but Shem and Terah, the age shown by the MT is significantly (usually 100 years!) less that that shown by SamPent and LXX. Since the LXX is the version that was used in antiquity by most Jews, including the New Testament authors, it seems to me that it should be regarded as the default standard in many cases. My own presumption is that later scribal copyists dropped the first digit because they thought the advanced ages listed in the Hebrew text were too high for the Patriarchs to father a child. But Christian chronologies, including Ussher’s, are based on the MT.
- The LXX inserts an entire generation, Kainan, that doesn’t appear in MT or SamPent. Again, I personally would go with LXX. Kainan’s existence is attested in the non-canonical book of Jasher, mentioned in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18. (Note: There are three known manuscripts of Jasher; at least two of those are counterfeit, but the third may be from a very ancient source.)
Additionally, I would point out that Genesis 11:26 contains an ambiguity:
26 When Terah had lived 70 years, he fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27 Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran fathered Lot. 28 Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Chaldeans. 29 And Abram and Nahor took wives. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran the father of Milcah and Iscah. 30 Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.
— Genesis 11:26-30 (ESV) emphasis mine
Scholars tend to assume that Terah began fathering sons at age 70 and the order of the list of sons in verses 26 and 27 is the order of their ages. Alternatively, one might assume that they are triplets. Neither is necessarily true, but unless there is another verse that gives more information, the first seems to me to be the most likely of these two alternatives.
Here’s the problem: The age of Haran is immaterial because he died in Ur, so he evidently never left for the land named after him. But the ages of Abram and Nahor are very important.
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
— Genesis 12:4 (ESV) emphasis mine
If the MT is correct (see the chart above), it would appear that Terah was 70 when Abram was born, so if Abram was 75 years old when he left the region of Haran, that means that he left when Terah was 70 + 75 = 145 years old.
How does this compare with Steven’s recounting of Abram’s life?
2b The God of glory appeared to Avraham avinu [“our father Abraham”] in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran 3 and said to him, ‘Leave your land and your family, and go into the land that I will show you.’ 4 So he left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. After his father died, God made him move to this land [Judea] where you are living now.
— Acts 7:2b-4 (CJB) emphasis mine
According to Steven’s lengthy address, centuries later, Abram didn’t leave Haran until after Terah’s death, but the chart above shows that Terah lived to be 205 years old, per both the MT and the LXX. There are two ways to resolve this contradiction:
- If either Nahor or Haran was born in Terah’s 70th year and Abram was born 60 years later, then the math adds up: 70 + 60 + 75 = 205.
- There could be another problem with the numbers in extant manuscripts.
- Steven could have been wrong. Scriptural inerrancy requires that Luke, as author of Acts, must quote, or at least accurately paraphrase, Steven’s statement, but not that Steven himself be correct, since presumably his sermon wasn’t inspired.
I’ll opt for the first. Triplets are unlikely, and Moses declines to list separate birth dates, so I assume they are listed in order of importance to the story. If Steven was wrong, then it only alters a date. Removing the 60-year offset tentatively puts Abram’s birth in Babel. I can’t rule it out, but the flow of events seems smoother to me if God began building His holy people after He dispersed the nations. Besides, it offends me a bit to suggest that Steven my have misspoken…
A Jewish version of the genaealogy
The following timeline of the Patriarchs (divided into two parts for readability) is from The Book of Torah Timelines, Charts and Maps. It is very similar to more familiar timelines of the Patriarchs, except that it uses Anno Mundi dating instead of Gregorian BC and AD.
Depending on the accuracy of the genealogies, discussed above and here, Terah lived during the period 1878–2083 AM (Latin Anno Mundi, “in the year of the world”). This Jewish dating system dates all events from the year of creation, Year 1 AM, which corresponds to 3761 BC on a Gregorian calendar.
I have stated many times in previous posts that I am an Old Earth Creationist so, while wholeheartedly giving Almighty God total credit for designing the universe and its laws, then placing everything into motion and maintaining its stability over the aeons, I put creation some 13.8 billion years ago. Beginning here, I make a case for the formation of Adam and Eve being a separate event from an earlier creation of pre-Adamic mankind, and here I equate that event to “Year 1 AM”, whether that is 3761 (Jewish) or 4004 (Ussher) BC.
The difference between 4004 BC and 3761 BC is 243 years, which is probably mostly due to different interpretations of the dates of the Egyptian sojourn.
Timeline observations
There are a number of very interesting observations that can be made from the timeline above:
First, pay close attention to the two horizontal dashed lines, representing the year of the Flood (1656 AM) and the year of the Dispersion from Babel (1996 AM). These two dates, 340 years apart, will be very important as I proceed.
Nimrod was probably born and began his conquests generations after the Dispersion from Babel and was most likely the historical figure Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great). Contrary to Christian tradition, there is no reason to assume that Nimrod was the architect of the city or Tower.
If Adam was, as we believe, the 1st generation of his line, Noah appears to be the 10th generation, about a thousand years later, and Abram (Abraham) appears to be the 20th generation, about a thousand years after Noah.
Because Noah is said to have lived for 600 years before the Flood and for 350 years after the Flood, he was no doubt in possession of just about all of the knowledge of mankind accumulated before and during his life. Certainly, he passed much of it on to his living descendants. Since there was no way to store or propagate knowledge other than word of mouth, ancient mankind before writing was very diligent about verbally passing on what was learned and memorized.
Noah lived until 10 years after the Dispersion. As discussed below, the date of the Dispersion could have been somewhat earlier. Noah could have been one of the founders of Babel, and he, as well as some of his descendants, could have been among those dispersed.
It appears from the chart above that Noah’s life overlapped that of all his descendants down to and including Abram. However, to solve the discrepancy in Terah’s age at death, I think the best solution is to add 60 years to Abram’s birth date, which removes him from both Noah’s lifespan and any likelihood of residence in sinful Babel.
I prepared the following table to show key dates, as modified in accordance with the above discussions:
When Abram was born, almost all of the post-Flood patriarchs before him were still alive. Only Noah, Peleg and Nachor were gone. Think of all the teachers Abram had at his disposal! If they were all together (see below for more on that subject), then one might have seen eight generations of the same family sitting on a single log!
Off to Babel
Interplay between the generations also depends on whether or not Abram and his ancestors were living in proximity to each other. I think the most likely answer to that question is “probably yes.” We know that in ancient times clans tended to stay together.
Ararat to Bable
The question then becomes, where did this patriarchal band go after the Flood?
I previously wrote that “I think it likely that Noah’s family hung around the Ark while long distance travel was greatly impeded [by slowly receding flood waters]. Then perhaps years later, as plant life reemerged in the wake of the falling water, it became easier to move, and they began scattering along the highlands and living as nomads over a larger and larger range.”
The incident of Noah’s drunkenness probably sets a lower limit of three years for their sedentary life in the highlands, because that is how long it usually takes for a vineyard to become fruitful after planting. In reality, since they had put down some roots (including the vine roots!), they probably didn’t rush off after the first grape harvest.
Technically, nomadism is a cyclic lifestyle wherein a band of families move back and forth or over a specific area, exploiting available pastureland and gatherable resources. Logistically, such bands are unwieldy if they exceed a hundred members.
Noah’s band, however, were probably moving slowly, if not sporadically, living off the land and seeking familiar territory in which to resettle. Technically, this isn’t “nomadism,” but rather “human migration.” Any groups that splintered off from the main migratory “herd” and went their own way would have probably been mostly subclans of non-inheriting younger sons.
Were Noah and his descendants leading the group that founded Babel and built the Tower? In my opinion, the younger generations were probably likely to be in power at Babel, rather than the aging Noah. After possibly 300+ years, there was certainly factionalism and group politics. I can’t lay the blame on anyone in particular, Patriarch or dissenter.
Timing of the Dispersion
All that the Bible says about the timing of the Dispersion is that it was during the lifetime of Peleg (1757–1996 AM). After doing a ton of research in my own library (including Jasher) and online, I found no convincing arguments to narrow that span. My sense is that many Christian writers simply assume that it happened in the year of Peleg’s birth, while almost all Jewish writers, based on a long-standing rabbinic tradition, assume that it happened in the year of his death. Lacking no better clue, I would opt for the latter or at least something late in Peleg’s life. Why?
The at-birth view allows only 101 years from Flood to Dispersion. Although that is a long time in modern human-life-years, it seems to me that the abatement of the Flood waters and the migration of the people would have taken longer. Pretty subjective, I realize. To put a number to it, using a rule of thumb population growth factor of 5% per year per person, I calculate that by the time the original 8 from the Ark reached Shinar, they would have produced a population of
8 * 1.05101 = 1,104 people,
including women and children, probably not enough manpower to build the city and the big tower in the time allotted.
Today’s population growth rate is, on average, less than half of that 5%, but in my own genealogy, which I’ve only followed to AD 1200, it was much higher in the past than now. If you think 5% is too conservative for ancient people with long lives, I’d suggest:
- The period of fecund years in that age wasn’t as expanded as the period of total life.
- Birth numbers would be balanced somewhat by groups peeling off to go their own way.
- I personally doubt that everyone lived the same long lifetimes as the Patriarchs.
Meanwhile, the at-death view allows 340 years, which makes more sense to me. It allows much more time for the migration, and the eight original ark passengers have theoretically become a huge crowd. The same formula used above yields 128 million souls minus however many have died or left the group over the period.
8 * 1.05340 = 128 million people,
probably not doable unless they travelled in waves. If the timeline is more or less correct, then the migration must have taken a majority of the 340 years between Flood and Dispersion, and all the Patriarchs from Noah through Terah (except for Serug who died early), may have been there to witness the building of the city and the Tower, and then to be driven out by God. Terah and perhaps most or all of the others ended up in Ur during the Gutian period, and Abram was born soon after.
Mechanism of the Dispersion
By what means did God drive the residents out of Babel to their new homelands? As stated in the previous article and above, Yahweh assigned angelic “Princes” to shepherd the new nations that were formed when he “confounded the tongues” of the people of Babel and set new boundaries for their habitation, i.e., He sent them to colonize areas of His own choosing. Surely it was these new Princes that He used to drive them to their assigned destinations.
Because these angelic Princes, with their angelic “superpowers”, either were corrupt from the beginning, or rapidly became corrupt, they quickly induced their human subjects to worship them as gods.
We have no information regarding the mode or modes of travel used during the actual scattering process. It could have been instantaneous, by supernatural power, but given that it was done under Divine judgement, my own supposition is that it would have been a forced march, much like the marches of the northern Israelites and southern Judahites into foreign exile.
If Peleg was the leader of the Tower builders, his death may have been during his march, or retribution for the consequences that the scattered people suffered. If either of those is the case, then it justifies the at-death placement of the Dispersion line on the chart.
However, assuming that Babel was ancient Eridu and that that city is sited as shown on the following map, travel between there and Ur can’t have been as difficult for the patriarchal line, if indeed they were living in Babel.
Abram
Abram was born around 2008 AM (1996 BC, Ussher) during the time of the Gutian Empire. Biblical hints lead me to speculate that he and his family were nomadic sheep herders in the region of the Ur city-state when his first call came.
If, as I believe, Deuteronomy 32:8 describes the Dispersion, and we accept the hypothetical date of 1996 AM (1765 BC) for that event, then we might say that verse 9 is set in motion when Abram was born, just 12 years later!
Looking at it this way, ancient history doesn’t seem quite so ancient to me.
Patriarchal worship
As discussed above, the Dispersion from Babel occurred during the time of Peleg, five generations after Noah. All of Peleg’s forefathers up to and including Noah, were alive during Peleg’s entire lifespan. As I speculated above, most of those first generations of patriarchs probably lived in Babel and experienced the Dispersion firsthand. Looking the other direction in the genealogy, it is also quite likely that the four generations following Peleg, down through Terah, also experienced the Dispersion firsthand.
Does this mean that these patriarchs were all uniformly evil? Not at all. We are not told that there were no righteous men in Babel. Centuries later, all of the Israelites were forced to wander the desert for 40 years because 10 out of 12 spies, and many (but certainly not all) of the adults in camp, failed to trust God. Still more centuries after that, not all of the Jews in the north who perished or were enslaved at the hands of the Assyrians were guilty. The same applies to southern Jews who fell to Babylonia.
I have often heard it said that Abram worshipped the pagan gods of Ur before his call. We don’t know that. We do know that his father and his grandfather did:
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.
— Joshua 24:2 (ESV)
They no doubt worshipped the current regional gods, Enlil and others. I suspect that Abram probably worshipped Yahweh as well as the other gods at this point, and probably did until God “cut the covenant” with him in:
And he [Abram] believed the LORD, and he [God] counted it to him as righteousness.
— Genesis 15:6 (ESV)
At least some of Abram’s living forefathers were probably worshippers of Yahweh, as Noah was. I have no doubt that Abram’s knowledge of the events at Babel was extensive. So even if he did worship Terah’s gods, he was aware of Yahweh and His power. He probably can’t have been highly resistant to an eventual change of allegiance.
Abram’s journey
Abram’s first call is recorded in Acts 7, but not in Genesis. It is presumptuous to assume that Terah left Ur with his whole family because of Abram’s call.
2b The God of glory appeared to Avraham avinu [“our father Abraham”] in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran 3 and said to him, ‘Leave your land and your family, and go into the land that I will show you.’ 4 So he left the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. After his father died, God made him move to this land [Judea] where you are living now.
— Acts 7:2b-4 (CJB)
Note that Yahweh did not tell Abram where he was to go. He just told him to leave Ur and implicitly promised to show him when to stop.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
— Hebrews 11:8 (ESV)
I presume that the plan to move to Canaan with his whole living family was Terah’s, not Abram’s. Whether Terah received a call of his own seems doubtful since he didn’t finish the trip. He may have heard that Canaan was more fertile and had better grass for grazing than Shinar. At any rate, they stopped in a fertile area of northwest Mesopotamia (northern Syria today), which Terah named for his dead son, Haran, Lot’s father.
Abram may have stayed in Haran for years waiting for further instructions. Then came his second call, evidently at the time of Terah’s death:
1 Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
4 So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
— Genesis 12:1-4 (ESV)
Abram left with his own wife, nephew and retinue to complete Terah’s originally planned migration to Canaan. Only when they arrived did God say, “this is the place.“
5b When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”
— Genesis 12:5b-7 (ESV)
Abram stopped there and built an altar, but then he moved on to the “hill country between Bethel … and Ai” and built another. By the way, Ai and the final letters of the Anglicized Sarai, employ a Hebrew diphthong, pronounced “Eye”, not “Aye-eye” as I’ve heard probably hundreds of times.
Why the move from Shechem to Bethel? God had not yet revealed the extent of the promised land, so it may have been rebellious of Abram to keep moving beyond Shechem at that time.
Then he kept going. Out of the fertile hill country and into the arid Negeb desert! Perhaps he thought there were too many people in the hills, or perhaps that area was too green and forested for his taste. I grew up in the desert, but from a very young age, I fished mountain waters with my dad, and I always yearned for trees and rain. Yet I’ve met people who moved from desert to forest and felt completely out of place and claustrophobic.
Romans 1
The following is my outline of Paul’s epistle to the Romans:
- Greetings and personal notes, 1:1–15.
- A unifying theology of righteousness through faith, 1:16–8:39.
- Paul’s burden for Israel, 9:1–11:11.
- Gentiles and Jews together, 11:12–36.
- Christian ethics for all, 12:1–15:13.
- Paul’s closing statements, 15:14–16:27.
A careful student can detect traces of Babel throughout both the Old and the New Testaments. I have decided to limit my NT discussion to just Romans 1.
The apostle Paul usually wrote his epistles to the various churches in order to address issues that were causing unrest in their congregations or damaging their witness to the world around them.
The problem in the roman churches
The problem besetting the Roman church was enmity between Jewish and non-Jewish members. The local church at Rome was a microcosm of the diverse Universal Church, so the former is a good case study for understanding the challenges of the latter.
Paul’s primary reason for writing his letter to Rome, then, was to act as a peacemaker between the Jewish and Gentile believers in the Roman churches (in a city of that size there were likely more than one).
Enmity between equals
Paul never “converted” from Judaism to Christianity! For a Jew to become Messianic was not a conversion! It was simply coming to a full understanding of the prophetic underpinnings of the Jewish covenantal relationship with Jahweh. Calling it a “conversion” is at best ignorant, and at worst antisemitic.
Historically, for non-Jews to enter into full fellowship with Jews, there was a process. Non-Jews could be “naturalized” into Judaism by undergoing certain rites, notably buying into the Jewish faith in Yahweh, ritual cleansing through immersion, and circumcision of men—and then submitting to the full body of Jewish ritual life.
Usually (but not always) these converts to Judaism were fairly well received by “native” Jews. By the 1st century, “Israel” was already a somewhat mongrelized race, due to centuries of intermarriage.
There was also a virtual “green card” situation, as well. A non-Jew could live peacefully among Jews as a גֵּר (ger, “alien, sojourner, stranger”) and enjoy limited fellowship, even within Jewish homes. At a minimum, a ger was expected to keep the so-called Noachide Laws, a version of which was cited by James, in Acts 15, and to avoid flaunting the Jewish laws and customs.
Melding the two
On his missionary journeys, Paul’s habit was to first approach the Jewish synagogues and preach to their congregations, then to expand his approach to gentiles in the community. Where did the new believers then meet together?
The normal early practice of Jewish believers (Messianic Jews), in Jerusalem and in the Diaspora alike, was to continue their normal Sabbath activities in the synagogues alongside non-Messianic Jews, then at dusk, at the close of Shabbat, the Messianics would adjourn to private homes to meet and fellowship together until well into the night.
It is unlikely that gentile believers, ger, would be welcomed into the synagogues, but Messianic Jews were still Jews. The ger would join the Jewish believers at homes after the synagogues closed for the night where they would discuss the new realities brought by Yeshua Hamashiach.
This was of course a great demonstration of the intercultural tolerance demanded by Paul. Nevertheless, the past centuries of enmity probably led to considerable friction.
In AD 49, Emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from the City of Rome, including Messianic believers. When the expulsion was ended after Claudius’ death in AD 54, two to four years before Paul’s letter, those Jews who returned found that Gentile believers had taken over their synagogues, and the result was increased bad blood between the returning Messianic Jews and the gentile usurpers.
The format of the Roman epistle
Due to the nature of the problem and given the arguments Paul wished to present, the letter sometimes addresses the Jews directly, sometimes the gentiles, and sometimes he addressed them all as fellow believers.
The letter as a whole, of course, is addressed to all:
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
— Romans 1:7 (ESV)
Some confusion results when comparing verse 7 with verse 13:
13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.
— Romans 1:13 (ESV) emphasis mine
As translated, this verse implies that the letter is written only to non-Jews. The problem is that the Greek ἔθνεσιν (ethnesin) at the end of the verse, and even the familiar English term, “gentiles,” can refer to “non-Jews“, or to “nations“, to “peoples“, or even to “pagans“.
The English Standard Version and almost all other English versions translate it in this particular verse as “gentiles.” In this context, I think that the ambiguity is handled much better by Young’s Literal Translation and a few others:
[13] And I do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, that many times I did purpose to come unto you–and was hindered till the present time–that some fruit I might have also among you, even as also among the other nations.
—Romans 1:13 (YLT)
Even that doesn’t quite work for me, though. Most people probably think of “nation” as synonymous with “country” or “state,” but to me the term implies an ethnic commonality. I would probably prefer the word “peoples” in this context, because I think Paul was referring to people of all ethnicities and languages outside of Rome itself.
Note in passing that where Paul wants to refer specifically to non-Jews as opposed to Jews, he normally uses the term Ἕλλησίν (Hellēsin), i.e., Greek-speaking peoples, as opposed to Hebrews. See, for example, verse 16:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Hellēni).
— Romans 1:16 (ESV)
Unfortunately, my personal favorite everyday translation, the Complete Jewish Bible, muddies the water by paraphrasing that as “to the Jew especially, but equally to the Gentile.” Ignoring the unintended derogatory “I’m more equal than you” slant, I don’t consider the translation of Hellēni as “gentile” to be linguistically correct there.
Romans 1:18–32, God and the pagan world
Although there is much more to the topic of Babel in Paul’s letters, I’m going to concentrate on this particular passage.
After his customary greetings and well-wishes at the beginning of the letter (verses 1–15), Paul expresses his confidence in the Gospel and the imputed righteousness it brings to those who place their faith in that Gospel (verses 16–17).
He then immediately gets down to business, reminding the Romans in the rest of chapter 1 of the blatant sin and arrogance displayed by the unrighteous, and announcing that God had given up on them.
Exactly whom did God give up on, and when did he do it?
Evidently this is speaking corporately, not of individuals. I recognize three occasions past and one future when He gave or will give up on mankind in general:
- The first occasion was when He kicked the Adam Family out of the Garden and cursed the ground. This was catastrophic, because the Garden was a tabernacle over which Adam was priest. His task was to ultimately spread that paradise over the planet. Recognizing that God is never surprised or defeated, and that everything that happens “works together for good”—in the sense that His ultimate plan was “foiled” by Adam’s sin, the desired end was delayed by, so far, six millennia. I believe that Antichrist is alive and rapidly increasing in power, and Tribulation will come soon. I also believe in a Millennial Reign of Messiah on earth, but that will not yet bring paradise to earth. Paradise will come only with the Eternal State.
- Ten human generations later came mankind’s first and only “extinction event”, the Great Flood. This came as a result of rampant sin by humans and angels. Among the humans, perhaps there were others that were righteous in God’s eyes (some ancient traditions hold that Methuselah, who died either right before or as a result of the Flood, was a righteous mentor to Noah), but only one “found grace in the eyes Yahweh,” so only he and his immediate family were allowed to escape to reseed the race.
- The third came after another ten human generations: the Dispersion from Babel. This could not be punished in the same ways as the first two (see Genesis 8:21, below). The result of this one was that the race of man became fragmented, and the fragments delivered over to corrupt angelic leadership.
- The fourth will be the Tribulation period of Eschatology.
I presume that Paul is referring to the third of the above judgements, since the fourth has not come yet and the first and second are old news and can never be repeated due to the promise in Genesis 8:21:
20 Noach built an altar to ADONAI. Then he took from every clean animal and every clean bird, and he offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 ADONAI smelled the sweet aroma, and ADONAI said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, since the imaginings of a person’s heart are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy all living things, as I have done. 22 So long as the earth exists, sowing time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”
— Genesis 8:20-22 (CJB)
The Gospel, faith, and righteousness (1:16–17)
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
— Romans 1:16-17 (ESV)
That is, Paul has complete confidence in the Gospel which he has given his allegiance to (i.e., he feels no shame or disappointment in them), to save all who believe, whether Jewish or not, though it was presented to the Jews first. The Gospel reveals the righteousness of God in us as we live by faith. The difficult phrase in verse 17, pisteōs eis pistin, literally “by faith unto faith” probably means something like “faith and nothing but faith” (New Bible Commentary) or, by “faith from start to finish” (UBS Translators’ Handbook).
Verses 16–17 is one side of the coin, God’s gracious gift to the righteous.
The other side of that coin presents God’s wrath and abandonment of the unrighteous.
No excuses! (1:18–23)
The Gospel of God’s grace is presented (a) in the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah; (b) in the Tanakh—the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings of the OT; and (c) in the visible wonder of His creation. This Gospel reveals the righteous nature of God, His expectations for His created Imagers (mankind), and the retribution to be delivered on those who pervert those things by their unrighteousness.
18 For the wrath [vengeance] of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things [literally, reptiles].
— Romans 1:18-23 (ESV)
Because of all the revelation which was available to them, they were well aware of His existence and His power (verse 21), they chose to treat Him as an adversary. “We know who you are and what you have done, but we owe you nothing! We are now many and powerful, too, and we will worship whatever gods we choose and do whatever we want to do, whether you like it or not!”
Abandoned by God (1:24–32)
Verses 24–32 describe the results of those choices.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
— Romans 1:24-25 (ESV)
They chose to disrespect God, to discount His anger, and to seek pleasure personal pleasure over righteousness.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
— Romans 1:26-27 (ESV)
Why the emphasis on homosexuality? Because throughout history nations have started with idealistic vision and good intentions, but as they age, the rulers and the ruled alike become cynical and self-serving, religious fervor wanes and becomes corrupt, and jealousies become exaggerated. Like mold finding its way into the refrigerator, sin begins to take root and spread out of control. Because sexual drives are so powerful, human beings, like the angelic “watchers” in Genesis 6, eventually seek new and forbidden thrills. Inevitably, the end result is a crumbling society.
Eventually, it is internal corruption that kills nations and empires. And one sure sign of that corruption is a radical decline in morals, which is almost always visible in widespread sexual deviance and declining respect for human life. This is well-known in Greek and Roman history and is obvious around the world today.
Was it the same in the earliest days of human history? The story of Sodom and Gomorrah tell us that it definitely was! Although I can’t cite Scripture to support this undisputably, I believe that the passage above implies that it was true for Babel as well.
Defying God may start with sexual depravity. but it is soon followed by all manners of sinful behavior.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
— Romans 1:28-32 (ESV)
Which is why I believe that God gave up on humanity one more time by scattering them, confounding the languages that held them together, and putting them under the care of inferior gods.
