Texts in Conversation
Genesis describes people in Shinar making bricks to build a tower with its top in the heavens, an image of human ambition connected to Babylon. Jeremiah later calls Babylon a corrupting mountain that will be cast down and burned out, using language that connects it to the narrative of the tower of Babel.
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Genesis 11:3
Hebrew Bible
1 The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary. 2 When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) 4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” 5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (Final composition) (based on scholarly estimates)
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Jeremiah 51:25
Hebrew Bible
23 I used you to smash shepherds and their flocks. I used you to smash farmers and their teams of oxen. I used you to smash governors and leaders. 24 “But I will repay Babylon and all who live in Babylonia for all the wicked things they did in Zion right before the eyes of you Judeans,” says the Lord. 25 The Lord says, “Beware! I am opposed to you, Babylon! You are like a destructive mountain that destroys all the earth. I will unleash my power against you; I will roll you off the cliffs and make you like a burned-out mountain. 26 No one will use any of your stones as a cornerstone; no one will use any of them in the foundation of his house. For you will lie desolate forever,” says the Lord. 27 “Raise up battle flags throughout the lands. Sound the trumpets calling the nations to do battle. Prepare the nations to do battle against Babylonia. Call for these kingdoms to attack her: Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz. Appoint a commander to lead the attack. Send horses against her like a swarm of locusts.
Date: 5th Century B.C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The allusion to Jeremiah 51 provides an instructive example of a critical link in a chain of analogic connections whose origins lie in Ninurta mythology. It illustrates again how Mesopotamian motifs could reach the New Testament via the Hebrew Bible, transfigured in the transmission process by the Hebrew biblical writers’ theological perspectives. It is possible that Jeremiah 51:24–26 influenced Psalm 118:22, the immediate source of all the New Testament references I have cited. But in the Petrine mention of ‘living stones’, the (contrastive) association with the Jeremianic text is direct. In Jeremiah 51:25, Babylon is designated the ‘corrupting mountain that has corrupted the entire earth’. That a conspicuously flat location such as Babylon (Genesis 11:2) is characterized as a mountain immediately flags the metaphorical nature of the imagery. Babylon is a mountain that God will ‘roll down’ from the heights and leave ‘burnt out’ ..."
Baker, Robin
Mesopotamian Civilization and the Origins of the New Testament
(pp. 239-240) Cambridge University Press, 2022
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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