Was there a real Tower of Babel?

And how does the city-building theme found in Mesopotamian texts like the Sumerian King List and Enuma Elish inform our understanding of the story?

The Inquisitive Bible Reader, Inquisitive. Academic. Unapologetic. A place for video essays about the Bible and ancient religion without a theological agenda, based on up-to-date academic research.

Academic works cited in this video:

• ⦾ Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past, 2000, Amazon link: https://amzn.to/2TCfwb4
• ⦾ Edwin M. Good, Genesis 1–11: Tales of the Earliest World, 2011
• ⦾ Patrick D. Miller, Jr., “Eridu, Dunnu, and Babel: A Study in Comparative Mythology”, in Biblical and other Studies in memory of Shelmo Dov Goitein (Hebrew Annual Review 9), 1985
• ⦾ Karel van der Toorn and Pieter Willem van der Horst, “Nimrod Before and After the Bible”, Harvard Theological Review 83/01 (Jan 1990)
• ⦾ E.A. Speiser, “Word Plays on the Creation Epic’s Version of the Founding of Babylon”, Orientalia 25/4 (1956)
• ⦾ Ellen van Wolde, “The Tower of Babel as Lookout over Genesis”, in Words Become Worlds: Semantic Studies of Genesis 1–11, 1994
• ⦾ Philip Michael Sherman, Babel’s Tower Translated: Genesis 11 and Ancient Jewish Interpretation, 2013
• ⦾ Theodore Hiebert, “The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World’s Cultures, Journal of Biblical Literature 125/1 (Spring 2007)
• ⦾ Ronald Hendel, “Genesis 1–11 and Its Mesopotamian Problem”, in Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity, 2005
• ⦾ Arie van der Kooij, “The City of Babel and Assyrian Imperialism”, Congress Volume Leiden 2004, 2006