Most people know that modern Christianity and most pagan
religions have a lot of parallels in stories and rituals and teachings. Some say that the pagan religions have
elements of Christianity in them because Satan is not capable of creation; he
can only distort reality. Others say
that Christianity has become ‘infected’ with paganism. Personally, I believe that both of these
reasons are equally true.
What is more important, in my opinion, is to determine what
elements of modern Christianity are infected with paganism, and to decide what
to do with those elements. And a good
first step is to see what God has to say about the subject. And that is the subject of a study I have
been attending.
In Rev. 18:1-4 (&ff) we are told to come out of
Babylon. This would seem to be a good
“jumping off” place. What is
Babylon?
There are several items to consider here. The first is that Babylon was an ancient city
in what is now present day Iraq, about 50 miles south of Baghdad. Since very few people actually live there now (it
was Saddam Hussein’s summer palace and later a U.S. Marine Military Base),
It is doubtful that we are being commanded to leave the city. Second, Babylon has been used metaphorically
as a symbol for the profane, materialistic world system. That sounds like something that a believer
should come out of.
And then there is a third consideration. In the Ancient Hebrew, (and in the Old
Testament), the city is referred to, not as “Babylon”, but as “Babel”. Remember the story of the “Tower of
Babel”? This is the reference that we
are going to consider here.
The story of the Tower of Babel is found in Genesis 11. First, let’s look at the story in a popular modern version.
Genesis Chapter 11 The
Message
“God Turned Their Language into ‘Babble’”
1-2 At one time, the whole Earth spoke the same language. It
so happened that as they moved out of the east, they came upon a plain in the
land of Shinar and settled down.
3 They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and
fire them well.” They used brick for stone and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a
tower that reaches Heaven. Let’s make ourselves famous so we won’t be scattered
here and there across the Earth.”
5 God came down to look over the city and the tower those
people had built.
6-9 God took one look and said, “One people, one language;
why, this is only a first step. No telling what they’ll come up with
next—they’ll stop at nothing! Come, we’ll go down and garble their speech so
they won’t understand each other.” Then God scattered them from there all over
the world. And they had to quit building the city. That’s how it came to be
called Babel, because there God turned their language into “babble.” From there
God scattered them all over the world.
It is obvious from a casual reading of this passage that
people, mankind, humans, did something that got God rather upset. First reading shows that they made a tower to
become famous. Well, that is a bit
presumptuous, I suppose.
It is fairly easy to demonstrate that when one translates
from one language to another, inevitably there is something lost in the
translation. Let’s take a look at some
key words and their possible translations.
Tower: Hebrew
migdal. An elevated place, used of
flower beds, castles, and watchtowers.
Heaven: Hebrew shamayim.
Sky, stars, astrology
“Make ourselves famous”:
Hebrew asah shem. To build or
create or birth a monument or memorial.
Babel: Hebrew babel.
Confusion or mixture.
It is
noteworthy that in this passage the Heb. babel is transliterated as Babel, in
almost all other passages in Scripture the word in English is Babylon. For example, in 2 Kings 20:17 the Hebrew
word babel is used but is translated to English Babylon.
It is generally accepted that the root of the Greek word
Babylon is the Hebrew word babel which, according to this text, means
mixture or confusion. Some contend that
the root word is the Akkadian (the Semitic root language) bab-ilu which is
translated as “Gate of God”. I
personally think that this might be a play on words, that the “Gate of God”
which they were building became a symbol of confusion. This would be a typical “word play” in the
Hebrew language.
Another way of understanding the passage is that God
confused the languages because the people constructed a “high place” from which
to worship the stars of heaven.
This is not as big a stretch as it may seem at first. Indeed, almost every ancient civilization
(and many modern!) has examples of high places erected to worship the
gods. The pyramids of Egypt, built as an
act of worship to memorialize the god-kings entombed within. The Taj Mahal, built as an act of worship to
a woman. The pyramids of Central
America. The pyramids of Indonesia. And most of that worship involved gods of the
sun, moon, and stars or their earthly representatives as priests or rulers.
Since Scripture must always be understood in the light of
what other scripture says, do we find other places in Scripture where the
practice of building a high place to worship the heavenly bodies is
condemned?
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