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Babel |
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Babel (bā`bəl) [Heb.,=confused], in the Bible, place where Noah's descendants (who spoke one language) tried to build a tower reaching up to heaven to make a name for themselves. For this presumption the speech of the builders was confused, thus ending the project. The story was perhaps originally an etiological tale explaining the diversity of languages and cultures, but, due to Israel's experience of the exile, now contains significant polemic against the presumption of Babylon, which is Babel in Hebrew. Babel1 Issak Emmanuilovich 1894--1941, Russian short-story writer, whose works include Stories from Odessa(1924) and Red Cavalry (1926) Babel2 Old Testament a. a tower presumptuously intended to reach from earth to heaven, the building of which was frustrated when Jehovah confused the language of the builders (Genesis 11:1--10) b. the city, probably Babylon, in which this tower was supposedly built Babel where God confounded speech of mankind. [O.T.: Genesis 11:7–9] See : Confusion
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| For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God's wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians. account of the Deluge; as Babel he had a tower partly erected to his A soft babel of feminine chatter and laughter came from the main room. |
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