By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor
ALEXANDRIA, La. (LBM) – In the beginning, God commanded that Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; …” (Genesis 1:28), and He repeated this charge to Noah and his family after their deliverance from the watery death that the rest of the world experienced (Genesis 9:1).
But a mere 100 to 350 years after the global calamity caused by the Great Flood, and while mankind was only starting to repopulate the earth, men and women convinced themselves to stop their expansion across the globe and to settle down in one place to “build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens,” choosing to “make a name” for themselves rather than continue to “be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4).
However, this biblical account about the history of mankind has largely been disputed by scholars and archaeologists, especially during the better part of the 19th and 20th centuries.
But today critics will concede at least some nuanced agreement with some elements of this historical account because of the discovery of many tower-like structures, stepped-pyramids called ziggurats, beginning with excavations in Ur (southern Iraq) in the 1850s. Other similar structures have since been found throughout Iran and Iraq, with the oldest discovered in the Sumerian city of Eridu (southwest of Ur).
Moreover, in just the last decade, researchers were given access to a privately owned tablet (dating back to the 6th century B.C. and found just 100 years ago) that showed a picture of a ziggurat with the label “the temple tower of the city of Babylon” and it was tied to a rebuilding effort by Nebuchadnezzar II.
Regardless, the “experts” argue about which of these ancient structures is the actual tower mentioned in the Bible, and they still insult the biblical account as fable.
However, all that criticism has been rendered moot by the most compelling discovery of all – not about anything man has made, but empirical evidence about the actions God took in response to man’s disobedience.
God said, “let Us go down, and there confuse their language” and He scattered them “over the face of the earth” (Genesis 11:7-8).
The idea of a rapid expansion of many very different languages baffles evolutionists. Yet, the biblical account of a linguistic explosion of sorts is what is evidenced in human records.
In 2011, Nature published a study that challenged evolutionists’ beliefs about language development. Looking for common patterns among languages, researchers analyzed grammatical rules of “word order” among different language groups, hoping to find similarities that would allow them to construct a linguistic “evolutionary tree.” Instead, they discovered that word order patterns were “lineage-specific rather than universal,” meaning word order patterns were random for each language and not consistent across languages.
So, no “evolutionary tree” of language — which is a critical point.
According to evolution’s logic, language developed in order to allow humans to communicate with each other. So, the sudden growth of many different languages and the resulting confusion – not ease of communication — among members of the same species does not make evolutionary sense.
Meanwhile, scientific evidence also indicates that significant global population movements—dispersions—happened approximately 4,000 years ago (the same time as the Tower of Babel scattering):
— Around that time, key urban areas in Mesopotamia were suddenly abandoned, and genetic studies indicate the people migrated to Egypt.
— Research also indicates that about the same time migrants from India entered Australia, and groups from Siberia dispersed across Arctic Canada and into Greenland.
— Moreover, a Harvard study published by Nature in 2025 found that a population of Bronze Age nomads gave birth to just under half of global languages (from Russia and Ukraine through northern India to most of Europe).
Regardless, proving the truthfulness of Scripture should not alter the strength of one’s faith in what is not seen.
Instead, believers should read about the punishment of mankind’s rebellion at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) and note that God revealed His plan to save the world in the next passage (Genesis 12).
Finally, God used confusion by language to disperse people from Babel. However, at Pentecost He used language to draw men to Him if they had receptive hearts. Moreover, He continues to use this same means (the person of Jesus) and this same method (hearing of the Word and receiving it in faith) to offer salvation to the world today.
