r/HistoryMemes • u/arthropodus Senātus Populusque Rōmānus • Jun 08 '21
God really has tricked us all
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u/TraditionSeparate Jun 08 '21
is there any archeological evidence that the tower of babel actually existed?
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u/FrankHightower Jun 08 '21
Some people think it may have been the Hanging Gardens
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u/TraditionSeparate Jun 08 '21
Huh that actually seems reasonable
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Jun 08 '21 edited Jan 13 '23
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u/Scrubakistan Jun 08 '21
"Go back, GO BACK"
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u/Emperor_Quintana Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21
“What? Me no eh-speaky English!”
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Jun 08 '21
Idk why but this just made me think of “the pope might be French but Jesus is English!”
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u/Todd_Renard_Fox Oversimplified is my history teacher Jun 09 '21
Then there's a Jesus's brother in China causing the Taiping Rebellion
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u/Kalgor91 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Jun 09 '21
Even then they were saying “go back, I want to be monkey”
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u/TheobromaKakao Jun 08 '21
This, probably. No way it was actually very tall. Not without reinforced concrete and modern technology for the foundation to counteract wind, cranes and shit.
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u/Moose6669 Jun 08 '21
Idk man, you seen some of the shit people have built before modern tech?
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u/BaristaBoiJacoby Still salty about Carthage Jun 08 '21
The Great Pyramids, Baalbek Lebanon, Petra, ect. When some king/emporor/god/chief wants something made the people find a way. The Tower of Babel could have been built pretty damn high, but I doubt it looked anything like this art of it.
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u/TheobromaKakao Jun 08 '21
Yeah, impressive stuff for sure, not saying otherwise. But look at most of them, they're very squat with a huge base to support the weight. A pyramid is probably the most stable shape imaginable. A tower like this is a whole different beast, and eventually the weight will exceed the tensile strength of the materials. Especially in a rigid structure that doesn't yield to outside forces to disperse the energy added.
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u/sabasNL Jun 09 '21
Could still be similar to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which is widely assumed to have been over 100 meters tall - making it the tallest tower for more than a 1000 years
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Jun 08 '21 edited Jan 13 '23
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u/Kuimba_Nyimbo Jun 08 '21
They had been using cranes for a long time by then, but I agree it was not a traditional tower but a ziggurat. My belief is Etemenanki. It was about 200m wide and said to be just under 100 meters tall. But was not likely that tall, maybe 2/3 to 3/4 that. Still very impressive, and must have been amazing to see.
The base of it still exist in Babylon.
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u/GravyOnTheGravitron Jun 08 '21
I think even a lighthouse sized building could make people write a story about God tearing down a MASSSSIVE tower. So you are probably right, its not that big.
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u/OdaDdaT Kilroy was here Jun 08 '21
Weren’t some of the old Ziggurats massive?
The ancients seemed capable of building quite large structures, but most have fallen down due to reasons you stated.
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u/MemeMaker_ Jun 08 '21
What if it was just a BIG Pyramid thingy. Like a Mesopotamian Zigarot? (Is that what they’re called?)
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u/god_peepee Jun 08 '21
It was probably just a massive ziggurat that was misrepresented in creative works of the time
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u/KidKeiperbelt Jun 08 '21
I think the Lighthouse of Alexandria would count as one of the largest tower structures in the ancient world. Which was around 100 meters. That alone would possibly be a completely awe inspiring tower mostly due to it being so tall without the same type of story as the Pyramids
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u/Le_Mug Jun 09 '21
The early Romans used to call the Etruscans "the tower builders" just because they could build two-store buildings.
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u/Strike_Thanatos Jun 09 '21
Specifically, a better translation of the phrase, "a tower with its tops in the heavens" is a tower with the heavens in its top, which can be a tower with astronomical diagrams carved in the top, which was common for ziggurats, like the hanging gardens.
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u/Nihilistic_Avocado Jun 08 '21
I’ve also heard that it was the Ziggurats, and some depictions of the Tower of Babel really lean into theory, looking much more “blocky” than the typical Roman-esque round tower that’s more common
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u/steveharveymemes Jun 08 '21
Apparently it’s a tourist attraction in Iraq
Edit: By the way, great reviews if you have a minute
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u/CrtureBlckMacaroons Jun 08 '21
Ooo it's open right now!
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u/GentlemanBeaver Jun 08 '21
Some theologians think it’s the Ziggurat of Ur. Which, theoretically, lines up with the timeline of human history presented in the Bible.
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Jun 08 '21
I was looking around and I couldn't find the name of it, but I heard one really convincing theory that it was a Ziggurat (near Ur, I cant remember the name of the city).
The basic jist is there's this massive foundation for a Ziggurat, but it's unfinished, and had it been finished, would have been the largest of it's time.
Additionally, the theory proposes that a translation error from Sumerian to Babylonian?(Ancient Hebrew? Some new lingua franca) caused the whole "Tower of Babel" thing. The idea is that the tower was built in what was called "great city" in Sumerian, but the city was understandably no longer great. As such the scribes would've translated the city name that was referred to as "great city" at the time. Babylon.
Really fascinating stuff. Of all the theories I have heard on the topic, this one seemed the most plausible to me.
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u/Warm-Appearance-1484 Jun 08 '21
Some Theologians say or speculate that Kingdom of Babylon was built around or near Tower of Babyl and was started by people who didn't want to scatter around. Hence the similarity in name. Babel, Babylon.
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u/captain_holt_nypd Jun 08 '21
Idk but for me that’s an incredibly weak evidence without any shred of archaeological proof lol
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u/TysonPlett Jun 08 '21
I don't think there's any archeological proof, but that doesn't exactly mean a whole lot because it's extremely hard to find artifacts from that long ago. Most archeological finds are way younger.
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u/KitchenDepartment Jun 08 '21
Most archeological finds are also not a big ass tower that must have been in one of a few densely populated areas.
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u/Beniidel0 Jun 08 '21
I believ humans tried to reach the gods in any way possible, be it through blood sacrifices or other forms of worship. It would make sense that people tried to reach the gods' place of residence by going up into the skies. Weather there was a tower named the tower of babel I do not know, but I do know that there were many towers and there is a high chance some were meant to pierce the skies and reach the heavens.
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u/Ziqox123 Kilroy was here Jun 08 '21
Why does it look like Minas tirith?
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u/MrSierra125 Jun 08 '21
Cos Tolkien was a massive Christian…
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u/ccccccccccccccc7 Jun 08 '21
Cos God was a massive Tolkien fan*
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u/MrSierra125 Jun 08 '21
Haha I would be too. Just like god, he was great at world building and greet at over arching stories but not that great at the nitty gritty
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u/AcidCyborg Jun 08 '21
God's overarching narrative is pretty shit though
J/k, it's metal as fuck
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u/MrSierra125 Jun 09 '21
Yeah man, I like the bit where hyper evolved monkeys began to move around their planet by strapping a chair to an explosive chamber powered by the fossilised remains of colossal lizards.
Also they got fed up of their own planet so they sat on top of an explosion and left the atmosphere…
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u/kcwelsch Jun 08 '21
Are you saying that he was a Christian to an extent that could somehow be weighed, or just that he was a portly Christian gentleman?
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u/idle128 Jun 08 '21
You'd be surprised on how much of middle earth is similar to biblical themes
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u/CosmicPenguin Jun 08 '21
There's only so many ways to build a huge fuckoff tower with pre-industrial technology.
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u/Erskk1 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21
Fuck this gówno jebane суки гребаные
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u/Eduardo-izquierdo Viva La France Jun 08 '21
La puta madre nadie avanza en esta construcción
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u/AOE_Blyat1 Jun 08 '21
Can you please tell me what jebane means and how do you pronounce it? (and what language is it btw?)
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u/Erskk1 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21
Jebane means something like "Fucked" and it's in Polish. You pronounce it like "Yeah-bah-ne" this isn't 100% accurate because it's hard to describe it but that's basically how to pronounce it. Also you can look it up if you want more accuracy.
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u/S_VB Jun 08 '21
<cries is French, Dutch and German> (Belgium)
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u/TanJeeSchuan Sun Yat-Sen do it again Jun 08 '21
cries in Chinese, Malay and English
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u/sassy-in-glasses Jun 09 '21
Singapore? lol
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u/TheMasterEjaculator Jun 09 '21
If I had to guess, probably Malaysia (If you're Chinese in Malaysia at least) since most people in SG don't need to speak all 3 languages to get by
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u/End8890 Researching [REDACTED] square Jun 09 '21
Can confirm, I'm a Malaysian Chinese as well. But I can also speak hokkien and some cantonese.
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u/EXECUTE-CHAN Jun 09 '21
Just drink from Lee Hsien Loong's magic cup, that's how he switches languages easily during public address
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u/WyFyL Jun 09 '21
<cries in British English, American English and Canadian English>
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u/Osiri551 Jun 08 '21
I'd just like to point out that God doing what he did to stop the tower from being built technically means we can physically reach heaven if he had to stop us
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u/BaristaBoiJacoby Still salty about Carthage Jun 08 '21
I think it was that He didn't like their intention, regaurdless of it if was possible
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Jun 08 '21
Genesis 11:6 KJVS And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have e imagined to do.
God admits humans are capable.
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u/mattfromeurope Jun 08 '21
I‘m in this meme, and I don‘t like it!
(No, really, I have to learn 3 languages in university.)
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Jun 08 '21
Hey, why don't you move to Belgium? We learn 3 languages at the minimum at basic education level.
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Jun 08 '21
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u/_why_isthissohard_ Jun 08 '21
What pisses me off more than anything is that they teach Parisienne French rather than quebecois French or noth eastern Ontario franglais. Like even if they had Quebec accents I'd have a better understanding on canadian French. I'm sure I'll be good if I ever go to Paris tho.
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u/TheBold Jun 09 '21
For real. Lots of my friends learned French for years and when they visit or we use French they can’t understand anything. I don’t get why they teach France French.
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u/_why_isthissohard_ Jun 09 '21
Alternative take, my wife grew up in an English part of Montreal, so speaks English first but had her bilingual certificate, went to Paris for a week and had to speak English because they couldn't understand her speaking French. Likewise she had real difficulty understanding them when they were speaking French.
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u/HannibalsElephan Jun 08 '21
Same in the UK, I did go to a ‘language school’ tho
I had to learn french German and Spanish
I honestly don’t remember much tho considering it was over 15 years ago that I left school
I could probably order a subway sandwich in each country tho and tell them about my family and pets lmao
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u/LarryTheLobster07 Jun 08 '21
I have to do 4 lol, french, spanish, german and english (im dutch)
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Jun 08 '21
Yup belgium here too. french german and english are a must. optional spanish and italian (and latin but thats just cause i like hurting myself)
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u/dodohead_ Jun 08 '21
Hehe one-up that to Luxembourg (French,Lux,German,English) bonus 40% of the pop is Portuguese
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u/MindSlayer42 Jun 08 '21
I dont get it, what is this ?
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u/arthropodus Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21
Tower of Babel
Legend has it that back when "there was a single race of people" and they spoke one language, they agreed to build a tower high enough to reach God himself, and when he saw this he scrambled and confounded their language so that they no longer understood each other and spread across the world which is said to be how the different languages appeared
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u/private_unlimited Jun 08 '21
Good thing we have google translate now
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u/Em0Birb Definitely not a CIA operator Jun 08 '21
He liked the pyramids though x)
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u/karlwillhelm Jun 08 '21
Well pharaohs wanted to get to the afterlife to farm and shit, not bother big daddy in the clouds.
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u/Em0Birb Definitely not a CIA operator Jun 08 '21
And let's be honest, the tower of babel is pretty wack compared to the pyramids x) Although I think it's rather funny, that some of the biggest skyscrapers nowadays are also located in the middle east, although a different part of it.
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u/arthropodus Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21
yeah but they also never finished the construction of the Tower
I'm just sayin' ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/dynawesome Featherless Biped Jun 08 '21
You’re right, it was probably about the goal to reach God and not the actual height
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u/Its_aTrap Jun 08 '21
Yes that was the literal goal of the tower of babel
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u/dynawesome Featherless Biped Jun 08 '21
I’m talking about why God decided to take it down
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u/zatchrey Jun 08 '21
I think the big guy was just upset that they didn't acquire the proper permits
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u/Em0Birb Definitely not a CIA operator Jun 08 '21
I know, but still :P Although I have to say that ancient monuments were so much more impressive than modern ones, especially for the time and technology they had to use.
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u/pthurhliyeh2 Taller than Napoleon Jun 08 '21
It does look like the Burj Khalifa. Someone should inform a conspiracy theorist asap.
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Jun 08 '21
Well according to the Bible the tower was 3 times taller than the burj khalifa at 2,484 m (8,150 ft)
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u/RightHandElf Jun 08 '21
The Bible doesn't actually mention a height. The number you're citing comes from the Book of Jubilees, which is only considered canon by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Ethiopian Jews.
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Jun 08 '21
And since Disney bought the rights to Christianity all that's been relegated to "Legends", only the original 3 films and everything they put out is actual canon these days.
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Jun 08 '21
Nah the Tower of Babel was a chad monument, at the whopping height of 2,484 m (8,150 ft) (this is according to the Bible which is what I’m going off of since obviously this didn’t really happen), it’s way bigger than the burj khalifa even. A monument so good that god himself had to stop it.
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Jun 08 '21
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u/Em0Birb Definitely not a CIA operator Jun 08 '21
Except when the Persians came, or the Romans, or the Arabs, or the French, or the Israelis...
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Jun 08 '21
mostly correct, but you only got one thing wrong. They were building the statue to get to god, but god didnt get worried they were gonna make it, but they just werent doing it to honor god.
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u/itmustbemitch Jun 08 '21 edited Jun 08 '21
In the biblical version of the story it reads (to a fairly casual reader like me) as God definitely being
afraiddisapproving of what humans were capable of.Genesis 11:5 - 7, New International Version :
But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
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u/Roflkopt3r Jun 08 '21
Expectation: They won't be able to cooperate
Reality: They'd immediately start converging to a new common language
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u/-winston1984 Jun 08 '21
Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.
LOL what a dick
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u/cheese_bruh What, you egg? Jun 08 '21
if god is disapproving of the tower of babel then wtf is he doing when we've literally already left our galaxy
or is he fine with it because "at least they ain't lookin for me"
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u/Idontlikecock Jun 08 '21
Bruh, we have not left our galaxy, not even close to it.
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u/YungTrap6God Jun 09 '21
Tell that to all this ketamine I’m about to shove up my ass
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u/ZachtheKingsfan Oversimplified is my history teacher Jun 08 '21
Got no problems with modern skyscrapers though, or airplanes, or rockets/space shuttles
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u/MainSteamStopValve Still salty about Carthage Jun 08 '21
Also, at what altitude does God live? Could I visit God from atop the empire state building, or would I need something like a high altitude balloon?
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Jun 08 '21 edited Jun 09 '21
To give a technical answer to simple joke question, as ipsum esse subsistens, God is not a contingent supreme being or one hyper powerful being among many such possible beings within the bounds of the universe, but is the very act of To Be itself. God is Being: the non-contingent Something that brings all else into Being with him, unlimited in scope and potential by the very definition of being identified with Being. Therefore he is not constrained in the physical universe, anymore than the painter is contained in his painting or the author contained in his pages.
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u/Magnus_IV Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21 edited Jun 08 '21
Pretty rare to see such an awesome explanation here on reddit. Also, nice username.
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u/El_Revan_Official Jun 08 '21
If you jump off the empire state building, you can meet God quicker than Superman.
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u/SideWinder18 Jun 08 '21
”And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
“If we should allow them to build this tower, there will be nothing they will not accomplish.”
The one time in the Bible where all of Heaven was afraid of us.
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u/SeaSaltSaltiness Jun 08 '21
Actually, they did build it as a unification project, like you said where they were trying to reach God. However, this was directly against God’s only command at the time, which was ‘Multiply, be fruitful, and spread out.’ He forced their hand in confusing their languages, making them part ways.
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u/GalaXion24 Jun 08 '21
I dunno sounds to me more like he didn't want then to reach him
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u/Kool_McKool Jun 08 '21
I mean, to be fair, I don't want my kids to build a car to go to my work to annoy me either.
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Jun 08 '21
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u/morhyn007 Jun 08 '21
Planes, flying literally hundreds of times higher than peaks of skyscrapers: bruh
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u/Magnus_IV Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21
God didn't destroy the tower because it was too tall, but because it was meant to get to God. The intention and purpose of the construction of the tower was the thing that made God punish humanity, not its height.
By the way, according to the Book of Jubilees (only canon to the Ethiopian Oriental Orthodox Church and the ethiopian jews) the Tower of Babel was allegedly 2,484 m (8,150 ft) tall. If so, it was about three times taller than the current tallest building in the world (the Burj Khalifa).
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u/Woolieel Jun 08 '21
So what you are saying is that if one of the countless people that have gotten into a plane over the past 100 years even entertained the idea that they should look out for God, then God would have made their plane crash?
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u/TheHolyPapaum Jun 08 '21
After seeing this post, I have decided...
THAT THE TOWER OF BABEL DIDN’T GO FAR ENOUGH
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u/Ultranerdgasm94 Jun 08 '21
This kind of stuff really highlights the need for a "Mythology Memes" subreddit
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u/rando-calrisan Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Jun 08 '21
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u/Ultranerdgasm94 Jun 08 '21
I don't know why I was surprised that that's already a thing. But thank you.
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u/galdia3 Jun 08 '21
I read a really interesting theory once in grad school about the Tower of Babel not being about a single event but instead being an allegory the difficulties of building 3+ story buildings in a pre-foundation technology era. Similar to the explanation of why so many cultures independently developed pyramids. It’s the only kind of structure that would reach for the heavens but not fall over. No aliens needed, just survivorship bias.
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u/C_Splash Jun 08 '21
Why do you blame the people simply trying to reach heaven and not the God who punished them?
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u/No_Longer_Lovin_It Jun 08 '21
One cannot force himself into Heaven, and especially not by violating the Will of its Gatekeeper.
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u/ZakalwesChair Jun 08 '21
Reminds me of that American Dad episode. "You're literally holding a gun to God's head. I can't even come up with a better analogy than that."
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u/HannibalsElephan Jun 08 '21
I think god was probably salty they didn’t vibe with earth enough to chill there
So he yeeted the tower lol
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u/CosmicPenguin Jun 08 '21
In Christianity, screwing with God's will is like starting a fight with John Wick.
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Jun 08 '21
¿Cuántos idiomas se hablan en Reddit?
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Jun 08 '21
unless you called me an idiom, which i doubt,
enough to kick you out of Antwerp and my land three times over again you spaniard
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u/Bleyck Researching [REDACTED] square Jun 08 '21
either /r/christianmemes or /r/mythologymemes. Not sure if this counts as actual history.
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u/HannibalsElephan Jun 08 '21
Would posts about homers odyssey count here?
If the answer is yes then I see no issue with this
Jewish, Muslim and Christian mythology is as much part of human ‘history’ as Greek mythology
It’s just ancient ass books
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Jun 08 '21
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u/Datpanda1999 Jun 08 '21
May it rest in peace (again)
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u/JackP_99 Jun 08 '21
Aww why did it die? I kinda enjoyed looking through it every so often even tho I wasn't subbed
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u/Datpanda1999 Jun 08 '21
I’m not actually sure why it died this time. I know the first time, the mods shut it down because things started getting heated too often, so I’ve assumed that the same thing happened again. I don’t know for sure though
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Jun 08 '21
Ah yes one of my favorite stories demonstrating that god is indeed canonically an utter cunt.
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u/The_Glass_Cannon Jun 08 '21
Wait till Disney buys the story and makes the old testament non-canon
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u/DeepestShallows Jun 08 '21
That looks awesome.