Just Finished Reading… by slaveofone
The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications by Paul Seely.
Overall, it was a fun and stimulating read, especially since it veered off into areas that while outside my familiarity or expertise, are nevertheless interesting subject matters (such as Creationism and the Natural Sciences). I could have done without Seely’s repeated tendentious impulse to remain faithful to the historical interpretation of the church,
which is nothing more than an appeal to authority—a logical fallacy that should not appear in a critical, scientific analysis. But I did very much appreciate both the archaeological examination of the Tower of Babel according to narrative evidence as well as the discussion of accommodation of scriptural texts to the concepts, world-views, and thought-forms of their days. Apparently, Creationists are want to approach biblical texts as if they were trying to teach astronomy or some such anachronism and I appreciate Seely setting the matter straight.
Unfortunately, the end was about as ironic and question-begging as it could get. Consider his own analysis of the situation:
One cannot date the tower of Babel early enough to fit all of the archaeological and anthropological data without implicitly espousing a methodology which favors bare possibility over probability; and such a methodology is antithetical to serious scholarship.
ibid, p. 28
And yet Seely’s way of dealing with the contradiction between the archaeological evidence and the biblical narrative is to propose a philosophy that could possibly explain the situation without giving us any historical or archaeological evidence to think there is a probability of his conclusion. Behold his summary statement:
In summary, in order to avoid obstacles to communication which might become stumbling blocks, and to respect the divine decision to delegate to humankind the responsibility for the discovery of natural knowledge, Scripture is accommodated in Gen 11:1-9 [the Babel narrative]…to the limited geographical and anthropological knowledge available at the time.
ibid, p. 38
Exactly what time
is Seely referring to? To what context is the tower of babel narrative being accommodated? Exactly what is the anthropological conception of the original hearers
of the Tower of Babel narrative and exactly who are they? Seely makes no mention of any of this in the entire essay. We are given no evidence and no reason whatsoever to believe that the original authors or hearers in whatever unmentioned historical period and geographical location believed all languages originated from a mother tongue in Babylon. The bare possibility of accommodation to such a context is all we are given. His essay is thus self-refuting, claiming to represent serious scholarship while utilizing the very method he says is antithetical to it.