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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
Dive deeper! Sign up for the newsletter (and catch up on past newsletters) at this link: https://weirdstuffinthebible.beehiiv.com/
Babel: The False Mountain
Genesis 11
Introduction
I know the podcast is called Weird Stuff in the Bible, but today, I want to start with something that’s weird in our world: ziggurats.
A ziggurat is a pyramid-like structure. It starts with a massive base, and every level going up gets a little bit smaller. They often have steps up the sides so you can climb to the top. You’ve probably seen pictures before of ziggurats in ancient Babylon, Mesopotamia, from the Aztecs, from the Mayans—there’s even one in Collinsville, Illinois.
And here’s what’s so weird about it: this structure is replicated in all kinds of societies all around the world.
Different nations, different languages, different cultures—and yet we keep seeing ziggurats repeated across the planet.
My question is: why?
Well, where do all ancient nations, languages and cultures come from? According to the Bible, they all got started at this event called the Tower of Babel.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that the Tower of Babel was a ziggurat.
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Genesis 11, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
(Continued)
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor.
Earlier this year, my wife offered to bring me a sprite, which I quickly accepted. But come to find out, it wasn’t sprite but a cheap knockoff called Citrus Twist. An off-brand. A false pop. The anti-sprite.
We’ll be talking about a false knockoff today, as we continue our Tower of Babel series that we started last week.
Before I get into today’s lesson, don’t forget, it’s the three-year anniversary of the podcast this month, so I am also sharing some bonus interviews on Fridays. Last Friday, we talked to Derrick Warfel, author of the new book UFOs and God. And this Friday, we’ll be chatting with Will Blesch, author of the recent book In the Shadow of Goliath.
So keep an eye out for that; for today, let’s learn about ziggurats.
Can you take me higher?
As you read through the scripture, you’ll find that people often went up on the quote-unquote “high places” to worship the quote-unquote “gods.”
The high places were shrines, idol centers, higher-altitude temples. There was a belief that to consult or meet with the gods, you needed to be in an elevated area.
I call them the quote-unquote “gods,” and I call them the lowercase-g gods, but these gods were very real. They were the Watchers, AKA the Sons of God, and they were tasked by God with watching over humanity. Some of them—actually many of them—perhaps most of them—rebelled against God and sought worship for themselves. They go by names like Asherah, Chemosh, or Marduk.
Now, these weren’t the Watchers of Genesis 6; those were the ones who descended in the pre-flood world, got with the human women, created the giants, and those Watchers were all locked away. The Book of Enoch tells that story, we pored over every detail, and the Bible itself backs that account up, saying they’re imprisoned in the Abyss until judgment day. So we don’t have to worry about them.
But Deuteronomy 32 teaches that there were a second round of Watchers who were put in charge of various sectors of the world—of humanity. In fact, it was AT Babel that these Watchers were dispersed.
Deuteronomy 32:8
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
(We’ll talk more about that verse in the weeks ahead.)
We see that there was something to these lowercase-g gods; they weren’t merely figments of human imagination. There was truly a Watcher (or principality) set in charge of Iraq, and Iran, and Syria, and so on.
Now, the good ones don’t seek worship for themselves. They redirect all worship to the capital-G God. But for the bad ones, they love the praise and adulation.
Mountaintop Experiences
What about this idea that you could meet with them on the high places? Was there something to that? Probably so. On this podcast, we’ve studied—especially this year—how often supernatural connections take place on mountaintops.
Let’s recap for a minute about the concept of a cosmic mountain. A cosmic mountain is a connecting point between heaven and earth. Technically, they would connect three realms: the heaven, earth, and underworld.
You won’t see the phrase “cosmic mountain” in the Bible; it’s just a theological term for a mountain that was a point of spiritual connection. They were typically garden mountains. To recap, let me read from Dr. Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm (page 55): Mountain peaks were the domain of gods because no humans lived there. Ancient times were not like modern times. People didn't recreationally climb mountains. They had no equipment with which to get very far if they tried. Mountains were remote and forbidding-the perfect places for gods to get away from pesky humans. Mountain peaks touched the heavens, which was obviously the domain of the gods.
The mountain aspect spoke of drawing near to the heavenly realm—the garden aspect spoke of connecting to the Underworld. Because if you think about it, what is a garden? It’s life from under the ground breaking up into our world.
We see spiritual experiences often taking place on cosmic mountains in Scripture, which I talked about more in-depth in episodes 136, 137 and 138 just a few months ago.
We have the Garden of Eden, which was on a mountain, according to Ezekiel 28. Mount Hermon, where the pre-flood Watchers came down—and where the Transfiguration took place. Mount Calvary, where Jesus died on the cross and then descended into the Underworld. The Mount of Olives, a garden mountain where Jesus ascended and will return at the Second Coming.
So these high places were locations of both good and evil supernatural activity. Now obviously, if God sanctions a mountaintop experience, that’s fine, but it had to be sanctioned by the capital-G God. If it had to do with one of these fallen lowercase-g gods, it was forbidden. This is why, when the Israelites entered the Promised Land, God warned them so clearly in
Deuteronomy 12:2-4
2 You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess served their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. 3 You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. 4 You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way.
The Watchers desired worship on these high places.
II Kings 17:9-12
9 And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right. They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city. 10 They set up for themselves pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, 11 and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord carried away before them. And they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, 12 and they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, “You shall not do this.”
And God ends up destroying the northern kingdom of Israel in this chapter because of these sins of worshipping the gods in these high places.
But here’s the next question I want to analyze today—what if you were the Watcher over Kansas?
I’ve had to drive across Kansas a few times in my life, and sorry to any of my listeners in Kansas, but when you drive across Kansas, you’re there for a long time, but not a good time. This is the flattest state I’ve ever witnessed. If you were standing at the other end of Kansas from me, we could probably wave at each other. When we were driving across Kansas, my wife pointed out a huge mound of dirt that we saw and said, “I guess Kansas does have a hill after all.” Now, to call that mound a hill would be like calling a Citrus Twist a Sprite, but fine, we’ll call it a hill if you want to. Then my wife kind of dozed off for about 10 minutes in the passenger seat, and then opened her eyes and said, “Hey look, there’s another hill.” And I said, “no honey, that’s the same hill.” That is how flat Kansas is. And if I ever have to drive across Kansas again, I hope we have self-driving cars by that point. I’m not totally sold on the idea of self-driving cars yet, but if you were in Kansas, it’s not like you have to worry about it crashing into anything. It’s not driving off any cliffs.
So back to the Watchers: what would you do if you had been assigned to some sector of the world that literally didn’t have high places?
And this is where ziggurats come into play.
Ziggurats
A ziggurat is a false mountain. Think about it: what geological structure does a ziggurat resemble? Mountains, obviously. Ziggurats and pyramids are like man-made mountains.
But not just mountains. These are religious mountains. These are temple mountains. These are cosmic mountains. Man’s attempt to create a cosmic mountain.
I’m going to quote from an article on a website called The Human Journey. This is a secular website describing what has been unearthed about ziggurats in archaeology and anthropology. The article is called “Ziggurats: Connecting Heaven and Earth.” Here’s how the article begins:
The ziggurat, the “mountain of God” or “hill of heaven,” was the center of the Mesopotamian temple complex. Built of clay bricks, it was a massive, solid, pyramidal stepped structure, the summit of which housed the god. It provided a connection to the heavens and, in practical terms, a place of safety for the priesthood and elite. Since, in a sense, the role of human beings in Mesopotamia was to be a link between the heavens above and the underworld below, much of the activities of the cities concentrated around the temple area. Temple complexes were built in the center of each city-state and included courtyards, storage rooms, bathrooms, and living quarters. The most important part of the complex was the ziggurat, a massive pyramid-like structure that was the sacred dwelling place of their patron deity and ensured that he/she remained close to them. Additional ziggurats were built for other gods as well. As the “mountain of God” or “hill of heaven,” ziggurats connected heaven and earth, with the rest of the city-state built around them.
(Citation: https://humanjourney.us/ideas/connecting-with-the-gods/ziggurats-mesopotamia-connecting-heaven-and-earth/ )
Listen to that: a connecting point between three realms: Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld. Just like the biblical concept of a cosmic mountain.
This article was particularly focused on the ziggurats in Mesopotamia, which is the region where the Tower of Babel incident occurred. Ziggurats are extremely common there:
Babylon: Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth (Etemenanki)
Sippar: Temple of the Stairway to Pure Heaven
Larsa: Temple Which Links Heaven and Earth
Of course, we all know of the pyramids of Egypt, which is their version of a ziggurat. The Egyptians used their pyramids as tombs for their kings to ascend to heaven when they died.
In Mexico at Chichen Itza (chee-chen eet-sah), there’s the Temple of Kukulkan- and in case you didn’t know, Kukulkan is a serpent god. A flying serpent.
I’m going to read something from ChichenItza.com—the website for this landmark, this ancient Ziggurat of Mexico—it says this:
For the Maya, Kukulkan, the Mayan Feathered Snake, was a god of wind, rain, and storms, closely associated with the creation of the world and the cyclical nature of time. He was revered as a mediator between the heavens and the earth, representing the duality of life. The serpent, which crawls on the ground, symbolized the earth, while the feathers symbolized the sky, embodying Kukulkan’s ability to transcend both worlds.
Now, let me ask you all a question; if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a few months now, let me ask you a question: is there a spiritual being in the Bible that presents himself as a serpent, and also as the storm god Baal and the storm god Zeus? Uh, yeah. A guy we call “The Devil.” And Scripture also says about this guy that he was cursed to this world, but he’s also called the Prince of the Power of the Air in Ephesians 2.
And they have a ziggurat to this storm god snake guy at Chichen Itza, which is in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, in a flatland. Here on the other hemisphere of the world from Baal and Zeus. And yet they also worship a being who is a storm god who connects the earth and sky.
Do we think that’s just a coincidence?
Guys, we haven’t even gotten into the Bible study part today and my mind is already blown. Let me keep going—there’s something really interesting about this ziggurat to Kukulkan:
One of the most captivating phenomena associated with the Mayan Feathered Snake occurs during the spring and autumn equinoxes. On these two days, the pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itzá is perfectly aligned with the sun’s position. As the sun sets, a play of light and shadow creates the illusion of a serpent slithering down the northern staircase of the pyramid.
This visual effect, known as the "Descent of the Serpent," draws thousands of visitors every year who come to witness the power and precision of Mayan astronomy. The snake appears to descend from the sky, a clear representation of Kukulkan’s role as a bridge between the heavens and the earth.
Citation: https://www.chichenitza.com/blog/the-feathered-serpent-of-chichen-itza-a-symbol-of-mayan-and-aztec-power
You can look at pictures of this online if you wanna google it. When the Mayans built this ziggurat thousands of years ago, how did they know that they could construct it in such a way that on two different days of the year—the spring and fall equinox—that the shadows of this temple would create the visual of a slithering snake? They’d have to have their precise measurements and alignments and dimensions all figured out beforehand. And these were ancient people who didn’t even have calculators or indoor plumbing. They lived in huts made out of sticks with palm tree roofs, yet they could build ziggurats out of stones that weighed tons and placed them in perfect alignment to create optical illusions of snakes.
I’m guessing they had some help with that.
And that’s just in the Yucatan Peninsula, a mere 1200 miles away from where I sit as I say these words. 1200 as the crow flies, but about 2000 miles if I were to drive there. Which would be a long road trip, but at least I could get there without going through Kansas.
And just about 300 miles away from where I’m sitting is the ziggurat of Collinsville, Illinois. This is a dirt ziggurat, so it’s not as architecturally impressive as some of these others. But it was a manmade ziggurat. It’s called Monk’s Mound, and it was built by the ancient Mississippians. (This is not a joke; you can google it; it’s right along the Mississippi River on a floodplain). But it’s clearly a ziggurat, it was built long before the Europeans came over.
Back to Mesopotamian ziggurats—as I mentioned a few months ago in my cosmic mountain series, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to create a garden mountain. The Hanging Gardens were a ziggurat with vegetation going up and down it. It’s considered one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World.
The wikipedia page on the Hanging Gardens says, They [The Hanging Gardens] were described as a remarkable feat of engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and vines, resembling a large green mountain constructed of mud bricks.
And just out of curiosity, and because I have to talk about Star Wars in every other episode, I was thinking this week about the Rebel Base on Yavin in the original Star Wars film. And I’m like: that was a ziggurat. Did they build that for a Star Wars movie, or did they go to one?
So I looked it up and this is a real place: The ziggurat at Tikal in Guatemala. The Tikal National Park website says, George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, chose Tikal as a filming location because of its otherworldly aesthetic and the sense of history and mysticism it conveyed. (Citation: https://tikalnationalpark.org/tikal-and-star-wars/ )
So ziggurats are all over the world. North America. South America. The Middle East. Africa. Asia. Even a Galaxy Far Far Away. Why so many?
And I’m sorry to quote so many sources today, but I’ve got one more. Once again, Michael Heiser’s Unseen Realm: (page 55)
This sort of thinking in part explains why Egypt's temples are carved and painted with the imagery of luscious gardens, or why pyramids and ziggurats were built. These structures were mountains made by human hands which served as gateways to the spiritual world, the realm of the gods, in life or in death. They were metaphors in stone.
A ziggurat is a false mountain. An attempt by man to create a cosmic mountain. They’re all over the world; they can be built with dirt, with stone, with rubble and plaster.
At Babel, they used bricks.
[musical interlude]
The Ziggurat at Babel
As we wind down today, I want to look at a Biblical ziggurat. I wanted to talk about 3, but I’m not gonna have time to do all three today. So I will either put the others in this weekend’s newsletter, or I will save them for future episodes this fall. I haven’t decided yet, but if you want to get on the newsletter email list, you can go to the link in the show notes and sign yourself up. If you find this episode later and want to read the newsletter, you can use that same link. It has a full archive of past newsletters, and will also let you sign up for future ones.
But I also just might share about them next week. And don’t forget, next time on the pod will be this Friday, where I’ll be sharing an interview with researcher and scholar Will Blesch.
I’ve heard from many of you who really like learning more about archaeological discoveries and how they relate to Christianity. If that’s your interest, you’ll want to check out this Friday’s interview. Will Blesch is author of the recent book In the Shadow of Goliath and lives in Israel, but he joined me on a zoom call recently to talk about his book and research. Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it- as well as next week’s continuation of the Babel series.
Today, we’ll just focus on one ziggurat: the Tower of Babel.
Genesis 11:1-4
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
Notice that: a plain. That means: a place that didn’t have mountains. No mountains, no high places to meet with the gods. Shinar is the region of Babylon and the surrounding cities; what we call modern day southern Iraq.
Babel was said to have been started by a man named Nimrod, a man whom I believe had some contact with the Watchers or Sons of God; but we’ll get into that in next week’s episode.
So they’re in a plain. If they want to go up on the high places, they’ll have to make their own high place.
3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
We won’t finish the story today, but you probably know the story because this is very familiar to Bible readers.
The main point is pretty clear: this is the story of where all our languages came from. The first verse of Babel’s story starts by telling us that everybody had the same words (or same speech). Humanity was united.
But at the end of the story in verse 9, it says the Lord confused the language of the peoples and scattered (or dispersed) them across the earth. This story in Genesis 11 interrupts the genealogy that started in chapter 10. Chapter 10 tells us about the original 70 nations or people groups that originated from Noah’s sons; and after the Babel story in chapter 11, it continues right along with Shem’s descendants.
So this is the story of how nations and languages got started. It explains why we have the world we see in the Bible and the world we have today. And if that’s the one thing you take away from this story, then I’d say you’ve got the main point.
But there’s a bit more going on with this story than just that, which is why I’m doing this series. As I said, Babel was a ziggurat.
Michael Heiser said in The Unseen Realm: “The Tower of Babel is regarded by all scholars as one of Mesopotamia’s famous man-made sacred mountains—a ziggurat.” (Unseen Realm expanded, page 140.)
You’ve probably seen pictures before of the Tower of Babel as a round, unfinished structure resembling a castle. There’s a famous painting depicting that. You’ll see a bunch of images like that if you google it. But that’s not a true depiction. That’s a modern imagination. The real Tower of Babel was a ziggurat.
Note that in Genesis 11:4, the people said they wanted a tower “with its top in the heavens.” That could be understood as just a really tall tower, if you want to be completely naturalistic about it.
But in verse 6, it says this:
6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
God is treating this like it’s some kind of threat. If this was just a really tall construction project, and the sin was nothing other than pride, then why was God so concerned about it? We probably have taller buildings today and God seems fine with them.
Some say, “well, the people were trying to build a tower up into the spiritual heaven. They were trying to break into heaven. They thought they could literally build a tower that reached into the firmament.”
Well, if you want to assume they were that dumb, then fine. You can do that. But if that were the case, why did God feel a need to stop it? If they were even capable of building a tower up into the atmosphere, they would have run out of air going up there.
And think about this: we go up higher than towers every day. 120 years ago, we got airplanes; travel by flight was invented. (Probably by someone who had driven through Kansas and was trying to figure out how to never do that again). About 50 years after that, space travel was invented. We’ve been to the moon, and it hasn’t been a threat to heaven in the slightest. So I don’t think God was worried about us physically building a tower up to His domain.
And many pastors have made connection here with the idea of trying to work your way into heaven, which I think is entirely appropriate. That’s a good New Testament parallel, and we’ll probably get into that in a future episode.
But we know that they couldn’t literally build their way into heaven with a tower, even if they tried. So again: why does God say “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” if they can do this:
Let me read verse 4 again:
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves
So I don’t think “the heavens” refers to the mere skies. I don’t think “the heavens” even means they could literally build a tower tall enough to reach God’s home—in a physical sense. Again, we have rocket ships that go to space on a regular basis, and heaven is just fine with it.
I think it means “the heavens” in the sense of the spiritual realm. This is how the Book of Ephesians uses the phrase “the heavens” or “the heavenly realms.” When Ephesians and other places in the New Testament use the phrase “the heavenly realms,” it doesn’t literally just mean “in heaven.” It can mean the spiritual realm in general.
Ephesians 6:12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
That’s the ESV. The spiritual forces of evil are not primarily in heaven. They’re the fallen angels and demons that we war against right here on earth. But they’re in the spiritual realm, which is what it means by “the heavenly places.”
Here’s that verse in the NIV
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
And here’s how it says it in the King Jimmy
against spiritual wickedness in high places.
High places. And Babel was an attempt to create a high place. It was not a physical threat to God’s Kingdom. They weren’t physically accessing heaven. They were building a structure, and something about this structure carried the power to access the spiritual realm.
In Giants: Sons of the Gods, Doug Van Dorn says: What was taking place at the tower was deeply religious. It was based upon an age-old idea that through this tower, they would be able to interact with heavenly beings. (Page 76)
Babel, of course, will later be known as Babylon in your Bible. A city and kingdom of great significance in scripture; they not only conquered Israel in the Old Testament, but they’re spoken of as making a return in the end times in the Book of Revelation and will have to be put down again. God prophesies the doom of Babylon in the book of Jeremiah, and I want you to notice what He calls it:
Jeremiah 51:24-25
24 “I will repay Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea before your very eyes for all the evil that they have done in Zion, declares the Lord.
25 “Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain,
declares the Lord,
which destroys the whole earth;
I will stretch out my hand against you,
and roll you down from the crags,
and make you a burnt mountain.
O destroying mountain. Why would God call it a mountain? Babylon is in Shinar; a plain. It’s not like Hermon, which was a mountain. The commentaries will tell you that this is just symbolic language because Babylon has no mountain. My study bible says “the exact meaning is uncertain” on this phrase because there’s no mountain there. (ESV Study Bible, page 1469)
I’ll tell you what this phrase means: it’s talking about the false mountain: the Tower of Babel. The human-made cosmic mountain where man attempted to access the spiritual realm.
There’s even a linguistic link in that verse: God said he would make it a burnt mountain—Hebrew śᵊrēp̄â (ser-ay-faw)—a much more rare Hebrew word used in Genesis 11:3 when the builders said, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.”
In fact, the word “destroying” there in Jeremiah 51:25 can also be translated “corrupting.” The Hebrew word (Shachath) means both. Shachath is a verb, so this is a mountain that corrupts. The next part of the verse says it destroys—or corrupts—the whole earth. It’s a common word in Scripture; it’s the same word used in Genesis 6 to speak of the pre-flood world and how “the earth was corrupt in God's sight” and “all flesh had corrupted their way.”
If ziggurats are all over the place, God obviously allowed them to be built. Not saying they’re good, just saying God allowed them. But God stopped the building of Babel. What made Babel so special that God put a stop to it? Why does he call it a mountain that corrupts?
That is the question we’ll discuss next time, and we’ll also pick up a thread we left off last week: how did Nimrod become a gibbowr?
Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.
Notes:
Citations from the article on The Human Journey:
Hirst, K. Kris. “Artifacts of the Royal Cemetery of Ur.” ThoughtCo, July 3, 2019.
Woolley, Sir Leonard. Excavations At Ur. Taylor & Francis, 2013.
Wright, R. The Evolution of God. Little, Brown and Company, 2009.
Full Heiser quote from earlier: Michael Heiser said: “The Tower of Babel is regarded by all scholars as one of Mesopotamia’s famous man-made sacred mountains—a ziggurat. Ziggurats were divine abodes, places where Mesopotamians believed heaven and earth intersected.” (Also see footnote on this page. It’s Unseen Realm expanded, page 140.)