Page 67 - Heavenly Signs III by Mel Gable

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Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews

The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews (c. AD 94), recounted history as found
in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the tower built
and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to turn the people away from God. In this account, God confused the
people rather than destroying them, because annihilation with a Flood hadn't taught them not to be ungodly.

Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a
bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy,
but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny,
seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power... Now the
multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built
a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands
employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built,
that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with
mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to
destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners in the Flood; but he caused a tumult
among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be
able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that
language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion.
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Islamic Babel

Though not mentioned by name, the Qur'an has a story with similarities to the Biblical story of the Tower of
Babel, though set in the Egypt of Moses. In Suras 28:38 and 40:36-37, Pharaoh asks Haman to build him a stone
or clay tower so that he can mount up to heaven and confront the God of Moses. Another story in Sura 2:102
mentions the name of Babil, but tells of when the two angels Haroot and Maroot taught the people of Babylon
the tricks of magic and warned them that magic is a sin and that their teaching them magic is a test of faith. A
tale about Babil appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut in the Lisan el-'Arab (xiii. 72). It states that without
the tower that mankind would have been swept together by winds into the plain that was afterward called
"Babil.” It is there where they were assigned their separate languages by God, and were then scattered again in
the same way. 104

In the History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th century Muslim theologian al-Tabari, a fuller version is given:
Nimrod has the tower built in Babil, God destroys it and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac, is then
confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida relates the same story,
adding that the patriarch Eber who is an ancestor of Abraham was allowed to keep the original tongue, Hebrew
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in this case, because he would not partake in the building.

Both of the Islamic attacks of 1993 and 2001 were targeted at the World Trade Center Towers. The Islamic
terrorist must have assumed that God would bless them in this destruction of the Twin Towers. The first
bombing may be considered a warning. But, the second attack on the Twin Towers was more than a warning it

102 Book of Jubilees, Wesley Center for Applied Theology, Northwest Nazarene University.

103 Flavius Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews, Book I Chapter 4..3
104 "Pseudo Philo Chapter 6". Sacred-texts.com.