TONGUES, CONFUSION OF. Genesis 11:1-9 contains the account of the origin of languages. That the languages of today root out of a past in which men used a common speech is an idea accepted by specialists engaged in philological research. The question of the origin of the various languages is closely related to the question whether the different races of men have sprung from a single stock. The Genesis account describes how the descendants of Noah settled in the plain of Shinar, or Babylonia, and built a city and a tower to reach into heaven, which would serve as a center of unity and power as well as satisfy their ego.

Many towers such as described in the Genesis account have been found on the Babylonian plains. Known today as ziggurats they served as rallying points around which cities were built as well as centers of worship. Inscriptions have been found relating to some of the ziggurats. Stephen L. Caiger (Bible and Spade [1936], p. 29) refers to an inscr. which has to do with the collapse of such a ziggurat, quoted by George Smith (Chaldaean Account of Genesis [1880]): “The building of this temple offended the gods. In a night they threw down what had been built. They scattered them abroad, and made strange their speech. The progress they impeded.”