[[170]]
So, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues,
the direct intervention of the Divine Will was brought in. As
this diversity was felt to be an inconvenience, it was attributed
to the will of a Divine Being in anger. To explain this anger, it
was held that it must have been provoked by human sin.
Out of this conception explanatory myths and legends grew as
thickly and naturally as elms along water-courses; of these the
earliest form known to us is found in the Chaldean accounts, and
nowhere more clearly than in the legend of the Tower of Babel.
The inscriptions recently found among the ruins of Assyria have
thrown a bright light into this and other scriptural myths and
legends: the deciphering of the characters in these inscriptions
by Grotefend, and the reading of the texts by George Smith, Oppert,
Sayce, and others, have given us these traditions more nearly in
their original form than they appear in our own Scriptures.
The Hebrew story of Babel, like so many other legends in the
sacred books of the world, combined various elements.
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