The Skeptics Annotated Bible (20 page)

26 And Joktan begat Almodad, and Sheleph, and Hazarmaveth, and Jerah,

27 And Hadoram, and Uzal, and Diklah,

28 And Obal, and Abimael, and Sheba,

29 And Ophir, and Havilah, and Jobab: all these were the sons of Joktan.

30 And their dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar a mount of the east.

31 These are the sons of Shem, after their families,
after their tongues
, in their lands, after their nations.

32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood.

11
And
the whole earth was of one language
, and of one speech.

(11.1)
“The whole earth was of one language.”
This could not be true, since by this time (supposedly around 2400 BCE) there were already many languages, each unintelligible to the others. This is even admitted earlier in Genesis (10.5, 20, 31) where other languages are mentioned before the tower of Babel was supposedly constructed.
43 How many languages before Babel?

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And
the LORD came down to see the city and the tower
, which the children of men builded.

(11.5)
“The Lord came down to see the city and the tower.”
Couldn’t he see it from where he was sitting?
18 Does God know everything?

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and
now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

(11.6)
“Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
God worries that the people will succeed in building a tower high enough to reach him (them?) in heaven, and that by so doing they will become omnipotent.

7 Go to,
let us go down,
and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

(11.7)
“Let us go down.”
Maybe he hasn’t been talking to himself; maybe there is more than one of them up there. Well, however many there may be, they all decide to come down to confuse the builders by confounding language and scattering humans abroad.
45 Is God the author of confusion?
9 How many gods are there?

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because
the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth:
and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

(11.9)
“The LORD did there confound the language of all the earth.”
43 How many languages were there before Babel?

10
These are the generations of Shem
: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:

(11.10-32)
“These are the generations of Shem.”
Another boring genealogy that we are told to avoid in 1 Tim 1.4 and Tit 3.9. (“Avoid foolish questions and genealogies.”) Note the ridiculously long lives of the patriarchs.