Babel, or God’s Gate
“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 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. And they said one to another, ‘Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, ‘Go to, let us build us a city (Babel — Author) 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.” (Genesis, 11:1-4).
So the people of Babel came out of their huts and got down to building a city on the plain, planning to make it a place to live in, a sight to feast one’s eyes on, a lure for wandering foreigners. At first things seemed to be going well, as befits people. They made some bricks, stocked up “slime” (bitumen), invited experienced masters from neighboring cities, and began to lay the foundation, which more than one generation of their forebears had dreamt of. At this point, however, something strange began to occur, as if the devil himself had intervened.
At first, the stocks of bricks and invaluable bitumen began to vanish, although the many guards never took their eyes off it day and night. (Travelers who occasionally passed across the Shinar plain said it is precisely at that time that the numerous relatives of the guards launched active construction. Could it be a coincidence?). But the point was not only this. It turned out that the all-too-wise gurus who ruled those people failed to coordinate the project of the future city and tower. Some of them wanted to build something like the glorious Atlantis, others preferred the prosperous commercial Tyre, and still others tried to prove it was better for everybody to go back to their huts. Indeed, why does an average person of sound mind need a tower as tall as the sky? For it is giddy here, and the sun can turn you blind. The hut option was also attractive because it required no bricks, bitumen, projects, or experienced builders. All it needed was guards.
To get things underway the Babel residents decided to set up a Council of Elders. There being many examples of such a setup, the residents looked around and opted for the practices of the foggy Albion’s Council of Elders. The latter had been ruled for many centuries by two groups of sages, either of which representing the interests of all inhabitants of the island. So the Babelonians went to the Albionians to study their experience and then studiously put it into practice. But something went wrong. To start with, two groups of Albionian advisers, once on the fertile land of Babel, immediately branched out into a hundred groups, each of them pursuing its own exclusive interests, as the Babelonian logic went. Another interesting paradox was that all the hundred groups had absolutely the same programs.
This also bred some other local peculiarities. For example, the lineup of groups in the Albionian Council had always been surprisingly stable, and if an elder defected to another group (they called it crossing the floor, quite a rare thing indeed), this always caused a resounding public scandal. Conversely, the Babelonian councilors had an absolutely free hand in this: they would incessantly change colors and strike new alliances, only to split again, as it turned out. And while the Albionian Council could be compared to a race where all horses try to outrun one another, still running in the same direction, the Babelonian Council rather resembled an upset anthill where each ant was running in a direction of its own, deftly tripping up all the others. What their politicians valued the most were bullhorns, and, in spite of never-ending journeys, they kept talking and talking, promising and promising, without a second’s respite. Ostensibly speaking the same language and taking the same solemn oaths, they still did not understand each other and thus failed as a matter of principle to coordinate the city construction project.
The poor plebeians seemed to have double and triple vision: the councilors had long become indifferent and uninteresting to them, as if they all had the same face. They reminded some of a number of jars bearing various gaudy labels and filled with the same gray unappetizing substance of unknown purpose.
As the verbiage continued, the coveted city could either extend far beyond the horizon or drown together with the tower in the unending deluge of empty eloquence. Meanwhile, the building materials had almost totally disappeared (as a result of global warming, some scientist tried to explain it). Every now and then, prophets would emerge to warn the Babelonian people that the Holy Writ’s following prophesy was about to come true: “Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis, 11:7) and that the Lord would close the Gate of Heaven in great wrath, scatter the Babelonians over all the earth, so that they would stop building the city and even forget having once had such an intention. To forget it forever.
