Was There Really a Nimrod, Really a Tower?
“Scholars have attempted, without real success,” says Collier’s Encyclopedia, “to identify Nimrod with a number of ancient kings, heroes, or deities, among them Merodach (Marduk), an Assyrian-Babylonian god; Gilgamesh, a Babylonian hero noted as a hunter; and Orion, a hunter in Classical mythology.” So a German reference work admits that in reality “we know nothing more about him than what is offered by the Bible account.”
Nevertheless, Nimrod did exist. Arabic tradition mentions him. His name, as Nimrud or Nimroud, occurs in the names of places in the Near East. Sumerian-Akkadian didactic poems report his heroic deeds. And Jewish historian Josephus refers to him by name.
Nimrod’s political system, designed as it was to supplant God’s rightful rulership over mankind, thereby took on religious overtones. People began building “a tower with its top in the heavens” to “make a celebrated name for [themselves],” not for God.—Genesis 11:4.
Although archaeologists have been unable to identify ancient ruins as definitely being Nimrod’s Tower of Babel, they have found over two dozen apparently similar structures in Mesopotamia. In fact, this type of tower was characteristic of temple architecture there. The book Paths of Faith says that Babylonian temples “centered in a ziggurat, which was a pyramid-shaped structure with a shrine at the top.” It adds: “Similar to religious edifices from the pyramids of Egypt to the stupas of India or pagodas of the Buddhist world, the ziggurat . . . was probably a remote ancestor of the steepled church.”
German archaeologist Walter Andrae did extensive digging in this area at the beginning of the 20th century. The shrine at the top of the ziggurat, he wrote, was thought to be “the gate . . . through which the God of heaven descends the ziggurat staircase to reach his earthly dwelling place.” No wonder inhabitants of Babel claimed that the name of their city meant “Gate of God,” derived from Bab (gate) and ilu (God).
It should come as no surprise some will not accept Bible history . The Scriptures foretold there would be deliberate attempts to discredit the holy writings.
(2 Peter 3:5, 6) For they deliberately ignore this fact, that long ago there were heavens and an earth standing firmly out of water and in the midst of water by the word of God; 6 and that by those means the world of that time suffered destruction when it was flooded with water.
