Genesis 11 “Tower of Babel,” and Aristophanes Birds 550ff.
ANNOTATIONS BY DANIEL LEVINE.
BOLD FACE indicates biblical parallels with Greek text of Aristophanes)
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly (πλίνθοις ὀπταῖς ὥσπερ Βαβυλῶνα. “with baked bricks, like [at] Babylon)” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city (μίαν ὀρνίθων πόλιν “one city – polis – of birds), with a tower that reaches to the heavens (τὸν ἀέρα πάντα κύκλῳ καὶ πᾶν τουτὶ τὸ μεταξὺ “all the air around and and everything in between”), so that we may make a name for ourselves (“… send a delegation to Zeus and set out your demands τὴν ἀρχὴν τὸν Δί᾽ ἀπαιτεῖν “to demand back the empire from Zeus); otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building (φρυκτωρίαι
ἐν τοῖσι πύργοις “The torch-fires in the towers are all burning” 1161). 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them (CHORUS: “But how will mankind recognize us as gods and not as jays?” καὶ πῶς ἡμᾶς νομιοῦσι θεοὺς ἄνθρωποι κοὐχὶ κολοιούς 571). 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel (Βαβυλῶνα “Babylon”)—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
The Lord wins in Genesis, because the text is a holy book showinbg the deity’s power, but in Aristophanes’ BIRDS, the builders of the city in the sky actually win the struggle against the high gods – in good comic wish-fulfillment fashion. They have created a successful and lasting UTOPIA.
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