a city and tower undertaken to be built by the whole human race soon after the flood, and remarkable for the miraculous frustration of the attempt by the confusion of languages. As to the situation of ancient Babel, most authors are of opinion that it was exactly in the place where the celebrated city of Babylon afterwards stood. That it was in the same country appears indisputably from Scripture; but that it was exactly in the same place is what cannot be proved, nor is it a matter of any consequence.

Authors have been much divided about the motive by which the whole race of mankind were induced to join as one man in such an undertaking. Some have imagined that it was out of fear of a second deluge; others, that they knew beforehand that they were to be dispersed through all the different countries of the world, and built this tower in order to defeat the design of the Deity; because having a tower of such vast height as they proposed, those who were at a distance could easily find their way back again. Had either of these been their design, however, it is probable they would have chosen an eminence rather than a plain for the situation of their tower, or indeed that they would have chosen some high mountain such as Ararat for their mark, rather than any tower at all; for though it is said that they designed the top of their tower to reach to heaven, we can scarcely suppose them to have been so absurd, as to imagine this possible in the sense we understand it; and must therefore rather take it in the limited sense in which it is often used by Moses and his countrymen, where they speak of cities walled up to heaven. Others there are who imagine that the top of this tower was not to reach up to heaven, but to be consecrated to the heavens, i.e., to the worship of the sun, moon, and stars; of the fire, air, &c., and other natural powers as deities; and therefore that the true Deity interposed in order to prevent a total and irrecoverable defection. Certain it is, that the species of idolatry which takes for its objects its worship those natural agents, as it is the most ancient, so it is by far the most rational, and the most difficult to be disproved. It is much more difficult, for instance, to prove that the sun, which by his enlivening beams gives vigour to the whole creation, is not a deity, than that a log of wood is not one; and hence, if such a system of religion became universally established among mankind, it would be impossible ever afterwards to eradicate it. Indeed that the scheme of Babel, whatever it was, could have been put in execution by man, seems evident from the interpolation of the Deity on the occasion; for we cannot suppose that he would have worked a miracle on purpose to defeat that which would have defeated itself if he had let it alone; and he expressly says, That now nothing could be restrained from them; which intimates very plainly, that, had this scheme gone on, the plan which God had laid for the government of the world would have been totally frustrated; and agreeable to this hypothesis Dr Tennison supposes that the tower was of a pyramidal form, in imitation of the spires of flame; and that it was erected in honour of the sun, as being the most probable cause of drying up the flood.

As to the materials made use of in the building of this tower, the scripture informs us that they were bricks and lime or bitumen. According to an eastern tradition, three years were taken up in making the bricks, each of which was 13 cubits long, 10 broad, and five thick. Oriental writers say, that the city was 313 fathoms in length, and 151 in breadth; that the walls were 5533 fathoms high, and 33 in breadth; and that the tower itself was no less than 10,000 fathom, or 12 miles high. Even St Jerome affirms from the testimony of eye-witnesses, who as he says had examined the remains of the tower, that it was four miles high; but Ado makes the height to have been no less than 5000 miles. The only account of its dimensions which can be at all depended upon (supposing it to have been the same which afterwards stood in the midst of the city of Babylon, and round which Nebuchadnezzar built the temple of Belus), is that given under the article BABYLON.