0012 Chapter two discusses the Tower of Babel story, along with ancient commentaries.

In Genesis, the story of Noah’s flood is followed by the genealogy-rich Table of Nations.  The Table of Nations leads into the Tower of Babel incident.  Then, another genealogy follows, segueing into the stories of Abram (who becomes Abraham).

Farrell does not take the reader into the particularity… that is, the “fit”… of this story as an introduction to Abram’s call.  He does not speculate that Abram’s call is directly connected to the embarrassing collapse of a bureaucratic project that promised to deliver a monument rivaling those of the Egyptians.

0013 Instead, Farrell wonders why the denizens… er… rather, the elites of the land of Shinar seek notoriety in building a structure larger than… those damned Egyptian pyramids that everyone admires.  At the time, the Egyptian pyramids are even more impressive than today.  A stone casement adorns each side.  The casement has been chipped off over the millennia.  So, we will never know what the pharaoh proclaimed about himself, for all to read.

Whatever it was, I suspect that it had to be edited by later pharoahs.

0014 Timing?

Farrell is not so interested in connecting the Tower building to a historical event.

Nevertheless, intelligent guesses are possible.

The idea of a tower that establishes the notoriety of a people… or is it regime?.. places the building of the Tower of Bab-ilim (Sumerian for “the gate of the gods”) after the Egyptian pyramid building frenzy (by most reckonings, occurring between 2550 to 2450 B.C.)

According to the world history encyclopedia, dynastic civilization in southern Mesopotamia is already hundreds of years old at this time, in the style of city states.  Around 2500 B.C., the first dynasty of Lagash establishes the first empire, swallowing many city states into one administration.  Codes of law appear by 2350 B.C.  Sargon the Akkad’s empire is even greater than the first.  Sargon sacks Ur in 2330 B.C.  Ziggurats are in use in many Sumerian cities by 2100 BC, showing what empire-ruling administrations can accomplish. The first king-list is officially registered around the same time.

Then, a short dark age follows, say 2080-2020 BC.

A Sumerian rebirth follows, the Ur III period in Sumer, the third dynasty of Ur, lasts from 2047 to 1750 BC.  Then, Babylonians invade.  Elamites attack.  Amorites migrate into the region.  Sumerian civilization ends.

0013 Farrell is interested in what the Genesis tales reveal.

Genesis offers a clue concerning the leader of the populations of Shinar.  Nimrod is a mighty hunter before the Lord. Everyone else is completely intimidated.  Nimrod hunts and conquers wild beasts.  What about human hearts?  Nirond overflows with charisma.

So, of course, Nimrod’s lackeys… er… “administrators” want to advertise his name (as better than the Pharaoh’s).  What better billboard than a tower reaching to the heavens?  Certainly, the Tower of Bab-ilim would secure their leader’s fame as well as ensure their own narrow objectives, such as maintaining their positional power as gatekeepers of the world most sacred site.  Sacred?  Yes, the word, “Bab-ilim”, in Sumerian, means “gate of the gods”.

0014 So what does God do?

God comes down and confounds their speech… oh, I mean to say… their common language.

Once the language is confounded.  Work grinds to a halt.  The project is abandoned.  The blame game begins.

0015 Here, Farrell follows his discriminating nose to the concept that smells the most suspicious.

What is this “common language” business?

Mother tongues are associated with peoples.  Peoples have similar genetics, by way of descent.  So, does the confounding go all the way to the genes?  And, what is in our genes that can be confounded?  Is it DNA.  Or is it what the DNA expects to encounter once its curiously complex code is rendered into a genotype that potentiates a phenotype?

0016 This reader imagines that the Tower of Babel story fits into the terminal events of Ur III, or perhaps with the preceding brief (but, I am sure, distressing) “dark age”.  I imagine that Nimrod is an outsider, living off charisma, speaking a language that is different than Sumerian.  Suggestions?  Akkadian will do.

So, Nimrod rules over the plain of Shinar where two languages are spoken.  One associates with his new regime.  One associates with the old regime.  There are two peoples.  At the same time, there are two elites who want to take advantage of the union of the peoples.

So, a map needs to be constructed.  The topology of this map connects spoken terms between the languages.  With such a map, the people, in theory, speak a common language.

If they speak a common language, then there is nothing that they cannot do.

0017 Here is a picture of Farrell’s second procrustean bed, concerning the tower’s construction.

Note that a two-level interscope corresponds to sensible thought.

0017 Here is a picture of Farrell’s next procrustean bed, concerning the tower’s deconstruction.

Note that God’s intervention brings the perspective level into play.  Once in play, social construction begins.

0018 What do I know so far from the Genesis 11 story?

0019 In terms of technical cohesion_3b, kiln-fired bricks_2b are expensive and methodologically demanding_1b. They must be uniformly burnt “thoroughly”_1b.  So, there can be no diversity in the meeting of specifications.  When the architectorders bricks for a monumental tower and asks that the bricks be burnt “thoroughly”, the manufacturer must deliver the appropriate product.  So, the situation-level nested form addresses the organization or incorporation of the project.

In particular, the potential of “overcoming diversity” means that all the bricks are burnt thoroughly.

0020 Farrell further informs me that the Sumerian word, “Bab-ilim”, “gate of the gods”, is readily confounded with the Hebrew word, “Babel”, “confusion”.  

May I wonder whether the technical term for “thorough” has a counterpoint in punnery?

0021 Farrell continues.  Old Testament pseudepigraphical referrals to the Tower of Babel story are found in several books of the Sybilline Oracles (date estimated to be 150-200 A.D.).

In Book 3, a brief allusion tells of Nimrod-philic administrators wanting to go up to the starry heavens.  This precisely contradicts the administrator’s propaganda that visualizes the tower as a passage from the firmament to earth.  Celestial beings are invited to come down for refreshment.  Mortal beings (except, of course, the administrators themselves) are not invited to go up and do something impetuous, like carve their initials into the metallic surface of the firmament.

In Book 11, the text mentions a universal ruler who furnishes another race of restless men.  Does that terminology sound like “immigrant laborers”?  I suppose the line between immigrant and “restless” is fuzzy, at best.  These are the ones_1bwho make the bricks to construct a tower of awful height, in opposition to heaven.

0022 Farrell suggests that these brief snippets add to the picture in Genesis 11 in intriguing ways.

First, the idea of going to the starry heavens intimates a desire for cosmic power (that is, the power of celestial beings).  Can that desire be reduced to a quest for immortality (for example, as portrayed in the epic of Gilgamesh)?  Is mortality tied to the confounding of the languages that accompany the deconstruction of the Tower?

Second, one aspect of the confusion of languages is phonetic drift.

Third, maybe, the immigrant-slave laborers are not regarded as human.

0023 Farrell next considers Slavonic and Greek translations of 3 Baruch.

In the former, the Slavonic writer sees features of the story in a vision.  At the start, angels carry the visionary through an immense portal (time and space?) to a plain populated by chimeric men, with faces of cattle, horns of deer, feet of goats and loins of rams.  When questioned, the angels say that these are the ones who built the tower of war against God.  The Lord threw them out.

Later, the angels say that these chimerians force men and women to make bricks.  One woman gives birth while engaged in such tasks and is not allowed to stop.

In a more technical vein, the visionary finds out that the chimerians devise an augur.  What is the plan?  When they get high enough to contact the firmament, they will use the augur to drill a hole in its surface, in order to ascertain its composition.

0024 Farrell asks the reader to consider genetic technologies to account for the chimeric humans.  Plus, dows not the thickness of the gates of heaven indicate distances of transit from Earth to Sun or from Earth to Saturn?  Such questions raise the specter of interplanetary powers.  Is the goal of the Tower to manipulate celestial mechanics?

Too bad the chimerians are not around to ask.

0025 Farrell next turns to the Book of Jubilees, where the Lord our God says that, if the tower is completed, nothing will escape the Nimrod-affiliated administrative state (or, I should note, God says ‘something like that’).  This explains why the Tower is called “an act of war against God”.

Most likely, the administrators claim (for the public to hear) that the Tower will serve the convenience of the celestial being.  Come on down and have refreshment!   But, the administrators (in private) have far more nefarious plans.

Thank God, no one knows about them.

0026 The citizens of the Shinar plain agree that whatever the administrators say must be correct.  The great tower should ease the descent of a celestial being.  Even the immigrant-slave laborer, who still knows what “thorough” means, is on board.  Even that woman giving birth knows that her “people” can do anything that they set out to do.  After all, they have a common language.

It’s like mind over matter.

In this regard, Farrell mentions the research of a material-science professor, at the University of California (back in the day), who demonstrates that humans, through agreement and projected intention, can generate “psychometric objects”.

Are these things that are altered by conditions?  Or things that alter conditions?  Or maybe both?

“Psychometric” is an evocative (yet ambiguous) adjective… and occasionally… noun.

0027 To me, “psychometric” describes the difference between an actuality alone and an actuality₂ with a normal context₃and potential₁.  An actuality by itself is a mind-independent being composed of matter and form.  An actuality₂ that is bounded by a normal context₃ and potential₁ permits understanding or whatever one wants to call the entire nested form as a mind-dependent being.

Farrell notes that psychometric objects naturally belong to rituals.  In Christian tradition, bread and wine (matter and form) transubstantiates to the Body and Blood of Christ (being and form, as actuality₂ in a nested form).  The appearance or essence of the substantiated form remains the same.  The presence or esse_ce of the substantiating being changes from matter to being.  Matter is material.  Being is relational.  Being entangles matter in its relationality.

The Eucharist is an exemplar for psychometric objects.

Being (relationality) entangles matter (physicality).

A category-base nested form entangles an actuality itself.

0028 Speaking of psychometric objects, Farrell next turns to Pseudo-Philo’s version of the Tower of Babel story, where “thorough” takes on an alchemical flavor.  Each person says to his neighbor, “Let us write our names on the bricks and then thoroughly burn them in fire.”

To me, the immigrant-slave laborers are only imitating their Nimrod-loving administrative masters.  The word, “thoroughly”, passes from a technical quantification to an alchemic qualification.  To burn a brick is to heat it long enough to fix the written name, rather than to drive all the water out, leaving spaces for molten bitumen to seep into before solidifying and stabilizing the brick.

The thoroughly burnt brick absorbs molten bitumen.  When the bitumen solidifies, it fortifies the brick.

The alchemically psychometric burned brick appears to absorb molten bitumen, but maybe not as much.  Plus, it costs a lot less.

Does that sound like a recipe for disaster?

0029 Pseudo-Philo re-iterates the idea that, if these Nimrod-serving bureaucrats and their immigrant-slaves act as one people, due to the conviction that they speak “one language”, then they will be daring in all that they propose to do, including building a tower that will rival the Egyptian pyramids.

But, Pseudo-Philo does not seem to notice that the method of brick manufacture has already changed, from construction material to alchemical psychometric thing, making it more and more difficult to ascertain which bricks are suitable for monumental construction and which are not.

How can the translator stone permit the discrimination of technically thoroughly burnt bricks from alchemical psychometric bricks when the translator stone is the mechanism supporting the ideology that the people of the old regime and the people in the new regime now speak one language and that makes them one people?

0030 The two-level interscope changes slightly, but tellingly.

0032 So far, the pointed mention of a common language before the construction of the Tower of Babel suggests a single people speaking a single mother tongue, rather than a translator stone that maps between the language of an established elite (Sumerian still is spoken in temple halls and in schools of learning) and the language of immigrants (Akkadian is spoken by the newcomers, both elites and common folk).

However, the image of a common language does not rule out the possibility that there is an instrument, a translator stone, capable of rendering Sumerian into Akkadian and back again.  Plus, this instrument would be in the hands of the newcomers, the “administrative” elites, who have taken over management and think that Nimrod is a great sport.  These administrators would never cross Nimrod and his family.  But, they might subvert the execution of those royal commands that do not advance their own interests.

In fact, the established elites and the incoming elites have their own incentives to fashion a single people for the mighty hunter to rule.

0033 Indeed, certain clues in the Genesis text and subsequent commentaries argue against the suggestion that the term, “common language”, requires a single people speaking a single mother tongue.

But, what does the idea of a common language indicate?

0034 Farrell asks the reader to consider late 19th and early 20th century inquiry into the Indo-European language radiation, which documents many of linguistic transitions through writing.  Yes, writing is invented soon after the proto-Indo-European population rapidly grows and diversifies and settles new lands (including Europe, Persia and northern India).

The proto-Indo-Europeans are a single people with a common tongue around 4000 B.C.  Writing first appears slightly later in Mesopotamia and Egypt.  So, this language radiation picks up writing along the way, enriching the documentary evidence for the hypothesis of a language radiation from a single population.

0035 Indeed, scientific inquiry into spoken languages and peoples shows that these two go together for the radiation of the Indo-European family of languages.

0036 Can the same be said for all spoken languages?

Do all spoken languages and populations go together, all the way back to the population that founds Homo sapiens?

Plus, wouldn’t it be nice if scientists obtain a psychometric object that can verify an affirmative answer.  The psychometric object cannot be writing, since writing starts, say, around 3000 B.C., and anatomically modern humans appear in the archaeological record before 200,000 years ago.  Perhaps, a computer simulation will suffice.

Statistical correlations might work.

0037 What does this tell me?

Does Farrell want to find a key in the union of language and populations (hence, genetics)?

The union of language and population is supported by well-documented research into the Indo-European radiation.  The divergence of the languages is documented in writing, so to speak. 

The union of language and population supports the alluring psychometrics of modern linguistic inquiry.  Inquiry discerns more and more expansive language families, reaching back to the earliest Homo sapiens.  Is the divergence of all languages documented by our genetics, so to speak?

Such documentation will make the union of language and population uncontestable.

Will the union be so uncontestable that one can construct an ideology that says, “If we share a common tongue, then we are one people.”?

And, can that ideology be so persuasive that everyone in a region buys into it, even though they speak different languages?

0038 I wonder, and in that wonderment, I offer the following three-level interscope as Farrell’s next procrustean bed.

0039 On the content level, the actuality of a translator stone_2a is contextualized by an ideology of a common language_3athat is supported by the potential of ‘technical and group cohesion’_1a.  This material and immaterial cohesion_1a must be strong enough to sustain an ambitious project of monument construction_2b.

Working against this cohesion_1a is the potential that the labor is immigrant and not particularly well-remunerated_1b.  Here, the alchemic knowledge_1c that contextualizes the tower’s construction_2b comes into play.  Alchemic knowledge_1c supports the ideology that both elite and immigrant practice a common language_3a, courtesy of the translator stone_2a.

0040 Here is the virtual nested form in firstness.

Consider the psychometrics.

If immigrant and slave labor serves as a potential_1b by itself, then, to me, it seems unlikely to support the actualization of the tower_2b that the techical organization_3b aims to achieve.

If immigrant and slave labor serves as a potential_1b in the above virtual category-based nested form, then it_1b operates as a psychometric object working within the virtual normal context of elite alchemical knowledge_1c and the potential of ‘the technical and group cohesion’_1a that the technical organization_3b demands.

Consider the numerological approach.

If I consider a number for this virtual nested form, I suppose it would be the number 5.  In binary code, {5} is {1(2²)+0(2¹)+1(2⁰)}.  The perspective (2²) and content (2⁰) levels are posited.  The situation (2¹) level is negated, or transformed into something that it is not: a psychometric object_1b.

No immigrant or slave (by himself or herself) ideates that he or she is either immigrant or slave (because all are of one people due to the common language ideology).

0041 On the situation level, the actuality of tower construction_2b is contextualized by technical organization_3b and operates on the potential productivity of immigrant, not well-remunerated, labor_1b.  That does not mean that they_1b are not well fed.  They are fed slogans daily.

0042 On the perspective level, the elite’s hidden normal-context of celestial manipulation_3c brings the actuality of the tower as a psychometric object_2c into relation with the potential of ‘elite alchemical knowledge’_1c. 

The virtual nested form in the realm of normal context is telling.  I assign the number three.

0043 In binary, {3} is {0(2²)+1(2¹)+1(2⁰)}.  The perspective-level is negated, thereby forcing everyone to think in terms of sensible construction.

In fact, the official propaganda is that the intended purpose of the tower is to serve as a stairway from heaven to earth.  The tower is an invitation for a celestial being to descend and find refreshment.  So, the number 3 is not enough.  There is one more “level” that packs the entire three-level social construction into… um… a content-level actuality_2a?

0044 Okay, then about the number 11?

In binary, {11} is {1(2³)+0(2²)+1(2¹)+1(2⁰)}.

So, the {1(2³)} affirms the negation of the perspective-level normal context by masking its emptiness with a public proclamation_2a(new) that covers over the “0” in the perspective-level normal conext_3c.

At this point, I wonder, “May I call this numerology business, ‘numerometrics’?”

0045 What about non-biblical version of the same type of story as the Tower of Babel?

Notably, the Meopotamian epic, Ennerkar and the Lord of Aratta, notes that, way-back when, everyone addresses Enlil in a single language, then Enki mixes up the speech of men.

In the event, the mix-up involves an envoy going to the mountains of Aratta, in order to obtain gold and a specific form of silver, capable of participating in alchemic synthesis.  What would the envoy synthesize?  The translator stone?  A philosopher’s stone?  A formula to bind illusions, such as an ideology that everyone speaks a common tongue, to human minds, so that everyone accepts the ideology while, at the same time, obviously speaking different languages?  A translator’s stone can be spell binding.

0046 Farrell next mentions the Mayan creation account.  Parallels between the Popal Voh and the Tower of Babel are numerous, especially an implicit threat that human knowledge increases so rapidly as to threaten the gods.  Human knowledge includes cosmological information.  Human can identify the four corners of the sky.

In particular, the gods identify intellectuals as the problem.  In order to address their fears, the gods introduce wives and women to cause procreation and stop the accumulation of technical and alchemical knowledge.

Keep those explicit abstractions in check!

0047 Here, I return to the interscope for social construction before the confounding of speech.

Note how the titles of each level change.

0048 Here is what happens next.