Babylon

Joel Kramer has a weakness when it comes to Tower of Babel. But apart from this, mainly first part of the video, it is a fairly good video:

Excavating Babylon (with Joel Kramer)
Sean McDowell | 25 Dec. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsnKAo7ac-8

1:17 On that one, I'd say "yes" and "no" ...

It's like saying Boston first shows up in AD 1204.

"In 1204, King John vested sole control over the town in his bailiff."

Before Massachusetts, there was Lincolnshire.

(Nearby property actually does show up in Domesday Book - but not under the name St. Botulphes-town, from 1470 known to be shortened as Boston).

In fact, Boston, Lincolnshire is a kind of anti-Babylon. Babylon went from city to demon-possessed wilderness. Iccanoe was a demon-possessed wilderness, until St. Botulph showed up ...

6:13 However, you have no cuneiform tablets from Genesis 10 and 11.

You do have cuneiform tablets, looking up my reference, ABC 20 “The Chronicle of Early Kings”, which seem to indicate there was a Babylon in "Subartu" before there was one in South Iraq.

Subartu seems to be where Mesopotamia is in East Turkey, possibly also North Iraq and North Syria. It's location is by now not precisely known.

If Ken Griffith and Darrell White put the location right, that would mean, on my view, there were three locations of Babel:

1) mine, Göbekli Tepe
2) theirs, in Diyarbakil
3) Sargon's / Nebuchadnezzar's

But on my view, Subartu possibly could have extended to Göbekli Tepe. However, given the end of Genesis 11 Babel would be carbon dated 8600 BC, there would still be a secondary location before Sargon gets around to transfer Babilu from North Mesopotamia to arguably Agade itself.

My contention about the place Joel Kramer excavated is, it was under Sargon known as Agade before he (having defeated Babilu in Subartu) had opportunity to rename it Babilu.

There are, as Ken Griffith and Darrell White mention, younger tablets than ABC 20 “The Chronicle of Early Kings” which exclude their interpretation, if correct. But these other ones are precisely younger.

7:37 My Hebrew is next to non-extant, even if I copy from interlinear to argue with Jews from time to time, but to my best knowledge, Beth-El does not mean gate of God but house of God.

7:46, on my view, as mentioned, the Babilu of Nebuchadnezzar was previously known as Agade. Look here:

And he called the name of the city Bethel, which before was called Luza
[Genesis 28:19]

So, previous mentions of Bethel, for instance in Genesis 12 and 13, the original account would have been ....

"And passing on from thence to a mountain, that was on the east side of Luza, he there pitched his tent, having Luza on the west, and Hai on the east; he built there also an altar to the Lord, and called upon his name."

But it was later changed to the now extant text.

And passing on from thence to a mountain, that was on the east side of Bethel, he there pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Hai on the east; he built there also an altar to the Lord, and called upon his name.

8:33 The Bible has a very clear view of where Jerusalem is, from when Abraham gets to Salem and to Mount Moria, to Apocalypse 11, where St. John refuses to call it Jerusalem. For reasons which need not be far off.

The Hebrews from Abraham to Joseph and from Moses to King David were perhaps less familiar with Babel, geographically.

I am highly confident that theological truths that hold about Nimrod's Babel also hold about Nebuchadnezzar's, but Hebrew memory is not naturally speaking a guarantor that they are geographically the same.

8:51 I have never contested that the Babylon in 32°32′33″N 44°25′16″E was Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon.

I am just saying, it was not Nimrod's (by the way, Nimrod's Ninive is only retrospectively called "the great city", since Qermez Dere is much smaller).

9:35 In the case of Nimrod's Babel, there is actually literary evidence against placing it in 32°32′33″N 44°25′16″E.

The adverb miqqedem.

Mt Judi: 37°22′10″N 42°20′39″E
Durupınar site: 39°26′26.39″N 44°14′5.22″E
Mount Ararat: 39°42′07″N 44°17′54″E

Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon is actually East of candidates for the landing place.

This is not the case with Göbekli Tepe which is nearly due West of Mt Judi:

37°13′25″N 38°55′18″E

A journey keeping around 37 ° and some North, starting 42 ° East and ending 39 ° East would really and truly involve "removing from the East" ...

10:13 "I've never known of someone proposing another place for Babylon"

Meaning, Joel Kramer is here referring by "Babylon" to Nebuchadnezzar's city, not to Nimrod's, of which he already said there were other proposals.

11:28 It's worth mentioning that the wasteland around Nebuchadnezzar's city was there in AD 90 ~ 100, when St. John wrote Apocalypse and Gospel.

A bit later, Hadrian couldn't find it.

17:53 I stopped to look up Koldewey. It seems, the article I found also gives a negative answer to whether Nimrod's city was also Nebuchadnezzar's.

"Ctesias, quoted by Diodorus Siculus and in George Syncellus's Chronographia, claimed to have access to manuscripts from Babylonian archives, which date the founding of Babylon to 2286 BC, under the reign of its first king, Belus.[34]"

Traditionally, Ninus and Belus, prior to Hislop, were not confused with Nimrod.

Syncellus places the fall of Babel near the birth of Peleg to 2724 BC, 438 years before Belus founded Babylon.

27:11 From Marduk to Hyenas and Wolves. Ha!

32:33 Excellent point. Cyrus did not end Babylon, Alexander the Great died there.

Babylon is in ruins by 100 AD. Hope Joel is going to make the point I made : Jesus Christ ended Babylon, by dying on the Cross.

Just as Abraham ended cannibalism in Fontbrégua cave in Provence, by praying to the true God during his childhood in Ur Kasdim.

34:59 Stopped the video again to check how much of Isaias' prophecy fits Göbekli Tepe.

Prior to Klaus Schmidt arriving, it was a kind of "holy place" of a somewhat pagan sort:

"Speaking to state-run Anadolu Agency, Yıldız said that before the archaeological excavations began, the ancient site was considered sacred by locals who used to use it as a place for sacrifice and make wishes."

But wild beasts shall rest there, and their houses shall be filled with serpents, and ostriches shall dwell there, and the hairy ones shall dance there:
[Isaias (Isaiah) 13:21]

And demons and monsters shall meet, and the hairy ones shall cry out one to another, there hath the lamia lain down, and found rest for herself.
[Isaias (Isaiah) 34:14]

Nearby Edessa (which is one candidate for Ur Kasdim) has long been a centre for occultism. This area saw a fairly longish survival of the old Babylonian religion.

The guard of Göbeklitepe, humanity’s ‘ground zero’
ŞANLIURFA | March 27 2018 00:05:19
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/the-guard-of-gobeklitepe-humanitys-ground-zero-129322

38:43 I can definitely see that. Rome, the cars basically drive like in LA (I've been to both places), unless you keep on narrow streets some places in the Old City.

44:29 W a i t ... bricks from Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon reused?

Perhaps (though very much earlier, if so probably in 2556 BC itself) a thing that happened to Nimrod's as well.

The major weakness, as I see it, with Babel in Göbekli Tepe is bricks seem to be lacking.

An option I've also favoured is, verse 3 speaks of somewhere else, or sth else, which can also be described in the Hebrew words later reused for baked bricks.

But bricks could also have been recycled quickly and hence not found now.

That could also explain why so many buildings are roofless.