| 单词 | tower of babel | ||||||
| 释义 | Tower of BabelBa•bel(ˈbeɪ bəl, ˈbæb əl)n. Ba•bel(ˈbæb əl)n.
Tower of BabelTower of BabelThe computer industry in the 20th and 21st centuries. There are countless arbitrary names made up every day for products and functions in this fast-paced field, which is changing constantly, even as you read this paragraph. See naming fiascos and standards.
 Tower of Babel(religion, spiritualism, and occult)One of the most well known biblical stories is related in Genesis 11. It tells of an ancient people who built a city with a tower that reached to the heavens. In the face of such hubris, God confused their language so that the people spoke many different tongues and could not understand one another. They thus scattered to the corners of the earth. The site of this tower, Babel, recalls the ancient city of Babylon and is the origin of the modern word “babbling.” In the nineteenth century, many questioned the story, dismissing it as a baseless fable. However, archeologists exploring ancient Babylon, located in modern Iraq, uncovered the ruins of a ziggurat, a temple in the form of a stepped pyramid. It was soon discovered that for several thousand years the people of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys had centered their town on one or more ziggurats. The Babylonian ziggurat had a square base, each side being some 300 feet in dimension. It honored the deity Marduk and is believed to be the source of the biblical story. Ziggurats were made of mud bricks, and even in the dry climate they have not fared well over time. Babylon, as an urban center, disintegrated after the fifth-century Persian conquest. Only the base of the Tower of Babel now exists, though a few other small examples of ziggurats have survived. The largest surviving ziggurat is found at Elam in southwestern Iran. The best preserved is at Ur, in modern Iraq, a ziggurat dedicated to the the moon god Nanna. In the contemporary world, the discovery of ziggurats has been used as evidence for the historical accuracy of the biblical text. However, critics have pointed out that while the Tower of Babel story probably refers to a real historical building, the myth itself is not a believable explanation for the origins of the world’s languages. Not to be outdone, a small group of conservative Christians has attempted to argue that ancient Hebrew was the original human language and other languages descend from it. Such arguments have met with little positive response from linguists. The Tower of Babel story might also have derived from an ancient Sumerian belief in a distant age during which everyone worshiped Enlil, the main Sumerian deity, until Enki, the god of wisdom, confused the people’s speech. Sources:Tower of Babel
Synonyms for Tower of Babel
|
||||||
| 随便看 |
|
英语词典包含2567994条英英释义在线翻译词条，基本涵盖了全部常用单词的英英翻译及用法，是英语学习的有利工具。
Tower of Babel - (Genesis 11:1-11) a tower built by Noah's descendants (probably in Babylon) who intended it to reach up to heaven; God foiled them by confusing their language so they could no longer understand one another