and on the Non-identity of Babylon and Bahel. 39 



The greatest weight of authority unquestionably is for re- 

 ferring the former half of this verse to the foundation of the 

 Chaldean Babel or Babylon by the Assyrians ; — not, however, 

 by any one individual, " the Assyrian," but '^W^? {Asshur), 



that is, the people of Asshur, or the Assyrian nation generally. 

 Yet this is so far from aiding Mr. Carter's opinion as to that 

 city's having been " a settlement of the earliest antiquity," 

 "made in the very infancy of society," that it proves directly 

 the contrary ; for if the Babel of Genesis " was not till the 

 Assyrians founded it," it is manifest that the Assyrians must 

 already have existed as a nation, and that some time — pro- 

 bably a considerable time : "...this people wat not till the Assy- 

 rians founded it," — had first elapsed. And not merely so, 

 but it would also seem completely to establish the non-identity 

 of Babel and Babylon; for (as Mr. Carter hinlself observes,) 

 " why was Babel " said in Gen. x. 10. to be "Only the begin- 

 ning of his kingdom, if we are not to understartd that it was 

 Nimrod who also builded Nineveh " ? But if so, it follows 

 that Babel must have been erected before he " Went out into 

 Assyria" ; whilst, on the other hand, the prophet tells us that 

 the Chaldean Babel " was not till the Assyrians founded it" — 

 in other words, that it did not exist until after thfe establish- 

 ment of the Assyrian Empire by Nimrod. 



Without however placing entire dependence upon this 

 argument, on account of the darkness of the text of Isaiah, I 

 must most distinctly assert, that this text does not (nor indeed 

 does any other throughout the sacred volume,) in the slightest 

 manner connect the two cities: the whole that can be inferred 

 from it with respect to the age of Babylon is, that that capital 

 was already in the prophet's time a great flourishing city. It 

 is from the Jews of the Captivity alone that we derive the pre- 

 valent erroneous notion with respect to the identity of the 

 Babel of Genesis with the far more recent Babylon (Babel). 

 From the similarity of the names of the two cities and the 

 existence in the latter of the famed tower of Belus, they (per- 

 haps not unnaturally,) fell into the error of imagining them to 

 be the same ; and hence arose all the fables respecting the 

 tower of Babel, for which not the slightest ground exists in 

 the pages of Scripture. But that Babylon could not have been 

 founded near the time of Nimrod— that in fact it did not exist 

 until a comparatively late period, must assuredly be the only 



under my consideration, and I am willing to regard it, 07i the tvliolc, as an 

 authority in favour of my hypothesis as to the late foundation of Babylon, 

 although I must, at the same time, confess thatl am far from being satisfied 

 with any particular interpretation of it which has yet been given. 



