The Tower of Babel and Mormon Scripture I Ep. 1626 | LDS Discussions Ep. 13

The Tower of Babel and Mormon Scripture: When Literal History Meets Academic Scholarship

What happens when a religious tradition treats an ancient mythological narrative as historical fact? This question sits at the heart of a significant tension within Mormon truth claims, one that directly involves the Book of Mormon's foundational narrative. The Tower of Babel account appears not only in the Bible's Genesis but also in the Book of Mormon through the story of the Jaredites. Yet modern scholars across religious and secular disciplines have reached broad consensus that the Tower of Babel, like the global flood and Adam and Eve, represents mythological literature rather than historical event. For members seeking intellectual consistency between their faith and documented history, understanding this gap matters profoundly.

The LDS Discussions podcast, in collaboration with Mormon Stories, has examined this discrepancy in detail. Their analysis reveals a structural problem: the Book of Mormon's entire historical narrative for the Jaredite civilization depends on the Tower of Babel being a literal, world-altering event. If it was not, the theological and historical foundations of Mormon scripture begin to crack.

Background: The Tower of Babel Across Traditions

The Tower of Babel story appears in Genesis 11:1–9, describing humanity's unified language and failed attempt to build a tower to heaven, resulting in divine confusion of tongues and human dispersal. The account explains linguistic diversity as divine punishment.

However, the historical record tells a different story. Hebrew scholars, including those cited by modern biblical commentators, have determined that Genesis itself was not written by Moses, a claim Joseph Smith explicitly made. Instead, linguistic analysis suggests the Tower of Babel narrative was composed relatively late in Israel's history, likely during or after the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE).