237 Babel, Tower of (1 Cor 13 : 12), and (in spite of the prohibition against allegorical explanations in his monastic rules) he interpreted the life of Moses as the way of the pure spirit towards cognition. Bibliography. Primary: ■ Frankenberg, W. (ed.), “Euagrius Ponticus,” AGWG.PH 13/2 (Berlin 1912) 8–471. [Syriac text with Greek-German translation] ■ Vaschalde, A. (ed.), Liber de Unione (CSCO 79/80; Louvain 1915–53). [Syriac text with Latin translation] Secondary: ■ Chediath, G., The Christology of Mar Babai the Great (Oriental Institute of Religious Studies 49; Kottayam/ Paderborn 1982). ■ Engelmann, T., “Babai der Große,” BBKL 28 (2007) 64–67. Till Engelmann Babel /Babel, Tower of; /Babylon; /Babylonia Babel, Tower of I. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament II. Judaism III. Christianity IV. Islam V. Other Religions VI. Literature VII. Visual Arts VIII. Music IX. Film I. Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Critical readings of the narrative of the tower of Ba- bel (Gen 11 : 1–9) have focused on three main ques- tions. (i) Is the narrative a compositional unity or the result of two (or more) originally separate narra- tives? (ii) Is there a particular historical context in which the narrative should ideally be interpreted? (iii) What is the meaning of the narrative? Gunkel famously suggested that the present form of the Babel narrative was the result of a com- bination of two previously existing narratives known to the Yahwist. The Tower-recension focused on the people’s desire to build a mighty tower reaching towards the heavens and concluded with the divine punishment of the scattering of the builders. A City-recension detailed the unified build- ing of a city and resulted in the divine diversifica- tion of human languages. More recently, Uehlinger has argued for four redactional layers for the com- position of the Babel narrative. The majority of scholars since the time of Gunkel, however, have tended to view the narrative as a compositional unity. The question of the historical horizons against which the narrative of Babel might be read is vexed. A number of commentators point to so-called “real- istic” elements of the narrative which they claim highlight the Mesopotamian background of the story; this is most clearly the case in connection to 238 the building materials used by the Babelites in the construction of the tower (the references to “bricks” and “bitumen” in Gen 11 : 3). The tower has often been treated (sometimes exclusively) as key for re- constructing the historical context imaged by the narrator. The tower of Babel is often identified with Mesopotamian ziggurats in general. It has been noted, however, that the Hebrew term used for the tower in Gen 11, migda¯ l, generally points to a mili- tary function, not a cultic function, in the HB/OT (e.g., Judges 8 : 9, 17; Ps 48 : 13; Ezek 26 : 9) J. Wal- ton, pointing to debates over the precise function of ziggurats in the ancient Near East, analyzes the names of many of these edifices before concluding that ziggurats served as divine stairways that allowed for the deities to descend to earth. The identifica- tion of the tower as a ziggurat does not ultimately help to narrow the historical time frame for the composition of the narrative. The ziggurat was an important, in fact central, aspect of Mesopotamian culture for much of antiquity. Interpreters like Wal- ton, therefore, can argue that the identification of the tower with a ziggurat is essential and points to the extreme antiquity of the current narrative. Other readers, however, can use the same identifica- tion to claim that the narrative dates from the pe- riod of the Babylonian exile and Israel’s forced ex- posure to the reality of Babylon and its main ziggurat, Etemenanki (Weisman: 48). The narrative itself is marked by great linguistic economy, and Gunkel wrote of its “almost excessive conciseness” (Gunkel: 101). The gapped and highly ambiguous nature of the biblical prose makes a single interpretation very difficult (Fewell). Differ- ent commentators highlight competing terms or phrases in the narrative to argue for their respective interpretations. The dominant reading, with a strong focus on the people building a tower with “its head in the heavens,” has viewed the story of Babel as an account of hubris and rebellion against the divine. The people are trying to encroach upon the territory of the deity. Such a reading is often strengthened by pointing to the Babelites’ desire to make a “name” (Gen 11 : 4) for themselves, a desire which is then contrasted with Yahweh’s promise to make a “name” for Abram (Gen 12 : 2). A contempo- rary variation of the dominant reading, focusing more attention on the “city,” has viewed the narra- tive as a critique of the totalizing power of empire (Babylon) which, through the construction of a sin- gular city and the imposition of a dominant lan- guage (“one voice”), enforces cultural and economic conformity upon “all the earth” (Croatto). A more conciliatory reading puts less attention on the tower and suggests that the Babelites’ desire to re- main in “one place” is, while misguided, not neces- sarily prideful or rebellious. Their desired unity simply blocks the fulfillment of the divine com- mand to “spread out and fill the whole earth” given