Editing Tower of Babel (section)

=== Themes ===
The story's theme of competition between God and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of [[Adam and Eve]] in the [[Garden of Eden]].<ref name="Harris">{{cite book|last1=Harris|first1=Stephen L.|author-link1=Stephen L. Harris|title=Understanding the Bible: A Reader's Introduction|date=1985|publisher=Mayfield|location=Palo Alto|isbn=9780874846966}}</ref> The first century Jewish interpretation found in [[Flavius Josephus]] explains the construction of the tower as a [[hubris]]tic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant [[Nimrod]].

There have been some contemporary challenges to this classical interpretation, with emphasis placed on the explicit motive of cultural and linguistic homogeneity mentioned in the narrative (11:1, 4, 6); this reading of the text sees God's actions not as a punishment for pride, but as an etiology of [[cultural differences]], presenting Babel as the [[cradle of civilization]].<ref name="hiebert">{{cite journal|last1=Hiebert|first1=Theodore|title=The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World's Cultures|journal=Journal of Biblical Literature|date=2007|volume=126|issue=1|pages=29–58|jstor=27638419}}</ref>