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The Birth of Religion

Travelling up North I-75 toward Dayton can tell you something about the nature of man: he is very religious. You can find almost any type of church there, not to mention a huge statue of touchdown Jesus near Monroe and a large mosque. Did you ever ask yourself where all the religions of the earth came from? Islam and Christianity are rather recent in comparison to some of ancient religions that have been around for thousands of years.

Anthropologists will tell you religion is a late development in the history of the world. It evolved as people in differing cultures tried to explain their origins and their relationship to the world.

Here’s an interesting quote: “All mankind has a common origin, as primates for many ages and as Homo sapiens perhaps for a million years, they spread out, occupied different territories and continents, and further changed in appearance and behavior. At some time in their long journey they became receptive to religion, which gradually evolved and persisted because it was favorable to survival.

Somewhere in early man’s ape-like mind, there developed an innate feeling that a spiritual force existed, which was impersonal and pervaded all of creation. Man learned to manipulate this force so that he could attain a desired outcome. Objects such as sticks or dolls, called fetishes, were thought to contain the force and could be worshiped.

As man further evolved he moved to animism. At this stage, he began to visualize the force as a personal spirit. He believed that a spirit or spiritual force was behind every event and many objects of the physical world carried spiritual significance.

Later he progressed to polytheism; moving from the belief in finite spirits to the worship of gods. That led to henotheism, which is belief in many gods, but only one was directly worshiped. And finally, the last stage was monotheism, or the worship of one God.

That’s what you would learn if you took an anthropology class at any secular university today, but it doesn’t square with Scripture or with anything we have yet observed from history. None of the polytheism to monotheism developments has ever actually been observed. But there is ample evidence that religions actually digress in the opposite direction – from the belief in one God to the belief in many gods. The best example is in Genesis 9-11. It answers the question of where the world’s religion came from.

The Aftermath of the Flood

At the end of the flood, eight people from the family of Noah left the ark. They were strong believers in the one true God. After the flood, who wouldn’t be? They shared the same language and the same culture, but this changed as children, grandchildren and great grandchildren were born to Noah’s sons and they gradually spread out across the Earth. Chapter 10 tells us that the sons of Shem remained in the region where the ark landed. The sons of Ham generally went south to Africa or east to China, and the sons of Japheth went to the north and the west. Seventy descendants are mentioned in all. Then in Chapter 11, the Bible turns its attention to Abraham, a descendant of Shem and the birth of the Hebrew nation. In the midst of Chapters 10-11 it is easy to overlook two parenthetical sections that have great significance. They tell us where the religions of the world, like Baal worship or astrology came from. Turn with me to the first section in Genesis 10:6-12.

Nimrod the Builder/Hunter/Priest

This account tells us about the grandson of Ham, the son of Cush. His name was Nimrod. Our text describes him as a mighty warrior and hunter. He was without a doubt the most popular hero in the ancient near east. The name Nimrod means “rebel” in Hebrew. He was the founder of the first world empire after the flood in the land of Shinar, which is in modern day Iraq. He built numerous cities: Babylon and Nineveh, both capitals of later world empires.

Ancient records reveal that Nimrod, like Cain before the flood, was intent on developing his own culture and religion. His intent was clearly to turn people away from the true God.

Ancient historians describe a rebellion which Nimrod led against God. We know that he became the lead priest of an occult religion. In fact, verses 8-10 might better be translated in this manner: Cush was the father of Nimrod; he began to be a tyrant in the earth. He was a tyrannical hunter in opposition to the Lord. Thus it is said, Nimrod the tyrannical opponent of God. The term hunter probably doesn’t refer to hunting animals, but men. He was a warrior. It was his ability to fight, kill, and rule ruthlessly that gave him uncontested power.

Nimrod started building Babylon about 100 years after the end of the flood. As his power grew, so did his perverted, degraded religion. It started in Babylon, spread to Nineveh and eventually throughout the ancient world. Nimrod had various names. He was Gilgamesh of the Gilgamesh Epic and his Babylonian name was Marduk. He was the primary god of Babylon. According to legend, his wife’s name was Semiramis. She had various names, one was Ishtar, and another was the Queen of Heaven. She had a virgin born son named Tammuz and a special festival was held each year in his honor around the time of the spring equinox. It’s where we get Easter.

Tammuz spent most of the year in the underworld, but he returned each year at the equinox to bring the world lush vegetation and usher in spring. Semiramis was often depicted with Tammuz as a small child on her lap. It’s almost identical to the picture of the Madonna (Mary and baby Jesus). That gives us the setting for the next parenthetical account in Genesis 11:1-9. Look at verses 1-4.

The Motive behind the Tower

God’s first command to Noah after the flood was to be fruitful and replenish the Earth. The settlement at Shinar or ancient Babylon was a partial fulfillment of that command, but as we read on it seems clear that Nimrod’s ultimate goal was to defy God. Instead of spreading out and engaging in farming or hunting, Nimrod’s plan involved urbanization. He wanted to create cities and great cultural centers for people to live together, and he developed a counterfeit religion so that people would not have to obey God and spread out over the earth.

Archaeologists have discovered that the buildings of the Chaldeans and Sumerians between 2500–3000 BC were made of kiln-fired bricks. The fact that the Bible mentions these building materials is significant. They had few stones in that area of Iraq so they had to rely almost entirely on bricks for construction, particularly when building temples, palaces and public buildings. Kiln-fired bricks were harder and often more durable than stone or iron. They were the exception and different from the sun-dried bricks that were used everywhere else in Palestine and the Near East.

The Purpose of the Tower

As a child, I thought God confused the languages because he was afraid they would build a tower that could get as high and close to heaven as possible. That's what the King James translation seems to imply. But the Hebrew phrase actually means “pertaining to the heavens.” It describes the purpose of the tower, not its height. It appears that there was a temple on the top of the tower and was dedicated to the worship of the sun, moon and stars.

In other words, the tower was most likely a pyramid-like structure that supported a temple complex at the top and was dedicated to the worship of the Zodiac. Archaeologists have found the remains of at least 30 ziggurats or temples that were located in Mesopotamia. Each one was dedicated to a particular god or goddess and there were at least four ziggurats in the city limits of Babylon. Astrology, as we know it today, actually began in Babylon. It was the basis of their religion, which eventually spread to Egypt and Assyria and to other parts of the Near East.

The Babylonians believed that a person’s destiny was determined by whatever sign he was born under. They developed horoscopes and lived after them. People today consider them to be innocent fun, but we know that the use of horoscopes has long been associated with demonic activity and Satan worship. So instead of worshipping the one true God, the temple on the tower of Babel was dedicated to the worship of the sun and stars and various gods. It was a religion driven by occultism and demonism. The priests of this occult religion could do things by the power of Satan. For example, the wise men and sorcerers in Egypt who also worshipped the sun and stars were able to turn a staff into a snake, water into blood, and even create frogs through their secret arts. So horoscopes aren’t anything that any of us should play with.

God in Man’s Image

Babylonian gods conformed to the image of man. Man was no longer attempting to be holy like God. Instead he was trying to bring deity down to the level of man. If you read ancient legends, Babylonian gods behaved like humans and even worse. They were capable of moral and ethical wrongdoing. But what is perhaps most shocking about this new occult religion was that it only took two generations to go from monotheism to polytheism. The world had a pagan system of worship that was dedicated to the glory of man. That’s when God finally took action. Look at verses 5-7.

The Building of the Tower

Earlier this year, there was interesting exhibit on the Titanic here in Cincinnati. It was the finest ship ever constructed and its builders boasted that the Titanic was “unsinkable.” Some even went so far as to say that “even God couldn’t sink the Titanic.” One woman refused to book a passage on the Titanic because she feared that God wouldn’t let such defying comments stand. She may have been right. If those comments were actually made, you could almost imagine God saying, “Oh, really?”

That’s what the text means when it says God came down to see the city and the tower. God was reacting to man’s defiance. Instead of sending fire or another flood, the easiest way to stop the blasphemy and enforcing the command to fill the earth was to confuse the languages. It was a sudden and miraculous event. From one moment to the next people who had been talking together and working side by side could no longer communicate with one another. So the work stopped. If they couldn’t understand each other, the only thing left to do was to find those who they could understand and separate.

Since the days of the enlightenment and the rise of atheism, a lot of so-called educated people believe that the story of Babel is just an ancient myth told by simple uneducated people. But ancient records indicate that the people who lived back then were highly advanced in mathematics, astronomy, and the arts. They also had highly-developed, written languages. They kept careful records of events that took place. In fact, similar stories to the Tower of Babel exist in other ancient traditions. Missionaries and anthropologists have found jungle tribes with no knowledge of the Bible who believed that all people spoke the same language, but the languages were confused by a judgement of the gods. Legends evolve from true historical events. The more often we find them, the more certain we can be that they are based on a true story.

Edenic

What language did Noah and his sons speak? People often refer to the first and original world language as Edenic, or the language of Adam and Eve. Throughout history, there have been many theologians who believe that the language of Eden was Hebrew. There is an interesting story that illustrates that point. When Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World, he requested to take a Hebrew speaker along. Why? When they encountered exotic natives in the new lands across the sea, it was assumed that only a Hebrew speaker would be able to communicate with them.

The prophet Zephaniah talks about a future one world language in Zephaniah 3:9. “Then will I purify the lips of the peoples, that all of them may call on the name of the LORD and serve him shoulder to shoulder. A Hebrew professor in seminary once told me that the Hebrew language has been so well preserved, that if Moses were to return today and walk the streets of Jerusalem, he could understand what was being said. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine that the future language of the new world could be Hebrew as well. Let’s take a look at the end of the story in vs. 8-9.

The Scattering of the People

When God confused the languages, people groups formed according to language and moved away from Babel to different parts of the earth. In so doing, they were forced to fulfill God's command of replenishing the earth. But there was also a negative side to the story. Remember they had been working on a temple dedicated to occult worship when their languages were confused. Now, wherever they went, they also took their religion with them. They had the same old practices. They even built structures reminiscent of the Tower of Babel; only the names of the deities had changed. Because of Babel, the occult religion of the mother goddess and her son spread throughout the world.

They found the image of a mother and child in places like Assyria, Egypt, Syria, Greece, Rome, and northern Europe. When Jesuit priests first entered Tibet, China and Japan they were shocked to find mother and child images there that could have been fashioned in Rome. The mystery religion of Babylon became the religion of the ancient world. Nearly all the major religions of the world contain some elements of pagan Babylonian religion; even in some parts of Christendom. It only took a few short centuries and the knowledge and worship of the one true God had all but vanished. Years later, when the children of Israel entered the land of Canaan, they alone believed in the one true God. Everyone else worshiped Molech and Baal: different names for the one who led the world astray – Nimrod.

The Bible makes it very clear that early man was a monotheist. He believed in one true God. But he wasn’t content to leave it there. He attempted to define God and seek Him on his own terms. Paul writes about this in Romans 1: 21-25, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.”

Conclusion: Religion versus Faith

I was asked once to explain the difference between religion and faith in Christ. Were they the same or was there a difference? There is a major difference. Religion, simply defined, is man’s attempt to reach and appease God. You can find religion everywhere - in churches, mosques, Hindu temples and the like. Faith is our response to a God who actively seeks us and wants to have a personal relationship with us. Religion is based on good works and religious acts which we hope will win us points with God. But it’s the exact opposite with true faith. God sent His Son to die for us, and he calls us to believe and follow Him. The Bible says that no man seeks after God on his own, but because God is seeking us, His Holy Spirit is drawing us, ever so gently, to Him. True faith is recognizing who God is. We accept Him on his terms, not ours. And, in so doing, we give our lives to Him. But the biggest difference is this: man-made religions won’t save anyone; only Jesus can. How about you? Are you merely religious or have you firmly placed your life in the hands of Jesus?