AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to millions of articles
from top publications available through your library. Anthony D.
Smith. Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1991, 226 pp. The
biblical story of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11) could be
interpreted as a mythical description of the origin of nations.
According to the story, at this early stage in human history,
the world was inhabited by one people who spoke one language
until, in their vanity, human beings challenged the limits of
their ability and joined together to build a tower reaching up
to heaven. Angry and apprehensive about this expansion of human
powers, and about the conceit it conveyed, God said: Behold, the
people is one, and they have all one language; and this they
begin to do and now nothing will be withheld from them, which
they schemed to do. Come, let us go down, and there confound
their language, that they may not understand one another's
speech (Genesis 11:6-7) Thus God scattered human beings across
the face of the earth, and t