Tower of Babel

According to Genesis Chapter 11 of the Bible, the Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מגדל בבלMigdal Bavel) was a tower built to reach the heavens by a united humanity. God, observing the arrogance of humanity in the construction, resolves to confuse the previously uniform language of humanity, thereby preventing any such future efforts. The tower's destruction is not described in Genesis, but is mentioned in the Book of Jubilees, and elsewhere (see 'Destruction', below). An interpretive account of the story explains the tower's destruction in terms of mankind's deficiency in comparison to God: within a religious framework, mankind is considered to be an inherently flawed creation dependent on a perfect being for its existence, and thus the construction of the tower is a potentially hubristic act of defiance towards the God who created them. As a result, this story is sometimes used within a religious context to explain the existence of many different languages and races.