The Númenóreans and the Tower of Babel – Proof that Tolkien is better than the nameless hack that wrote the bible

Not all fiction is equal

For those who are weak in Tolkien lore I have prepared this brief summary of the history of Númenor.

Once there was this half-elven guy named Eärendil who was a great hero of Middle Earth. He was so awesome that Manwë, king of the Valar (demi-gods of Middle Earth) said he and his part elven children could decide if they wanted to be elvish or manish. One of his sons, Elrond (you you may remember from The Lord of the Rings), decided to be elvish and his other son, Elros, decided to be manish. Because of his elvish heritage and his awesome dad, he became a special kind of man that lives 300 years. He became the first king of Númenor and his descendents were the Númenóreans, who all live to be 300 years old.

Númenor was this huge island to the West of Middle Earth and after many hundreds of years they became a super powerful kingdom. They also became a super bad kingdom. They decided that not living forever like the elves sucked so they decided to invade the Undying Lands and seize them from the Valar (demi-gods). Then they would be able to live forever. As soon as they landed on the Undying Lands there was this huge cataclysm that completely obliterated the invading fleet and the Undying Lands were removed from the world.

Not all the Númenóreans were bad though. Most of the good ones escaped before this failed invasion and ended up in Middle Earth. Aragorn, who I hope you remember from the films, is one of their descendents. I always thought it was funny he ended up married to Elrond’s daughter Arwen, because she is his first cousin like 30 times removed.

Summary of summary: Númenóreans were cooler than normal people. They got tired of dying so they decided to invade “heaven.” The gods didn’t like that so they killed the invaders. Also: Aragorn’s relationship with Arwen is naughty.

Now let’s look at the biblical account:

Genesis 11:4 (KJV) And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

Many contemporary writers claim this passage means the people were making the city and the tall tower to keep all the people in one place, rather than scattering across the earth according to Yahweh’s plan.


This explanation doesn’t work for me because I’m convinced a good portion of the Old Testament was ripped off from Tolkien’s writings, as is the bulk of contemporary fantasy (to be fair, Tolkien ripped off a lot of his stuff from other sources too, like Beowulf). I think the humans were tired of God having all the fun so they decided to invade heaven where they could be like gods and live forever. My reading of the Old Testament reinforces this idea. There is never any indication that people go to heaven after they die. There is no eternal reward or punishment mentioned in Genesis. All punishments and rewards from Yahweh are immediate and temporal in nature.

The people in Babel had no idea they had “eternal spirits.” That concept didn’t show up for another few thousand years. It makes sense therefore that they thought the only way to live forever was to actually build a tower to get to heaven.



Tower to Heaven



One day Yahweh wandered down from heaven to visit the people of Earth and while he was there he noticed the city and tower. This kinda freaked him out and he said, “Holy crap! It looks like if all the people live in the same place and speak the same language they can accomplish anything they put their minds to! They might even find a way to take heaven away from me, or live forever, or make an iPad!”

This simply wouldn’t do, so Yahweh confounded their language so they couldn’t talk to each other and scattered them across the planet. Then just to dick with us, he took all the color from the skin and hair of the people he stuck in Europe and gave it to these in Africa. Then he gave the Asians thick eyelids so the white people would make fun of them for having “squinty eyes.”

Biblical summary: Babelians were cooler than normal people. They got tired of dying so they decided to invade “heaven.” Yahweh didn’t like that so he/she/it scattered the invaders and messed with their language. Also: Yahweh gave Asians thick eyelids.

Ref: Genesis 11:1-9