<P> Genesis 11: 9 attributes the Hebrew version of the name, Babel, to the verb balal, which means to confuse or confound in Hebrew . The first century Roman - Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel (βαβὲλ), meaning "confusion". </P> <P> The account in Genesis makes no mention of any destruction of the tower . The people whose languages are confounded were simply scattered from there over the face of the Earth and stopped building their city . However, in other sources, such as the Book of Jubilees (chapter 10 v. 18--27), Cornelius Alexander (frag. 10), Abydenus (frags. 5 and 6), Josephus (Antiquities 1.4. 3), and the Sibylline Oracles (iii. 117--129), God overturns the tower with a great wind . In the Midrash, it said that the top of the tower was burnt, the bottom was swallowed, and the middle was left standing to erode over time . </P> <P> Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon . It was famously rebuilt by the 6th - century BCE Neo-Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II . According to modern scholars, such as Stephen L. Harris, the biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews . </P> <P> Nebuchadnezzar wrote that the original tower had been built in antiquity: "A former king built the Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not complete its head . Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words . Since that time earthquakes and lightning had dispersed its sun - dried clay; the bricks of the casing had split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps ." </P>

What is the date of the tower of babel