[Avodah] tower of bavel

[Ilana Sober]

RnLL: I don't get why you say that simple pshat says all of
mankind was resident in Mesopotamia.  Simple pshat always includes
context.  And it's clear from the context that there were people
living in Eretz Yisrael (the cities of the plain) and Egypt, at the
very least.  Simple pshat might be that Shinar was the world capitol,
but that's about all.

Simple pshat, i.e., the words of the chumash itself, doesn't say anything
about migdal bavel being 340 years after the flood. AFAIK, the source for
that is Seder Olam Rabbah. Simple pshat with context but without the midrash
is "Vayehi KOL HAARETZ safah achat..." One can very easily read the chumash
as implying that migdal bavel occurred within a few generations of the
flood. The survivors and their descendents remained together, travelled
together to Shinar, and built a tower. The post-mabul dispersion of humanity
to all over in the world originated with migdal bavel, which took place
several hundred years before Avraham Avinu.

So the difficulties raised (how could there be peoples, nations, kings, etc
well established in Ur Kasdim, Charan, Eretz Knaan, and Mitzrayim within a
few decades of the dispersion?) reflect an apparent contradiction between
the midrashic chronology and the pshat in chumash, not a contradiction
within the "simple pshat" of chumash.

- Ilana
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