Blurry Creatures - EP: 232 The Tower of Babel with Dr. Judd Burton

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

In a bold departure from traditional beliefs, Dr. Judd Burton, renowned archaeologist and historian, challenges the age-old narrative of the Tower of Babel's location. Join us as we delve into his groundbreaking theory that places this iconic biblical structure not in Lower Mesopotamia but in the heart of Turkey. Uncover the evidence, unravel the mysteries, and embark on a journey that redefines ancient history. Tune in to explore the mystery of the Tower of Babel like never before, only on Blurry Creatures. Support the show! www.blurrycreatures.com/members Opening Track: PYLOT "Locke" Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Music Kyle Monroe: tinytaperoom.com Outro Song: TimeCop1983: timecop1983.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen, Luke, we know that we live in a world where everything is fake, fake food, fake clouds, fake news, everything's fake. And you know what? You get tired of it. And you're just like, if I want to buy a shirt or something nice, can I just, please give me something real. Quinn's is an amazing company that does high quality everyday essentials. So we're moving in. We're in spring here. Moving into summer. Maybe you need to refresh that wardrobe so you're ready for the summer, t-shirts, shorts. These are everyday essentials made from premium materials. Here's a chance to refresh. your wardrobe for the summer at the price that's 50 to 60% less than similar brands. And we always ask, how do they do this, Nate? And it's because they work directly with ethical factories, cut out middlemen.

So you're paying for the quality, not the brand markup. And everything is designed to last and look good, baby. Well, if you want stuff that's the real deal, go to quince.com. Like we have got a whole fleet of new T-shirts this last time, man, because I'm ready for the spring and summer. I got 100% ring-spung cotton shirts. I got a couple flown-it shirts of light and area to wear around, work in the yard, or wear to the studio.

If you're like me and you want to get some new threads for the summer, refresh your wardrobe at Quinn's. Go to quins.com slash blurry for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada. You're in America's hat. You want the goods. You can get it now. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash blurry for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quins.com slash blurry.

Luke so often, people email us and they have this story. They're out in their woods and they're looking in the bushes. what's that? And when you are pouring your dog food and your dog's bowl, that's the last thing you want to say. What is that? What is the stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs. And that's why we partner with rough greens. Most of us would love to have our dogs, you know, live as long as possible. I mean, I just lost my dog in December. And I would have just, I would have loved more time with Carl. And one of the things you can do to get more time with your dog is to feed them better. Dog owners don't usually realize that live nutrients, that their dog is, needs to thrive or missing from the food. You just talked about. What is that, right? That's where Rough Green comes in. It's America's number one dog supplement that you sprinkle on top of their food. It's packed with prebiotics, enzymes, omega oils, and 20 live vitamins and mineral support digestion, energy and overall health from the inside out. It's all natural made in the USA and thousands of dogs are feeling younger, more energetic and healthier than they have in years. That's why we love it.

I'm giving it to our two dogs. You know, I've got older dogs, Nate, as I said. And so, you know, since they've been getting rough greens with their food, I've noticed they have more energy. their joints hurt less, they're older. I mean, they were talking 12 and 13 years old. And Rough Green's really made a difference in their energy levels and the pep in their step. So if you want to do what we did, you can get a free jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Just cover the shipping. Go to roughgreens.com and use discount code blurry.

That's RUFFF Greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. You know, I had this kind of moment like Indiana Jones did in Riders the Law. Stark when he and Sulla figure out that Belok is, he's digging in the wrong place because he only had one side of this medallion. So his measurements, the measurements were off. So I'm saying that we're looking in the wrong place and the wrong time for Babel. We need to be looking in northern Mesopotamia and we need to be looking earlier because

the linguistic dynamics of what's happening don't, don't line up with a later date. This week is a special week on the podcast, April 16th. Through the end of the week, we are doing Jed Week. And those you guys have been with us from the beginning, know that Jed was one of the first scholars to come on our show and talk about something other than Bigfoot, and he's helped us connect a lot of dots over the years. And speaking of years,

Jud's been stuck in a facility for the last couple years trying to get healthy and get better and get back on his feet. And it's just been a nightmare story for him. And so we decided it's time to, raise some funds and awareness to help Judd. If you love Judd and you want to help us out, we've got a couple ways to do that. You can go to his medical GoFundMe,

which we're launching this week, and it's on our website. And some exclusive merch here through Blurry Creatures and all the proceeds and funds. Go to Judd and help get him back on track. And we hope you guys and the blurry community can rally around our good friend and pal on and off the show, Dr. Judd Burton.

And we can support him the best we can. Judd first came on the show, episode 11. He was actually our first real venture out of the Bigfoot space was with Dr. Judd Burton. And here we are, you know, 220 plus more episodes later. The great thing about blurry creatures in this crazy journey is that there's an amazing community that's could really come around this show and in this space. And Judd has been a friend since the very beginning. He's a humble guy, and he's not someone who would ask for help.

And so this is really us wanting to help, you know, one of the best guys in this space. and ended up in a facility that actually didn't make him better, it made him worse. And so part of our goal was to get him out of there, and that's already happened. So we've got a lofty goal of raising $35,000 for Judd. That's a number that we can quantify for physical therapy, aqua therapy. He needs a surgery, and this gets him out of that place in the funding for those procedures. So right now, as we are recording this episode, we are about $12,000 from the, that goal on the GoFundMe.

So if you feel compelled and if you have love for Dr. Judd Burton, any type of gift, any amount helps. And we can really wrap our arms around somebody very special to, not only to blurry creatures, but to our community, Judd has ingrained himself into the fabric of this show. And the backdrop is very pregnant with meaning. Nate, we've got, as you said before, we've got shirts too. So if you'd like to donate and that's on your heart,

go check as how does it go fund me. The links are on all of our all channels. So you can find it there. If you just want to search it on GoFundMe, Dr. Judd Burton Medical Relief Fund, get over there and see what you can do for the good doctor. If you want to help buy buying a shirt, we've got a couple pregnant with meaning designs.

We're releasing and only doing this week. It'll be a pre-sell only. And you can go get one of those. All proceeds will go to this fund to support Dr. Judd. So it is Judd week. And come on down. The tea is sweeter. the accents are slower you know we're going to have some fun with one of our really good pals

who spent his life really in the archaeological um and linguistic space of the old testament in ancient history so we've got a fun one today on the on how to rethink the genesis 11 tower of baffle event all right let's get dr jett on this one thank you guys for supporting everyone in this space supporting our podcast as well through the member space. So looking forward to that member's episode with Judd later this week on Goliath. Let's get Judd on this one. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it.

I'm going to assume at least one person is right. Because if one person's right, it bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they had a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermann event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. And then we launched into the giant discussion. But this week's called Jud Week, because we're helping Judd.

We've got a whole campaign going to help Judd to get rehabilitated and get back on a feet and he's been going through some some medical stuff over the years those have been paying attention and we decided to kind of circle the wagons around jed here in the blurry community and we have a go fund me that we launched and we also have some exclusive merch and all the proceeds are going to go to help jud get back on track it's been a long process for him trying to recover those in the blurry member space know that you know it's been it's been a long road for Judd. So welcome back to the podcast, Dr. Judd Burton. Thank you for taking a chance on blurry creatures and being here. And I might add something, Nate, before, Judd, before you pop in.

Okay. Judd, you were, if we say Bigfoot was the gateway drug, you were the gateway drug and a Giants. If we go all the way back, you were episode 11 for everybody who's been here since the beginning. Yeah. Which would have been 10, 12, 2020. We did our first episode outside the Bigfoot space on ancient giants with with with with the good doctor who's here with with us. So Jed, you are near and dear to our hearts. You took a chance on us before we had a website before we had anything. Any, any really thing going on except two guys talking about, about Bigfoot and want to get

into into the biblical paradigm surrounding that. So we're grateful for your friendship. Again, as Nate said, this is Judd week. So what we've done is we put together a campaign to really, you really come along as a community come alongside Judd. There are a couple exclusive t-shirt designs. We're doing a pre-sale this week. So go check those out.

Of course, with Judd's, his legendary and iconic pregnant with meaning statement, which everyone loves in this space. Of course, it's part of our intro. You just heard him say it if you turn into this episode, we tune to this episode. So, Jed, we are, we're grateful what you're doing. Go check out the GoFundMe. You know, we're just trying to be generous and help someone who's very much ingrained himself and endeared himself to this wonderful community that, that is surrounded Nate and I

and blurry creatures. and Judd, you're very much a part of that. So we're grateful to have you here. We're going to blow it out all week. If you feel so inclined, go check out what we're doing with merch. And go check out the GoFundMe page. We're trying to get Judd to a fairly lofty goal, but we want to really come alongside him

and help him get back to the vigor and health that he enjoyed before he had this medical incident. He's been really privately battling for the most part over the last two years. So Dr. Judd Burton, got a fun one today. We're excited to have you back in our space. Well, it's good to be back. And I just want to start off saying thank you to

everybody in the Blue Reverse and you guys for, you know, welcoming me in, you know, 2020, it just rolled right past us and here we are in 2024. Yeah, it's, I'm so humbled by all of the

support and prayer and donations and all of the just love that everybody's expressed and shot my way. It's really overwhelming. And thanks to, you know, the blurry verse and people like my friend Dan Blinko and you guys, there were, you know, basically for this next phase of what I need to do, the expenses are covered. And I mean, it's just been a real blessing. God just stepped in and did what he does. And I'm just, I'm so overwhelmed and humbled and grateful everyone.

God bless every one of you. And happy to be here on blurry creatures, as always. I love it. That was a tiny Tim quote there. Jed, you don't like to talk about the little people. You'd like to talk about the big guys, and we're going back to the Tower of Babel today. Sometimes, you know, we've learned a few things over these last four years. Not a lot, but we've learned a few things, and we're going back to the Tower of Babel,

And you kind of teased us with an episode about this, that there's some things there that maybe we can rethink our understanding of when and where. Jed, how do you want to kick this one off? The floor is yours. Well, most people, students of the Bible or otherwise, because it's become such a part of our cultural vernacular, most people recognize the story of the Tower of Babel that's referenced in Genesis chapter 11, right on the heels of the table of. nations in Genesis chapter 10 and the telling of the emergence of Nimrod and his kingdom in Shinar. And traditionally, Babel has been associated with Babylon and Middle Mesopotamia, lower Mesopotamia. And that's understandable because the Hebrew designation for that part of the world at the time Shinar encompassed that area, but it wasn't confined to that area. And the event itself has been dated to a period after the advent of writing, so in the historical period,

so as early as the 4th millennium BC. But over the last few years, as I've become, I wouldn't say, more interested in linguistics, probably the right word is reinvested in linguistics. I began to rethink the entire Babel event in terms of where it happened, what. it was and when it happened. I think that there are some key elements to the discussion that have been left out because things like historical linguistics have not been brought into the discussion. And as we get into it today, I'll talk a little bit more about that.

But a lot of it, the sort of, I suppose, scholarly ruminations that I've been involved in and rethinking Babel, have me looking more northwards in northern Shinar rather than middle and southern Mesopotamia. So it's really interesting to look at the history of scholarship, biblical scholarship that's been done on the Tower of Babel and the Babel event itself. And it's very convenient. You know, I get it. It's very convenient to locate Babel.

in Lower Mesopotamia, Middle Mesopotamia. Like I said, it's convenient to locate it there. There have been any number of scholars like David Rol who have located it in Lower Mesopotamia and a redo. But again, taking all of this other data into account, the historical linguistics, particularly as pertains to something called the Proto-Indo-European language shift. I think that the magnitude of that event lines up,

better with the confusion of languages that's referenced in Genesis chapter 11. And people are probably wondering, well, what does the Proto-Indo-European language ships? What is Proto-Indo-European? I was about to ask that, Chad. I was like, what all those terms mean? And what is that? Proto-Indo-European is a, it was a real language. We had to kind of reverse-engineer it from European and Asian languages, but it did exist as a spoken language. And for all, intensive purposes, proto-Indo-European is the mother tongue of the lion's share of languages in Europe and Asia. And from everything that we can tell, the Proto-Indo-European heartland was the region, it encompassed the region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea and went

all the way down into eastern Turkey. And it was spoken anywhere between 9,000. in 6,000 BC. This, of course, putting it in a, to my mind, puts it in a post-flood context, especially if we're looking at the younger Darius event as the Noahic flood, which I think that it was. At any rate, this mother tongue gives us the, if I could use the word, gives us the backdrop for the magnitude of this confusion of languages with the actual shift and the movement of people's away from this.

region. Jed, let me ask something about that real quick. Yeah. This is going to be a comparison, but when we talk to Hugh Ross, Nate, about the reason that evolution, you know, they could blow that out of the water because you had these advent of fully formed organisms, not this evolution at these different periods where they just appeared. Are we kind of talking about the same thing where instead of having an evolution of language,

you have this language just appears, is it well, like fully formed? Am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, it is fully formed. And that's not to say that there weren't... Like precursors or... Yeah, there are some theoretical precursors. But the existence of Proto-Indo-European as a functional language is not really debated at this stage in the game in terms of the historical linguistics community. But to me, what's interesting about it, why it's so important, to me, why it lines up with the Babel event is because there are lots of things in place in the later period.

if people wanting to date the Babel event to the later period, let's say the fourth, middle of the fourth millennium BC. But what you don't have is this is the magnitude of languages and dispersal with people. You don't have all those things in place in Mesopotamia. There were only a handful of languages. And of course, the top one, the Samarian-Acadian language in terms of the literary tradition of Mesopotamia, that was the overarching one. And you don't have that change.

in the wake of a, let's say, a proposed 4th millennium Babel event. By contrast, what you do have in the proto-Indo-European language shift, which happens somewhere between 6,000 and 4,000 BC, what you do have there is the birth of literally hundreds of language families and thousands of languages that crop out of that, not to mention the multitude of ethnogenesis or the creation of different societies springing out of this people because the Genesis 11 also talks about the dispersal of peoples from this area. So that is firmly in place in Eastern Turkey, the Transcaucasus. So to my mind, we need to be looking more northward in northern Mesopotamia, Eastern Turkey, in other words.

and earlier for the Babel event itself. Because, as I say, you've got lots of things in place for a potential babble in Lower Mesopotamia, but you don't have the magnitude of language shift, language creation, and the ethnogenesis that you have in the wake of the proto-Indo-European shift. Sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill, it's like the crash site document, you can't read it.

There's a bunch of numbers, random fees, vague language, stuff's blacked out. You're like, what am I actually paying for? I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. I like to be simple. I like to be easy. I'm going to be thrown away money on big wireless carriers. You too can say goodbye to overpaying for wireless, get a simple bill.

That's where Mitt Mobile comes in. So stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. That's what you do. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless service for a fraction of what the big carriers charge. And you get to keep your phone number. Get to keep your coverage, most importantly. And it runs on the nation's largest 5G network. So the question becomes, why has everyone,

been acting like this has to be expensive. It doesn't have to be. Dr. Judd Burton's out there dialing up blurry every day giving us the scoop on what's going on in the academic world and the ancient world on Mint Mobile. Loud and clear on the job sites, way out in the middle of nowhere, Texas. And if you want to save money, just like the illustrious Dr. Judd Burton, switch to Mint Mobile. If you like your money, say where it is. Mintmobiles for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash blurry. That's mintmobile.com slash blurry. Up front payment of $45 for a three-month, five-gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only,

then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra, cement mobile for details. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd, but too often, life gets busy, or the price holds you back. Price line is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars,

you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. That's fascinating, Jeddick. I love how you look at these things, right? It's not really your quote conventional archaeology, right?

And I know you've done a ton of of that type of work in your career, you know, field work on the ground archaeology. But there's an interesting way to sort of change the way you look at an event, right? Because if you look at it instead of from sort of the, The monolith of tradition, right? This is where it's traditionally believed to have happened. You read Genesis 11, and it's eight verses. This whole part is eight verses, and it talks about the plane of Shinar,

and people move eastward, which really just, we're looking at our English versions here. We're talking about, you know, people came from the east, and there's this place, and Shinar really just Babylonia, which is very general. And we're not, this is not a necessarily like an X on the map. And then to look at it from, from this, and this is what you do, right,

from a linguistic standpoint, and we did a really good episode with you on the origin of Raphaim and the word Raphael, right? You have this very interesting scholarly academic look at history via language. You're not stunning at all is that this entire Babel event, aside from the practicality would happen, really lands on a linguistic ending. You have this scattering of folks all over the earth after God says, let us go down and confuse their language so they cannot understand each other. And so you, you would, as you're saying, which I think just sort of reiterating, it's a fascinating way to look at it because you should see, and then you look at the story and do see an explosion of language types. And that should happen. If we're to believe the biblical narrative and look at what happens in Genesis 11, then we should be able to look into the language, linguistic record, and see a corresponding explosion of language. And then take that, right? And then you can do geo and chronological sort of locating based upon where these events would have appeared to happen. And so, I love this.

In the blurry verse, it's just, like, one of the things we love to do, and since the beginning with episode 11 with you, and, you know, is to look at things in a different light in some ways and kind of expand your paradigm to hold and consider that maybe things are a bit different than we assume, right? And so, yeah, I just wanted to sort of read it. I think it's just a fascinating juxtaposition of looking at an event we're all familiar with and saying, well, what if? What if this is, and laying out evidence for that?

And I think, what better place and better person to talk to about the aspect of language? goes when it comes to Babel than you. I'll let you continue, but you were saying that a lot of this proto-Indo-European, if I said that right, explosion was more eastern Turkey than southern Mesopotamia. And when you're saying southern Mesopotamia, are you talking about sort of the fertile crescent, the closer to the Persian Gulf? Yes. Okay.

Traditional Mesopotamia from the northern limits of Mesopotamia would have gone into Eastern Turkey. but it would have gone all the way down to the Persian Gulf. You think there's a connection there between Eden and the Tower of Babel? Well, insofar is that this sort of goes, this, this takes me back to the work that Dr. Aaron Jenkins and I have done at Gobeckley-Tepi, and that we've posited that Gobeckley-Tepi and other sites like at Karin-Tepi, Novolichari, the contiguous level at Chalurpha, they're all particularly Go-Bekly-Tepi, or watcher outposts, the proximity to, Eden, both the country and the garden of Eden, which was this strange place where heaven and earth touched, right? You know, read in Genesis and Adam and Eve are having, you know, direct

conversations with God. So our theory was that the watchers knew enough in general terms of where Eden was, and they hoped to weaponize it to try and attack heaven, basically. They either thought that they could defeat or win over. the angel that guarded Eden to gain access to it. And so we look at it as a Babel-style event in the pre-flood world. And so the same stratagem, in other words, the same mechanism as that work in the Babel event. So you think that Turkey, I mean, if you look at it on a map, I mean, it looks mountainous, right? So, you know, these four ancient rivers that supposedly float out of it, I mean, all rivers start in the mountain.

they start in the mountains and flow out. Is this a dumb thought to think that Eden could be in Turkey? No, not at all. I think that Eden was in Turkey. I think that the geographical markers for it are, you know, we know two of them for sure, the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. There's some debate as to what ancient rivers or riverbeds would have been a Guillaume and a Pishan.

But yeah, keep in mind, too, that Moses, who's riding all this stuff down, is receiving a vision of the very beginning in the same way that John the Revelator in the New Testament is receiving a vision of the end. And so they're trying to make sense of all this bizarre, very different stuff from what they're used to with the cultural language of their day. You know, keep in mind that Moses was raised in the Egyptian court. He was educated. He would have had a more comprehensive knowledge of, you know,

geographical markers, you know, in the ancient Near East. And so I think, I think taking that into account, the best case scenario is for the location of Eden is still in Turkey and the mountainous, a high-range country of Turkey. And people that will locate it, you know, in the Persian Gulf, you know, there are people that will locate it in, even in Israel. There's some people that the Tron located in Jerusalem. But I think when you look at the circumstances of the author, Moses' life and his education and whatnot, you know,

there's pretty specific geographical parameters to what he's describing. So I think that Turkey remains the best case scenario for the location of Eden. Well, we talked a lot about mountains on our podcast, specifically why the ancients had an obsession with mountains, You know, and then we talked about how in the ancient world, they were considered the abode of the gods, right? And I think this idea, like Luke and I have discovered so many times, like, where does this idea start from? And you talked about, like, the names for kings. Where do we get these names?

There's an origin point for how we name these god kings on earth. And I would say that the mountains is specifically an important part. I mean, Tim Mackey came on and said that he thought Eden was on a mountain because there was evidence of like rivers flowing from it. Sure. You know, and then it gets challenged, and people often debate these little things, but I think it's important to think that, okay, if we have this obsession with mountains, where does that start? And I think that starts the beginning, that there was this mountain where, like you said,

heaven and earth collided. And I think we think about how rivers start in the mountains, and they flow down. And the Tower of Babel is sort of a metaphor of this. This is what they're trying to recreate here on earth. Yeah, that's, I was going to say, Nate, it's a ziggurat, right? It's an effigy to a mountain, the same way the pyramids are effigies to mountains. Exactly. Yeah, and that's something we've talked about before on the show is that the pyramids, ziggurats,

all of those kinds of structures are mountain effigies. They mimic the supernatural idiom that people's had concerning their gods that they believe that mountains. Yeah, they were earthbound, but there were these things that jutted up into the heavens. and this place where the sacred and the mundane, you know, connected and the gods live there. And that's why you have these little temple and shrine structures at a lot of the tops of pyramids and ziggurads. But this all goes back to you. I think just like everything the demonic does, they take what's holy and they make a counterfeit out of it. Right.

So Eden is in this high country and gods there. Then they're going to try and make some counterfeit of that. And that's really what you have at Mount Herman. with the Genesis 6 event. In fact, I've come to believe and continue to contend that these monuments like ziggurots and pyramids and what have you, these temples all harken back to that event. They're a legacy of that. But a high place, whether it's an earthen structure or a mountain itself or a hill or a temple,

the creation of this ritual space, whether it's a structure or a mountain, is what's important here. And definitely you've got ritual taking place in the Babel event because it's not just the construction of the tower or the, you know, it's not just a feat of engineering that it's taking place here. It's ritual. And the purpose of it is to assault heaven. And these ziggurots are different than pyramids, right? The ziggurots were like stepped. They have shelves on it. Well, yes, that's true. They were, they look more like mountains. Yes. They didn't look perfectly triangular. They didn't. And in fact, I mean, if we are talking about a kind of the Zygorot structure, typically we think of the Samarians as being the first

Zygirot builders, but they weren't. There were some actual culture, proto-civilization that existed in Mesopotamia before the Samarians, called the Ubiad culture. And the Ubiads go back at least as far as about 7,500 BC. So like a lot of the cities that people typically think of as Samarian, like a rook and a redo and poor, a lot of these places were established by the Ubiads and they were the oldest, the oldest, of course they're in pieces, but the oldest Zygirot at those sites were all built by the Ubiad. So if we are talking about a ziggurat structure, again, because the Ubiad culture stretched all the way into eastern Turkey, it's very likely that we are looking at some kind of

of Ziggarot structure. But again, that's a secondary consideration because what's happening here is not so much a feat of engineering as it is a kind of magical working, a ritual. So we are postulating about the location of Eden, perhaps being somewhere in the mountainous region of Turkey, which would be northern Mesopotamia and northern Babylon

at the time of Nimrod. But if we go pre-flood, which we talked about, you were talking about Gubecula Tepe and Kaharan Tepe and a number of other ancient, very ancient, into Deluvian archaeological discoveries right now that have thrown a monkey wrench, if you will, into the archaeological timeline. So we know those are there. We've talked about those potentially being temples of the watchers, because what you have there is this explosion of technology, architecture, temple, advanced temple structure, carvings, etc.

That shouldn't be there in a time where traditional archaeology would tell you this is hunter-gatherer times. And we've talked about these on the show with Nate, with like Hugh Newman, for example, who leads tours there. He was big on this space. But we're talking to, to you about this, Jed. So if we're going to hypothesize that those temples of the watchers, those watcher outposts, as you call them, they were looking for Eden. And we know that per the garden, that Eden, once Adam and Eve were ejected from Eden, that there was an angel placed at the gate to the garden or the flaming sword. Can you talk a little about the idea of Eden being sort of a country as opposed to just the garden being a portion of Eden? Because I think

that's a really interesting idea, one, and two, it kind of makes Babel being this location. also make a lot more sense, right? If this was what was happening pre-flood, they were sort of looking for access points. And we know that, as Nate's talking about four, we know that Eden, the garden itself was a place where God walked with Adam and Eve. This is Genesis 1, two, two, three, right? God's walking with Adam and Eve. And then if you think about, and this kind of, and I'm sort of just poshousal, but if you think about the idea that a Ziggurat is to bring a God down to meet with you to essentially walk, if you will, with God. What do you think, can you talk about what you things happening here, sort of in a historical timeline. If we would have believed Eden's there and

the watchers were doing stuff there. We know that like, you know, 2% maybe of Quebec Cepi's even been excavated. These are massive advanced structures that don't really shouldn't exist in that timeline. But then we, of course, Genesis 11 have, if we were to take the, as you say, the linguistic record and place Babel there north, then should we think, how should we think about this and what may be happening there in addition to just sort of the traditional thought around a, you know, a ziggara. in the Tower of Babel. Yeah, well, ancient Turkey, Anatolia, is usually kind of a peripheral subject in most discussions about the Bible, but it's really central, especially, I mean, if you're starting at the beginning,

you know, with the garden, with the region of Eden, the country of Eden, that's a Turkey. Noah's Ark comes to rest in the mountains of Ararat, and Eastern Turkey. That's where the sort of re-peopling of the earth, you know, begins to take place. and Abraham is from Er, which traditionally people had located again in southern Mesopotamia, but Err was in Haran, biblical Abrahamic Err was in a place called Huron, which is in southern Turkey and northern Syria. That's near Gobeckley-Tepe. Yes. In fact, Shanlarifa, which is probably one of the better candidates for Abraham's Err, it actually preserves the name is only about 10 miles away from Gobeckli-Tepi.

The other candidate is Erkeesh, which is in the same region, was a Hurian site. And it's in that border area in northern Syria that would have been part of Iran. So, and if you fast forward to the New Testament, there's a lot going on there, too. Paul is from Asia Minor, which is what they called Turkey at the time. There's a lot of mission work taking place. A lot of the major churches, the seven churches of Revelation are in there. John lived in Ephesus for a while and ends up on Patmos. So a lot of the Bible flows from ancient Turkey.

Yeah. And I mean, in a lot of ways, it sort of begins and ends there. The ethnogenesis, if you will, of the Hebrew people begins there with Abraham. So when you take all of these things in some, It's hard to get past the importance of Turkey in the biblical narrative. And it also helps to make a better case for a more northerly location of the Babel event because of the location of where the ark ends up, where Noah's descendants begin to proliferate. Yeah.

So I just wanted maybe we can get a visual for people who are listening. So the mountains of Turkey, you have Gobeckley-Tepe there, and it kind of comes down, and you have the tigers in the Euphrates flowing down towards lower Mesopotamia into the Persian Gulf, right? Mm-hmm. And the traditional people say the Tower of Babel was kind of located where the tigers

kind of in Lower Mesopotamia where they almost touch, right? And the tower was like somewhere in the middle of there. That's in Babylon right there. But that's like more of a marshland or more lush, you know, like I said, the fertile crescent or whatever. So I'm, that's sort of the tradition.

That's what everyone sort of says that's where the Tower of Babel is. And you're saying it's maybe up more in the mountains north. Yes. And a lot of that has to do with the Proto-Indo-European language shift that takes place between 6,000 and 4,000 BC. So I would situate in terms of chronology, that's the window that I think we should be looking at for the Babel event. And also because you don't, again, you don't have anything on the magnitude of what happens in the proto-Indo-European in Heartland, you don't have anything linguistically happening like that in the 4th millennium BC in middle and lower Mesopotamia.

It's just not happening. I mean, nobody, no scholar is going to debate that. What you do have in the earlier period that seems to line up better with the confusion of languages and the scattering of peoples is this proto-Indo-European language shift that births most of the major language families and languages of Europe and Asia, that to me, makes more, it lines up better with the biblical description. And that's what I've tried to do, you know, over almost 15, 16 years now, applying anthropological models to biblical studies. So I think that when we do that, when we try and find this middle ground between what we can glean

from the text of the Bible and then what we can take from linguistics or archaeology or ethnography or even physical anthropology to help fill in the gaps because the farther back we go we have fewer and fewer written records so if we're at it you know ostensibly if we're looking at the babble event you know between 6,000 and 4,000 BC you know any any touches any traces of a written language are minuscule and sparse at best so you know I had this kind of moment like any Anna Jones did in Raiders of Lost Stark when he and Sola figure out that Belloc is, he's digging in the wrong place because he only had one side of this medallion. So his measurements, the measurements were off. So I'm saying that we're looking in the wrong place and the wrong time for Babel. We need to be looking in northern Mesopotamia and we need to be looking earlier because the linguistic dynamics of what's happening don't line up with a later date. So let's look at this pre-flood, post-flood. Okay.

I'm more of a visual person, so my mind is trying to put, like, some visual context to this. So pre-flood in Turkey, you have these watcher outposts that are maybe near or trying to find Eden, correct? Around, and that's the land of Shinar. Is that what you're saying? It is. It's northern Shinar, yes. Okay. And I mean, Genesis 11 says that's where they settled, right?

Post-flood. And then Gobeckley-Tepi and some of these, which is, you know, what we've talked about, some of the oldest archaeological finds. and we talked to Hugh Newman about that, they're buried or they're obviously the flood, they would have been buried then too, however you decide that. And then Noah's Ark settles there and we sort of get the birth of civilization

again in these mountains in this region, post-flut, right? It could be near Eden itself. And one thing we've talked about a lot on this show is that everything is intentional. Locations are intentional. That most scholars who kind of plug in this blurry knowledge understand that like if Jesus goes to Mount Hermon

and does this transfiguration, that mountain specifically has a greater importance to the story than just some, any old mountain. And if they're trying to build this ziggurat and they're trying to sort of give a giant salute F you to God, they would probably build it near Eden, I would guess, right? They would try to, and they wouldn't just randomly build it somewhere else. Yeah, well, for all, that's just. Yeah, for all intents and purposes, it's right next door to Eden. And again, just given the importance of ancient Anatolia, ancient Turkey, the people that God ends up using, you know, especially early on, yeah, it's an affront to God. You know, whatever the structure is, whether it's a ziggraud or some sort of earthen structure, it seems to be that it probably was a kind of zygrod or proto-zigroth because they're making brick to build this thing. So, but yeah, you're exactly right, Nate, it is.

It's a complete thumbing of the nose to God in the same way. Again, this shouldn't surprise. It's in the same way that the demonic realm takes everything, makes a mockery of it, makes a counterfeit, it takes everything that's holy and makes it counterfeit or a mockery of it. Jed, do you think that they're looking for a portal? You think that's part of what's happening here? Like if you're close enough to the access point, to the portal, if you will.

I don't know how else to really put it. That's sort of blurry language, I guess. But like they're looking for to be close to this space where they can get in. And they can, you know, kind of backdoor themselves into a war with God. Yes. I think that's well said, a kinetic war. Indeed, there's working and intention here. And yes, I think that they are trying to weaponize this access point.

I think that's what happened in the pre-flood world with the establishment of sites like Gobeckwee TEPI and Kauron-Tippy. But I think whether they're trying to gain that specific portal or recreate that access, to heaven to launch their war. Yeah, I think you're looking at the same kind of modality here. And it all has to do with the creation of ritual space or the weaponization of sacred space in a case of Eden here. I think what it boils down to you is a weaponization of that access point. Yeah.

I was thinking about Eden and, you know, supposedly a chair guarded it with a sword, right? If it was in a flat land, like a flat marshy kind of garden, hard to guard that area. And I think I'm starting to like the idea that it's on a mountain because you could have it sort of backed into a certain area where you only have one access point to get to it. And it's kind of surrounded by mountains. And then you have this cherub in one spot kind of protecting people from getting back there. If you have more of just like a practical view of Eden, I get it that there could be some sort of gate. And maybe that's why they're building the tower at a certain height because whatever they do, they can open these doorways from our realm to the heavenly realms. But it would make sense that it was probably enclosed in some space by nature.

And there was only one way in and one way out. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. And why that's such a big theme

throughout the Old Testament, New Testament. You know, like that's the origin. It's all there. It begins in the mountains. It begins on this thin space, you know? and we are constantly trying to rip off the ideas of heaven, build things that maybe we get the idea of what kind of buildings are in heaven, and we rip that off and we build it down here, you know,

because they're building certain structures all over the world. They have this knowledge of the architecture. They know what, where do they get that from? You know, why do they just, they just know how to build this stuff in certain ways? There's just these repeating themes on the show, and I'm trying to visualize, maybe that's what Eden looked like. Well, yeah, I mean, the words like Paradise and even Eden itself is probably from a Samarian-Ocadian word, which means enclosed garden. So there was only one access point at the end, you know, as you pointed out, guarded by the cherub.

But here's something that might blow your mind, too. There's actually a province to this day that exists in Turkey in this general location. that is called Shinar. Interesting. Really? It's spelled out, it's, it's, it's spelled out as C, the English transliteration. It would be C-I-N-A-R, I think, but there's a, there's a mark under the C-E-N-T-H-E-R that would make it sound Shinar.

Yeah. And that's how you pronounce it in Turkish as Shinar. So the, the name in that region is actually preserved. So there are all these little clues that linguistics, can bring to the table that I think make a northern location and an earlier dating for Babel a more sensible approach and conclusion. Where do you get all the material to build such a structure too? You need a lot of material if this thing was as big as they say it was. Is there any archaeological evidence in Turkey that this thing

was there that you've uncovered? Well, I mean, the precedence for that sort of building exists in the Neolithic period, which is what I'm proposing here is that this is a mid to late Neolithic timing since the proto-under European language shift takes place between 6,000 and 4,000 BC. So the technology, the actual boots on the ground engineering technology to build structures like that existed. As I pointed out, the Ubiad, we're already building structures. at that time. So yeah, there's plenty of archaeological evidence to support that such a structure could have been built in that location. I think it's interesting too, Jed, that like if you look at Genesis 113, you know, we talk a lot on the show about megaliths and these these stone structures that are antediluvian and survive the flood.

And then even ones that are post-flood that are super ancient and they remain because they're stone. But you have in verse, you know, Genesis 113, you said, it says, they said to each other, come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They used brick instead of stone and tar for mortar. So when we talk about archaeology for, you know, a tower of Babel,

it's interesting that they're using a, you know, a medium that is much less durable over the eons than some of what we find, you know, done in stone, right? Nate and I went to Peru. These megalists, super ancient, one likely, you know, antediluvial. and you look at some of the things like the pyramids that are made out of cut stone

and the longevity of those things. It's very interesting to me that this is a, it's also sort of this innovation or change in construction or architecture at this point because instead of, you know, a massive, maybe it's just practicality too, making a massive stone tower that reached to the heavens, frankly, is probably an impossible,

impossible effort based on physics. But interesting to me though, right? Because you have this, then you really just have a pile of bricks. And we know bricks, you know, even in a couple hundred years in our era, can end up and turn into dust if they're damaged. Anyway, I find that fascinating. The brick stuff kind of looks a lot more like Gobeckley-Tepe. Why can't that be the site of the Tower of Babel?

Well, because Go-Bekly-Tepi, Go-Bekly-Tepi is not brick. it's stone. You're dealing with cut. All of it? Cut stone. There are standing stones and T-stones. Yeah. There are, but I mean, is it all built that way?

Can't remember. What we, yeah, the blind share of it has to be because what is preserved, even in the enclosures, you know, you look at the enclosures that were, you know, that were backfilled and filled in. The pillars, the enclosures themselves, all of that was constructed of limestone for the most part. You don't have much in the way of brickwork, but with the Ubiad culture and the, there's another culture called the Halaf culture, which was contiguous with it. And there was a lot of diffusion between the Halaf and Ubiad culture.

You do have evidence of brickmaking. But the in and alluvian stuff, the pre-flood stuff like Quebecli Tepe, Karan teppy, this is, it's all solid stone instruction. Judd, you know, I love we're doing here, we're rethinking, you know, the geo, sort of the geolocation and also its cosmic implications as we've talked about on the show quite a bit, Nate.

Like, you know, you said, like the idea of Mount Herman, things that happen there, geographically important, cosmically important. And then again, the location of this tower, right? Geographically important for its cosmic implications, if we are to have this nearer to, these ancient locations and nearer to maybe perhaps the the places that the ancients believed Eden existed. You know, it's funny to me, I know, we've talked about this before, Judd, sort of off off the record, but, you know, Genesis 6 and Genesis 11 are really interesting because they are,

as I said earlier, there's four verses in Gen 6 and eight verses in Genesis 11. So there's this implied cultural knowledge of these things. It's just sort of like, Moses is saying, yeah, you know about this. This is what happened. And you kind of know about what happened here. you know these stories, right? And a bit of that's lost to us. And, you know, we, for Gen 6, we have, you know, First Enoch, we just talked about ad nauseum on the show. And the great thing about First Enoch is that because of the discovery at Coomran, we really have a provenance to this, just predating the time of Christ at the very least, right? So an ancient, an ancient book that talks about the, especially the first part of First Enoch talking about an ex-posé on Genesis

6. What I want to ask you is we rethink Babel and the tower. There is an account in Jash, which is, of course, is another extra biblical book. It's mentioned in the Bible. It's mentioned in Joshua. In fact, Joshua 9 and 10 was what I read in my Bible study this morning, and it references the book of Jashir. There's a lot of controversy around this book, but there are about three chapters in the copy of Jashir we have now

that really deal with Nimrod and the tower. So from a scholarly standpoint, from a biblical standpoint, that being your wheelhouse, how were we to think about the book? of Jashire as it relates to this story and to Genesis this Genesis 11 event, if you will, because there's a lot of things about garments

and sort of this expose, almost three chapters that kind of revolve around Nimrod and the tower event, but not quite the same provenance by any means that we have with First E, not. Yeah, well, Jashers is certainly relevant and it's interesting. Part of the concern that allows

scholars have, have is, is this, is this the, the jasher that we have now, is it the one that's referenced in the Old Testament? Right. And I think substantial portions of it probably are, but we can't be 100% sure. The flip side of that is that this is what we have. And I remember, one of my mentors and one of professors said that the best we could do as historians is to make probability statements. And that means that we work with the best evidence at hand. We work with what we got. And if it proves to be right over time, then it will be corroborated. If not, it will be amended and discarded if need be.

Right now, we have this document, which may shed some light on the story of Nimrod. It's really interesting because he pointed out that it talks about the garments of Adam and Eve that were actually handed down. Apparently, these were tokens of authority for the Antediluvian patriarchs. And there's an interesting story also in the extra-biblical material about not to veer too far off topic. Actually, I made a video about this number of years ago proposing that one of the stories about Nimrod and his material is that Esau, the brother of Jacob, was the one that finally killed him. Yeah, that's part of this tradition. Took these garments, these tokens. a patriarch, you know, again, everybody

knows the story about Jacob and Esau about how Esau came in and he was clearly discombobulated about something and so overwrought that he traded his birthright for a bowl of soup.

And that sounds really odd, but I think there's a good case to be made for the birthright that sold being this marker, these garments of the Anadolivian Patriarchs. Now, again, that's so much scholarly conjecture on my part, but it does add a layer of logic, or at least an expanded and fuller understanding of what's going on in the story of Jacob and Esau.

But yeah, you're right. There is an interesting commentary on Nimrod in that that may prove to be more relevant to the story of Babel as time goes on. I don't think we can completely peripheral as works like Jashir and Jubilees and the Genesis Apocryphon and Enoch, which is probably the one that's got the most traction. Not that we equate them with canon, but they come out of the same worldview. So they give commentary on the biblical narrative. It feels like a lot of access to the implicit knowledge that would have been culturally ingrained for these peoples, right? It's kind of just the Mike Heiser paradigm, right? To read the Bible is to read it as ancient Semitic peoples

in writing to an audience of ancient Semitic peoples. I wanted to ask your thought of that because Jashire isn't obviously in the same boat, right? We don't have, I would say providence like you do with art where you can reach all the way back and say, hey, we've got these copies from a couple thousand years ago. It's more contemporary. But the same time, we know it's mentioned in Joshua, so there was an ancient copy of Jashir.

Are those two one and the same? as you said, perhaps some of it. But I find that the conversation around it fascinating because all it does for me is sort of open the story a little more to make a little more sense of at least the way that the ancients thought about that portion of the story. So if you're going to put a bow on this, Judd,

summarize a little bit of your thought because I think the best way to do this would be to go back and just say, this is why you think it's here and this is the linguistic and this is why it's important so that we can kind of sum up this for folks because this episode is rethinking

Babel so if you're to summarize sort of your thoughts on this have you gone through this thought process and you know from a scholarly standpoint summit of course certainly what I'm doing here I'm not I'm not disputing

any of what's going on in Genesis 11 I'm taking that as a history historical event. As a person of faith, as a Christian, as believer, I accept that. What I'm saying is that the traditional location for Babel is off because it doesn't make sense in terms of the confusion of languages and the scattering of peoples. That to me seems like a very, that's a significant event because if people were speaking the same language, the people that lived in the world at the time speaking mutually intelligible dialects of the same language and then all of a sudden

you have this massive you know confusion of languages yeah they would spread out from somewhere yeah you don't have that kind of linguistic event taking place in the fourth millennium or third millennium bc in middle and lower mesopotamia you have to look the northern mesopotamia you have to look earlier you have to look i think i think there's a very good case to be made for the proto-indoeuro european language shift, which birthed all of these language families in Europe and Asia and these thousands upon thousands of languages and the ethnogenesis, the creation of these, you know, new societies as people were scattered onto the earth. That's the kind of event that lines up more logically with Babel. And as I pointed out, the Neolithic technology is there to build

that structure. We have precedence for pre-Sahmarian, cults. cultures, you know, building those kinds of rudimentary structures, at least. We need to be looking in Eastern Turkey. We need to be looking in this window of 6,000 to 4,000 BC when the proto-Indo-European language shift takes place. That's when and where, in my opinion, where we're going to find the historical framework, the linguistic framework for the Babel event. And it's still in Shinar.

It's still in that northern section of Nimrod's Kempark. kingdom. Yeah. Or it says the planes of Shinar. Or plane. It just says the plane. It's pretty not well and there are in these in these mountainous regions in Turkey there are plateaus. So again, there are geographical markers, geographical features that also line up with the region. There are lots and lots of reasons to be looking earlier and more northwards for the babble event. with all respect to the scholars that have located it in lower Middle Mesopotamia at a later date. I understand that. A lot of it makes sense, but what you don't have is the magnitude of the language change.

There's nothing in Lower Mesopotamia in a 4th millennium BC to even approach what's happening linguistically with a proto-Urorean language shift more northerly. Yeah, dude. I mean, only you could, Jed could use language as sort of like archaeological evidence and fish it out. Yeah. Yeah. Because people like us just regulars, you know, we don't see what you guys see. You scholars can unpack and say, look, there had to have been a structure here because of all the linguistic evidence that kind of flows from that spot. I never even thought about it like that.

I mean, we did that the king, the God King's episode. You go back and listen to that one. listeners if you want to like kind of get a even a more in-depth dive of the names of kings themselves and kind of the origins of that. But Judd, thank you for coming on again on blurry creatures and dropping this. And

for everyone else, just a reminder, we have Judd week kick it off. If you're late, if you're listening to this three or four weeks late, the GoFundMe you can find it. We'll put it on our website. There will be a flyer on the front page of our website for a while.

And go help Judd out. and the pre-order for his merch will be a week long. So if you want to get a shirt pregnant with meaning, we got two designs, and Jud, I think it's rather appropriate, pregnant with meaning with the Paramount logo. I love it. Talking about mountains.

I love it. And then we got an old 80s ACDC-1, pregnant with meaning. Go support our good pal, Dr. Judd Burton. Jed, Jett. Thanks for coming back on our show, and we wish you the best. We love you, man.

We can't say that enough. And this community loves you and really believing they're going to rally around you and help get you back. We can't wait to have you. You go back to full, full engines, full power. And it's been quite a journey. We always say enjoy the journey, right? Episode 11 to episode 232, it's been a journey with you, my friend. And we love it.

But yeah, 1.21 Judo Watts. Was just about to say that. We're getting that. You took the words right out of the world. Yeah. Back to the Burton. I love you, bro. I love you guys too

and thanks to everybody I mean God bless each and every one of you and I will keep you posted and updated on what's going on All right guys We'll be here for it

Thanks, Judd Love you, dude I love you too Be well Roll that time Judd Roll that time cop, Judd