Q 01/05

What happens to the city when the builders are scattered?

A) It is burned to the ground

B) It is finished by Nimrod's sons

C) It is swallowed by a flood

D) It is left unfinished

Answer · why

D) It is left unfinished

Genesis 11:8 says they 'left off to build the city'; the phrase 'Tower of Babel' never actually appears in the Bible.

Q 02/05

What does the Babel story set out to explain?

A) Why bricks are baked

B) Why the seasons change

C) Why humans speak different languages

D) Why cities have walls

Answer · why

C) Why humans speak different languages

It is an etiology: God confounds one shared speech and scatters the builders across the earth.

Q 03/05

In which land do the builders settle before starting the tower?

A) Moab

B) Shinar

C) Canaan

D) Goshen

Answer · why

B) Shinar

Shinar is the Hebrew Bible's name for southern Mesopotamia, the region of Babylon.

Q 04/05

What did the builders use in place of stone and mortar, according to Genesis?

A) Baked brick and bitumen slime

B) Sun-dried mud and chopped straw

C) Marble blocks and lime plaster

D) Cedar planks and pine pitch

Answer · why

A) Baked brick and bitumen slime

The detail matches real Mesopotamian construction, where bitumen from local springs cemented fired bricks.

Q 05/05

What did the builders hope to avoid by making a name for themselves?

A) Being conquered from the east

B) Being starved by a great famine

C) Being scattered over the earth

D) Being drowned in a second flood

Answer · why

C) Being scattered over the earth

The irony is that scattering is exactly what God does to them.