101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

yth #46:
Nimrod conquered Babylon.
The Myth: And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the
mighty hunter before the LORD. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and
Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. (Gen. 10:8–10)
The Reality: This story preserves an ancient legend about Pharaoh Sesostris,
who ruled during Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty.
This brief story about Nimrod is puzzling because it presents a completely distorted
history of the Near East in the second millennium B.C. (see the discussion in
Myth #45 about the Table of Nations). As set forth, it says that Nimrod was a son of
Cush and that he began an empire in the cities of Babylon. Cush represents the nation
of Ethiopia, Egypt’s southern neighbor and the Bible makes him a son of Ham, who
represents Egypt in the Table of Nations. The implication of the story, then, is that a
descendant of Egypt, associated with Ethiopia, conquered the cities of Babylon in the
second millennium B.C. Historical evidence completely discredits this claim.
A better explanation recognizes that the Table of Nations derives from a variety of
legends about national origins. In fact, the Greek historian Herodotus, often called the
“Father of History,” records a particular legend about an Egyptian pharaoh named
Sesostris, who came to the throne about 1897 B.C. during Egypt’s twelfth dynasty.
His account seems to be based on the same legend that inspired the Nimrod story. An
identification of Nimrod with Sesostris also is chronologically consistent with the
Table of Nations, which places Nimrod in about the same time frame as Egypt’s
twelfth dynasty. According to Herodotus, Sesostris was the only Egyptian king to
conquer Ethiopia. He subsequently launched a military campaign into Mesopotamia
and across Asia, conquering every nation in his path until he reached Europe.
Herodotus says he learned of Sesostris from discussions with Egyptian scholars,
and it is evident that legends of this king were part of Egyptian folklore. The story
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