Early Church Fathers Scripture Index : Texts

Genesis 11:4

There are 9 footnotes for this reference.

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 4, page 497, footnote 2 (Image)

Tertullian (IV), Minucius Felix, Commodian, Origen

Origen. (HTML)

Origen Against Celsus. (HTML)

Book IV (HTML)
Chapter I (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 3683 (In-Text, Margin)

... and to destroy, and to throw down, and to build and to plant.” For we need words now which will root out of every wounded soul the reproaches uttered against the truth by this treatise of Celsus, or which proceed from opinions like his. And we need also thoughts which will pull down all edifices based on false opinions, and especially the edifice raised by Celsus in his work which resembles the building of those who said, “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top shall reach to heaven.”[Genesis 11:4] Yea, we even require a wisdom which will throw down all high things that rise against the knowledge of God, and especially that height of arrogance which Celsus displays against us. And in the next place, as we must not stop with rooting out and ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 2, page 312, footnote 1 (Image)

Augustine: The City of God, Christian Doctrine

City of God (HTML)

The history of the city of God from Noah to the time of the kings of Israel. (HTML)

Of the Diversity of Languages, and of the Founding of Babylon. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 873 (In-Text, Margin)

... they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Come, and let us go down, and confound there their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. And God scattered them thence on the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city and the tower. Therefore the name of it is called Confusion; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and the Lord God scattered them thence on the face of all the earth.”[Genesis 11:1-9] This city, which was called Confusion, is the same as Babylon, whose wonderful construction Gentile history also notices. For Babylon means Confusion. Whence we conclude that the giant Nimrod was its founder, as had been hinted a little before, ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 7, page 42, footnote 6 (Image)

Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies

Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John. (HTML)

Chapter I. 32, 33. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 131 (In-Text, Margin)

... give security to pride, raised a tower, apparently that they might not be destroyed by a flood, should there come one thereafter. For they had heard and considered that all iniquity was swept away by a flood; to abstain from iniquity they would not; they sought the height of a tower as a defense against a flood; they built a lofty tower. “God saw their pride, and frustrated their purpose by causing that they should not understand one another’s speech, and thus tongues became diverse through pride.”[Genesis 11:1-9] If pride caused diversities of tongues, Christ’s humility has united these diversities in one. The Church is now bringing together what that tower had sundered. Of one tongue there were made many; marvel not: this was the doing of pride. Of many ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8, page 213, footnote 1 (Image)

Augustine: Expositions on the Psalms

Expositions on the Book of Psalms. (HTML)

Psalm LV (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 2016 (In-Text, Margin)

... purpose there were a whispering against me, he saith, all mine ene mies, let them lose their “one purpose” in evil, divided be the tongues of them, let them not with themselves agree together. “Sink, O Lord, and divide the tongues of them.” Wherefore “sink”? Because themselves they have lifted up. Wherefore “divide”? Because for an evil thing they have united. Recollect that tower of proud men made after the deluge: what said the proud men? Lest we perish in a deluge, let us make a lofty tower.[Genesis 11:4] In pride they were thinking themselves to be fortified, they builded up a lofty tower, and the Lord divided the tongues of them. Then they began not to understand one another; hence arose the beginning of many tongues. For before, one tongue there ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 1, page 84, footnote 5 (Image)

Eusebius: Church History from A.D. 1-324, Life of Constantine the Great, Oration in Praise of Constantine

The Church History of Eusebius. (HTML)

Book I (HTML)

Summary View of the Pre-existence and Divinity of Our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 47 (In-Text, Margin)

... excess of voluntary wickedness, the natural reason of man, and the seeds of thought and of culture implanted in the human soul. They gave themselves wholly over to all kinds of profanity, now seducing one another, now slaying one another, now eating human flesh, and now daring to wage war with the Gods and to undertake those battles of the giants celebrated by all; now planning to fortify earth against heaven, and in the madness of ungoverned pride to prepare an attack upon the very God of all.[Genesis 11:1-9]

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 1, page 120, footnote 3 (Image)

Eusebius: Church History from A.D. 1-324, Life of Constantine the Great, Oration in Praise of Constantine

The Church History of Eusebius. (HTML)

Book II (HTML)

The Works of Philo that have come down to us. (HTML)
CCEL Footnote 426 (In-Text, Margin)

2. There are, besides these, treatises expressly worked out by him on certain subjects, such as the two books On Agriculture, and the same number On Drunken ness; and some others distinguished by different titles corresponding to the contents of each; for instance, Concerning the things which the Sober Mind desires and execrates, On the Confusion of Tongues,[Genesis 11:1-9] On Flight and Discovery, On Assembly for the sake of Instruction, On the question, ‘Who is heir to things divine?’ or On the division of things into equal and unequal, and still further the work On the three Virtues which with others have been described by Moses.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 6, page 60, footnote 17 (Image)

Jerome: Letters and Select Works

The Letters of St. Jerome. (HTML)

Paula and Eustochium to Marcella. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 942 (In-Text, Margin)

What are God’s first words to Abraham? “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred unto a land that I will show thee.” The patriarch—the first to receive a promise of Christ—is here told to leave the Chaldees, to leave the city of confusion and its rehoboth or broad places; to leave also the plain of Shinar, where the tower of pride had been raised to heaven.[Genesis 11:4] He has to pass through the waves of this world, and to ford its rivers; those by which the saints sat down and wept when they remembered Zion, and Chebar’s flood, whence Ezekiel was carried to Jerusalem by the hair of his head. All this Abraham undergoes that he may dwell in a land of promise watered from ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 275, footnote 7 (Image)

Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen

Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)

On the Great Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 3338 (In-Text, Margin)

22. The crowning feat of this faction was the council which sat first at Seleucia, the city of the holy and illustrious virgin Thekla, and afterwards at this mighty city, thus connecting their names, no longer with noble associations, but with these of deepest disgrace; whether we must call that council, which subverted and disturbed everything, a tower of Chalane,[Genesis 11:4] which deservedly confounded the tongues—would that theirs had been confounded for their harmony in evil!—or a Sanhedrim of Caiaphas where Christ was condemned, or some other like name. The ancient and pious doctrine which defended the Trinity was abolished, by setting up a palisade and battering down the ...

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 7, page 418, footnote 3 (Image)

Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen

Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. (HTML)

Funeral Oration on the Great S. Basil, Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia. (HTML)

CCEL Footnote 4524 (In-Text, Margin)

67. I will only say this of him. Whenever I handle his Hexaemeron, and take its words on my lips, I am brought into the presence of the Creator, and understand the words of creation, and admire the Creator more than before, using my teacher as my only means of sight. Whenever I take up his polemical works, I see the fire of Sodom, by which the wicked and rebellious tongues are reduced to ashes, or the tower of Chalane, impiously built,[Genesis 11:4] and righteously destroyed. Whenever I read his writings on the Spirit, I find the God Whom I possess, and grow bold in my utterance of the truth, from the support of his theology and contemplation. His other treatises, in which he gives explanations for those who are ...

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