Michael Anderson, age 8, of Canfield, Ohio, for his question:

WHAT IS THE TOWER OF BABEL?

The Tower of Babel was a terraced pyramid called ziggurat that was said to have been built near Babylon in Mesopotamia. Babel is the Hebrew name for the city. It means gate of God in the Babylonian language.

The descendants of Noah who settled in Babylon, according to the Bible, started building the tower. They wanted it to reach all the way to heaven. But God did not want the tower to be built and he caused all of the people to speak different languages.

According to the story, the people could not understand one another because of the language problem, and as a result they had to stop building the tower. The Hebrews believed this event represented the origin of the world's various languages