The tower of Babel
Whether Babel recounts a datable event or serves as an origin story for the scattering of nations and languages.
Genesis 11:1-9
1The whole earth was of one language and of one speech.
2As they traveled from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they lived there.
3They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.
4They said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth.”
5Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built.
6Yahweh said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do.
7Come, let’s go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”
8So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there on the surface of all the earth. They stopped building the city.
9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of all the earth. From there, Yahweh scattered them abroad on the surface of all the earth.
What each tradition says
Rabbinic / Midrashic
Rabbi Huna said they met with success. One who came intending to lay one brick laid two, and one who came intending to plaster two bricks plastered four.
Sefaria 2022 translation, Midrash Rabbah, Genesis — Sefaria 2022 translation — Bereshit Rabbah 38:8 (on Genesis 11:3-4)
Patristic
Augustine identifies the city called Confusion as Babylon, noting that Babylon means Confusion. He concludes that Nimrod founded it, since Scripture says the beginning of his kingdom was Babylon, which held supremacy over other cities as metropolis and royal residence, though it did not reach the grand dimensions its proud and impious founder designed.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430), The City of God (trans. Marcus Dods), in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 1, vol. 2 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), Book XVI — Book XVI, ch. 4 ('Of the Diversity of Languages, and of the Founding of Babylon')
Catholic
Gigot recounts that God confounded their tongue, so they did not understand one another's speech. God thus scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. He identifies this as the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel.
Francis E. Gigot, The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company), vol. 2, s.v. 'Babel, Tower of' — article 'Tower of Babel', 'History of the Tower'
Orthodox
No sourced position found. Checked John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition (Book II ch. 2 on creation and ch. 4 on the devil: no treatment of Gen. xi; the volume's index has no Babel entry), the Catena Aurea's Matthew volumes (no Genesis material), pravoslavieto.com Philaret's Longer Catechism (no article on the passage), and archive.org Synod of Jerusalem 1899 (no relevant article) — no statement on Gen. xi. 1-9 found.
Reformed / Protestant
Calvin holds it probable that shortly after the building of Babel, the memory of those things which ought to have been discussed and celebrated was obliterated. In his reading, what should have been kept alive by continual discourse was instead forgotten.
John Calvin (1509-1564), Commentaries on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, vol. 1 (trans. John King; Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1847; CCEL text from the Baker reprint) — Commentary on Genesis 11 (the building of Babel and the dispersion)
Evangelical
No sourced position found. Checked CCEL: Matthew Henry's Genesis pages (JS-only shells, no served text), Wesley's Notes (no Genesis notes in the CCEL set), Barnes' Notes (New Testament only); bibliaplus' Adam Clarke commentary (Genesis not hosted); Project Gutenberg for a PD exposition of Genesis 11 — no citable statement on the tower's historicity found.