The Tower

K. Douglas Bassett

Lehi in Desert, Nibley, p. 154-160; Messiah in Ancient America, Warren and Ferguson, p. 120

“The people being of one language, gathered together to build a tower to reach, as they supposed the crystalized heavens. They thought that the City of Enoch was caught up a little ways from the earth, and that the city was within the first sphere above the earth; and that if they could get a tower high enough, they might get to heaven, where the City of Enoch and the inhabitants thereof were located.” (Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses 16:50)
“The people who built the Tower of Babel are said to have done so in order that its top might ‘reach unto heaven.’ It was to prevent them from accomplishing this purpose, that the Lord confounded their language. (Gen. 11:1-9.) Tradition credits Joseph Smith with the statement that the ‘heaven’ they had in view was the translated city.” (Cowley & Whitney on Doctrine, p. 307)

Latter-Day Commentary on the Book of Mormon

References