In our recent publications we have discussed and argued our point on the problem of the sacred places in the Hebrew religion. In the following lines we are going to reflect on two texts in the Genesis, which we propose to read in a synoptic manner: t he Tower of Babel (Genesis 11, 2 - 9) and the dream of Jacob (Genesis 28, 10 - 22). The two narratives seem in fact constructed so as to contrast two ways of relating to the Word: using it so as to build for material purposes and receiving it for

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... derstanding its spiritual purposes. The tension dramatized by the two texts seems to reveal a complex theology of the Word, which, being undoubtedly grafted on archaic stories, attests to a will for a conceptual unification typical of a cosmological monotheism.