The author reviews the recent research on the text of Gen. xi 1-9. He underlines the significance of the method of literary criticism as developed by G. von Rad ("Uberlieferungsgeschichte") which has not been considered enough in the author's opinion. This method, with some modifications, is applied and in doing so a new attempt is made to solve the problems in the text by a smoother separation into two layers. As a result, the growth of the text becomes lucid in three phases.