"Now the sons of Noah were three, Shem and Japhet, and Ham, born one hundred years before the deluge.2 These first of all descended from the mountains into the plains, and fixed their habitation there; and persuaded others, who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, and so were very loth to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their examples. Now the plain, in which they first dwelt, was called Shinar." Book I, Chpt. 4 verse 1
-- Flavius Josephus of the Antiquities of the Jews
"And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven... And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded."
"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth"
"Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as aNimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
"In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with part of the vessels of the house of God: which he carried into the land of Shinar to the house of his god"
Amraphel was king of Shinar (14:1), Judah was carried captive there (Isa. 11:11; Dan. 1:2; Zech. 5:11) and the name denotes the lower part of the land between the Tigris and Euphrates.
"...it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grand-son of Ham, the son of Noah: a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was through his means that they were happy; but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny; seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his own power. He also said, “He would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again: for that he would build a Tower too high for the waters to be able to reach; and that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their fore-fathers.”
---Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, chpt 4. v.2
"The place wherein they built the Tower is now called Babylon: because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before: for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, Confusion. Hestiæus mentions it, when he says thus, “Such of the Priests as were saved took the sacred vessels of Jupiter Enyalius, and came to Shinar of Babylonia.”
[About An. 2520] Now they were the grand-children of Noah, in honour of whom names were imposed on the nations, by those that first seized upon them. Japhet, the son of Noah, had seven sons: they inhabited so, that beginning at the mountains Taurus and Amanus, they proceeded along Asia, as far as the river Tanais; and along Europe to Cadiz: and settling themselves on the lands they light upon, which none had inhabited before, they called the nations by their own names. For Gomer founded those whom the Greeks now call Galatians [Galls], but were then called Gomerites. Magog founded those that from him were named Magogites; but who are by the Greeks called Scythians. Now as to Javan and Madai, the sons of Japhet; from Madai came the Madeans, who are called Medes, by the Greeks;