The haggadic assumption that there are seventy nations and languages in the world is based upon the ethnological table given in Gen. 10-11, where seventy grandsons of Noah are enumerated, each of whom became the ancestor of a nation. These are the primordial nations, sometimes referred to as the "seventy tounges," representing all humanity. The Talmud (BT Sukkah 55:B) teaches that the seventy bulls that were offered in the Holy Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles served as atonement for the seventy nations of the world. Truly, as the rabbis observed, "if the nations of the world had only known how much they needed the Temple, they would have surrounded it with armed fortresses to protect it" (Bamidbar Rabbah 1, 3).