Radical and Traditional Interpretations of Genesis

A Garden of Edens: Table of Contents (see annotated TOC below)

Part I: Ancient, Modern and Future Scientific Origin Theories
Part II: Religion, Biblical Religion, and Scientific Origin Theories
Part III: Traditional & radical traditional approaches to allegorial understanding of Genesis
Part IV: Interpretations of the Creation and Eden Accounts: The Creation accounts as something other than purely-literal descriptions of actual historical physical events: sections in Part IV:

1: Similarities to the Big Bang and Evolution in Traditional Sources

2: Genesis as an Additional Act of Creation/Formation to a Pre-Existent Universe

3: The Indefinite Age of the Universe: Two Traditional Sources

4: Predecessors and Contemporaries of Adam: 'Adam': a Race Rather Than An Individual

5: The order of creation: various approaches

6: Hidden Chronology and the Creation Date

7: The 'creation accounts' as Something Other Than Descriptions of Creation (R. Yosef Albo, Rashi)

8: The Creation Account: A Description From A Human-Type Perception.

9: The Creation Accounts as Literal Descriptions of Divine Mental Events.

10: The Second creation account as a literal descriptions of mental events in Adam's Mind:

11: The creation accounts as literal descriptions of events in the Spiritual plane.

12: Genesis as an Account of the Mental Blueprint Design of the Universe:

13: The Creation Account as a Divinely Sanctioned Prophetic Conception of Creation: A prophet other than Adam.

14: The Creation Account as a Divinely Sanctioned Revision of an Ancient Pagan Conception of Creation

Part V: Discussion and Epilogue

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Annotated Table of Contents

Part I and II : Ancient, Modern and Future Scientific Origin Theories

Overview of Scientific Origin Theory: Ancient Greek conceptions regarding the origin of the universe and of life. Lucretius’s view. Medieval conceptions. Rambam.
An introduction to the theory of the big bang and of evolution, and to the overall scientific origin theory.

Part II : Religion, Biblical Religion, and Scientific Origin Theories

Why the big bang theory was originally considered as being too close to religious ideas of creation to be palatable as a scientific theory.
Various philosophical interpretations of the big bang theory.
Why scientific origin theories are considered to present conflicts with the Biblical creation account.
Similarities to the Big Bang and Evolution in Traditional Sources: Genesis can be interpreted via a combination of various traditional Jewish sources in order to construct a parallel between the origin theory and traditional interpretations of Genesis. In this sense Genesis can be read as agreeing with the scientific model of the origin of the universe and of life.
Both the agreement with origin theory, and the conflict with the origin theory, are inherent in the fact that Genesis has more than one interpretation.

Part III: Allgory
A: Allegory in the Pentateuch, Nakh, and Midrash

We begin with a presentation of statements referring to the non-literal interpretation of the words of the Pentateuch - of the highest level of inspiration - and follow this with similar type statements about the writings on progressively lower levels of inspiration - the writings of the prophets, and then the Talmud and Midrash.

i: Traditional Approaches to Allegorization of the Bible
ii: The 'Intended Meaning' of a Passage
iii: Allegorizations of Talmud and Midrash

B: The Creation Account and Allegory in Jewish Tradition

i) How Traditionally Fundamental Is the Belief in Creation?
ii) : The Creation Account and Allegory
iii): The Cosmological Views of The Jewish Sages [Khazal]

A short historical perspective of the use of allegorical interpretation over the ages, and its relation to apologetics.

Allegorizations of the Creation Account: Brief description of actual allegorical interpretations of the creation account which have been offered in traditional sources over the ages, and a brief discussion of the attitude of these allegorizers to the literal translation of the account.

Allegory, the Creation Account, and Scientific Theory:

Part IV:

Creation as an Additional Act of Creation/Formation to a Pre-Existent Big Bang Universe: The words of the creation account can be interpreted literally, but in a different context than is ordinarily assumed - for example, as being a description of the creation of the earth alone, or of the solar system alone, rather than of the universe as a whole.
The Indefinite Age of the Universe: Two Traditional Sources. Hidden Chronology and the Creation Date ('Seder Olam':R.Shimon Schwab). Tradition does not accept that creation took place at a specific date, a certain given amount of time ago.
Predecessors and Contemporaries of Adam: Biblical and Rabbinic Sources indicating that Adam was not the first human and therefore one need not see contradiction between evolutionary theory and Traditional understandings of the Biblical accounts of Adam. Adam as a Race Rather than as an Individual: Biblical and Rabbinic Sources indicating that an entire race of humans were created, so that the Biblical story of Adam relates to an earth populated as described by evolutionary theory.
The order of creation: various Traditional approaches. The creation account as interpreted traditionally is sufficiently flexible to be seen as compatible with some aspects of scientific theory.
The 'Creation Accounts' as Something Other Than Descriptions of Creation (R. Yosef Albo, Rashi). There is no conflict with science since the opening chapters of Genesis do not deal with creation but rather with the purpose for which the universe was created.
The Creation Account: A Description From A Human-Type Perception: The creation account can be taken as a description of creation from the point of view of the Creator, but translated into human terms - as a human would have experienced the beyond-human-comprehension processes accompanying creation;
The Creation Accounts as Literal Descriptions of Mental Events in the Mind of God: e.g. the Mental Blueprint Design of the Universe: Traditional sources contain many references to there having been many events on the mental level and in the spiritual realm accompanying or preceding the creation of the universe. There are also numerous references to a blueprint from which God created the universe. Thus, the creation account in Genesis can perhaps be expected to contain references to these events, or perhaps even to be dealing only with these mental and or spiritual events rather than with actual historical events in the physical universe.
The Creation accounts as literal descriptions of events in the Spiritual plane. Appendix: the construction of the Spiritual Forms - Ramkhal; The creation account is a translation into humanly comprehensible physical terms of events which occurred in the spiritual plane in connection with the creation of the spiritual cosmos, these events being parallel to, or analogous to - but certainly not identical to - events which occurred in the physical universe as it was being created.
The Creation account as Adam's Prophetic Vision. [Appendix: Ramban.] The 'creation account' can then be a description of the creation of the universe as perceived in a prophetic vision by Adam, a description of it being passed down the generations and then incorporated into the Torah by Moses at God's behest (or word for word dictation).
The Creation Account as a Divinely Sanctioned Prophetic Conception of Creation by a prophet other than Adam: At various junctures in the history of mankind, God engaged certain individuals in a special manner, and this encounter allowed the communication to them of various aspects of reality inaccessible to a purely intellectual and rational investigation of the universe. Perhaps they experienced 'prophetic visions', some of these visions perhaps involving elements related to some aspect of the creation of the universe.
This vision may have been that of a pre-Mosaic prophet, or of Moses himself. Indeed, this prophet may have been not one we are familiar with from the Torah - and may have been some 'non-Jewish' prophet, which prophecy was later included in the Torah by Moses at God's behest (or word for word dictation). Appendix: A Reply to Ramban's Objections
The Creation Account as a Divinely Sanctioned Revision of an Ancient Pagan Conception of Creation:
The Creation Account as Allegory: An extensive exploration of the traditional sanction for allegorical interpretation, the history of traditional allegorical interpretation, the methodology of various interpreters as applied to the creation and Eden accounts.
The Instant Universe: It is possible to interpret both accounts as being literal descriptions of actual physical historical events while at the same time accepting that the universe is indeed in a 'big bang emergent state' as described by scientific theory. In this scenario, after God created the universe as detailed in the first creation account, and after the events told of in the garden of Eden account, God 'rested' by creating a self-consistent system of natural law which would allow the universe to operate 'independently', in a 'natural' manner. As part of this procedure, God put the universe into a state consistent with this system of natural law - that is a big-bang-emergent state.
This is an interpretation in which both creation accounts - although not comprising a complete description of the entire process of the development of the universe - are nevertheless purely-literal descriptions of actual physical events.

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