The Creation and
Teleology, Metaphysics, and Moral History
The book you are now reading was written by God.
A startling claim like
that made above will not be taken at face value by most readers. The mere fact
that a book makes the claim to be a record of God's word to man is certainly
not sufficient reason to accept it as such. Claims made by a book about itself
- its contents, origin, authorship, history and so on - will not, if
unsubstantiated, convince most readers.
Of course, a text itself may contain what is to some people
convincing evidence of the truth of its claims it makes. For example, upon
reading a particular book which claims divine origin some people may feel
convinced by its insight that it is indeed of divine origin. Generally though
instead of simply accepting or rejecting the claim of a book regarding its
authorship, we might ask others if they know where the text originated, when it
was written, by whom. We look for the cultural context of the book[2].
Modern approaches of deconstruction and the post-modernist
attitude to interpretation of history and of texts provide important insights.
However in this work we are more concerned with free will of the type implied
by the traditional understanding of the Bible; it is that which has informed
our cultural conception of free will and moral responsibility. We are not
concerned here with historical, critical or deconstructionist readings of the
Biblical text.
For our purposes here the relevant cultural context of the Bible
is provided by the Tradition claiming to stretch back to the time the Bible was
written. Consequently in our discussions we
consider the written text of the
Bible to be simply an element of the oral tradition (see appendix below for
more discussion of this point), and our interpretation of the creation and
The Creation and
The first chapters of Genesis present two
separate stories relating to the central mysteries of human existence. The
first - that of the six days of creation - relates to the fundamental
questions of why the universe exists at
all, how it came to exist, how life came into
being, and the origin of the
human race. In the second account - that of the Garden of Eden - the central
event is the onset of free-willed consciousness and of moral choice,
represented in the Bible by the incident of the
Tree of Knowledge.
To understand the creation accounts, one
must also understand the literary background of the people to whom the Bible
was initially given. Analyzing the creation accounts that were current at the
time provides us with insight into the meaning of the creation account for
those who first received it. Indeed, comparisons with the creation accounts of
the Babylonians and other ancient nations show up distinctive and significant
differences between them, which allows us to see what special meaning the
creation and Eden accounts had for those who first heard them, and were perhaps
familiar with the current Babylonian and other creation stories[3].
The central message conveyed by the contrast
between the creation account in Genesis and the other creation accounts is that
from the Biblical perspective the universe is Purposive, having been created by
an Omnipotent God rather than having been eternally existent and governed by
various competing gods. God consciously chose to create, freely deciding on
each step of the design of the universe, proceeding only when and because the
prior stage met divine approval. There is a moral order in the universe, God is
not capricious, and man was created 'in the image of God' - a conscious being
endowed with free will and the moral responsibility to choose the good.
Creation is itself an act of will, and the
creation account is accordingly about an act of divine will. Indeed, the method
of creation in Genesis exhibits choice and thought rather than caprice or
predestination, and the culmination of the process is both an expression of
will and its attendant creation of will - according to some traditional
Biblical commentators, [God is the quintessential Will and therefore] the
creation of a being who is made 'in the image of the creator' means the
creation of a free willed being.
While the creation account leads up to the
creation of mankind, this in turn leads up to the eating of the tree of
knowledge in the
This
second account, that of the Garden of Eden, relates to the fundamentals of the
human condition; human mortality, existential loneliness, and the burden of
moral choice. It also involves the central philosophical paradoxes of human
existence such as the emergence of free-will, the mind-body problem (discussed
in later chapters), and the soul/body and God/man dichotomy.
The significance of the creation and
The knowledge gained from scientific origin
theories makes the creation and
As we stated in the preface, understanding
the connections between the two accounts will aid us in appreciating their
meaning and their juxtaposition, and can also help motivate the implications in
Genesis that the universe was created not so long ago and that the first human
being lived only thousands of years ago.
The
Creation and
The underlying theme reappearing at various
junctures in the present book is that of free-willed moral consciousness, and
this theme also underlies most of the Bible.
The Bible is concerned with moral
instruction and regulation, with rights and duties, and its stories are
concerned always with the moral actions of humanity. All the Biblical
commandments and prohibitions, all the praise and censure, all talk of reward
and punishment, are predicated on the fact that humans are moral beings - that
they have a free will, the intelligence
to understand the consequences of their actions, and an understanding of the
distinction between right and wrong. The Bible is about the actions of moral
beings, and is addressed to moral beings.
The
other half of the equation is that of the source of all the above - of the
moral beings themselves, and of the book- the Bible - that is addressed to
them. According to the tradition which presents the Bible, the universe as a
whole is the product of design, the moral beings are part of this design, and
the book derives from the author of the design. The universe is the product of
free-willed conscious design, and it contains within it a free-willed conscious
being, a being which when sufficiently developed can even employ its moral
consciousness to challenge that of its creator, as the book tells us Abraham
did.
Thus the Bible is prefaced with the two
central ideas underlying its entire content. First, a description of a
deliberate, willed, planned creation; creation of a universe via the design of
a free-willed consciousness, concluding with the creation of free-willed humanity[4]. Then an account of the emergence within this
universe of an independent free-willed moral consciousness, derived of a
mixture of dust and divine spirit.
The
rest of the Bible is then a dialogue between the creating free-willed
consciousness and this creature of dust and divine spirit, whose autonomy
extends to the use of its free-will to defy the will of its creator who has
granted it this very autonomy.
As advertised, we will find that an understanding of the Bible as
based on the concept of free-willed conscious moral activity will allow us to
better understand some of the perplexing issues relating to the creation and
Garden of Eden accounts. Furthermore, with insights provided by modern physics
and cosmology especially as relating to the idea of free-willed consciousness,
we will find a better appreciation of the relationship between the ideas
presented in Genesis and those of science and cosmology itself.
Genesis as Teleology rather than
Chronology
The
creation account should not be expected to contain a chronological description
of the development of the universe, but rather it is a reference to the
underlying purpose for which the universe was created. And, as in the Biblical
perspective this purpose involves the fulfillment of the Bible's moral ethical
and religious commands, and it is man's free-willed consciousness which
qualifies him for this challenge, the creation and Eden account are less
concerned with the development of the physical universe and the animal kingdom,
and more with the emergence of man and of free-willed consciousness.
The Bible is not primarily a history book,
and the text itself makes no overt claim to be one. Nor does it claim to be a
science text. Tradition does view the text in this way to some degree however
this is not necessarily its essential fous. Rather, it is to be seen as a
record of divine revelation regarding moral history, and moral ethical and
legal imperatives, with the creation and
Rather than stressing the physics of
planetary formation, Genesis stresses that the universe was carefully designed
to produce life; rather than dealing with biology, it speaks of a purposive
universe in which a creature formed from the dust of the earth is infused with
the divine spirit and charged with the challenge and obligation of moral
action.
The entire course of Biblical narrative
points to the fact that from the Biblical perspective the universe is a stage
for the drama of moral activity, that its purpose is the fulfillment of the
imperatives outlined in the Bible, that the meaning of life and of existence of
the universe itself is tied to the action of free-willed conscious choice[5].
In the Biblical perspective, it is not the
actions of non-sentient animals which are of interest, it is not the evolution
of stellar systems which are relevant, but rather only the moral activity of
free-willed beings are significant. In this world-view, history - as a record
of events of significance - begins not with the big bang or with the dinosaurs
or even with early hominids, but rather with the emergence of the first
free-willed conscious being, the drama of the first moral choices.
This understanding of the meaning of history
for the Bible, and of its preoccupation with events of moral significance,
allows an appreciation of the historical-chronological structure of the first
few chapters of Genesis.
Traditional Genesis presents a description of
the careful and purposeful creation of the universe culminating in the
formation of the first humans, followed by an account of the emergence of
free-willed consciousness and of moral activity.
It declares that contrary to those who may
claim that the universe is the product of random chance, or exists in of itself
from eternity, the universe is actually the creation of a Mind, and is the
product of careful design. In contrast to those who may insist on the cosmic
insignificance of humanity in comparison to the vast physical universe and the
myriad species of life on earth, the creation account stresses the crucial role
of humanity in the universe as derived from the potential for moral choice
which distinguishes humanity from the inanimate no matter how vast, and from
the non-sentient, no matter how numerous.
When
understood in this context, and with this understanding of their role, the
opening chapters of Genesis resonate not only with the rest of the Bible, but
also with many of the speculative ideas which have arisen in the wake of modern
physics and cosmology; in turn these ideas shed light on the structure and
content of the opening sections of Genesis.
Genesis, Tradition, History, and Science [6]
The supposed conflict between scientific and
traditional readings of Genesis.
It is quite interesting
that only 60 links in the chain of Tradition are required to connect Moses, who
lived about 3,500 years ago, with a child studying Bible today. In Traditional
communities many a child learns from an adult, teacher or grandparent who is 60
years or so older than they are. Sixty links of sixty years gives 3,600 years!
Those who accept the
Bible as a divinely revealed text most often do so not due to claims or proofs
in the text itself, but rather as a result of a chain of tradition which claims
to reach back to the time the Bible was given. One's grandparents relate how
their grandparents related...etc ....back along the links in the chain to the
time 3,400 years ago that according to tradition the Bible was revealed to man[7].
Indeed, the Bible does not make outright claims about itself, as
a complete book. It does not open with a statement such as "I, God of the
universe, am giving the following book to man" or even "These are the
words of God as revealed to Moses..". Instead it opens, without
introduction, without revealing the identity of the narrator, or even the
source of the information supplied. Simply "In the beginning God created
the heavens and earth....". [8]
Much later on the book relates that God told Moses to write
various things down and present it to the people of
Should there not have been some written record of the seminal
event of the giving of the entire text of the torah to the people, accompanied
by a discussion of the meaning of the text, reasons for giving it, and so on?
Of course one could
reason that since a description of the giving of the text must of necessity be
composed after the giving itself, it cannot be included in the given text.
However, the text does describe the death of Moses, which must have occurred after
the giving of the text, if it was Moses who gave the text to the people.
According to tradition it was indeed
Moses who gave this book to the Jewish people, and this part of the text was
written either by Moses in prophecy, or by Joshua. Similarly, it would not be
impossible for the giving of the text to have been mentioned in the text itself
- written either by Moses via prophecy, or by Joshua. Nevertheless these
seminal events and all-important information about the text were not included.
How is it that the book does not itself relate to its readers
what its intended purpose is, and that the author of he book is God? Perhaps
because even were the text to make claims about itself, such as “this book was
written by God”, these claims would not be accepted simply on the basis of the
textual statement itself. And so, the text must in any case be accompanied by
an oral tradition in order to be complete. Therefore there is perhaps no
logical necessity in including the claims itself in the text. And so the text
makes few claims about itself; most of the claims regarding the text are made
by the oral tradition accompanying the text.
Instead, the oral tradition can tell us all about the book -
where and when it originated, why it was written, even how it is to be
understood. For example, the Bible does not specify if it is meant as poetry,
history, science, theology, myth, moral homily or literature - this must be
left to the oral tradition accompanying it. In some instances a written text by
itself without an accompanying oral tradition about it is an orphan,
incomplete.
The
Bible has been transmitted from generation to generation, in a tradition
thousands of years old. Those who transmitted it included a framework within
which it was to be understood. The oral framework to the written text, the oral
tradition, include not only insight into the purpose and source of the text but
also interpretations of the material in the text. It is the framework provided
by the oral tradition which gives legitimacy to the written text, not vice
versa. Again, the written text is a part of the oral tradition. As such, the
traditional understanding of the Bible[9] as
understood within this framework - if it has been correctly transmitted to form
the present day - has more authenticity than possessed by a seemingly more
objectively accurate literal 'translation' of the written text.
Traditional (“Orthodox”)
Jews believe in what the tradition says, and believe in the Bible because the
Tradition tells them to. It is very important
to understand this, that for traditional Jews Judaism is built on the tradition
and not on the the Torah. Therfore the meaning of the Torah as a whole and of
particular segments, is determined by Tradition, for example as recorded in the
Talmud, rather than by philological analysis o f the Torah text itself. To a
traditionalist, it is not relevant whther or not a literal translation of the
Bible conflicts with something she holds to be true, since the literal apparent meaning is not canonical
(religiously accepted) .
The Bible and Science
The Bible is written in the Hebrew language. The words of the
Bible can therefore only be properly understood within the context of the
cultural-linguistic context of those Hebrew-speaking people to whom it was first
given, and within its own internal context. Any translation is necessarily an
interpretation, especially translations composed long after the Bible was
originally written.
Even an understanding of
the text as written in the original Hebrew is an interpretation because the
words may have different meanings now than when it was written. And given a
text, even if the language is familiar, to understand it properly one must
understand the intent of the writer to determine whether it is to be understood
as poetry or as science[10]. Scientific texts are meant as literal and
complete accounts of the contents they speak of, however this is not
necessarily the case with poetry, or other types of texts. For these and all other texts, one must look
into the text itself and to the oral tradition accompanying it to decide how it
was meant to be understood.
If the Bible is indeed
interpreted as a purely literal and complete surface-meaning description of
actual physical events, then clearly the Bible and science conflict. However,
since from the Traditional perspective the Bible is meaningless without the
context provided by its accompanying oral tradition we will interpret it
according to the tradition within which it is embedded, rather than as a
science text book, or via a translation into English or even modern Hebrew.
Those who transmitted the Bible through the generations have
bequeathed a comprehensive, flexible, and even multifaceted attitude toward the
meaning of the Bible. As a result, the Bible as interpreted within the
framework of approaches taught by Jewish tradition is very different from its
literal 'translation'. In particular, the creation account as understood from
within many of these approaches is not in conflict with science.
............................
A poem is recited to a
loved one: "your eyes are stars, your face shines as the sun...". Is
this poem true?
Clearly the question of
the truth or falsity of the statement "your eyes are stars" is
misplaced here, and knowing that it is a poem is the key. Only if it is
presented as a statement of scientific fact rather than as a poem is it false.
A culture which had only science and no poetry might well misunderstand the
intent of such a statement, and finding it in a book would conclude that the author
was proposing a cosmology in which all stars are actually some type of eye, and
that some people had eyes which were of this type. They might then conclude
that the author had a primitive notion of the universe and disregard the book -
another culture upon seeing the book might adopt this belief themselves. Both
would be misunderstanding the author's point.
A poem which states that
the sky is composed of the breath of one's beloved obviously does not conflict
with science. However, for readers to base their cosmology on a literal
understanding of the poem may indeed represent a conflict with scientific
teachings regarding the nature of the universe. The poetry book in itself, and
the words of the book are not in themselves in conflict with science, however
it may certainly be the case that the beliefs held by some due to the words of
the book may indeed be in conflict with science.
Similarly, the possibility of contradiction between science and
the creation and
Furthermore, even
those traditional views regarding creation which seem to conflict with science
do not necessarily involve all of tradition in their conflict, since not all of
the ideas regarding matters cosmological expressed in post-Biblical traditional
sources are necessarily authoritative. As Rambam states[12]:
"You
must not expect that everything our Sages say regarding astronomical matters
should agree with observations for mathematics was not fully developed in those
days, and their statements were not based on the authority of the Prophets, but
on the knowledge which either they themselves possessed or they derived from
contemporary men of science."
Regarding cosmological knowledge and its relation to the traditional
secret teachings, Rambam stated[13]:
"Know
that many branches of science relating to the correct solution of these
problems, were once cultivated by our forefathers, but were in the course of
time neglected, especially in consequence of the tyranny which barbarous
nations exercised over us. Besides, speculative studies were not open to all
men, as we have already stated only the subjects taught in the Scriptures were
accessible to all.....no portions of the secret teachings of the Torah [were]
written down...[they were] orally transmitted....the natural effect of this
practice was that our nation lost the knowledge of those important disciplines.
Nothing but a few remarks and allusions are to be found in the Talmud and the
Midrashim, like a few kernels involved in such a husk, that the reader is
generally occupied with the husk, and
forgets that it encloses a kernel."
Regarding the metaphysical cosmological ideas current in his time,
and the opinion of some that they were in conflict with religious belief,
Rambam states[14]:
"...these
theories are not opposed to anything taught by our prophets and our
Sages....But when wicked barbarians have deprived us of our possessions, put an
end to our science and literature, and killed our wise men, we have become
ignorant...Having been brought up among persons untrained in philosophy, we are
inclined to consider these philosophical opinions as foreign to our religion,
just as uneducated persons find them foreign to their own notions. But in fact
it is not so."
The Bible without the accompanying oral tradition is just a book
rather than a set of beliefs, and therefore there can be no conflict between
the Bible itself and science. The Bible plus the traditional belief that the
Bible originated with God, word for word, does not in itself give rise to a
conflict between the Bible and science. Although it may be that some have
beliefs about the content of the Bible, about the words which tradition
ascribes to God, which lead these words to conflict with science, Traditional
Jewish understandings of the creation accounts are generally not in conflict
with scientific teachings.
In the words of Prof.
Walter Kaufmann of
"The contemporary Jew faces no grim
problems in connection with specific scientific statements. He need not choose between dogma and
The Surface Meaning of the Creation
and
We have no way of knowing from the text itself if the Genesis
account and most of the other sections were part of the writings which God told
Moses to write down and give to the people. Even if the text began with a claim
to the effect that the creation account was part of that, we would have no
means of knowing if that claim were true and so we search for the origins of
the Book in that which people know of it - that is, in tradition.
We are not told by the text if the creation account is an actual
or poetic description of physical events. We are not even told in the text why
the story is told, whether the fact that it is told means that we must read it,
study it, know it; we are not even instructed as to whether we must believe
that the creation account is an actual description of physical events.
Certainly anyone can see
that on the surface it contains many inconsistencies[16], so that it could not have been meant as a purely
literal surface-meaning account of actual physical events. Furthermore, the
anthropomorphisms in the creation account such as “God said” or “God saw”, or
“”God rested” are inconsistent with Traditional religious belief itself that
God is not corporeal (God is a spiritual rather than physical entity and
therefore does not have a physical body) . Clearly, proponents of Tradition
cannot accept the account as totally literal. Clearly then, one cannot
legitimately assume that Traditional belief necessarily considers every word of
Fthe creation and Garden of Eden accounts as literal. However, what these
accounts do mean, and why they were included in the Bible, and how we must
relate to them are not in the text, and cannot reliably form part of the text -
for this context we turn to the tradition which accompanies the text.
As stated above, many of the statements
regarding the creation and the creation account in the Talmud, Midrash, Zohar,
and in the classical Jewish Bible commentators seemingly conflict not only with
each other, but also with the Biblical creation account itself. Because they
contradict each other at the level of their surface meaning, it is not possible
to claim that the creation account and the statements about creation in
traditional sources are all meant literally.
In addition, many of these
statements speak of processes which are not mentioned in the creation account,
so that they can be true only if the creation account is not a complete account
of all the events which took place at creation, and in the Garden of Eden. Many
of the statements are also somewhat vague, and are therefore amenable to a wide
range of interpretation.
Whereas a dogmatic religious fundamentalist makes the claim that
every word in the Torah was meant totally literally, and as a description of
actual physical events unless religious tradition unequivocally states
otherwise, many - perhaps most - traditional Jewish sources imply that the
creation account is not meant as a totally literal description of actual
physical events.
The most authoritative voice of Jewish Traditional
philosophical beliefs has been that of Maimonides, whose views have reigned for
the last eight hundred years. Seven hundred years before
"..the
account given in Scripture of the creation is not, as is generally believed,
intended to be in all its parts literal." [17]"The literal meaning of the words might lead
us to conceive corrupt ideas and to form false opinions about God, or even to
entirely abandon and reject the principles of our Faith."
He states categorically that according to Tradition, the Garden of
Eden account is allegorical. Of course that they are meant allegorically does
not mean that they are trivial stories. R. Crescas, in his commentary on
Rambam's statement that the creation account is at least partially allegory[18], states:
" Allegories....means that the mention in Scripture of the
Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge, the description of
Adam, his initial condition and what he later became, the serpent, Eve, the
naming of Adam's sons Cain and Abel, and all that long narrative, all refer to
extremely deep matters which are inaccessible to the common run of humanity and
were therefore given in the form of allegory." [19].
Even the very idea of a creation ex-nihilo (from
nothing), which is seen by some as one of the central points in the creation
account, was included by Maimonides as possibly in this category. In a
discussion of Aristotle's belief that the universe is eternal rather than
created, Maimonides states[20] that just
as the anthropomorphisms in the Torah are not meant literally, it is
theoretically possible that the idea of creation ex-nihilo presented in Genesis
is also meant allegorically[21].
Other great Traditional
Biblical commentators and philosopher such as Rashi and Ramban (Nachmanides)
have intimated that the initial chapters of Genesis should not even be seen as
a 'creation account', since the Divine actions leading to the creation of the
universe are beyond man's comprehension. Instead, these accounts are meant to
teach humanity certain basic truths - and in this book we shall indeed look at
these accounts in this light rather than as cosmogonies.
Origins
Speculations on the origin
of the universe have fascinated man for thousands of years. During the last few
thousand years one of the most widely accepted answers - and one considered
quite authoritative - was provided by the book of Genesis. In recent centuries
however, this source has seemed to be somewhat in conflict with the results of
careful observations of the universe about us, and with the deductions from
these observations. To many readers, the origin theory of science and the
origin model described in Genesis seem quite incompatible with each other, and
this has led many to feel that one could not accept both - painful though such
a choice might be. Einstein writes[22]:
"I had attained
a deep religiosity by the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular
scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the
Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of
freethinking."
However,
the conviction that one is faced with an inescapable contradiction can be
founded on misconceptions.
"revealed his lack of expertise in biblical
matters by replying to the information that the notorious 4,004 B.C. date for
the creation of the world was Archbishop Ussher's and not Moses' by laughing,
'How curious about the Bible. I declare I had fancied that the date was somehow
in the Bible'."
Many of the traditional
Jewish interpretations of Genesis might well have astounded
The following, which on the face of it bears virtually no
resemblance to Genesis, is a composite of traditional understandings of the
creation referred to in Genesis[24]:
"Before
all was created
God
reigned
and
after all ended
God
reigned
Time
emerged from no time,
and
there passed 17 1/2 billion years
Then,
in
the beginning,
nine
hundred and seventy four generations
prior
to that of Adam,
God
was to have created the universe
but didn't.
God
contracted Himself
and
emanated a number of emanations from Himself
in descending order of contact with the
Divine.
God looked then into that part of Himself which
is the Torah,
and
created the universe from a black fire.
God
then created and destroyed several universes.
Then
God created a universe in one day,
containing
among other things
a
two-headed male-female creature
with
scales, webbed fingers and a tail,
whose
height was such that
it
could see from one end of the world to the next.
[At
first God wanted to create a female and a male separately, but then God decided
not to.]
In
the heavens, God created two suns,
but
changed one into a moon later on........
There is virtually no
similarity between the above 'creation account' and that given by the Bible. In
fact they 'contradict' each other no less than the origin theory 'contradicts'
the Biblical creation account, yet every idea in the above derives from
traditional sources hundreds or thousands of years old.
One can say that an elephant
is gray, or that it is huge, or that it
has a certain odor, or that it has four legs or that it is a mammal, or
that it is noble. Each description can indeed be that of an elephant, and each
is very different, yet it is clear that none of them contradict any other -
unless they are offered as being the exclusive truth about the elephant as
perceived from any possible perspective. The differences in the descriptions
derive from the differing perspectives or senses which are being used in order
to compose the description.
Science, the Kabbalah, and
the Midrash, are all systems which provide explanations regarding certain
aspects of reality, and do so from differing perspectives. They see things
differently, and are interested in answering different types of questions[25]. Thus, each system describes the origin of the
universe from the point of view of its concerns, leading the unwary to the
impression that this difference implies a contradiction and a conflict.
Just as traditional sources like
the Midrash and Zohar are explanations of the Torah rather than contradictions
to it, so too the scientific origin theory is an explanation of the creation
account rather than a contradiction to it.
Discovering how the two are related is one of the subjects of both this
book and its companion volume entitled "A Garden of Edens: the Many Faces
of Genesis".
Whatever one's approach to the Bible, the text
itself implies that the creation and
Indeed, by presenting in the
creation and Eden accounts two very different and conflicting descriptions of
what are seemingly the same events, and by juxtaposing these two accounts, the
Torah itself makes unmistakably the point that the creation and Eden accounts
are not to be interpreted naively according to a straight 'literal'
understanding[27].
Jewish tradition, which
indeed sees the two accounts as referring to the same subject, does not see the
surface meaning of the texts as the level from which its meaning can be
gleaned.
The Bible as Moral History
History is not monolithic. The past may be
objectively existent, but history is not, as it is merely a subjective and
selective human view of the past.
Some history books begin with the ancient
empires of the near east, and contain accounts of various wars and political
struggles. Others mention wars not at all, but focus instead on the artistic
achievements of humanity, beginning perhaps with cave-drawings found in
southern
According
to the greatest of the traditional Biblical commentators, Rashi, the creation
account is not really a chronological account of the creation of the universe,
but is instead a teleological account. That is, the very first few words of the
creation account usually translated as "in the beginning God
created", actually mean something quite different, more on the line of
"The reason that God created the universe was for [and Rashi
specifies]......".
Since in these traditional views the
creation account is not a chronological description of the creation and
evolution of the physical and organic universe, and its focus is upon the moral
dimension, tradition may feel no need of searching it for mention of the big
bang or of stellar evolution or the extinction of the dinosaurs.
As some of the greatest of traditional
Biblical commentators have pointed out many hundreds of years ago, the
so-called creation accounts cannot be that, since creation ex-nihilo is beyond
the reach of ordinary human comprehension[28]. Instead of being a description of divine
creation therefore, these accounts serve a different purpose, including setting
the stage for the subsequent commandments and narratives.
Thus, the creation account should not be
expected to contain a chronological description of the development of the
universe, but rather it is a reference to the underlying purpose for which the
universe was created.
[1] This is Ch 6 of “The Retroactive Universe”
[2] The first
few pages of a book often contains claims about the authorship and publication
of the book - we tend to believe these claims generally because we know that
bookstores generally buy from reputable publishers, and the laws of the country
would penalize false claims, and so on. This information is what we call 'the
cultural context' of the book.
The information we have about the book, about the language it is written in, the author, the publishing company, and so on - information from sources other than this book itself - is also part of the cultural context, or what we call the 'oral tradition' accompanying the book.
[3] See eg the now classic writings of Umberto Cassuto, and of Yeheskel Kaufman, and the more recent book by Nachum Sarna “Understanding Genesis”.
[4] Created "in the image of God", which according to various traditional interpretations refers to free will [e.g. Sforno and S.R. Hirsch]
[5] It is due to the infusion of the divine 'breath' that the being thus formed (mankind) is considered to be 'in the image of God', (which according to various traditional interpretations refers specifically to the fact that this being - as distinct from the other created beings - possesses a free-willed consciousness)..
[6] This is the first chapter of Part VI of “The Retroactive Universe”.
[7] A link in
this chain of tradition can be been taken as sixty years based on the model of
a grandparent of seventy-five teaching a grandchild. Or, as often occurs in the
great centers of religious learning, a brilliant sage of seventy-five teaching
a select few young star pupils, budding scholars already showing brilliance at fifteen.
In such a case, only sixty links connect between us and the time of the patriarchs, sixty links of transmission from sage to future sage, from the sages of ancient times to those of today.
[8] In the introduction to his commentary on the Torah [very beginning] Ramban makes a similar point: he notes that Moshe (Moses) wrote the Torah anonymously rather than saying at the beginning of Genesis something like "these are the words which I Moses have written...". According to Ramban, this was because the words he wrote in the Torah had already been written before [since the Torah preceded the creation] and therefore Moshe was "like a scribe who copies from an old book".
[9] including the commandments contained in it
[10] Even if one accepts that every word in the Bible originates with God, is it necessarily true that God would only tell the truth in the Bible? Is it possible that God would include material in the Bible which God knew was not true? Or that God would allow the original recipients of the Bible to mistakenly believe that what was actually a poem was instead a factual statement? If we do not know what God would or would not allow to be included in a document, we cannot set standards for a decision as to whether a document did or did not originate with God even based on its veracity.
[11] A book itself is an inanimate object and therefore cannot conflict with anything That which can in theory conflict are the beliefs of people, eg beliefs they hold about the book (or regarding the claims in the book, or regarding the truth of the claims in the book, or beliefs which people may hold as a result of reading the book) and other beliefs eg re science.. Thus, the Bible does not conflict with science, nor do the words of the Bible represent a conflict, but rather the beliefs of some people about the bible and what it says and means can be in conflict with what others believe as a result of scientific theories. Many people however do not find that the bible and science lead to contradictory beliefs, and this position is supported by tradition. Therefore it is inaccurate to say that the Bible and science conflict.
[12] "Guide" III:14.
[13] "Guide" I:71 (referring to the discussion in I:70).
[14] "Guide" II:11.
[15] "A Critique of Religion and Science":
[16]in the creation account itself, and especially between the creation account and the Garden of Eden account. If we interpret both strictly literally, they contradict each other as to the order of creation of man, woman, and animals; as to the purpose and role of the animals; and as to the days on which all was created. Of course Tradition contains many approaches to resolving these inconsistencies - and when understood within the context of these interpretations no inconsistencies remain.
[17] "Guide" II:29.
[18] Rav Khisdai Crescas (1340-1415). See "Challenge" p127.
[19] From Rabinovitch, p.129 "Source Material".
[20] "Guide" II: 25:
[21] After exhaustively analyzing Aristotle's ideas on the matter, Rambam concludes that there is no proof against creation. However, he states that if conclusive scientific/philosophical proofs were offered against the idea of creation ex-nihilo, he would see no difficulty in accepting that it was meant allegorically.
[22] See p.2-5 of Schilpp.
[23] See Gillespie See Gillespie p. XX
[24] This composite was constructed by the present author by combining bits and pieces from various Jewish traditional sources, and therefore in its present form it in no way reflects any actual Jewish traditional source.
[25] According
to Maharal ["Gevurot Hashem"], all midrashim are meant on a different
level than that of 'pshat' [purely literal interpretation]. See Maharal
regarding the maidservants of the daughter of Pharao and regarding the
famous statement in the midrash that "the patriarch Ya'akov never
died".{ See on this Ta'anit tzad i by R. Tzadok, Takanat Ha Shavim p 24].
Interpretations of the Zohar must take into account that it is a mystical text, not written to be understood by the non-expertly trained reader, perhaps deliberately obscure and therefore potentially misleading as to its intent to those not steeped in the oral tradition accompanying the text.
[26] "The
surface meaning of the creation and
Due to the apparent discrepancies between
the two accounts, e.g. in the duration of creation - six days vs. one ; the
order of creation of woman and the animals; the method of creation of man and
woman and so on, it is quite certain that the reader of the surface meaning
translation would make the assumption that the two accounts contradict each
other, and that if they are true accounts, then they are not referring to the same
events.
We can therefore conclude that since tradition teaches that the creation and Eden accounts do refer to the same events, then it is clear that tradition did not understand the accounts in accordance witht the 'surface meaning' as we have defined it.
[27] For example, the very idea expressed by the
creation account that the universe was created in six days is seemingly
directly contradicted by the following
[28] According to Ramban (Nachmanides) one of Judaism's leading mystics (11xx-12xx), the creation is beyond human comprehension and the literal meaning of the account in Genesis is meant essentially to provide the introduction to the rest of the Bible, motivating the commandments by explaining that the God who commands is the God who created the entire universe.