What is the purpose of beginning the Torah with a creation story?
Creation itself is not the point. Order out of chaos is the point.
The purpose of the Genesis account of Creation is not to establish a time line but to distinguish God's divine story from other ancient stories in which the gods had little control over the process of Creation.
In contrast to myths that suggested that the universe might at any time dissolve back into chaos, God's Creation is secure. The point is that we have moved from chaos to order.
Questions to Address:
1. What is the relationship between the Bible and science?
2. Is there a tension between the discoveries of science and the Revelation of Scripture?
3. What is our understanding of the Big Bang theory?
The Big Bang Theory was created by Georges Lemaître in 1927. This contradicts the story of creation in the torah, written over 3000 years ago. Rabbis and commentators as early as the 1500’s, before the Big Bang theory was created, worked to explain how science, and later the Big Bang theory fits into the torah. In order to answer this question, we have to understand what was created, when it was created, and how we can understand the discrepancies between the age of the universe in the torah and science.
How was the universe created?
The first part of the Big Bang theory where we find a discrepancy between it and the torah is what was the first thing that was created. The torah says it was light and the Big Bang Theory says it was Quarks (matter) which eventually formed atoms.
(1) When God began to create heaven and earth— (2) the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water— (3) God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
All commentators agree that ה׳ did something in the first verse of Genesis: בראשית א:א, but we can interpret what God did in multiple ways.
הקב"ה ברא כל הנבראים מאפיסה מוחלטת. ואין אצלנו בלשון הקדש בהוצאת היש מאין אלא לשון "ברא"; ואין כל ה"נעשה" – תחת השמש או למעלה – הווה מן האין התחלה ראשונה. אבל הוציא מן האפס הגמור המוחלט יסוד דק מאד, אין בו ממש, אבל הוא כוח ממציא, מוכן לקבל הצורה ולצאת מן הכוח אל הפועל. והוא החומר הראשון, נקרא ליוונים "היולי". ואחר ההיולי לא ברא דבר, אבל יצר ועשה, כי ממנו המציא הכל והלביש הצורות ותיקן אותן. ודע, כי השמים וכל אשר בהם – חומר אחד, והארץ וכל אשר בה – חומר אחד. והקב"ה ברא אלו שניהם מאין, ושניהם לבדם נבראים, והכל נעשים מהם. והחומר הזה, שקראו היולי, נקרא בלשון הקדש "תֹּהוּ"
(3) In the beginning: Rashi wrote, "If you are coming to explain it according to its simple meaning, explain it thus: At the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth and the earth was chaos and void and darkness, God said, 'let there be light'" If so, everything follows the creation of the light.
And [its explanation according to Ibn Ezra] is that at the beginning of the creation of the firmament and the dry land, there was no habitation on the earth, but [rather] there was chaos and void covered in water, and God said, 'let there be light.' And according to his opinion, nothing [else] was created on the first day, only the light.
[Difficulty for Rashi - the word resishit (beginning of) is only used in the Bible as a relational term. If light was created - it had to be created in relation to something already in existance]
And now, listen to a correct and clear explanation of the text according to its simple understanding (peshuto).
The Holy One, blessed be God, created all of the creations from absolute nothingness. And we have no other expression in the Holy Tongue for bringing out something from nothing than "bara" (which is found almost exclusively in this verse). And none of all that which was made - 'under the sun' or above - existed [directly] from nothing. Rather, God brought out a very fine element from complete nothingness; it has no substance, but it is the energy that can create, that is able to accept a form and to go from the potential to the actual.
[God formed light from an energy already in existance]
And this is the first material [and] is called hyle by the Greeks. And after hyle, He didn't create anything, but [rather] formed and made [the creations]; since it is from it that He brought everything forth and clothed the forms and refined them. And know that the heavens and all that is in them are one material, and the earth and all that is within it is [another] material; and the Holy One, blessed be He, created both of them from nothing - and the two of them alone were created, and everything was made from them. And this material that they called hyle is called tohu (chaos) in the Holy Tongue. And the word['s definition is understood by looking at] the language of [the Sages] (Kiddushin 40b), "with one that is toha (wonders) about the earlier ones."
Since were a person to define a name for it, he would wonder and deliberate to give it another name, since it has not taken a form, such that a name would fit it at all. And the form that fashions this material is called bohu (void) in the Holy Tongue. And this word is [a] compound [that is made up of two words, bo (within it) and hu (it)], meaning within it, is it.
And this is what they stated in Sefer Yetzirah, "He created substance from tohu and made 'it is not' [into] 'it is.'" And they also said in the midrash of Rabbi Nechunia ben Hakaneh (Sefer HaBahir), "Rabbi Berachia said, 'that which is written, "and the earth was tohu and bohu," what is meant [by] "was?" That it already was tohu. And [if so,] what is bohu? Rather, it was tohu - and what is tohu? Something that makes people wonder - and it went back to being bohu - and what is bohu? Something that has substance to it, as it is written, "in it is it (bo hu)."'"
Ramban believes that light is used as a metaphor for the creation of matter. He believes that God used the energy he created in the first verse of Genesis, בראשית א:א to create a substance that he called "a very thin substance-less substance". He goes on to say that this thing, known in the language of the Torah as "nothingness", was the same substance discovered by the greek scholars.
(1) והארץ היתה תהו ובהו, “this very center which was created at that time was composed of a mixture of raw materials, known as tohu, and its original external appearance is what is described as bohu. The reason is that the whole expanse of tohu was comprised of a uniform appearance. This explained that the first raw material was something entirely new. It is described as tohu to indicate that at that point it was merely something which had potential, the potential not yet having materialised, been converted to something actual. When we read in Samuel I 12,21 כי תהו המה, the meaning is that these phenomena did not exist in reality, they existed only in someone’s imagination. [a reference to pagan deities. Ed.] The appearance of this primordial raw material is described as bohu, meaning that as such it came to exist in actual fact, in real terms. Isaiah 34,11 “weights of emptiness.” This describes any phenomenon that does not retain its appearance for any length of time. It constantly changes like a chameleon
Soforno gives an explanation similar to Ramban. He believes that the entire universe was created out of a single matter known as Tohu. The Soforno goes on to say that these particles had potential to be converted into anything. This is similar to the modern understanding of quarks. He also says that the particles only exist in the imagination, similar to today when they exist in scientists imagination but they are not something easily found in nature.
Age of the Universe
The Torah teaches that God created the world in 6 days and the 7th day God rested. How do you understand the concept of time in our Torah text?
The second discrepancy we find between the Big Bang Theory and the torah is how old the universe is. Before we can figure that out, we need to know when light or matter was created.
Biblical chronology indicates that God completed the creation of the world close to 6,000 years ago. This age is reflected in the chronology developed in a midrash, Seder Olam, but a literalist reading of the Book of Genesis is rare in Judaism. This age is attributed to the tanna Jose ben Halafta, and covers history from the creation of the universe to the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.[3]
Most modern rabbis believe that the world is older than 6,000 years.[5] They believe such a view is needed to accept scientific theories, such as the theory of evolution. Rabbis who have this view base their conclusions on verses in the Talmud or in the midrash. For example:
- The Midrash[6] says: God created many worlds but was not satisfied, and left the world he was satisfied with.
- each "world" is a different era in Earth's history
- Nachmanides (Moses ben Nahman) (1194–1270) writes:[7] In the first day God created the energy (כח) "matter" (חומר) of all things, and then he was finished with the main creation. After that God created all other things from that energy.
- Some midrashim state that the "first week" of Creation lasted for extremely long periods of time.[8]
Medieval Views
In his commentary on the Torah, Rabbi Bahya ben Asher (11th century, Spain) concludes that there were many time systems occurring in the universe long before the spans of history that man is familiar with. Based on the Kabbalah he calculates that the Earth is billions of years old.[9]
Some medieval philosophical rationalists, such as Maimonides and Gersonides[10] held that not every statement in Genesis is meant literally.[11] In this view, one was obligated to understand Torah in a way that was compatible with the findings of science. Indeed, Maimonides, one of the great rabbis of the Middle Ages, wrote that if science and Torah were misaligned, it was either because science was not understood or the Torah was misinterpreted.[12] Maimonides argued that if science proved a point that did not contradict any fundamentals of faith, then the finding should be accepted and scripture should be interpreted accordingly.[13]
For example, in discussing Plato's view that the universe has existed literally forever, he argued that there was no convincing rational proof one way or the other, so that he (Maimonides) was free to accept, and therefore did accept, the literal biblical view that the universe came into being at a definite time; but that had Plato's theory been convincing enough with sufficient scientific proof he would have been able to reinterpret Genesis accordingly.[14] With regard to Genesis, Maimonides stated that "the account given in scripture is not, as is generally believed, intended to be in all its parts literal." Later in the same paragraph, he specifically states that this applies to the text from the beginning to the account of the sixth day of creation.[15]
כשנעמוד על סדר הבריאה של הכדור הארצי שלנו ממקום שהתחילה התורה לספר, נמצא שהיה בלא סדר ומרוב הקיטורים והאדים העבים והלחים היה מלא מים וחושך. והצעד הראשון היה שנטהרו קצת האדים עד שהיה קצת אור שולט, אבל לא היה בהיר כל כך האויר עד שיהיה אפשר לראות ממנו גוף המאורות. אם כן רק האור נברא, לגבי כדורינו, ועצם המאורות אינם נחשבים לברואים מצדו, שאלו היה אדם עומד עליו לא היה מכיר כלל שישנם מאורות במציאות. אמנם בוקר וערב היה על כל פנים מסיבוב הכדור, ואחר זה בא האויר לציור הראוי להקרא בשם רקיע, אף על פי שהלחות היתה רבה מאד למעלה מחוג האויר, המורגשת בראיה אילו היה אדם עומד אז עליו. ואחר כך התכנסות מימי הארץ למקום אחד והתפתחות הכח של הצמיחה. ואחר כך זיכוך האויר עד למדה זו של ראיית המאורות יפה באופן הראוי גם כן להתפתחות שכלית לאדם לחקור על סיבוביהם. ורק אז נעשה האויר מוכשר לנפש חיה ונבראו בעלי חיים המעופפים שפורחים במקום שהאויר דק, ודגים שאינם צריכים לטהרת האויר כל כך. ואחר כך שנטהר האויר ביותר, ראוי היה ליצירת בעלי חיים הולכים על הארץ והאדם.
When we look at the order of the creation of our earth, from where the Torah begins to relate it, it appears that there was no order, and from the great amount of smoke and thick moist vapors, it was full of water and darkness. The first step was that the vapors dissipated somewhat, so that some light could penetrate. But the air wasn't yet sufficiently transparent to enable seeing the actual celestial bodies. Therefore, from the perspective of our planet, only light was created, and the actual stars were not considered to have been created from its perspective, for if a person had been standing [on Earth] he would not have discerned that there were celestial bodies in existence. Nevertheless, there was morning and evening, because of the rotation of the planet, and the air then became transparent enough that it could now be called a sky, though the moisture was still so great above the sky that one could discern it by sight, had a person been standing there at that point. Afterwards came the gathering of the waters of the earth to one place, and the emergence of vegetative growth. Afterwards, the air cleared up even more so that the heavenly bodies could be seen with sufficient clarity for [subsequent] intellectual development in humans to ponder their orbits. Only then was the atmosphere sufficiently refined for animal life. Birds were created, which could fly through the now rarefied atmosphere, and fish [were created], which do not require highly purified air. Finally, when the air reached its highest level of purification, it was now fit for the formation of animals that walk on land, and humans.
Behold, it is not written in the Torah, “And God made on the first day", or “And God made on the second day", etc. Instead, it ordered all the actions in a sensible, gradual order, and at every dividing point, it states “And it was evening and it was morning, day one”, “...day two”, etc, which makes no difference for us whether we interpret the actions as taking place within the span of a complete day of twenty-four hours or [whether we interpret] that the Torah was does not actually indicate how long each stage of development took. The appropriate understanding is to depict in our minds that is that everything was arranged in an order, with intent, and adequate preparation for the purpose of God's wisdom and morality, that there should be an impact on the process of human perfection. Seeing as how the seventh day is holy, and devoted to remembering the work of Creation, therefore, the [Torah] understands these six general divisions as if they were six actual days. There is also nothing which prevents such an interpretation, neither from the standpoint of Scripture, nor from the standpoint of the obligation of [appreciating] the holiness of the Sabbath, which is intended to correspond to the inner workings of the human mind.
(כה) וַיִּצְעַ֣ק אֶל־ה׳ וַיּוֹרֵ֤הוּ ה׳ עֵ֔ץ וַיַּשְׁלֵךְ֙ אֶל־הַמַּ֔יִם וַֽיִּמְתְּק֖וּ הַמָּ֑יִם שָׁ֣ם שָׂ֥ם ל֛וֹ חֹ֥ק וּמִשְׁפָּ֖ט וְשָׁ֥ם נִסָּֽהוּ׃
(25) So he cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. There He made for them a fixed rule, and there He put them to the test.
ויורהו ה׳ עץ וישלך אל המים, “the Lord taught him about a certain kind of wood, and he tossed it into the water;” although G-d had other means of making the water sweet, without using that kind of wood, G-d wanted to teach Moses some common chemistry, i.e. how to use natural products to sweeten something that only needs sweetening in order to make it drinkable or edible.
Different Views on Science and Judaism
Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman
Carl Sagan / The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
24
Rev. Dr. Ruth Shaver
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe. Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.
It is said that science demystifies nature, but scientists on the frontier are awed by the elegance and harmony of nature. As science reveals the secrets of the universe and deciphers the cosmic code, it evokes wonder. Why is the sky blue? Among the wavelengths of light in the sun's spectrum, blue oscillates at the highest frequency and is, therefore, scattered effectively by molecules of air in our atmosphere. This turns the sky blue. To me, this seems more amazing than ancient Mesopotamian and biblical beliefs that the sky is blue because of all the water up there. What science shows us about the evolution of our universe and our selves is as awesome to me as Genesis or the Kabbalah.