The Context of Biblical Text [1]
Teleology, Metaphysics, and Moral History
The book (or webpage) 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 Eden accounts will follow the interpretations provided by this tradition.
The Creation and Eden Accounts
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 Eden account. Thus, there is a progression from the initial creation of existence to the emergence of free-will and of moral choice - with the being which was created in the free-willed image of its creator acting in defiance of the will of its creator.
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 Eden accounts derive from their interpretations on various thematic levels, and in this work we explore these accounts from the perspective of the metaphysical, philosophical, religious and scientific centrality of free willed consciousness. We will explore the connection between the two accounts , as well as the connection between the themes of existence, purposive creation, free-willed consciousness, and moral choice.
The knowledge gained from scientific origin theories makes the creation and Eden accounts particularly enigmatic when interpreted as a cosmogony. However, the understanding of these accounts as being an ordinary cosmogony is actually somewhat limiting, and possibly inappropriate to its intent, as we shall discuss later. At various junctures throughout the book (eg in the appendix to this chapter), we will discuss the relationship of these accounts to the teachings of modern cosmology.
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 Eden Accounts, and their Connection to the Rest of the Bible
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 Eden accounts as introductory chapters.
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 Israel, however we are not told explicitly and unambiguously in the text what it was that Moses was told to include in the text. There is also no mention in the text of an intention by God to give an inviolable text to the Jewish people which would contain a creation account, a history of the patriarchs and so on.
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 Eden accounts arises not due to the Bible itself - the very existence of the Bible cannot by itself represent a conflict with science - nor even due to its contents, but rather due to various beliefs about its contents. Specifically, the beliefs regarding the universe which some people have as a result of their interpretation or understanding of the words of the Bible may be in conflict with scientific understandings of the universe[11].
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 Princeton University[15]
"The contemporary Jew faces no grim problems in connection with specific scientific statements. He need not choose between dogma and Darwin. Whatever dogmas various Jewish theologians may have thought up from time to time the contemporary Jew can repudiate and still be a pious Jew, even a so-called Orthodox Jew."
The Surface Meaning of the Creation and Eden Accounts
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 Darwin, Maimonides wrote:
"..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. Darwin for example[23]
"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 Darwin. Quite a few do not consider the creation account to be that of a standard cosmogony at all. Furthermore, many of those which do so consider it, contradict the plain meaning of Genesis, and do so rather more than does the theory of evolution.
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 Eden accounts refer to many of the same events. However, even the casual reader easily notices that the two accounts portray these events in widely divergent fashion, with the surface meaning of the two texts often being in direct contradiction[26].
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 France - subjects entirely absent in the previously mentioned history books. The careful reader of a 'history of the world' must understand the context of the work, and the intent of the author in order to correctly integrate this 'history of the world' into a coherent understanding of the world's complete and objective history, its 'past'.
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 Eden accounts" as we employ the phrase here means something different than 'the pshat'. The 'surface meaning' as we mean it could be arrived at in the following manner: present the two accounts to two Hebrew speakers who have never read them, and don't know what they are, and have them translate them independently into English. Then present these two translated sections to an English speaker who never heard of the Bible or read these accounts.
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 Eden account which relates the creation as having occurred in one day, "on the day when heaven and earth were created". Rather than trying to determine which of the two is 'correct', this juxtaposition of the two accounts with differing durations for creation can be seen to point to the non-literal meaning of the word 'day' in the creation account. That is, the contents and juxtaposition of the creation and Eden accounts in themselves militate against understanding these accounts as suggesting that the universe was created in 6 days. By juxtaposing the two accounts the Bible is indicating that the meaning of the accounts lies not at the level of the surface meaning, nor of the technical aspects such as such as the duration of creation, but at a deeper level of meaning of the accounts.
[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.