Some material for an Intro, Preface or ch1:

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The Talmud tells of Moses's time travel to hear R Akiva's lecture over a thousand years ahead. If Moses turned up here in the twenty-first century on a time-travel jaunt, and learned all that we know about evolutionary theory and the big bang, would the wording of Genesis have been changed on his return? Would there perhaps not even have been a reason to since there would not have seemed to be any conflict?

It probably depends on whom you ask.

The scientist/scholar may say that Genesis is a literary masterpiece which represents humanity’s attempts to understand …. grapple with ….. Obviously since there was no way for the authors and editors to know … there can be no rational expectation of a congruence of modern scientific theory and the creation account in Genesis. They do not ‘conflict’; the scientific understanding speaks of actual physical events, and the Bible is poetry, or is early man’s (erroneous) conception of what were the actual physical events which surrounded the emergence into existence of the universe. If there was a Moses, he was probably not the final redactor of the genesis story, and inevitably if he were to learn of our science he would certainly edit the creation account accordingly.

Postmodernists couldn’t care less who wrote the book, and would be annoyed at the author for presuming to change it. And to them science, like Genesis, is a narrative - to try to assume one as more ‘truthful’ than the other or to make the two coincide would be missing the point of both.

Fundamentalist Jews are a strange breed – they consider it heretical to practice everything in the Bible (eg sacrifice, eye for an eye), and idolatry to believe some of the things implied/written in the Bible (that God has hands etc).

Perhaps they would say that time-traveller Moses would not have changed a word, and that if science has a problem with that, then it is science’s problem, not Moses’ or theirs. But they would also not be convinced that there is any conflict between science and Torah. It is this point of view which is explored here.

Traditionalist Jews believes that the book of Genesis was dictated to Moses by God. That is, the account of creation and of the Garden of Eden were dictated by God to Moses word for word.

First of all , does this belief in itself conflict with science – can a belief in science coexist with a belief that God exists? that God dictated books to humanity? that Genesis is among these books? .

Fundamentalists who believe in the words of Genesis as being fully literally-meant, complete descriptions of the actual physical events surrounding creation, are generally not expecting science to agree with the Bible, after all the Bible is God’s infallible word and science is a fallible creation of humanity.

Can the traditionalist accept the validity of the scientific origin theory or must a traditionalist choose between …. ?

a literal translation of the Bible This book is about the traditionalist understanding of the creation and Eden accounts and its compatibility with a belief in scientific origin theory.

This book is about …. Genesis and science, however traditional, postmodernist and feminist readings of Genesis differ. There will also be differences between traditional, archeological and anthropological understandings of what were the actual events which precipitated the stories in Genesis. Postmodernist and feminist understandings of the universe, and of science will differ from that of most scientists.

We do not attempt to analyze the belief in the dictation by God of the … Genesis.. with the ideas of moderins, femisins or science…. Rather, we look at the traditionalist… is the beliefs of the T are consistent.

Mention of this book ms in the context of a discusison of bible as allegory: (my older site, note the subsections of the url; also references the oldest site, now dead): https://sites.google.com/a/nyu.edu/avi-rabinowitz/biblical-studies/allegorical-and-other-interpretations-of-biblical-accounts/thecreationaccount_asallegory

Synergy, AntiSynergy and Annihilation

Synergy is what happens when the total is greater than the mere sum of the parts. The opposite can happen as well. In the process of nuclear fusion, whether in the heart of a hydrogen bomb or in the depths of a star, two atoms each of identical mass combine to form a new atom. What is unusual is that the combination has less mass than the sum of its two constituents. This would seem to be a form on anti-synergy - when the total is less than the sum of the parts.

However the truth is the opposite - and this actually is the secret of the great energy released during nuclear fusion; some of the mass (m) has been converted to energy (e) according to Einstein’s famous formula e=mc² (c is the speed of light). Less is more - the less mass remaining, the more the tremendous energy of the explosion. What seems to be antisynergy is revealed as a great synergy indeed.

When looking at the mass alone, this seems to be a negative synergy, but taking into account the energy release, we see that it is actually an impressively synergistic process.

Some questions are so good, so penetrating, that they are almost inevitable better than any answer. Some questions have various answers, and the combination can be more convincing than any individual answer. However sometimes there are so many answers to a particular question, and they perhaps contradict one another, that the very fact that there are so many answers reduces the convincing power of the totality - a form of antisynergy.

Someone arrives late, and is asked “why are you late”. They give several excuse for arriving late - saying “there were no trains this morning, and also the train was too crowded to get on, and also I slipped getting out of bed and had to go to the doctor, and also my alarm clock did not go off until much later than it should have, and also I forgot that I was supposed to come today” then although each individual excuse is weak, the totality has even less convincing power than one excuse alone.

In this case not only is the question better than the answer, but even moreso, one answer is better than many answers combined.

Occasionally however, the very fact that there are so many answers can convince us that the question itself is not a good question. Sometimes philosophical or theological questions arise, for which there are many answers, but none are convincing, and neither is the totality; however one emotional or spiritual experience can lay the question to rest.

When an excuse and its opposite meet, the question is only strengthened, but when a particle and its corresponding anti-particle meet, of equal amounts of matter, they annihilate each other, and if the questio is ‘how much matter is there?’ the answer is ‘no matter’ (only energy remains). Sometimes the only effective way of answering a good question is not to answer it but to turn it into a non-issue for the questioner - so that the question does not matter anymore.

Good questions which are better than their individual answers can also be better than the negative synergy of their totality - but the totality can also be a vehicle for the annihilation of the question.

Aware of the potential hazards of a negative synergy, but hopeful of an annihilation, in this book we will present many different - and possibly somewhat contradictory - approaches to understanding the creation account.

Genesis is not falsifiable. Infinite Plasticity of Genesis --> meaninglessness.

Is it the plasticity of the text or the flexibility of our interpretation/interpretation methodology which allows them to not contradict?

At what level is there supposed to be a parallel between scientific origin theory and Genesis?

Does the belief that Genesis is of God necessitate that there be a parallel at all?

If Genesis can be made to parallel all scientific accounts from ancient Greeks to today does that mean that it is empty (if it is so flexible?).

Whatever science will come up with, people will be flexible enough to say that Genesis is in correspondence with it (however the more fundamentalist they are, the less this is likely).

Actually Aristotle’s eternal universe was considered problematic by Rambam who felt Genesis didn’t imply an eternal universe, so it wasn’t so plastic as to be empty.

On the other hand Rambam said the creation aspect of Genesis could be allegorical; Ralbag (?) said it did mean eternal universe. So it is infinitely plastic.

One could say Genesis is in accord with the big bang theory by overlooking the whole question of the age of the universe, of the method and order of creation etc etc, and focusing on only one aspect, that it is not eternal. But this is not ‘in accord with’ but rather ‘in accord with one of the fundamental aspects and totally contradictory of all the other aspects’. And then the next theory comes along and Genesis is reinterpreted to be ‘in accord with it’ too.

So if it is so plastic, then what is the true meaning. That is, the meaning is clearly not literal and not this or that, so what does it mean? It has to be a meaning which is appropirate to a religious text not a scientific one, so nothing it says is of the verifiable type of information/description.

And, we therefore need science to tell us what IS true so that we can then deduce what Genesis does NOT mean.

So if Genesis is not in conflict with any possible scientific scenario, then we should say that outright: there is no contradiction with any possible physical theory, and therefore Genesis can also never be said to have predicted a particular theory nor is it ‘perfectly in accord with’ in that sense. It is perfectly in accord with science in the same sense that a poem is (not to say that Genesis is a poem); finding Genesis to be ‘parallel’ to this or that theory should therefore not be surprising nor taken as an indication of something relevant. In fact, no one should bother trying to find parallels since it is not necessary, since whatever the scientific theory of the time, it is not ‘a contradiction’ to Genesis, because Genesis does not contain any verifiable information - and therefore is not falsifiable.

Retrodiction vs Prediction

It is easy to find correspondences after the fact. Codes etc. Cannot say that Genesis tells of the big bang theory because of some interesting parallels (my creation poem) - especially since there are other statements in the same sources which are totally contradictory, and because most of Genesis contradicts the origin theory, and this ‘prediction’ was not stated long ago as an unequivocal prediction of what would be found scientifically.

Prediction means something which is not a known fact and is unexpected and then is verified objectively. There is no prediction in Genesis.

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NOTE AR TO AR:

Sasoon and Ginsburg

Add re Sasoon’s method (reread it - especially re fw, for fw book).

Add reference to Einstein books by Jammer and Goldberg(?).

Add discussion of R Ginsburg’s type of approach. Insert some of his translated article (need permission?). In what sense/at what level of meaning is this a parallel?

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A Garden of Edens: Interpretations of the Creation Account:

Preface

In various forums the claim has been made that science and the Bible are in conflict. Books however cannot conflict; perhaps beliefs can.

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Do the two in fact give different pictures? Yes

Are they in fundamental agreement? Not necessarily.

Can one accept the validity of at most only one? No.

If so, which is to be preferred? Ans: Preferred by whom, and for what purpose?

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Poetry books and science texts are in conflict about the origin of the universe. Poetry texts claim that “the universe is created by your glance, my beloved” and make other unscientific claims. Can poets accept the claims of science? Can scientists enjoy poetry? Of course.

The bible and science texts are also in conflict with each other in this way.

Books cannot conflict, only beliefs can.

Can one person believe both these statements?:

• The Torah, including the creation account, was given to Moses by God.
• Scientific investigation shows that the universe emerged from a big bang 15 billion years ago and humans evolved about one million years ago with modern humans originating about 100,000 years ago.

Answer:

Yes. First of all, many human minds are sufficiently flexible to hold two contradictory beliefs. As Lewis Carrol had one of his characters say: “Sometimes I have been able to believe as many as 5 impossible things before breakfast”.

Secondly, the two are not necessarily contradictory beliefs, no cognitive dissonance need be involved in accepting both.

One can of course reconcile the two by marginalizing one of the beliefs: e.g. It may be that God gave an account in the Torah which is inaccurate, or untrue. Or, it may be that for some reason scientific investigation is not a reliable means of arriving at Truth, while Torah is.

But who says there is a conflict to begin with?

Is it necessary to demonstrate that there is NOT, or is it incumbent on others to prove that there IS?

This also would not be agreed upon. And, only after being convinced that the two do not conflict will some one agree that actually a priori the burden of proof is on the other side. This is to destroy the question, not only to answer it.

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What we are claiming to show:

• Traditionalists can accept the divine origin of the Bible - including the creation account - as well as the validity of the results of science, without cognitive dissonance.

What we are NOT claiming to show:

• That the Bible is of divine origin
• that .......

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Many critics believe - or feel that it has been proved - that the Torah, including the creation account, was not revealed to Moses. This could be either because Moses is not a historical figure, or because there is no God to do the revealing, or because the Torah material was written/compiled much later than Moses.

If the creation account is neither divinely inspired nor dictated then is it relevant whether or not it is in conflict with science?

To someone who believes that the Rabbis totally reinterpreted the text of the Torah in a way not foreseen by those who wrote the creation account, and so their interpretation is valid only in the post-modernist textual deconstruction sense, then it is not relevant that the plastic Tradition has managed to make statements which give the creation account such wide latitude that it cannot be said to conflict... to them it is irrelevant because the Tradition is not a valid representation of the creation account. However we are not concerned with whether it is or is not, merely with whether a Traditionalist is compelled by Tradition to beliefs derived from the creation account which are necessarily in conflict with the results set by science re the physical universe ... etc. We are not trying to prove that the Torah is of divine origin, or that the rabbis or Moses knew modern scientific theory or its results re the age or construction of the universe, merely that it is not correct that Tradition requires a belief that the universe is 6,000 years old, or that it requires a belief that the universe did not begin in a big bang or that Traditional belief is inconsistent with an acceptance of the scientific validity of the theory of evolution.

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The following statements are either untrue, irrelevant, or relate to a spurious discord:

1. Science has shown that the universe was not created by God, yet Genesis claims it was.
2. Science has shown that the universe came about via a big bang, yet Genesis claims it was created in 6 days in a very different process.
3. Science has shown that the universe began about 15 billion years ago, yet Genesis claims it was created only about 6,000 years ago.
4. Science has shown that humans evolved yet Genesis claims they were specially created.
5. Science has shown that humans are basically animals, evolved apes, yet Genesis makes perhaps the opposite claim: that humanity was created “in the image of God”.

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The borders of what is traditionally accepted or considered heresy are not well defined - or are defined very precisely, but in different way by different authorities. In a community of belief there is a continuum; a person at the liberal edge who is nevertheless considered in by the others to his right, may consider someone to his left in as well, yet that person may be ‘out’ to the others. And so on. There is not necessarily any group in which all members accept each other not only as part of the group, but as the whole of the group. There can therefore be no one commonly-accepted canon; what is within the bounds of the traditionally acceptable to some will be outside the pale to others.

Although the creation account is considered to be in a category of its own, Traditional statements that are applied by a traditional source to some other part of the Torah is applied here to the creation account as well. There will definitely be those in the community of traditional belief who will object, and who will therefore reject the categorization of that interpretation as being legitimately ‘traditional’. However, we are flexible, and look only for approbation to our right, not necessarily all the way to the right.

Introduction

Just as an object of art is an expression of the artist, the physical universe expresses divinity. The laws of nature shed light on the Mind which designed them. Can it be that study of these leads to a contradiction with a book written by the same source?

This has been the dilemma faced by philosophers accepting the divine origin of the Bible. Resolutions have been presented via many approaches and this book is a compendium of various such paths followed by traditional understandings of the Bible.

The Bible does not begin 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 telling who is the narrator, or even what the source of the information is. There is even dispute in Tradition as to what the first passage means.

We are not told by the text if the creation account is an actual description of physical events, or perhaps is poetry. We are not 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, or if we must believe that it is an actual description of physical events.

Certainly anyone can see that it contains many inconsistencies, so that it could not have been meant as a purely surface-meaning translation-literal account of actual physical events. But what it is and why it was given and how we must relate to it are not in the text.

Such a text must be accompanied by an oral tradition to be complete. The oral tradition can tell us all about the book - where and when it originated, why it was written, how it is to be understood.

The Bible has been transmitted from generation to generation for thousands of years, and those who transmitted it also transmitted along with it a framework within which it was to be understood. This framework provides the traditional meaning of the Bible with far more authenticity than that of a literal 'translation' of the written text.

Those who transmitted the Bible to us through the generations had a comprehensive, flexible, and even multi-faceted 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 the following section, we shall explore a number of different approaches to understanding Genesis, some of them perhaps too radical to be comfortably accepted by all traditionalists, yet nevertheless all of them consistent with the entire Torah including Genesis being the direct word of God as given to Moses at Sinai.

There is no one unique traditionally accepted interpretation of the creation account, nor is there an undisputed dogma in Tradition as to what the creation account is intended to represent, other than that it is part of the Biblical text revealed by God to man via Moses. There are in fact many traditionally accepted ways in which the creation account has been understood, and many other possible interpretations which are not part of the traditional approach but are nevertheless not contradictory to Traditional belief .

Although it is true that certain specific types of interpretations of the creation account may conflict with modern scientific theory, many interpretations allow a mutual acceptance of both the scientific origin theory and the divine origin of the Bible. Thus any perceived conflict between science and Genesis can be attributed to a conflict between scientific theory and certain types of interpretations of Genesis, rather than a conflict between scientific theory and religious belief.

The approaches we offer are speculative and are presented here not as 'the true meaning of Genesis', but rather they are offered as an indication of the breadth of interpretational choice available to the reader of the creation accounts in Genesis - without violating basic traditional guidelines.

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The opening chapters of the Bible relate a powerful and enigmatic narrative about the creation of the universe. Tradition has struggled without cease to understand these words and has come up with numerous, and wildly different interpretations/explanations. Understanding how these interpretations relate to one another, and then to the explanations offered by the world of science can be an extremely difficult endeavor. As a professional physicist with extensive formal religious schooling, I have had to struggle with many of these ideas at their most intense levels.

text seeks to lay out the various “options” one has in coming to grips with the great variety of explanations offered with respect to the beginnings of the universe and what to make of these as they relate to scientific origin theories.

We do not undertake here to solve the great mystery of creation or to push a particular point of view - the book is informed by a wide variety of religious, philosophical and scientific sources.

how to assimilate the answers provided by Tradition with those provided by science.

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The “Conflict” Through the Ages

At the time of the giving of the Torah, there were other creation accounts current, and so there must have been some ‘conflict’ between these. There are remarks in the Talmud about comparisons between theology and astronomy of other nations and of torah, but is there also re cosmogeny?

Rambam deals with conflict between idea of creation itself and idea of ancient Greeks that the universe is eternal.

See p248-9 of Jammer Einstein and Religion re Philo (based on Plato’s “Timeaeus’) and time not existing before universe existed for perush of breisheet.

Was there any Jewish talk of the theories of Buffon etc?

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There is no doubt that the accounts in Genesis have widely divergent meanings and origins for critical scholars, the deeply religious, and postmodernists. We do not attempt to deal with the question of the origin or meaning of the Bible, but rather to present interpretations of Genesis consistent with both Tradition and scientific findings.

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File: “Agnosticism and Biblical”

Agnosticism and Biblical fundamentalism share a basic similarity in their approach to theological questions.

Biblical religion posits an all-powerful deity, and the fundamentalist believes that this deity may act in ways incomprehensible to humanity - 'the ways of God are mysterious' - so that no rational argument or scientific evidence of any sort can be used as proof of the non-existence of God or of the non-divine origin of the Bible.

For example, although 'creationists' attempt to discredit the scientific origin theory, other fundamentalists simply state that God planted the fossils etc, that the disparity between what science concludes and the Bible states is a test of our faith, that it is impossible to assume that we could know why an all-knowing all-powerful deity would create the universe in a way that would mislead scientific investigators.

Those who prefer a more 'rational' approach to Biblical religion - perhaps as a result of the belief that it is incumbent on people to understand religion rationally as far as possible, or their deep attachment to rational thought, or to scientific theory, seek ways in which science and the Bible can be reconciled.

Disregarding the possibility that eventually scientific investigation will somehow prove the creation account to be correct, a possible implication of creationism, such a reconciliation can be effected in two general ways: accepting the Biblical account literally together with the stipulation that at some point after creating the universe as detailed in Genesis (perhaps after the expulsion from Eden), God put the universe into the big-bang-emergent state it is observed to be in today; or alternatively that the creation and Eden accounts are not to be understood in their entirety according to their surface literal meaning, as corresponding to descriptions of historical events in the physical universe.

In this book we do not make the claim that Jewish tradition supports this or that approach, since many adherents of tradition are likely to object to this or that particular interpretation, and many of the sources are ambiguous and can be interpreted one way or another. What is presented are approaches which the author feels are in consonance with traditional belief and the positions taken by traditional sources, along with various arguments which the author feels support this contention.

It is recognized however that arguments can and have been brought against these types of approaches, and that no finite book will be capable of presenting all possible views, that discussions on the matter with people of opposing views can always raise new issues, new objections, new counter-objections.

Above: A garden of Edens 2002 version from file attachment on email: " Garden of Edens book Aug 16 2002" Jun 19, 2002, 1:37 AM ; From disk #12 in NY June 2002

In MSWord (as in the attachment), 251 pages.

Below is the same ms in GoogleDoc form, only about 213 pages. [Since it is long, it can take time to load.]