[Avodah] What are we to learn from Bereishis?

[T613K at aol.com]

R' Yakov Homnick, a  writer, a scholar, my neighbor and relative-by-marriage, 
has written an  outstanding article--"First Things First"--about science and 
Torah.  It  appeared in last week's Jewish Press.  Some of his themes will be 
at  least somewhat familiar to regular Avodah denizens, but  this article is  
well worth reading in full.  
 
I have compressed his article,  dispensing with ellipses for ease of reading. 
  

==begin quote==



First we need to establish  perspective by seeing how the Oral Law processed 
the Bible’s presentation. One  Mishna encapsulates the entire subject. It 
begins the 5th chapter of  Avot:  "The world was created by ten Divine statements. 
Why was this necessary?  Couldn’t everything have been created in one 
statement? It must be to punish the  wicked who destroy a ten-part world and reward 
the righteous who maintain a  ten-part world."  
In other words, the  surprising part of the Bible’s Creation story is that it 
has phases. In purely  religious terms, we would presume that the world was 
created at once, since an  omnipotent Creator has no need for steps. Had 
Creation not been mentioned in  Genesis, the natural assumption would be that it was 
done simultaneously. The  purpose of the Bible story is to introduce a staged 
 process. This somehow raises the stakes on the table of existence, making 
the  righteous maintenance of the enterprise a more profound achievement.  

We  can extrapolate from this Mishna to the arena of time as well. The 
intuitive  sense would lead us to think that all of Creation would be accomplished 
at once.  Instead there is a span of development described as seven distinct 
days, with  new components added each day until the full architectural vision is 
realized at  the very end of this schedule.  

Again, in the intellectual  sense this version of events can be fairly termed 
more scientific than  religious. The faith system not only did not "need" 
this information, it is to a  significant degree undermined by it. Why impose 
artificial limits on the  Almighty and say He used stages and time periods? It is 
just a weird and  uncomfortable idea to posit an omnipotent Creator who chose 
to limit the pace of  His creating.  


Even more mystifying is  the insistence in the biblical text that a point 
existed at which no observer  could glean an inkling of where all this was 
heading. By the eleventh word of  Genesis, we have already been plunged into a dark 
world of chaotic images that  defy any decoding.  

"A man seeing this vista would be utterly confused by the  havoc," Rashi 
(1035-1105) explains. (The Midrash says it would have been heresy  to say this had 
it not been written.) What possible purpose would there be in  forcing 
existence to pass through an amorphous state? 


The  point here is that the Torah is spending all its initial effort on 
teaching you  science rather than religion. The first sentence would have been 
quite enough.  "In the beginning the Lord created the heavens and the earth."  
Instead, the Jew is being forced to train his mind to relinquish  simplistic 
constructs of how divinity meets humanity.  

To review, the concept of  creation taking time was introduced by the Bible, 
only later – much, much later  – to be echoed by scientists. The idea of 
creation having distinct "ages" along  the track to completion was taught here 
first as well.  

The next shock comes when  the Bible teaches that all living creatures were 
somehow fashioned out of the  preexisting stuff of inorganic matter. 


Creatures of the sea are  said (Genesis 1:20) to be spawned from the water. 
Animals emerge from the  instruction (1:24) "Let the earth bring forth…" Then 
man was fashioned from  "dust of the earth" (2:7).  

Once again the basic  religious impulse is stood on its head. Every time we 
are told that God made a  new creature, the biblical text hastens to clarify 
that He used available matter  as his clay. No new material is added to make the 
fish, the birds, the animals  or even man. The introduction of life is 
somehow accomplished without the  addition of a single new element. All the 
ingredients were built into the earth  in its initial structure (as Rashi repeatedly 
reminds us in his commentary).  

There is no question that without these verses it would be  sacrilege to 
suggest such a scenario. How dare we suggest that God did not  deliver these 
creatures fully formed out of nothingness? 




As startling as this approach must have been to the assumed  orthodoxies in 
other religions and secular systems, nothing can compare in  bombshell status 
to the biblically hinted, and Talmudically expounded, notion of  prehistoric 
man.  

The  Talmud in Shabbos  (88b) indicates there were 974 generations of 
prehistoric man. In Chagiga  (13b) the Talmud sounds more like those generations were 
never actualized. The  Midrash  Rabba (Genesis 28) says they were wiped out.  


While it remains somewhat  unclear exactly what these 974 generations 
represent, this seems to be a matter  of prime importance that is stressed in two 
verses (Psalms 105:8, Chronicles I  16:15). These verses point out that the Torah 
was given to the thousandth  generation, which is explained by the Midrash to 
mean the 974 prehistoric  generations plus the 26 from Adam until Moses.  

If geology and archaeology have indeed yielded specimens that  are 
indisputably prehistoric men (I am not expert enough to be certain of this),  they are 
substantiating one of the most mysterious parts of the Jewish  intellectual 
tradition. (The late David Brown makes this point in a work that  received the 
imprimatur of Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman,  zt"l, considered one of the 
supreme scholars of the last generation.[The  book is called *Mysteries of 
Creation* -- TK]) 


Even many Jews are not  aware that the dating system existed before the seven 
days of Creation. The  tradition (Midrash  Pesikta) is that the first day of 
Creation was the twenty-fifth day of  the sixth month, so that man emerged on 
the first day of the seventh month:  hence Rosh Hashanah is the anniversary of 
mankind’s birth.  


Another point relating to  time is in the area of compression. Sometimes time 
seems to accommodate much  more than we would expect, as in the Talmudic 
tradition (Sanhedrin  38b) that Adam was created on the sixth day, Eve two hours 
later, and their two  children were born an hour after that. On the other hand, 
we find early man  living eight or nine hundred years. However these things 
are explained, the  overriding message comes through: do not expect to compute 
the early time frames  for events with great retrospective accuracy.  


All this being said, there is one other Mishna which holds  another very 
important key. That is in Chagiga  (11b), where it states that the story of 
Creation should only be taught to one  student at a time, not in the classroom. 
Creation is a matter that must be  conveyed with great accuracy and subtlety. 

The  Talmud and Midrash explain that this is an area in which God hides more 
than He  reveals.  

Furthermore, we encounter  a phenomenon in the Creation story that is 
inconceivable in other biblical  tales. There are entire sections of the presentation 
that are understood to be  conceptual rather than actual.  


The  Talmud in Brachot  (61a), Eruvin  (18a) and Ketubot  (8a) says the verse 
(Genesis 5:2) "He created them male and female" refers to a  "prior concept" 
of Creation rather than to what happened in the end, where man  appeared 
without immediately having a companion. Rashi (ibid 1:1) seems to go  much further, 
understanding a Midrash to say that the entire first chapter of  Genesis is 
communicating a conceptual model.  


Once again, this type of  interpretation is never applied to any other part 
of the Torah. It is clear that  Creation is being transmitted in a unique 
system, where the principle – not the  medium – is the message.  


In  summation, the Bible does not claim to be presenting a complete version 
of  Creation. What we can derive from the first chapters of Genesis is a broad  
outline with a few critical high points. Those keystones tend to be supported 
by  the clearer conclusions of science.  


Long before modern  science, we Jews said it took time to create the world. 
Long before modern  science, we said it was created in stages. Long before 
modern science, we said  living things were developed from preexisting matter.  

Long before modern science, we said there was something encoded  into the 
evolving planet to drive it toward perfection. Long before modern  science, we 
said the most sophisticated creatures came last, with man as the  climax.  
The indications that these claims are accurate serve as a  dazzling testimony 
that our revelation, counterintuitive though it was, was  indeed the truth. 


==end quote== 
For the entire article, please see 
_http://www.jewishpress.com/displayContent_new.cfmmode=a&sectionid=61&contentid=29737&contentName=First%20Things%20First_
 
(http://www.jewishpress.com/displayContent_new.cfmmode=a&sectionid=61&contentid=29737&contentName=First%20Things%20First) 

--Toby  Katz
=============





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