[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zvi Lampel]

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> 
<mailto:micha at aishdas.org> wrote:

 >"Yom" not meaning day has millenia of history, from well before anyone
confronted a scientific theory that said that time had a beginning, but
it was far more than 6,000 years ago..."Haaretz" in the context of the 
mabul not meaning the entire planet has no such mesorah. <
*
"Aretz" not meaning the entire earth has millennia of history, from well 
before anyone confronted a scientific theory that the Flood was not 
global. *
**
*"Yom" in the context of the Creation account not meaning a regular has 
no such mesorah. On the contrary, the mesorah is clear that it is a 
regular day. And the Geonim and Rishonim clearly ascribe to this 
meaning, and the Ramban insists upon it.*
**
*The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim (**2:30**) invokes the unanimous position 
of---*
**
*[a]ll our Sages...that all of this [the creation of Eve from Adam, the 
tree of life, and the tree of knowledge, and the account of the serpent] 
took place on the sixth day.... None of those things is impossible, 
because the laws of Nature were then not yet permanently fixed.*
**
*For the Rambam's problem to make sense, he must have been presupposing 
24-hour days. Had it been acceptable to posit---against the Gemora in 
Chulin and against the Chazal he explicitly referenced---that the "days" 
of creation were unspecified "periods" actually consisting of the 
passage of numerous 24-hour days, there would be no difficulty of 
containing all the events mentioned in the pesukim within one such 
period, and no need to invoke the fact that the laws of Nature were not 
yet fixed.*
**
*As you write later,*
**
"But from a process and acceptability point of view, my problem is with
the creation of new peshatim where there is no TORAH reason to do so. I
find that kind of force fitting to another discipline beyond my personal
range of acceptibility. (Meaning that it doesn't even feel to me like
"a different but valid shitah".)"

 >RMB: (Back in the days of the rishonim, when they thought the earth 
had no beginning, no one had a motivation to suggest that a day isn't a 
day.)<

*The Ramban certainly was confronted with the idea that a day isn't a 
day--and rejected it. And the Kuzari was confronted with a nation 
claiming the world was hundreds of thousands years old. He did not solve 
the problem, as he easily could have, by claiming the sixth day of 
animals' and Adam's ("mankind's") life was an era. *


 >RAs is an entire "this isn't literal" approach to the pereq as a whole.<

*---an approach that is not applied to the days of Breishis by any 
classical commentator besides the Ralbag. The Ralbag bases himself on 
the Chazal that everything was created fully-formed, and on the Chazal 
that everything was created simultaneously. He concludes that although 
the vegetation did not develop until the fourth day, the other 
references to "day" are "stages." Everything else was created fully 
formed at the first instant. Akeides Yitchak and the Abarbanel---who 
often repeats the former's comments without attribution---attribute this 
view to the Rambam as well, and go on to condemn it with several proofs 
that it is untenable with the pesukim. The Abarbanel later reinterprets 
the Rambam to conform with the meaning of day to be day.

They do not address the fact that the Ralbag himself, although often 
referencing the Rambam, declared that no rishon before him suggested his 
approach.*


 >RMB: Shalom Carmy ...raised the ...following questions: It seems 
obvious that Rabbi Kook doesn't advocate wholesale rejection of biblical 
statements. To do so would render Tanakh useless as a source of history. 
Under what circumstances would he countenance "deconstruction" of the 
text...

My own position appears to be RSC's first hava amina "Only where biblical
texts contradict each other or rabbinic statements".<

*--Which is the stated position of Rav Saadia Gaon, the Rambam, Sefer 
Ikkarim, and the approach practiced by all the rishonim, with the 
baseline that words be taken at their primary meaning unless 
contradicted by here-and-now sensual perception or logical construct.*

Zvi Lampel

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