[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zev Sero]

On 22/11/2010 10:06 AM, Micha Berger wrote:

> There is no mention of Yom haDin, just of Yom Hashem. The notion that
> would need explanation would be your assumption that they're identical.
> Or even that Yom haDin was a day -- I would think it's shorter.

It's Yom Hashem Hagadol Vehanora.  What other day could that mean *but*
Yom Hadin?  And it needn't take up the whole day, but that is the Day
of Judgement; it certainly needn't take *more* than a day.


>>>>> Or a more significant example to our case, in Bereishis 2:4, the creation
>>>>> era is called a yom -- "beyom asos H' E-lokim eretz veshamayim" --
>>>>> not 7 of them!
>
>>>> Doesn't that mean the first day?
>
>>> It means the period in time that included "asos Hashem shamayim va'aretz"
>>> and "vayitzer H' E-lokim es ha'adam"
>
>> Rashi explicitly says otherwise.
>
> Rashi on 2:1 explicitly says that "kulam nivera'u barishon". Nothing
> about a given day.

Come, now.  His comment is on "*beyom* asos Hashem", and he says
"*limdecha* shekulam nivre'u barishon".  *This teaches you* that
everything was really created on the first day, not on the subsequent
five days.  What teaches you this?  The word "beyom".  In other words
Rashi takes this "beyom" absolutely literally.  It does not mean even
as little as a week, let alone any longer period.  If "yom" could mean
a longer period, then this whole Rashi makes no sense, and how does he
know things weren't really created on the six days, as perek 1 seems
to say?  Why, throughout perek 1, does he keep telling us that all
these things were already created on the first day and were merely put
in place later?


> In fact, taken very literally, Rashi is saying that
> everything was created at the start of the week, as he says on 1:14
> about the me'oros, "they were created since yom 1, and on the 4th [yom]
> it was commanded on them to hand in the raqia'".

Exactly.  And how does he know this?  Because of this "beyom", which
you claim means the whole week!



> For that matter, on which yom were shamayim va'aretz created? IOW,
> does yom echad begin with "bereishis bara E-lokim", or with "veha'aretz
> haysah"? Is 1:1 an introduction, telling you that shamayim va'aretz,
> whose creation is described in full from 1:2-1:3 (including the creation
> of Shabbos), was in the beginnning of?

Rashi already handled that one.  The main pshat is that this pasuk is
about the *purpose* of the whole creation, not its timing; and if that
doesn't sit well then the secondary pshat is that it means that the
next pasuk ("vehaaretz haysa tohu vavohu") happened at the beginning of
the creation of shamayim va'aretz.  Rashi absolutely rejects the idea
that 1:1 tells us when shamayim va'aretz were created.


> But in any case, returning to the first sentence of the previous
> paragraph: There is nothing in Rashi that says that the yom in which
> shamayim va'aretz were made was not the yom in which the story happens.
> In fact, since the pasuq in question says, roughly, "Here's a story of
> something that happens in the yom in which heaven and earth was created",
> is would take some work to say that it happens on a different yom. And
> if 1:1 is an introductory overview, then 2:1 is saying maaseh bereishis
> took a yom.

Sorry, you are distorting the Rashi beyond any recognition.  Rashi
couldn't be any clearer: "beyom asos" means the first day and only the
first day, to the specific exclusion of the rest of the yemei bereshis.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher