[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zvi Lampel]

*ZL:*

*> > *"Yom" in the context of the Creation account not meaning a regular 
day has*

*> > no such mesorah. On the contrary, the mesorah is clear that it is 
[no longer than] a*

*> > regular day....*

**

*RMB: >We've debated this numerous times. And I still believe you're 
mistaken.<*

**

*And despite my quoting-- *

**

*1. Chagigah 12a that on the first day Hashem established the length of 
the day and the length of the night,*

**

*2. Rav Saadia Gaon that a prophet claiming that Hashem created the 
world literally in one year is contradicting the Torah and is a false 
prophet*

**

*3. The Kuzari who dismisses the Indian belief, that they had 
antiquities and buildings millions of years old, as contra our tradition 
(rather than reconciling the evidence by interpreting the sixth day as 
an era of Adam/"mankind"*

**

*4.The Ibn Ezra defining "yom echad" to the turning of the sphere*

**

*5. The Rambam (MN **2:30**), as I will elaborate.*

**

*6. The Ramban insisting that "*the days mentioned in /Ma'aseh Breishis/ 
were, in the creation of the heavens and the earth, literal days, 
composed [not of years and millennia, but] of hours and minutes, and 
they were six, just as are the six days of the work-week*" (maybe he was 
countering how some mistakenly took the Rambam--that he meant that only 
the first day was meant literally; or maybe his talmid RY of Akko, who 
positied that each day consisted of thousands of years)*

**

*7. The Rambam's son (who takes the word "yom" in *the verse (Breishis 
2:4)"...the day Hashem fashioned the Heavens and the Earth" to mean a 
period (namely a week). He says that here the word "day" cannot be taken 
in its conventional way, because the fashioning of the Heavens and Earth 
took place over a period lasting six days, not just one. (Needless to 
say, if he thought the six days of Creation were already not meant as 
conventional days, the contradiction would not have arisen.)

*8. Rabbeynu Bechaya, 9. the Ralbag (first intepretation), 10. Akeidas 
Yitzchak, 11. Abarbanel, 12. Seforno, 13. Rabbbeynu Ovadiah 
MiBartenuro--all of whom explicitly explain the 6 Creation days as 
regular 24-hour type days of light and darkness and/or the turning of 
the sphere.*

**

*--despite these sources you had claimed that the majority, mind you, of 
rishonim allow for the creation days to consist of eons of time. And 
despite your "belief" that I am mistaken, you still have produced not 
one classical rishon who does so (and one RY of **Akko**who posits 
thousands of years before the existence of our world).*

* All this is with keeping in mind that the context of the "day" issue 
is attempts to reinterpret the pesukim to jive with the current view of 
academia of our world and its inhabitants having developed through 
evolution over the eons of time asserted. Yet even stretching the 
meaning of "yom" to mean biliions of years, the sequence of the creation 
process and the description of what developed from what in no way 
corresponds.
*

*Yes, I am aware that you personally are not promoting this, but a view 
that neither academia nor we can attempt to have any idea at all of how 
the world developed. But this does not correspond to the 
commentaries---who vie with each other's interpretations of the pesukim 
to determine the details of creation, nor to the teachings emphasized by 
the baalei mesorah--the Moreh Nevuchim 2:17, Midrash Shmos Rabbah about 
Onkelos, and Ramban in Torah Temimah citing this Midrash, neing only a 
few among them, as detailed in another post.
*

*
ZL: > > *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.**

**

*RMB: Neither is the concept of day possible because time wasn't created 
yet.*

**

*I address this in another post, which the subject line: Moreh Nevuchim 
Part II Chapter 30.*

**

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