[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zev Sero]

On 1/12/2010 12:02 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Zev Sero<zev at sero.name>  wrote:
>> You want to say that his problem with saying that
>> shamayim were created in the beginning is that we are still running with
>> the hava amina that they were created on the second day, and only in
>> chapter 2 will we discover that it wasn't so.  But how could we form
>> that hava amina in the first place, when the very first time the chumash
>> tells us they were created on the second day Rashi hastens to inform us
>> that they weren't?   *Where* are you getting this whole concept from?
>
> That is in 1:6, and shows that Rashi was already planting the seeds
> for 2:4. Rashi is quite an educator. But in 1:1, he is still trying to
> convince us that heaven and earth were not created on the first,
> because that would be incongruous.

So you keep saying, but where are you getting it from?  Where does Rashi
either say or imply that they were not created on the first day?  Where
would we get the idea that they were created on the second, if not from
1:6, where Rashi explicitly tells us *not* to?

Rashi is not "planting seeds" for some future revelation, he's explicitly
saying exactly what he says later.  He's not gently leading us to a
conclusion, he tells us the whole thing straight away, and warns us not
to be misled by what seems at the moment to be the simple pshat.  By the
time we get to 2:4 we already know his opinion, and all we finally learn
is *why* he's been telling us this.  Now we see the wall we would have
run into, had we not had Rashi for a guide.


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