[Avodah] Do we Owe Respect to Old Bones?

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 10:40:34AM +0100, Arie Folger wrote:
: Finally, if you subscribe to what I call the programmer's model of
: creation, i.e. that the world is a virtual reality in G"d's "mind" and
: that the individual creations of the Six Days of Creation are kind of
: subroutines (works perfectly with Rashi who speaks of everything being
: created before the first day, but put in place on its day, and it all
: only coming into function on day six, when Adam was made to come
: alive), then the first answer above would fit, too.

I think more the Rambam. The Moreh 2:30 says something similar to what
you quote from Rashi (Bereishis 1:1 d"h "Berieshis bara", the "kepishuto"
given 2nd).

But the Rambam suggests this for a different reason than Rashi. Rashi
needs a sun in order for "erev" and "boqer" to make sense. The Rambam
raises the problem that time itself requires motion. (The Greeks believed
that time was the property of a process, not visualizing it as an axis,
the way science has since Galileo.)

Therefore, the particular Rashi you quote might suggest that a creation
yom is a length of time other than one "trip of the sun around the earth"
(revolution of the earth) as we have them, since the galgal wasn't in
place yet.

But the Rambam, saying the same thing, would suggest that yom isn't
a span of time altogether. And AFAIK, this is the commonly accepted
understanding of the Rambam. (Although if RZL sees this, he'll post
his counterargument.) That the 6 yamim are stages of a process, not
temporal at all.

Where Rashi does suggest that maaseh bereishis isn't within linear time
is more what you pointed to in November -- the combination of 1:1 and
2:4. But it is far from muchrakh. It could be (as you suggested) that
Rashi simply explains each narrative al pi peshuto without trying to
reconcile the two.

This "subroutine" notion might also explain the Ramban's pairing of
creation yamim with historical-era millenia.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             The fittingness of your matzos [for the seder]
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