[Avodah] Do we Owe Respect to Old Bones?

[Arie Folger]

RAM wrote (ages ago, in the paleolothic or so, by internet times, about
three weeks ago):

> Suppose there was a creature whose appearance and behavior was
> indistinguishable from Bnei Adam. However, we were somehow able
> to determine that this creature did NOT possess a Tzelem Elokim.
>
> You seem to be saying that it would be assur to murder such a creature,
> yet at the same time, its bones would not be m'tameh.
>
> I do not understand that nature of such a creature. Is it a Ben Adam
> or a Baal Chayim? If a creature is in the category of a Ben Adam, then
> it is assur to murder him, and his bones are m'tameh, and Tzaar Baalei
> Chayim is irrelevant although Chesed and Nezikin are very relevant. If
> a creature is in the category of a Baal Chayim, then it is mutar to kill it
> for a good reason, and its bones are not m'tameh, and Tzaar Baalei
> Chayim is very relevant while Chesed and Nezikin do not apply.
>
> I had always thought that Tzelem Elokim is what distinguishes a Ben
> Adam from Baalei Chayim. Perhaps I was mistaken. It seems that there
> is a third category, that of Adnei Hasadeh, creatures which appear to be
> Bnei Adam, but have no Tzelem Elokim. I would have expected appearances
> to be irrelevant, and that the halacha would be determined by our knowledge
> that it has no Tzelem Elokim, thus placing it in the Baal Chayim category.
>

Please pardon my extensive quoting above, but RAM's remark was very
appropriate. Adnei hasadeh may or may not provide a model for dealing with
the issue at hand, but I arroved at it because of ethical qualms, not
because of any specific sources.

Let me explain.

There are several ways to interpret ma'asseh vereishit as regards to its
seeming contradiction  with many scientific findings. As I am won't to say,
the question is mostly not a scientific one, but a philosophical question,
as science has no way to determine and no interest in determining whether
the world was created as a half finished work in progress appearing to be
much older, or whether the world really is very old. Likewise, the question
as to how to interpret verses in the Torah is a philosophical question,
regarding the role of metaphpor and language in describing such most
complex matters as Creation.

Still, one of the ways to reconcile Torah with science is to say that G"d
created the universe through the Big Bang and steered it to produce life
sustaining earth, where He also allowed life to evolve. Australopithecus
and other hominids did roam the earth, and homo sapiens sapiens was out
there for two hundred thousand years or so, some of them along Neantherthal
man.

If so, however, what does the account of creation of man mean? Again one of
the ways to reconcile those seemingly conflicting accounts is to say that
Adam was not the first homo sapiens sapiens, but the first adam betzelem.
That would, by the way, work nicely with some midrashim that imply other
people out there (as well as with the verse kol motz'i yahargeni, which is
otherwise explained as relating to the animals), but I digress.

The above scenario implies that homo sapiens sapiens nontzelemus was partly
contemporaneous to homo sapiens sapiens betzelemis, which raises the
question of how we ought to relate to such nontzelem creatures. Would we
consider them non-human? Does this not reek of the theories put forward to
oppress blacks in the 18th and early 19th century? Does this not open the
gate for the extremely unegalitarian notion of solid hereditary differences
between one group of humans and another? What about the descendants of
nontzelemites? Are all homo sapiens babies after Adam automatically endowed
by a tzelem, even if their parents lacked it? Did all nontzelemi die out
with the mabul? If they are nonhuman, why didn't Noach save two in his
teiva?

Because of all the above questions and the serious ethical repurcussions
possibly even down to our day, I take it as axiomatix that killing such a
being extrajudicially would be, well, murder, even if they lack a tzelem.
The rest I still need to deal with, but the mishna in Kilaim did encourage
me, in Rabbi Yossi positing that an adnei hasadeh is metame.

Kol tuv,
-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
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