[Avodah] Bereishit

[Alexander Seinfeld]

Hi thanks for your comments.

>1. Torah isn't a history book, but it also happens to teach history.?

Not necessarily. Meaning, at times it does, but not always in the way
that secular people use the term History. So we should not compare the
two. I¹d rather say, ³It contains historical information²

>2. The problem with this answer is that it really doesn't answer it, as
>the chronology still doesn't work - according to science, there were no
>plants before the sun and the moon. So either it's all a parable (and
>there doesn't need to be any correlation between Torah and science), or
>you need another answer (such as the Lubavitcher Rebbe's answer that the
>world was created old).

We don¹t have to make it work. The point is that most people frankly have
no clue what cosmology says about origins (other that it¹s complicated
and somewhat mystical), and they often dismiss Torah because it appears
to them so unsophisticated. Peeking at the Rambam gives one a clue
that we have a Mesorah of a extremely sophisticated, complicated and
mystical Bereishis.

>3. The question is if we're working within nature or without. So
>hurricanes are natural, but Beriya very well may not (do you have a
>source that nature started from day 1 vs day 6 or when Adam was evicted
>from Gan Eden)?

No I don¹t. But I believe I saw in Rav Hirsch that Adam was first
created outside Gan Eden and only put in there for the test.