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<![endif]--><font face="Courier New, Courier, monospace">Thu, 18 Nov
2010 Micha Berger <a href="mailto:micha@aishdas.org"><micha@aishdas.org></a>
wrote:<br>
<br>
>"Yom" not meaning day has millenia of history, from well
before anyone<br>
confronted a scientific theory that said that time had a
beginning, but<br>
it was far more than 6,000 years ago…"Haaretz" in the context of
the mabul not meaning the entire planet has no such mesorah. <<br>
<b><br>
“Aretz” not meaning the entire earth has millennia of history,
from well before anyone confronted a scientific theory that the
Flood was not global. </b><br>
<b> </b><br>
<b>“Yom” in the context of the Creation account not meaning a
regular has no such mesorah. On the contrary, the mesorah is
clear that it is a regular day. And the Geonim and Rishonim
clearly ascribe to this meaning, and the Ramban insists upon it.</b><br>
<b> </b><br>
<b>The Rambam in Moreh Nevuchim (</b><b>2:30</b><b>) invokes the
unanimous position of—</b><br>
<b> </b><br>
<b>[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.</b><br>
<b> </b><br>
<b>For the Rambam's problem to make sense, he must have been
presupposing 24-hour days. Had it been acceptable to
posit—against the Gemora in Chulin and against the Chazal he
explicitly referenced—that <span style=""> </span>the "days" of
creation were unspecified “periods” actually consisting of the
passage of numerous 24-hour days, there would be no difficulty
of containing all the events mentioned in the pesukim within one
such period, and no need to invoke the fact that the laws of
Nature were not yet fixed.</b><br>
<b> </b><br>
<b>As you write later,</b><br>
<b> </b><br>
"But from a process and acceptability point of view, my problem is
with<br>
the creation of new peshatim where there is no TORAH reason to do
so. I<br>
find that kind of force fitting to another discipline beyond my
personal<br>
range of acceptibility. (Meaning that it doesn't even feel to me
like<br>
"a different but valid shitah".)"<br>
<br>
>RMB: (Back in the days of the rishonim, when they thought the
earth had no beginning, no one had a motivation to suggest that a
day isn't a day.)<<br>
<br>
<b>The Ramban certainly was
confronted with the idea that a day isn’t a day--and rejected
it. And the Kuzari was confronted
with a nation claiming the world was hundreds of thousands years
old. He did
not solve the problem, as he easily could have, by claiming the
sixth day of animals’
and Adam’s (“mankind’s”) life was an era. <span dir="RTL"
lang="AR-SA"></span></b><br>
<br>
<br>
>RAs is an entire "this isn't literal" approach to the pereq as
a whole.<<br>
<br>
<b>—an approach that is not applied to the days of Breishis by any
classical commentator besides the Ralbag. The Ralbag bases
himself on the Chazal that everything was created fully-formed,
and on the Chazal that everything was created simultaneously. He
concludes that although the vegetation did not develop until the
fourth day, the other references to “day” are “stages.”
Everything else was created fully formed at the first instant.
Akeides Yitchak and the Abarbanel—who often repeats the former’s
comments without attribution—attribute this view to the Rambam
as well, and go on to condemn it with several proofs that it is
untenable with the pesukim. The Abarbanel later reinterprets the
Rambam to conform with the meaning of day to be day. <br>
<br>
They do not address the fact that the Ralbag himself, although
often referencing the Rambam, declared that no rishon before him
suggested his approach.</b><br>
<br>
<br>
>RMB: Shalom Carmy …raised the …following questions: It seems
obvious that Rabbi Kook doesn't advocate wholesale rejection of
biblical statements. To do so would render Tanakh useless as a
source of history. Under what circumstances would he countenance
"deconstruction" of the text…<br>
<br>
My own position appears to be RSC's first hava amina "Only where
biblical<br>
texts contradict each other or rabbinic statements".<<br>
<br>
<b>--Which is the stated position of Rav Saadia Gaon, the Rambam,
Sefer Ikkarim, and the approach practiced by all the rishonim,
with the baseline that words be taken at their primary meaning
unless contradicted by here-and-now sensual perception or
logical construct.</b><br>
<br>
Zvi Lampel<br>
<br>
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