[First posted in 2014. Source: Pentateuch & Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz–Admin1.]
THE BOOK OF GENESIS
The Hebrew name for the First Book of Moses was originally Sefer Maaseh Bereshith, ‘Book of Creation.’ This was rendered into Greek by Genesis, ‘origin,’ because it gives an account of the creation of the world and the beginnings of life and society. Its current Jewish name is Bereshith (‘In the beginning’), which is the first Hebrew word on its opening sentence. Bereshith is also the name of Chap. I-VI,8, the first of the 54 weekly Torah Readings (Sedrahs) on Sabbath mornings.
If the Pentateuch (which is a Greek word meaning the five books of Moses) were merely a code of civil and religious laws, it would have opened with the 12th chapter of Exodus, which contains the earliest specific commandment given to Israel (Rashi). But it is far more than a code of law: it is the Torah, i.e. the Divine Teaching given to Israel, and the Message of Israel to mankind. Therefore, it describe the origins of the Jewish people; traces its kinship to the other portions of the human family—all being of one blood and offspring of one common stock; and goes back to the creation of the world, which it declares to be the work of One Almighty and Beneficent God. All this is told in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. The remaining 39 chapters give the story of the Fathers of the Jewish people—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his children.
THE CREATION CHAPTER
Genesis I-II,3, is a worthy opening of Israel’s Sacred Scriptures, and ranks among the most important chapters of the Bible. Even in form it is pre-eminent in the literature of religion. No other ancient account of creation (cosmogony) will bear a second reading. Most of them not only describe the origin of the world, but begin by describing how the gods emerged out of pre-existent chaos (theogony). In contrast with the simplicity and sublimity of Genesis I, we find all ancient cosmogonies,whether it be Babylonian or the Phoenician, the Greek or the Roman, alike unrelievedly wild, cruel, even foul.
The infinite importance, however, of the first page of the Bible consists in the fact that it enshrines some of the fundamental beliefs of Judaism. Among these are:—
I. GOD IS THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE.
Each religion has certain specific teachings, convictions, dogmas. Such a dogma of Judaism is in its belief that the world was called into existence at the will of the One, Almighty and All-good God. And nowhere does this fundamental conviction of Israel’s Faith find clearer expression than in Genesis I.
When neighbouring peoples deified the sun, moon and stars, or worshipped stocks and stones and beasts, the sacred river Nile, the crocodile that swam in its waters, and the very beetles that crawled along its banks, the opening page of the Scripture proclaimed in language of majestic simplicity that the universe, and all that therein is, are the product of one supreme directing intelligence; of an eternal, spiritual Being, prior to them and independent of them.
Now, while the fact of creation has to this day remained the first of the articles of the Jewish Creed, there is no uniform and binding belief as to the manner of creation, i.e. as to the process whereby the universe came into existence.
The manner of the Divine creative activity is presented in varying forms and under differing metaphors by Prophet, Psalmist; by the Rabbis in Talmudic times, as well as by our medieval Jewish thinkers.
In the Bible itself we have at least three modes of representing the overwhelming fact of Divine Creation. Genesis I gives us the story of Creation in the form of a Divine drama set out in six acts of a day each, with a similar refrain (And there was evening and there was morning, etc.) closing the creative work of each day.
The Psalmist, to whom Nature was a continual witness of its Divine Author (Ps. XIX) gives in Psalm CIV a pure poetic representation of the Creation story:
O LORD my God, Thou art very great; Thou art clothed with glory and majesty. Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment, Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain . . . Who makest the clouds Thy chariot, Who walkest upon the wings of the wind; Who makest winds Thy messengers . . . ‘
Again, Proverbs VIII,22-31, shows forth Divine Wisdom presiding at the birth of Nature.
The ode of creation continued to engage Jewish minds after the close of the Bible and throughout the Rabbinic period, even though the Mishnah warns against all speculation concerning the beginning of things.
To some, the relation of God to the universe was that of a mason to his work, and they accordingly spoke of God’s ‘architect’s plans’; others lost themselves in heretic fancies as to what constituted the raw material, so to speak, of Creation; while to Philo of Alexandria, Creation as altogether outside time.
Several of the ancient Rabbis, followed by the later Mystics, believed in successive creations. Prior to the existence of the present universe, they held, certain formless worlds from the Fountain of Existence and then vanished, like sparks which fly from a red-hot iron beaten by a hammer, that are extinguished as they separate themselves from the burning mass.
In contrast to these abortive creations, the medieval Jewish Mystics maintain, ours is the best of all possible worlds. It is the outcome of a series of emanations and eradiations from God, the Infinite, En Sof.
Furthermore, Rashi, the greatest Jewish commentator of all times, taught that the purpose of Scripture was not to give a strict chronology of Creation; while no less an authority than Maimonides declared:
‘The account given in Scripture of the Creation is not, as is generally believed, intended to be in all its parts literal.’
Later Jewish philosophers (Levi ben Gerson, Crescas, Albalag) made dangerous concessions to the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter; which doctrine Yehudah Hallevi, among others, strongly opposed as both contrary to Reason and as limiting God’s Ominipotence.
JEWISH ATTITUDE TOWARDS EVOLUTION
In face of this great diversity of views as to the manner of creation, there is, therefore, nothing inherently un-Jewish in the evolutionary conception of the origin and growth of forms of existence from the simple to the complex, and from the lowest to the highest.
The Biblical account itself gives expression to the same general truth of gradual ascent from amorphous chaos to order, from inorganic to organic, from lifeless matter to vegetable, animal and man: insisting, however, that each stage is no product of chance, but is an act of Divine will, realizing the Divine purpose, and receiving the seal of the Divine approval.
Such, likewise, is in effect the evolutionary position. Behind the orderly development of the universe there must be a Cause, at once controlling and permeating the process.
Allowing for all the evidence in favour of interpreting existence in terms of the evolutionary doctrine, there still remain facts—tremendous facts—to be explained; viz. the origin of life, mind conscience, human personality. For each of these, we must look back to the Creative Omnipotence of the Eternal Spirit. Nor is that all. Instead of evolution ousting design and purpose from nature, ‘almost every detail is now found to have a purpose and a use’ (A.R. Wallace). In brief, evolution is conceivable only as the activity of a creative Mind purpose-ing.