By Dr. Yitzhak Hayut-Man
and Tirtsah Arzi
The Book of Genesis as a Redemptive
Scenario and Guide for Re-Biography.
1. Introduction
2. The Worlds and
the Chronology of the Multiple Versions of Genesis
3. When was The Book
of Genesis Written?
4. The Fractal
Structure of the Torah and the
Threefold Structure of the Book of Genesis
5. The Tense in
which the Torah is written
In the course of the thousands of years that
have passed since the Giving of the Torah (Pentateuch – “The Five Books of Moses”, the original
Hebrew core of the Bible), the three major Monotheistic religions that have
derived from it have not argued its veracity, in theory or practice.
Only by the 18th century, when
modern science discovered new geological and biological evidence about the
evolution of the universe in the course of millions and billions of years that
apparently contradicted the story of the Creation according to the Book of
Genesis, was the simple belief in the Torah shaken, among
Christians and Jews alike. Modern textual and historical research,
which sought evidence that the Christian and Jewish scriptures were edited and
re-edited many years after what was accepted by religious tradition, added to
challenge the authority of the Scriptures, the Torah included.
So what, then, is the Torah?
Is it a holy writ that is beyond human
understanding, the definitive intermediary between us and the Infinite, as
claimed, for instance, by the teachings of the Habad (Chabad) Hassidic
movement?
Or is it an ancient literary text that is
still worthy to be studied today, because its literary and psychological value
is still valid?
Or should we regard it as the
cultural-folkloristic background for the growth of Jewish culture?
Bereshit Raba, a traditional exegesis, has a different
claim: “The Torah says: I was the tool of the
Creator, the Holy One blessed be He”…. “ The Holy One was looking at the Torah
and creating the world” (Bereshit
Raba 1:1).
We shall present an approach
that includes all the possibilities enumerated above and attempt to bridge
between them. True, we’ll claim, the Torah has served human needs in the past,
and had a decisive influence – for good and sometimes not – upon human history.
But its main importance and influence are hidden in the present and future,
from our generation onwards.
This approach will also settle an apparent
contradiction between what is written “A Torah
shall proceed from Me” (Isaiah 51:4 – in future
tense!), as well as “for out of Zion there will
come forth a Torah” (Isaiah 2:3, Mikha 4:2),
where the emphasis is on the future tense: the Torah has not yet issued
forth from Zion, but is destined to – and, on the other hand, the tenets of belief
of Maimonides, which Judaism has adopted as its principles, including: “that all the Torah that is extant with us is the same
Torah given to our master Moses, peace be upon him”, and “that this Torah will never be replaced and there will
come no new Torah from the blessed Creator”.
We claim that this same Torah
from generations past is to be rediscovered in our times as a New Torah
that was not conceived by our forefathers, and this new understanding will
bring to new creation, a Creation in which humankind will be a full co-creator.
Also among traditional interpreters we find clues and references of
extraordinary innovations that will be revealed in what was for them the
distant future. For us, that future is now.
In the Likutei Amarim
(collected discourses) of the Magid of Mezeritz (the teacher of
the founder of Habad) it is said: “a Torah
shall proceed from Me” (Isaiah 51:4), that the Torah is
(like) a Komah
Shlemah (full stature of man) – skin and flesh, sinews and
bones. Skin is called the shell of the Torah, and flesh as (it is said that) whoever
tires himself (studying the Torah) tastes the taste of meat, and Gidim
(sinews) in the manner (it is said) vayaged lahem (He
admonished them) that He told them words tough as sinews. And bones – Atsamot – means
that the essence – Atsmiyut – of
the Torah has not been revealed yet.
Because we see that all of the Torah is
collected from (the stories of) saintly people, from Adam and the Patriarchs
and Moses that God has put His Presence – Shekhinato – upon
their deeds, and this is a whole Torah. But the lucidity of the
Essence (of the Torah) has not yet been revealed until the Messiah would come
and all will under- stand the clarity of its essence. And this is “A New Torah
will issue from Me”, namely from My Essence. And this is what the prophet
Ezekiel prophesied, as he saw the building of the Future and said, “will those
bones – Atsamot –
live?” namely the Essence – Atsmiyut – of
the Torah”.
(According to Magid Devarav le’Ya’akov” section 6).
Rashi (Rabenu Shlomoh Yitzhaki, 12th century), who
is considered the foremost of the Torah interpreters, opens his exegesis to the
Torah
and to the Book of Genesis with the question that seems to throw doubt on the
relevance of the Story of Creation:
“Said Rabbi Yitzhak: there was no need
to start the Torah, but from “This month shall be
to you the beginning” (Exodus
12:2), which is the first
commandment that Israel were commanded, so for what purpose did He start with
Genesis? … That if the nations of the world will
tell Israel – you are robbers who occupied the land of seven nations, Israel
will answer them (that) the whole earth is the Lord’s, as He created it (and
could give it to whom He pleases)….”
This is a most surprising argument. Whereas
in the Middle Ages in France in the times of the Crusades, where Rashi lived, those
with might would conquer lands and occupy them, this exegesis assumes an
international regime that seeks to check “the legitimate rights” of every
nation to its land. Applying this for the bitter conflict between Jews
returning to their land with the native people of that land (Am ha’Aretz),
could Rashi really hint at the moral right of the Gush Emunim people to
disregard the arguments of those calling for rights for the Palestinians? Has
the Book of Genesis, studied and taught for a hundred generations of Jews
before our times, finally become relevant really at our generation?
Let us continue following the exegesis of Rashi to the Book of Genesis.
After
the first two chapters of the book, which contain two alternative creation
stories (to which we shall return), there appears the story of the Garden of
Eden. In it, God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from one of the trees. The serpent
explained it to Eve in this way: “For God knows
that on the day you eat of it, then your eyes would be opened, and you shall be
as gods, knowing good and evil” (3:5). Rashi explains:
“Because God knows…. From the tree He ate and created the world”, and adds: “and
you shall be as God – creators of worlds”. Understood as a metaphor, each person
in every generation builds a small world of her/his own, and that the sum total
of human creation is the creation of an artificial world. But in our time a
technology emerges that enables the physical creation of entirely new worlds,
in deserts and the polar regions and under the sea. On the horizon is the
formation of inhabited worlds in outer space and in planets “terraformed” for
human habitation. Moreover, from a cultural and technological perspective all
human population of the earth has been transformed into the inhabitants of a
global city.
Again we see a hint
in Rashi’s interpretation, for evidence for what may come in the future,
applicable to our times and other than in the days of the crystallization of
the people of Israel, or of Talmudic Judaism, or of the Catholic church, which
sees itself as “the true Israel”. Assuming that the object of the exegesis of
the Torah is not only for Jews but also for all our contemporaries who chose to
relate to the Torah, in the sense of “for
out of Zion there should issue Torah”, we shall have to examine the
appearances of the concept of “Zion” (and thus also Zionism) in Biblical
exegesis.
In the introduction to the Book of the Zohar
(the basic book of the Kabbalah – the Jewish
mysticism) there is an exegesis on the verse “plant
the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth, and say to Zion – Thou art my
people” – Ami ata - (Isaiah
51:16): “and to tell to
those… who are distinguished - metsuyanim – namely those who formulate
excellent - metsuyanim – innovations of Torah exegesis, you are with me
– Imi ata – (with the vowel I (hiriq) rather than A (patah).
Just as I have made heaven and earth through my words, as it is written “by the word of the Lord were the heavens made”
(Psalm 33:6), so are you too, as with your acts of
wisdom you made new heaven and earth”. Therefore,
the future of Zionism is in the collaboration of the most excellent among humankind in the creation of new heaven and
earth, since the Acts of Bereshit-Genesis are likely recur.
We shall begin with this insight. Basing our
discussion on the Torah, we shall strive to make “A New Heaven and New Earth”,
excellent innovations and derivations, that will allow us (among other things
to be revealed through our discussion) to settle seeming contradictions between
the chronology of creation in the Book of Genesis and scientific findings,
contradictions that have deterred many good people. We might thus enable
contemporary educated people to return and observe the Torah as a guide and
Life Teaching, and not just as an interesting folkloristic vestige.
2. The Worlds and the Chronology of the
Multiple Versions of Genesis
Chapters 42 and 43 in Isaiah serve as the Haftarah
(the supplementary reading from the prophets) for the Parashah (weekly
reading tract of the Pentateuch), and for a good reason. These two chapters
deal with the subject of creation. Chapter 42 deals with the creation of heaven
and earth, and chapter 43 with the formation of Jacob and Israel. As we shall
see in the conclusion, the overall course of the Book of Genesis is between
these two creation stories.
Verse 7 in chapter 43 has drawn the attention
of the Mekubalim (or “Kabbalists”, as rendered quite
insensitively). “Every one that is called by my
name, for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, ye I have made
him”. The Kabbalah deducts from this the existence of creation on
different levels, and through different processes: “Creation” (Bri’ah),
“Formation” (Yetsirah) and “Making” (Assiyah).
Moreover, the Kabbalah designates these not
only as different processes but also as different Worlds: The World of Beri’ah,
the World of Yetsirah and the World of Assiyah, and
implies that each one is distinct from the Creator, who surrounds and nurtures
them all. These “worlds” relate to different strata of human existence, which
are called “Neshamah” (roughly – eternal, divine soul), Ru’ah
(“spirit”) and “Nefesh” (natural, or “animal” soul), and have
entirely different chronologies and time scales.
Let us return to the description of the
creation in Bereshit Raba (see above), according to which the
Holy One, Blessed be He, was looking at the Torah as at a blueprint or plan
with which to create the world. We may consider the plans as edited for
millions of our years, kept as if in a drawer and then executed on a different
time scale, be it longer or much shorter.
For even
contemporary human creations that seemingly take “six days” to create, are
actually the fruit of millions of years of planning given the evolution
required for the needed mental pattern. The mental pattern enables the creation
as a result of the development of the mental apparatus – namely the human brain
of the designer – by a chemical and biological process of millions of years and
cultural development of thousands of years.
Yet, it is also possible that the whole
discussion above is unnecessary; if we regard time itself as a created
entity, which was formed through a process and at a certain stage, there is
no point in asking about time that elapsed before time was created. At most, we
might inquire: when was Time created?
We are given some clues to the process by the
conventional division of the chronology of humankind into “history” and
“prehistory”. The word “History” is related to “Story” (the same holds for the
French “histoire” and the German “Geschichte”). This means that
history is the time since humans learnt to tell their story, from the time they
learnt to attribute meaning to human existence. This also means that history is
a cultural invention that requires the existence of several conditions, the
main one of which is memory. Not the fleeting memory of an individual
human being, but a collective cultural memory, a memory that requires means of
making external records. The hunter-gatherers did not require records and
land-registers, and have hardly left records behind them. To create permanent
records humankind needed to develop agriculture, to settle in cities and to
form writing.
Archeological research has found that the
transition to agriculture and the start of the domestication of wheat occurred
at the Middle East about six thousand years ago (it is for a reason that Jewish
tradition claims that “The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge” was wheat, to which
we shall return in the next chapter). Also the most ancient script known to
science is from the fourth millennium B.C.E. (before the Common Era), namely:
about six thousand years ago.
If we return to our Hebrew Biblical sources,
according to which the “creation” (and really, the expulsion from Eden) occurred
about 5760 years ago, we find that this dating matches the creation of the
human world – namely the creation of (historic) Time[1].
According to this perspective, about six thousand years have elapsed since the
creation of time and the sprouting of the seeds of questioning about the
meaning of human existence. The trees that have grown from these sprouts
continue to grow, and the need for an answer now becomes ever more desperate.
The Biblical narrative, more than it is a historical record, is the story of
this reverberating question, and of its possible answer. This is the primary
question that God poses Adam when he asks, “Where are you?”
Let us then find for ourselves where are we
in the acts of Genesis.
According to the accepted traditional perspective, based on the verse “for a thousand years in Thy sight are but like yesterday
when it past“ (Psalm 90:2), or as
formulated in the New Testament in the second Epistle of Peter (3:8) “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a
thousand years as one day” – we are still in the process of “the six
days of Creation”.
We
can find further sources for this parallel – between each Day of Creation and
each millennium – in Beresit Rabati of R. Moshe haDarshan of
Narbonne (who is often referred to by Rashi). There it is stated that the two
temples – which were built and also destroyed in the fourth millennium of the
Hebrew calendar – are related to the fourth Day of Creation, in which the
luminaries were created. The Kabbalah (which appeared publicly among the Jews
at the beginning of the Sixth Millennium) has adopted this historic chronology,
according to which we are now at the (end of) the Sixth Millennium.
If by present count we are now at the sixth millennium according to the
Hebrew calendar, then we are at “the Sixth Day of Genesis” – the epoch of the
Creation of Adam.
It
follows that the whole affair of the Trees of Knowledge and of Life, and the
punishment that their abuse may bring about, should be considered not as an
event from the remote past, but as an imminent threat of our times. In the
sequel, we shall discuss this possibility, which is of great meaning and grave
consequences.
Along with this we shall discuss the
implications that issue from the Talmudic saying “the
World exists for six thousand years and than for one it lies fallow” (Rosh haShanah 38), namely, to the traditions that attribute the Messianic Times and End
Times as relating to the end of the Sixth Millennium. Or alternatively, to the
tradition that anticipates at the end of the sixth millennium the transition
from “This World “ (Olam haZeh), to “The Coming World” (Olam
haBa) – which is a world of much superior human and spiritual
qualities.
This issue, of the existence of alternative
worlds, is elaborated in an ancient book of Kabbalah – Sefer haTemunah
(the Book of the Picture). The Midrash states that the Lord “Creates worlds
and destroys them” (Bereshit Raba 3:9) or according to another version “In the beginning, it came up in Thought
to create the world according to the measure of Judgment (Midat haDin),
but when He saw that the world would not endure (like that) He started with the
measure of Mercy (Midat haRahamim) and added it to the measure of
Judgment” (Bereshit
Raba 12:15). Building
upon these insights, Sefer haTemunah developed a system of
“Sabbaticals” (Shemitot): world cycles that endure for six
thousand years and then are replaced by other worlds.
The Kabbalah, in its doctrine of the Sephirot[IA1], incorporates this division into seven
thousand years cycles and draws a parallel between the six “Sephirot of
Construction” (Hesed-Mercy, Gevurah/Din-Rigor/Judgment,
Tif’eret-Glory, Netsah- Eternity/Victory, Hod-Yielding
and Yesod-Fundament) and the six Days of Genesis, whereas the
seventh millennium corresponds to the Sephirah of Malkhut-
Kingship and to the Sabbath, “The Sabbath of the Worlds”.
There are many discussions in the Kabbalah
dedicated to the number of Shemitot (7000 year cycles) that preceded
the creation of This World. The more accepted view (also from a dramaturgical
point of view) is that we are nearing the end of the seventh world made, as its
predecessors, of cycles of seven thousand years. This reckoning estimates the
age of the (our human) world as about 42 thousand years.
But the Kabbalah hides still bigger surprises
for people of our generation: Rabbi Yitzhak of Akko, a contemporary of
Rabbi Moses de Leon, in the 13th century, calculates the age of the
universe is the same assumed by the latest astronomical calculations.
In his book Otsar haHayim
(the Treasure of Life)[2]
which was discovered fairly recently, Rabbi Yitzhak builds his
calculations on the verse we brought earlier: “for a thousand years are in
Thy eyes as a day…” He than takes the 42,000 years that were already agreed
upon by the Mekubalim (6 cycles of 7000 years) and multiplies it
by 1000 times 365 “days” (in each such Divine Year). The outcome is
15,330,000,000 years. This makes a bit over 15 billion years, which corresponds
to the scientific calculations about the time of “The Big Bang” (for example,
Steven Hawkings in his “Short history of Time” estimates the age of the
universe to be between ten and twenty billion years. So here we have “a
scientific Fig leaf” for those who would avoid the Torah for appearing
obsolete, or irrelevant, in light of the laws of Modern Science.
But we, in the course of this book, shall
prefer to cling to the well-accepted Jewish accounting, the one that serves the
Hebrew calendar. About six thousand years ago something memorable occurred, and
is supposed to endure for six thousand years. Now we are approaching the peak,
or – alternatively – the conclusion. As the Talmudic source [quote]: “The world endures for six thousand years… two thousand
years Tohu (confusion), two thousand years Torah (instruction)
and two thousand years the Times of the Messiah”. We are therefore near
the conclusion of the messianic Times.
3. When was The Book of Genesis Written?
So far, we have tried to contend with the
challenge posed by scientific-physical research to the authority of the Torah.
Can we also contend with the challenge posed by the scientific
historical-philological research about the authorship of the Torah? Was the
entire Torah (Pentateuch, “The Five Books of Moses”) composed entirely by
Moses, as the tradition maintains? Or was it edited in a way that allows us to
see it as written by bands of priestly scribes until the times of the
destruction of the First Temple and of the prophet Jeremiah, and its final
editing took place perhaps even later, at the time of Ezra the Scribe (as
assumed by the Bible criticism scholars, including Israeli researchers)?
For those who are willing to relate to the
works of the Scripture scholars, there appear some weighty claims to see the
times of composition as fairly late. But the avoidance of these is also clear:
many believers, both Jewish and Christian, fear that abandoning the sacred
Scriptures to the operations table of objective textual Nituah
(analysis, but also “surgery”) is likely to kill them. How could a collection
of texts written by ordinary people constitute a sacred life teaching? Yet the
appreciation of their conjoint authorship under collective prophetic sacred
work, in which the holy spirit at the temple in Jerusalem inspired the scribes,
guided them in fashioning their multi-faceted material out of “the letters in
which heaven and earth were created” and within primary sacred templates and
patterns, can make the Torah an inspiring example of the highest human
potential.
Let us first observe how much communality
might there be between the seemingly contradictory versions. The earlier
assumption is that the Torah was written entirely by Moses, about 3,500 years
ago, and the later assumption dates the completion of the editing of the Torah
to about 2,500 years ago. From the perspective of our times, the difference is
not all that great. Either way, the writing and/or the editing of the Torah
took place in the middle period – between “the creation of this world” as we
have explained it so far, and the actualization of the purpose of the Torah –
the realization of the 6000 years “World Plan” coded by the Torah. The Torah,
therefore, regards this world with two orientations – backwards towards the far
past, and forward to a future just as distant. The Torah scribes knew the
people they dwelled among, and knew well that the historical circumstances were
still far from actualizing the ideals they were dreaming about[3].
The writing – or editing – of the Torah by the temple scribes must have
been the acme of holy work in ancient Israel. The status of scribes is well
recognized and mentioned in the Torah and the Talmud. The scribes who copied
the scrolls of the Torah were warned (Talmud Bavli, Eruvin tractate 13:1; Sota
tractate 20:1) that whoever adds
or subtracts a single letter is likely “to destroy the whole world”, because as
a result the aim of the Torah will not be fulfilled. That is, fulfillment of
the intention of the world plan depends on the precision of the writing, and
negligence will bring its destruction. The high priest who entered the
innermost sanctuary of the temple required ritual immersion and purification.
The scribes who copied the holy text for ritual use also required purification
before writing the Holy Name. How much more so the sacred group of
priest-scribes who dwelled in the depth of the Temple, far from the maddening
crowd and nearest to the Holy of Holies and the inspiration of the Shekhinah
(the Divine Presence) [4].
The Holy Spirit (Ru’ah haKodesh) which is described so
vividly in the books of the prophets, is the same that gave inspiration to the
prophets of the First Temple period and its scribes, and must have been
prevalent among those who stayed in the cells at the core of the Temple.
As noted, even in the most glorious days of
the People of Israel, from the times of Moses till the destruction of the First
Temple, Israel has not been regarded by the Torah and its writers as perfect
and worthy per se, but as raw material (indeed “mixed multitudes”, the Erev
Rav) that required processing and reconstruction according to the patterns
and molds that the Torah specifies and through protracted processes that
continue to our present times.
The narrative of the Book of Genesis, the lives of the Patriarchs and
the cycles of relationships between humans and the Divine, were originally
authored with the intention of serving the restoration of the nation and the Tikkun
(Restitution) of all humankind. This original intention of the Torah is
especially apparent in our times, the “Sixth Day” – the epoch of the
Reconstruction of Humankind-Adam.
Here we arrive at a possible resolution to
the apparent contradiction between the traditional approach – a Torah entirely
written by Moses – and the approach of the Biblical scholars, according to
which the Torah was edited, or even written, by the hands of the First Temple
scribes. The resolution of this contradiction is vital in sustaining the value
of the Torah as a credible and inspired plan.
Even the sages (of the Mishnah and Talmud
period) agree that “The Torah was given in
consecutive scrolls” (Shemot
Raba 5:22, passim),
which implies that the scribes had to add and join them together. If we see
these original “scrolls” (Megilot) as revealing (megalot)
God’s Will, then the work of the scribes was “the gathering of revelations” (Kibbutz
Giluyim, a play on Kibbutz Galuyot – “the ingathering of
the exiled”) of God’s words for the Israelites, as they were preserved at the
different tabernacles and temples – in Sinai, at Shiloh and at Nov, in
Jerusalem, at Shomron and at Dan. Our approach seeks to integrate the seemingly
contradictory perspectives that are currently prevalent in Israel, much as was
done then with those scrolls. Precisely such a point of view, that of the First
Temple scribes who wrote the Torah as a prophetic holy work, is valid for our
own times.
In writing about the creation of Adam and his
expulsion from Eden the scribes of the First Temple likely intended to hint at
the impending Babylonian exile and the gathering of the exiles that followed
it; and in Noah’s building of the Ark to save therein the remnant of humankind
they might have seen the essence of their own work, the writing of the Torah
(whose place is in the Tevah – Ark – of the synagogue) that will
be taken to Babylon and make the people remember and return, hopefully even
with the formerly-exiles Ten Tribes, back to the Land of Israel and to the
rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.
From our point of view, therefore, it is
actually the perspective of Biblical criticism that might give us a preferable
way to comprehend the Torah for our own times, the times of the Return to Zion
and the restoration of Israel. The Temple scribes were living in a period of
preparation for an exile and for the gathering of the exiles of the first
temple. (And if the final edition took place in the times of Ezra, its
orientation would have been precisely for the restoration). It is possible that
the scribes who finalized the Bible were not able to consciously envision times
and circumstances beyond that first Return to Zion, such as the advent of
modern Zionism. But through their entry into the inner source of world events
and through their being charged with prophetic inspiration (no less than the
major prophets – Isaiah and Jeremiah), they were able to enter into the
archetypal and eternal primordial patterns of Exile and Redemption (Golah
and Geulah), and make their writing instructive also for the
present, second Return to Zion and the restoration, or Tikkun, of
all humankind in our times.
Scribes who wrote about the first redemption
and the Exodus from Egypt at the period towards the destruction of the First
Temple or during the return to Zion that followed it must have longed for redemption
in their own times. Yet since the grand structure of the Torah, as we shall
shortly see, is made of triads, it follows that the time for the ultimate
Return to Zion and the complete redemption, according to the Torah, was not
then, but now.
According to the Jewish tradition, Adam was
created on the first of the month of Tishrei (the beginning of
the Jewish year, as celebrated for over two millennia). The Jewish New Year is
therefore not a mark of the beginning of Creation, as commonly assumed, but we
see the beginning as pertaining to the Sixth Day – the “Day” of the Creation of
Humankind. Not Cro-Magnon nor Neanderthal, but humans “in our likeness and image”,
who contend with the kind of problems we are dealing with to this very day.
“This World” (Olam haZeh) is
thus a human world, with human dilemmas, and not only an array of geological
structures millions and billions of years old. All the same, there exists, we
deem, a certain resemblance between the order of cosmological processes and the
order of cultural processes. One is a certain reflection of the other, albeit
on a micro scale.
We too, as contemporaries of the modern age,
will use examples from the new sciences to convey this: the new approach to the
geometry of nature, connected with the name of Benoit Mandelbrot, which deals
with “self-similarity” and is called “Fractal Geometry” [5],
illustrates with amazing computer graphics a law that is apposite to our
concern: a certain figure (which in the case of a special mathematical group
called “the Mandelbrot Set” looks a bit like a great sitting Buddha figure) is
repeated endless times in diminutive forms, which are tied to the original
large figure by invisibly delicate cords, and the geometry of each detail is
similar to that of the overall figure. Each of the figures is unique and is not
exactly identical to the others, but the differences are subtle and require
much discrimination to tell.
Let us return to the Midrash we were dealing
with, according to which God “was looking at the Torah and creating the world”,
and try to discern how the overall divine patterns also appears – just as in
the case of fractal forms – in the minutest details.
According to the Jewish tradition the cycles
of “the seven days of Genesis” are operative in the creation of the cosmos and
the planets, as well as in human history, with its cycles of Shemitot and
jubilees – the proper maintenance of the living earth from whence comes our
sustenance – as well as the structure of the week, with the six days of work
and the Sabbath of rest, which are the proper maintenance laws for humans.
Similarly, when we examine the literary
structure of the Book of Genesis we can discern a definite repetitive pattern
in whose details is also apparent a trend of development. The very Story of
Creation is told in three versions, which, on the face of it, are entirely
different from each other. Many Bible critics see this as evidence to the
juxtaposition of different sources. But from our point of view this has a
literary aim and is even a necessity (which will be explained in Chapter 1).
The first version is that of the story of Creation in six
days, which can be divided into three and three. Three "days" for the
creation of the Eretz -Earth, or Adamah, and three
for the creation of living creatures, culminating with humankind, or Adam.
The second version is the story of the Garden of Eden,
according to which the whole creation occurred in one day ("in the day
that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens"). There, the creation of
Adam occurred before the completion of the earth ("And no plant of the
field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field has yet grown"), and
even the name of the Creator has changed. The protagonists of the story are
three: Adam, Eve and the Serpent, who are later joined by their two contending
sons, and then the children of Cain.
The third story is the story of the third son – Seth – the
grandfather of Enosh, namely, the progenitor of Enoshut –
humankind. Again the story opens with a one-day creation. "This is the
book of the generations of Adam (Man). In the day that God
created mankind…" (Gen. 5:1). Adam is a marginal figure in this story. Eve
and the other characters of the preceding story are not mentioned, or even do
not exist.
For each of these three stories there is also
a characteristic ending.
The ending of the first story is idyllic -
"Thus the heavens and earth were finished, and all their host... and God
rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done".
The second story – which contains three
sub-narratives – also has three endings, all of which are tragic. Adam and Eve
are expelled from the garden of Eden, Ebel-Hevel is killed, Cain
is sentenced to exile and wanderings, but in his end there is also hope: he
builds the first city.
The third story ends with the birth of Noah –
the one who survives while all his generation perishes in the Flood.
We shall dedicate extensive discussion to
these three stories in the next chapter. It is appropriate to note here the
parallel between the creation stories and the building of the Tabernacle-Mishkan
(which is commented upon by many traditional interpreters and is discussed in
much detail in the Zohar). There are, as noted, three creation stories. There
are also three repetitive descriptions of the structure of the Tabernacle.
These three repetitions correspond to the distinctions we made between the
processes of (i) Creation (the idea of the Mishkan and its
pattern given by divine inspiration), (ii) Formation (Betsal’el
designs and builds the Mishkan), and (iii) Making (the materials
are gathered from the people, the priests come in to officiate and work in the Mishkan).
In detailing the stories of the mishkan the process is repeated
in high fidelity, whereas in the more natural and usual processes of the world
and of human history there must have occurred many mishaps and flaws.
An overview will show us that the whole book
of Genesis is also divided into three stories, where the end of one story leads
to the beginning of the next one, which in turn is an attempt at improvement
and development.
The first story, the story of the children of Adam, reaches
its tragic ending with the Flood. This is the first millennial Day of Creation,
the first millennium of the two thousand years of Tohu (Confusion).
The second story, the story of the
children of Noah, reaches its end – which is tragic but perhaps shows a
breakthrough – with the generation of the Tower of Babel. This is the second
millennial Day of Creation, the second thousand years of Tohu.
The third story of Creation
– which is the beginning of the two thousand years of the Torah – is the story
of Abraham and his children. This story is also divided, in the manner of
fractal geometry, into three sub-narratives – the stories of the three
patriarchs. And in spite of the varying characters there is one pattern that
repeats itself again and again. There are instances when the characters fail,
in others they rectify, but clearly there is no "Original Sin" that
condemns them forever. Human conduct is improving and human understanding
progresses, even to this day.
Indeed, even the story of our generation is inseparable from the story
of the Creation. After two thousand years of Tohu and two
thousand years of Torah (the second half of which was the days of
the two temples and the editing of the Torah), we are now within
the third story of the creation, the two thousand years of the Messiah. The
Fifth Day was the time of the formation of the Talmud and the Midrashim,
and now - – on the Sixth Day – "Let us make Adam".
In
the course of the following chapters we shall demonstrate that the meaning of
these interweaving and repetitive patterns is quite different not only from the
assertions of Biblical criticism, but also from the claims of traditional
exegesis. The tradition sees the Bible as a continuing process of Berur,
an ever-narrowing selection: from all of humankind the nation of Israel was
"chosen", and from the nation of Israel – the kingdom of Judea, thus
the Jews, as the only people to know and preserve the Torah. This
approach was necessary for a persecuted and humiliated people in exile.
But the Torah was given to Israel
on the threshold of entering the Land, and was later issued from the Temple.
Today, when we have again returned, the Torah may well guide us
in ways that our forefathers have never conceived. This comes not from our
being intellectually superior, but by the progressive unfolding of the
"Six Days" of Creation where we now find ourselves living in freedom
in our land, potentially free from the fears of exile with its many pains and
hatreds, and by our speaking freely in the language of the Torah.
The return of Hebrew as a living, spoken
language offers another insight into the study of the Torah as
relevant specifically for our generation. Each Hebrew speaker is aware of a
clear division as to tenses and times. Were the writers of the Torah not aware
of the same?
The Torah opens, as might be expected, in the
past tense: "Bereshit Bara Elohim..."
(Initially God created....); but it adopts immediately the present continuous
tense: "...veRu'ah Elohim merahefet
al pnei haMayim" (and the spirit of God is
hovering over the face of the Deep). And from there onwards, in all the
chapters of the Humash (Pentateuch), - the writing is in
the future tense, "va'yomer
Elohim...." (and God will, or would,
say....).
It is true that no translation pays attention to this, because the many
generations of linguists regarded the letter V’av (“and”)
preceding the word in future form as "inversion" (V’av haHipukh),
which converts the future to the past tense, but this does not explain it away.
It is much more accurate to regard this letter V’av (translated
as "and" in English) as "the joining" (vav haHibur)
of times – the joining of events in this world with an eternal (or archetypal)
world of revelation which is beyond time, and in which past, present and future
are one.
It
is therefore valid to read the entire Torah as written in the
future tense, a prophetic tense - A future that was recognized in the past and
is becoming present in our times.
Let us examine the story of Genesis in the
light of this possibility.
© Tirtsah Arzi and Yitzhak Hayut-Ma’n
Translated by . Yitzhak Hayut-Ma’n; Corrections and English editing, Dr. I. Asmon.
[1] In Gen. chapter 36, on Parashat vayishlah, we shall also show the Biblical acceptance of former worlds and histories and the specific ways their influence might linger, but these are secondary to the main Biblical narrative
[2] "Otsar haHayim" by R. Yitzhak
of Akko. Manuscript No. 775 Ginzburg Library within the Lenin Library in
Moscow. It is surveyed in Kaplan’s book (see below), which deals with Biblical
chronology:
Kaplan, Arie (1993): “Immortality, Resurrection and
the Age of the Universe”. Ktav Publishing, New Jersey.
[3] Whether the texts were written by Moses, or by later Temple scribes, the chastising of the people and the frustration at missing the chance for an immediate, quick realization of the Torah expectations are apparent from almost any chapter, and is extremely strong in the Ha’azinu portion at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy
[4] Israel Knohl, "The Temple of Silence". (In Hebrew)
[5]
Mandelbrot, Benoit (1977, 1983): “The Fractal
Geometry of Nature”. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York.
[IA1] THIS IS PROBABLY ONE
OF MY MOST IMPORTANT COMMENT FOR YOU: MUCH OF YOUR ARGUMENT THROUGHOUT THE
EXEGESIS IS BASED ON THE KABBALAH AND IN PARTUCULAR ON THE SEPHIROT. HOWEVER MOST READERS, MYSELF INCLUDED,
DON’T HAVE A CLUE TO WHAT THE
SEPHIROT ARE ALL ABOUT (I for example have the idea that the word
“sephirah” is derived from the Latin “sphera”, so they are kind of spheres surrounding
the earth as in Ptolemaic astronomy), WHAT CHARACTERISES EVERY ONE OF THEM (I know
at least that their character has nothing to do with their names), HOW THEY
RELATE TO EACH OTHER (why are the six “sephirot of
construction” lower than the others?), ETC. THIS INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER IS THE RIGHT
PLACE TO GIVE A 1-2 PAGE EXPLANATION OF THE SEPHIROT BEFORE
YOU DIVE
INTO THE EXEGESIS.