Hi all!
I'd like to wade into this if I may. One of my favorite books is the late Carl Sagan's
The Dragons of Eden. One of the most interesting chapters in it is entitled "Eden as Metaphor." In it, Dr. Sagan takes a metaphorical/allegorical view of the Creation account in Genesis & shows how it jibes at many points with general evolutionary theory.
Ferinstance...
The enmity that God decrees between the snake/serpent & Eve's descendants is a reference to the time when reptiles and mammals contended for domination of the earth.
God decrees that the snake would, henceforth, go on his belly. This implies that before God's decree, snakes had some other method of locomotion, i.e. legs. Not only did snakes evolve from lizard-like reptiles, but many species of snakes have vestigial hip/leg bones, isolated in their tissues, unconnected to their spines.
God decrees that childbirth would be painful for Eve & her descendants, after Eve had eaten the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, i.e. after she/humanity had developed/evolved the ability to think in abstractions & make moral judgements, an ability that is unique to humanity. (Didn't John Locke say that, "The beast abstracts not"?). This ability, as far as neurologists know, resides in the brain's neocortex,
which constitutes 5/6 of total brain mass, is the most recent part of the human brain & and is most developed in humans (although all mammals have some neocortex). Childbirth is (so I'm told) painful because of the passage of the head (and humans have the largest brains in proportion to their overall size), most of which is neocortex. Childbirth became painful for humans (and is generally painful
only for humans) after the neo-cortex evolved to near its present size (I'm told that the fossil record documents an explosive, in evolutionary time scales, growth in the neo-cortex), i.e. only after we had developed the abilities to reason & make moral judegements, i.e. only after we ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, which jibes perfectly with God's post-eating-of-the-fruit-decree that childbirth would
henceforth be painful for us, which is a symbolic/metaphorical representation of this whole process. (Please don't try to diagram the previous sentence!)
Howzat?
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Below is excerpted from a post from this past July:
Please allow me, if I may, to offer my perspective as an orthodox Jew. The views expressed herein are mine alone. While I definitely believe that they are 100% compatible with normative (i.e. orthodox) Judaism, please do not take my post as expressing
the orthodox Jewish view.
VOW posted:
I don't understand why evolution and creation MUST BE an either/or situation. I'm perfectly satisfied in my mind and in my heart with a composite origin, which borrows from both. I don't see why they have to mutually exclude each other.
I agree with VOW; well said!
Athlon4all posted:
VOW, it must be because first of all, believing in Evolution is rejecting the authority of the Word of God, and that will no doubt lead to questioning other parts of the Bible.
I do not agree; please let me explain why.
I have noticed that very many believers (Jewish and Christian) who object to, or disagree with, evolution do so because they believe that evolution does not jibe with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis. Lets talk about "a literal reading of the Book of Genesis" for a second. I dont think that any two people could agree on a "literal reading" of Genesis (certainly mine, as an orthodox Jew and based on the original Hebrew, will probably differ in many particulars from that of a fundamentalist Protestant, based on the KJV); such a thing is inherently subjective and based on our own idiosyncrasies, psychological/emotional/spiritual baggage and personal it-seems-to-mes. Thus, we should be very leery of basing our arguments on a "literal reading" of Genesis. Those who do insist on a strict, narrow, "literal" interpretation of Genesis are, I believe, forcing it into a literary and spiritual strait-jacket entirely of their own devising that does no justice to the scriptures.
So, that being said, how do I as an orthodox Jew view Genesis? Well, of course, I believe that it (and the other 4 books of the Torah: Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) is the literal word of God as He revealed it to Moses our Teacher. We believe that the Torah can be understood/appreciated/interpreted on any of four general levels ranging from that which is most in accord with a close reading of the (original Hebrew!!!) text, to the metaphorical, to the most rarefied and esoteric (the grasp of which is waaay beyond most of us). Who is to say which chapter and verse of Genesis is to be best understood or appreciated on which level? Moreover, our Sages say that the Torah is like a diamond with many facets, each with its own brilliance, each offering a different perspective from which to behold the wondrous jewel.
I do not see why God could not have created His world and the life in it through and by the system we (as yet) imperfectly understand as "evolution". I do not see how the previous sentence violates anything I said in the previous paragraph or in how orthodox Jews appreciate the Torah.
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Be well!
ssv
