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Mon, 17-Sep-07 10:39:49
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Quote:Genesis 1:27 G-d [thus] created man with His image. In the image of G-d, He created him, male and female He created them. 28 G-d blessed them. G-d said to them, 'Be fertile and become many.
Quote:Genesis 2:7 G-d formed man out of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life. Man [thus] became a living creature. . .2:21 G-d then made the man fall into a deep state of unconsciousness, and he slept. He took one of his ribs and closed the flesh in its place. 2:22 G-d built the rib that he took from the man into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
Quote:It is possible that the name earth mentioned in the first verse already contains a hint that a force which causes things to grow should spring up from the earth, and it was from this force that the foundations of all vegetations according to their kinds emanated. Ramban, (Nachmanides), Commentary on the Torah,
Quote:Though the number of fossils attributed to Homo habilis and Homo erectus are few and incomplete, by the time we reach strata of 50,000 years ago, we find enough Cro-Magnon fossils to fill museums. And they do. The Cro-Magnon fossil is in essence an exact match of the modern human skeleton, including cranial capacity and shape. The scientific publications that discuss these fossils and the artifacts associated with them, are not based on the machinations of a few demented scientists. Evidence is overwhelming for the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, weaving 9,000 years ago, pottery 8,000 years ago, cave paintings 10 to 30 thousand years ago. To deny their existence is counter productive from a theological stance.But there is no need to deny them, provided we believe that the biblical insights brought by Onkelos, the Talmud, Rashi, Maimonides and Nachmanides are valid. The first objection to investigating the possibility that Adam had an ancestor is temporal. Agriculture 10,000 years ago? I thought the world is 5762 years old as of Rosh HaShana, September 2001. Where are the missing years? In Leviticus Rabba (29:1) and elsewhere we are told that all agree, Rosh HaShana commemorates the creation of the soul of Adam; that the Six days of Genesis are not included in the years of the calendar. Yet the Talmud (Hagigah 12A) and Rashi, based on the verse "And there was evening and there was morning day one" (Gen. 1:5), inform us that the days of Genesis are 24 hours each, right from "day one." If they are 24 hours each, why exclude these six 24 days from the rest of the 24 hour days that follow Adam? Nachmanides tells us why: because these days contain all the ages and all the secrets of the universe (commentary on Ex. 21:2 and Lev. 25:2). It took Einstein's discovery of the relativity of time to solve the seeming paradox of how the ages of the universe could pass in six 24-hour days. Viewing the creation from today, looking back in time from the perspective of our very large universe, the universe appears 10 to 20 billion years old. Looking forward in time as does Genesis chapter one, viewing the universe from a time when its scale was 1012 times smaller than today (ref. 1), that is, from the start of "day one," the universe looks a mere six days old. That's the nature of time in a world where the laws of relativity are part of the laws of nature. "The standard interpretation of the redshift [the stretching of radiation wave length and the concurrent lowering of that radiation's frequency] as an effect of the expansion of the universe predicts that the same redshift factor applies to observed rates of occurrence of distant events . . . even when the epoch is so early the redshift cannot be observed in detected radiation" (refs. 2, 3). So the time is there for 10,000-year-old agriculture and 30,000-year-old cave paintings. The question is do these ancient, pre-Adam inventions threaten the Torah view of our origins?
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