CREATIONISM VS.BIG BANG THEORY

Human beings have always been curious about the creation of the universe, and have come up with a variety of myths in order to explain it. We find a number of them in the ancient Near Eastern (ANE) texts, like Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian as well as in our Hebrew Bible. Even medieval Kabbalah has one of its own.

ANCIENT MYTHS

How did the ancients imagine our world’s creation?

1.    They thought that it was placed at the center of the universe.

2.    They believed that it was stationary and everything else moved around it.

3.    They claimed that the earth, appearing flat, was covered by a canopy called “firmament” over which the sun and the moon rolled. The “holes” in it allowed the rain to come through. Underneath the earth, they maintained, existed an undifferentiated underground called Sheol to which the dead went down but lived a shadowy kind of existence. At times, some people came back to earth, but mostly they remained there forever.

The ancient Egyptians honored the god Ra as the creator and ruler of the people. They believed that he recreates Egypt every day. Ra (also called Atum), “who came into being by himself” (ANET, p. 4), also formed the other gods.  Some creation myths of the past had a political agenda. Thus, for instance, the main purpose of the Babylonian story of creation (the so called enuma elish, “When on high”) was to show why and how Marduk became the patron god of Babylon. According to this very popular myth, after a conflagration among the various gods, Marduk volunteered to fight on behalf some of them. Consequently, he killed Tiamat (the salt water god), and by cutting her into two, created the heavens and the earth:

“Then the lord [Marduk] paused to view her dead body,

That he might divide the monster and do artful works.

He split her like a shellfish into two parts:

Half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky.” (ANET, p.67)

After the creation the world, Marduk had Ea, ( the god of wisdom) formed a human being out of the blood of Tiamat’s divine husband, whose name Kingu.

As of today, no Canaanite creation story has emerged. It appears that the Hebrew Bible, influenced by the Babylonian story, proposed its own creation myth by providing two different models, one in Gen. 1 and the other in Gen. 2. The first story in Gen. 1 follows a pattern of creation that spans over seven different days; Gen. 2 does not know this format and is more flowing in its narration.

There are significant differences between the biblical stories and the ancient Near Eastern equivalents, all of them deriving from a debate between ANE polytheism and Israelite monotheism:

1. Whereas in the ANE we have various gods involved in the forming of the universe, in the Bible the entire process is assigned to one God.

 2. In the ANE, humanity is created from the blood of a fallen god, but in the Bible, Adam and Eve are formed by God alone.

 3. In the ANE, the main purpose is to show the ascendency of Marduk to a high position among the gods. The story in the Bible, on the other hand, is not a central event but only an introduction to a process that will culminate with the revelation of Torah at Sinai.

The Biblical creation story is not the only one in the Jewish sacred literature. The medieval Lurianic Kabbalah proposes a very different one based on the assumption that creation took place in three consecutive phases:

1. Tzimtzum: Contraction of all existence into God’s self;

 2. Shevirat Ha-kelim: The breaking of the vessels that resulted by God sending into the new vacuum of the world rays of divine light;

3. Tikkun Olam:  And finally, the hope that at the end of time, these sparks of light will once again be collected and harmonized through Tikkun Olam, the fixing the universe.

THE BIG BANG THEORY

How does the scientific community of our time deal with the creation of the universe? It supports what is called “The Big Bang Theory.” The idea was first suggested by a Belgian priest and astronomer, George Lemaitre (d. 1966) in the 1920’s. Today many scientists offer a few changes to it.

         In essence, the theory is based on the observation that other galaxies appear to be moving away from our own at a greater speed, in all directions, as if they had been propelled by a former explosive force. It assumes that about 13 billion years ago, our universe emerged, perhaps through this explosion, out of a “singularity” which combines various fundamental particles, such as neutrons, electrons, and protons. As the universe began to inflate and decay, it started to cool off and expand. It continues to do so even in our time.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE BIBLICAL CREATION STORY?

Even though the Genesis story is primitive and certainly nonscientific, it still has some lessons to teach us:

1.    There is an order in the universe, and we need to preserve it even in our lives.

2.    Humanity is the pinnacle of creation and every human being need to be considered as sacred.

3.    Just as we need to work, we also need to rest (“the Sabbath idea”); we are not animals.

4.    God created the universe, not only by a “word” (“God said, let there be light, and there was light” Gen. 1: 3), but also through personal involvement (“God made the two great lights” Gen. 1: 16). Therefore, just as the word has power and needs to be respected in our inter-human relations, we need to dedicate ourselves to “creating” , through individual commitment, something new that would benefit humanity.

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

March, 2016

SONSINO'S BLOG: TORAH FOR ALL; A COMMENT ON EXODUS 21: 1

SONSINO'S BLOG: TORAH FOR ALL; A COMMENT ON EXODUS 21: 1: Laws are promulgated today with the intention that they will be binding on all people, irrespective of their social and economic positi...

TORAH FOR ALL; A COMMENT ON EXODUS 21: 1

Laws are promulgated today with the intention that they will be binding on all people, irrespective of their social and economic position in society. In the past, however, most of the law collections were wisdom texts that were compiled by sages and attributed to the rulers of their time. These “laws” were not used in the courts. We do not have a single legal case that was resolved according to them. People simply followed local custom. The same applies to biblical laws. We do not know to what extent biblical laws guided local judges in their daily cases, if ever, but, as wisdom sayings, they do display certain characteristics that are unique within the context of the ancient Near Eastern traditions.

Take, for example, the first statement of the so-called Covenant Code in the Book of Exodus: “These are the mishpatim that you shall place before them “(Ex. 21: 1).

We have two major issues with this text:

1. What are mishpatim? We don’t know exactly what they were. Originally, they seem to refer to court rulings. Most people now translate them as rules, regulations, judgments or statutes. The Aramaic translations of the Bible render them as “laws.” The Septuagint calls them “ordinances.”

2. The “laws” are to be placed “before them.” Who are “them”? According to a late rabbinic text, the Tanhuma (9^th cent. CE?), this meant “before the Israelites but not the idolaters” (Mishpatim, 3). A 13^th cent. Spanish-Jewish scholar, Nahmanides, understood it as “before the judges” who will implement the laws. A straight reading of the text, however, implies that “them” are all the Israelites. In other words, the laws have to be placed before the entire people for study and practice. Now, this is unparalleled in the past.

In the ancient Near East, law collections, such as the one by Hammurabi (17th cent. BCE) or Lipit Ishtar (19^th cent. BCE), were primarily put together by wisdom teachers on behalf of the rulers, to indicate that they, the kings, were carrying out their civic responsibilities to the gods of administering justice in society, and thus deserving of divine favors. Laws were carved on stones and placed before the statues of the gods, and studied primarily by scholars in scribal schools. Most people were not even aware of these regulations and followed customary law. Furthermore, whereas in the Bible, the mishpatim are meant for all the Israelites, the laws of Hammurabi, for example, were restricted to those aggrieved parties who needed to know what the gods had revealed to the king and, by reading them, each victim could “set his mind at ease”  (see, CH, Epilogue, lines 10-19).  

The biblical injunction to place the regulations before the entire people of Israel made possible to establish general education for all; everyone is entitled to know and follow the laws diligently. In biblical Judaism, and later on in rabbinic Judaism, no individual has an exclusive on the Torah. Anyone can access it freely. Education is not limited to a few individuals, but is available to all Jews willing to learn.  Torah is for all.

 Now, that is remarkable.

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

Framingham State University, Boston, MA

Feb.2016

The 12th COMMANDMENT AGAINST FANATICISM

The question is this: If you could add one more commandment to the Decalogue, what would it be? 

The Decalogue/Ten Commandments are considered as the foundational text of Judaism. They are also viewed as one of the most important ethical documents of the Western civilization. They were recited daily at the Temple of Jerusalem (M Tamid 5:1). However, when some “sectarians”- we don’t know their identity, but perhaps, early Christians- maintained that they were the only texts revealed by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, the Rabbis decided to eliminate them from the liturgy (BT B’rahot 12a). According to them, all the laws in the Torah, from the one that urges the removal of the mother-bird before taking the fledglings (Deut. 22: 6-7) to all the minutiae of the temple sacrifices, were given by God to Moses, and they are as important as the lofty message of the Decalogue. 

We now read/chant the Ten Commandments in the synagogue only when they occur in the regular cycle of Torah readings, both in Yitro (Exod. 18:1-20:23) and in Vaethanan (Deut. 3:23-7:11) as well as during the festival of Shavuot that celebrates the summer harvest and the revelation of the Torah. 

One of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the past generation, Emil Fackenheim (1916-2003) argued that it is time to add a new commandment, the 11th,  to the list that reads, “Do not give Hitler a posthumous victory.” By this he meant that after the Holocaust, we, Jews, have an obligation to preserve Judaism for future generations, and we dare not give Hitler the satisfaction of completing the final solution by our inaction and lack of commitment. Similarly, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1983), the founder of the Reconstructionist Judaism, maintained that the biggest challenge facing the contemporary Jewish community is the “open” society in which we live that gives Jews various options, including to bow out of it.  

I am convinced that in our days, the greatest danger to the Western world comes from political and religious extremism. When fanatics try to impose their views on all of us, we are all in danger. When bombastic loudmouths come up with unwarranted generalizations, we are all in danger. When obscurantists in our midst attempt to eliminate the open and civil dialogue, we are all in danger. No religious group or political party is immune to this curse. We, Jews, too, have our own close-minded individuals who deny the legitimacy of many well established and respected religious and political ideologies around the Jewish world. Perhaps, this can be remedied through education, open and respectful dialogue, and, on rare occasions, even through self-defense. So, my 12^th commandment reads: ‘Do not allow the fanatics to rule the day.”

What do you think?

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D. 

Jan. 2016