Rishon Rishon

Six days of Creation

Today was Shabat B’reshit (שבת בראשית) – the Sabbath of “In the Beginning”. Every week Jews read a Tora (Pentateuch) portion, such that over the course of a year, we read the entire Tora. Today, the first Shabat after Simhat Tora, is when we start over. The Tora portion of B’reshit covers the entire creation story, from “In the beginning”, through the story of Adam and Eve, and up to the story of Noah, which we will read next week.

I talked about the story of Adam and Eve not too long ago. I should point out, that the story I told is not a radical reading – it is the normative Jewish reading, at least in its major features. Here’s some more support for the two-in-one theory of Adam:

וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ
בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ
זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה בָּרָא אֹתָם

Vayivra’ elohim et ha’adam b’salmo
B’selem elohim bara’ oto
Zakhar unqeva bara’ otam

And God created the Adam in his image
In the image of God he created him
Male and female he created them

Genesis 1:27

At the time of his creation, Adam is referred to as both singular and plural, male and female.

Getting back to this post, the Bible (of which the Tora is the first five books) begins with the epic description of the six days of creation, supposedly laying out the case for what is known today as creationism. Now, while this idea may be critically important in some other Bible-based religions, it is irrelevant to Judaism. In the 11th century, long before the idea of six days of creation was a problem from a scientific point of view, Rashi, probably the most normative of Jewish scholars said about the story of creation, “Scripture did not [intend to] teach anything of the earlier or later sequence [of creation]”. 

If the purpose of this story is not to each about the sequence of creation, what then is its purpose? I don’t have a clear answer to that question, though if pressed, I could suggest some. But it is important to understand that the Bible is not meant to be a history book – it is meant to teach us how to live. Not only that, the way a 21st century American reads the Bible is definitely not necessarily the way it is intended to be read. How do we know how it was intended to be read? Well, we can start with a tradition that is as old as the Bible itself. But that is a subject for another post.