Dvar Torah on Creationism

Dvar Torah on Creationism
August 24, 2007
Rabbi David Kaufman

On satellite radio, there have been frequent advertisements for a website called Godsaidmansaid.com. I decided to take a look at it the other day. It is a creationist website that argues that the ridiculous notion the earth is only 6,000 years old.

One article on the website discusses evolution. The author points out that:

Before 1859 and Charles Darwin, the prevailing view of man was that the age of the earth was young...about 5,850 years or so. Darwin was a former theology student who turned materialist. His first book, The Origin of Species, catapulted him into the status of the father of the doctrine of evolution.

That much is true. Darwin’s theory mandated that the earth be much older and dramatically challenged the orthodox views of his day. Since 1859, Evolution, the development of our world WITHOUT the influence of the divine, has been the standard view and the basis of natural science ever since. The idea that the world was only a few thousand years old was not so crazy only a century and a half ago.

Hah! You say! Silly! Ludicrous! A 6,000 year old earth! Yet,
this Rosh Hashanah Jews around the world will celebrate the year 5,768. Not even 6,000. From where does that number come?

Last year, Stephen Rosenberg wrote an Op-Ed for the Jerusalem post in which he answered that question.

Rosenberg pointed out that it is assumed that the dating 5767 is Anno Mundi, the years of the world from Creation, or at least from the birth of Adam. The count is based mainly on Seder Olam Rabba, a treatise ascribed to Rabbi Jose ben Halafta of the 2nd century CE. It is mentioned in the Talmud, but was not used as a calendar until the 9th century. Prior to that dates had been based upon the local ruler’s time in power. By the end of the 10th Century, Seder Olam Rabba’s count became the accepted dating throughout the Jewish world.

According to this system, the end of the Second Temple is dated to the year 3828. It counts 1,656 years from Creation to the Flood, 392 years from the Flood to the birth of Isaac, then 400 years to the Exodus, 480 years to the building of the Temple and another 900 years to its second destruction.
That works out at 68 CE, which is very close to the date of 70 based on Roman sources, and the date of Creation is then 3760 BCE, which is the date we use, being 5767 minus 2007. Thus, our world is only 5, 767 years old.

Science says otherwise. The accepted science is that the age of the earth spans from 4 billion to 6 billion years, and the oldest known rocks are estimated at 3.9 billion years "by measurement of lead isotypes that condensed from the primeval cloud of interstellar gas and dust from which the entire solar system is thought to have been formed."

Humanity came on the scene much later, after the formation of land masses and seas, when life appeared in the form of plants and primitive organisms. Some kind of development then ensued, which gave rise to more and more complex organisms that eventually resulted in the Humanity that we know today.

The only way the formation of planet Earth can be envisaged as developing in less than 6,000 years would be by a process of "catastrophism" - the rapid succession of major catastrophes one after another - but this is rejected as being completely improbable. One would need to believe in MIRACLES.

One small problem—well one really large problem—is that hundreds of millions of people around the world DO believe in miracles. They are believers in the Truth of the “Bible,” which is very much a catastrophic history and certainly not science. The inerrant Truth of the biblical narrative is the basis of the godsaidmansaid website and also the basis of the Traditional Jewish dating of the days since creation.

Rosenberg asks a rather interesting question, which is also addressed by Creationists. Why is it that Jewish dating goes back to just 3760 BCE?

True, it is based on the ages of all those biblical characters, but why do they go back for less than 6,000 years? Why do our records go back to only that date?

Chapter 10 of Genesis sets out a picture of the world and its inhabitants after the Flood, and it includes other cultures, particularly the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians which have their own records. These records are at least partly available to us today. How far back do THEIR records go?

The Egyptians, who were concerned to push back their monarchic history of "the two lands" as far as possible, counted their first royal dynasty as starting with the Pharaohs Scorpion, Narmer and Menes, at about 3150 BCE. The earliest written records of any kind from Egypt date to about 3300 BCE. Hence, Egyptian “named” History includes 5,307 years of information.

As for Mesopotamia, it was two rivers rather than two lands that shaped its history. Its civilization may go back to the earliest Stone Age of about 8000 BCE, but its named history is no earlier than the Egyptian record. The early temples appear in about 3500 to 3250 BCE and pictographic writing dates from around 3300.

The earliest dates of writing in Egypt and Mesopotamia (Sumeria) coincide and it is still a matter of argument as to which came first, Egyptian hieroglyphics or Sumerian cuneiform.

All this suggests that named history as we know it today cannot go back further than about 3000 BCE at the earliest, while before that folk memory takes over. That memory, in oral form, could perhaps have gone back another 500 years, or 1,000 at the most. Our tradition tells us that it goes back to some date between 3000 and 4000 BCE, and the given one of 3760 then becomes quite believable.

SO WHERE does all of this leave us - in a world 5,767 years old, almost 5,768, or one that is billions of years old?

The Jewish Tradition seems to give us a place among the nations based on the earliest records available to us and them, and it is clear that such records would place our beginnings in a world of nearly 6,000 years ago, and at a date, that we still record, of 5,767 years before the present.

Then again, perhaps each of God’s Six Days was a billion years long?

Meanwhile, in only a few weeks, on Rosh Hashanah we will welcome the year 5,768 since creation and in the words of the great 11th Century Jewish exegete, Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, “Ha-mei-vin, ya-vin,” “The one who understands what is truly being said, will understand.” There will be no explanation. For a number based upon faith, there can be none.

Happy almost 5,768 or something in the billions. Either way, have a good new year.

Shabbat Shalom.