An introduction to this website

I began this book following a religious crisis in young adulthood.

This is when I realized that the creation account at the beginning of Genesis contradicted modern science. More than that, there seemed to be two creation stories in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. Not only were they different from each other, but neither bore any relationship to what we now know about the beginning of the universe and the development of the human species.

But how could the Torah, which I regarded as nothing less than the word of God, be so off the mark in its opening chapters?

As a teenager, I had been fascinated by the correspondence between the biblical creation account and science. I attended talks on the biblical creation story, some given by knowledgeable physicists. When I was older, I invited Gerald Schroeder, the author of a book about the correspondence between Genesis and science to speak at our synagogue.1 I devoured books about the Big Bang and astronomy.

However, as I grew older, I began appreciating the tremendous gulf between the biblical account and what science has to say about the beginnings of the universe and the formation of planet earth.

Science tells us that the universe began some 13.7 billion years ago with a Big Bang involving a super-hot, infinitely dense spot, only a few millimeters wide. From this Big Bang all matter, energy, time, and space originated. Following the violent explosion of this small singularity, two major stages occurred. The first within seconds was the radiation era, named for the dominance of radiation, the establishment of the four forces of nature and the formation of hydrogen. The next era was the matter era marked by expansion and cooling, the combination of electrons with nuclei, and the formation of helium. Hundreds of millions of years later, regions of gas began to collapse under the influence of gravity to form the first stars and galaxies. Within the core of these stars, nuclear fusion produced heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen. Massive stars ended their lives as supernova explosions and their heavy elements were thrown into space to be incorporated into new stars.

The sun began as a giant molecular cloud of dust and gas, primarily hydrogen. As its temperature increased, the hydrogen nuclei began fusing to form helium, leading to the release of vast amounts of energy.

At the same time, leftover material of dust and ice stuck together and coalesced to form the planets of our solar system, including our earth and the moon.

Simple plant life such as photosynthetic bacteria and algae appeared around 3.5 billion years ago and from these elementary beginnings complex plants evolved. Animal life began in the oceans some 600 million years ago as simple organisms and these also evolved into more complex forms.

The scientific story of planet earth is one of initial simplicity, with the development of increasing complexity over billions of years.

The first biblical creation account relates a somewhat different story. By its second sentence, earth had been formed, but all is chaos.2 Beginning on that very first day, God proceeds to organize this chaos in a systematic way to make earth habitable for human life. Animal life was created only when plant life was fully developed and available for consumption.

There is, of course, no reason why the Genesis account should have taken modern science into consideration. Notions such as the Big Bang and evolution would have been inexplicable to people living in the ancient world. It would also have contradicted the science of their day. Nevertheless, could not God have written Genesis I in such a way as to avoid such obvious contradictions?

This is where I stood for many years — professing belief in the Divine nature of the Torah but harboring grave doubts that this was truly the case. The first Genesis account seemed to have been written by humans and framed in the prevalent science of that time. Reluctantly, I was gravitating towards the documentary hypothesis and the notion that the Torah was composed by different authors writing from the perspective of their times.

Some years later I was directed to the works of Nahum Sarna3 and Umberto Cassuto4 on the Book of Genesis and they provided me with a totally different perspective on these early chapters. Both authors suggested that some of these stories had an underlying foundation of mythology. Mythology was important to people living in the ancient world since it provided a framework for understanding the world in which they lived, just as the Bible does for us today.

In his book “Understanding Genesis,” Sarna proposed that the early chapters of Genesis were composed as polemics against the pagan ideas of Mesopotamian society.3 The biblical stories were written in the same form and with the same science as the original mythological stories but in such a way as to refute their underlying ideas. I call them anti-myths.

Cassuto also recognized mythology as important in the format of the creation stories. He considered mythic motifs as cultural reference points and as tools through which the Torah asserted its monotheistic message.

Because Umberto Cassuto (1883-1951) was so important to me in my understanding of the Torah, plus his writings have influenced countless others, some information about him is in order. After earning his rabbinic ordination in 1908, he served as secretary and assistant rabbi of the Jewish community in Florence. When the Chief Rabbi of Florence passed away in 1922, Cassuto was appointed his successor. He also served as director of its Rabbinical Seminary until 1925.

Cassuto was a brilliant academic scholar and he subsequently left the rabbinate to become Professor of Hebrew and Literature at the University of Florence, followed by a chair of Hebrew Language at the University of Rome. His expertise was in Ugaritic and Semitic languages and the cultures of the ancient world. Just before the Second World War, however, he was forced from his position in Rome because of antisemitic racial laws and he accepted a chair of Biblical Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine. This department was strongly vested in biblical criticism. Cassuto contested this and found himself a leading critic of the documentary hypothesis.

Cassuto held that the Torah was a single, unified composition rather than a patchwork of independent documents. He proposed that the Torah was put together by an Israelite writer living during the time of the early monarchy, around the time of King David or King Solomon. This was a time that literary style was highly developed and national unity was strong.5 Cassuto never claimed that Moses wrote the Torah word-for-word by the dictation of God, but he did see the Torah drawing on authentic ancient traditions handed down from the patriarchal period and the Exodus. In the final analysis, his opinion on this makes little difference for appreciating the brilliance of his scholarly works since he ascribed a unity to the Torah. It is very easy, therefore, to insert the word God into his books if one wishes to do so

I have been much influenced, in particular, by Cassuto’s focus on the literary style of the biblical text and the Torah’s use of keywords. These are words that are repeated seven times or multiples of seven within a section or paragraph to provide emphasis to that section. He was the forerunner of biblical scholars who have made extensive use of literary analysis in their writings and teaching.

Cassuto pointed out that the Bible was written in the style of the ancient world, and his knowledge of semitic languages enabled him to write authoritatively on this topic. He showed that ancient Near Eastern literary practices often included repetitions, parallel narratives and variations in language and these were used to emphasize or elaborate on key points. He also demonstrated how the literary style of each biblical story was related to the message it was trying to convey.

Cassuto is fairy well-known in Israel, but not so much outside of Israel, which is why I had not previously come across his name. Mosaic authorship of the Torah is a basic tenet of Orthodox Judaism and because Cassuto did not hold strictly to this, his writings were rarely studied in orthodox Jewish circles. In addition, because of his opposition to the documentary hypothesis, his work was not considered favorably by many academic biblical scholars.

Ironically, I found that Cassuto’s books and the literary studies of those who followed him made it that much easier for me to accept Divine authorship of the Torah. The Torah is so consummately written. Its allegories contain depths of meaning. Themes are developed throughout the span of the Pentateuch by word parallelisms. Critical passages are lucidly clear while at other times obscure, as if to say — you, the reader, need to figure this one out for yourself. Its ethical messages were revolutionary for its time. The Torah is also completely honest in its documentation of the failures of its characters, which is unusual and improbable for a national book.

Together, the postulate of Sarna that some of the early stories in Genesis are polemics against Mesopotamian ideas, plus Cassuto’s analyses of the Torah’s literary structure based on Near East writing had a profound effect on me. No longer was I dogged by the discordance between the Torah and my religious beliefs. Little by little, it was all beginning to gel together.

The main ideas in this book:

The pages of this book give prominence to a number of important concepts:

The significance of the different names of God in the Torah

The documentary hypothesis considers mention of the names Elohim and YHWH in the Torah to be source-related. Therefore, to substantiate his unitary hypothesis, Cassuto needed to explain the Torah’s use of the names of God differently. His conclusions are summarized in a monograph entitled “The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch.”5 Cassuto suggests that the name YHWH is used in contexts highlighting the covenantal relationship with Israel, while “Elohim” is a more general name for God used in more universal contexts. This is elaborated in the webpage “The importance of the names of God in the Torah.”

Based on Cassuto’s analysis of the meaning of these names, I formulated the proposition that the essence of the entire Torah is not God, nor man, but the relationship between God and man.

In brief, YHWH is an immanent and merciful God Who wishes to establish mutual relationships with mankind. Elohim, on the other hand, the Creator of the universe, is a transcendent God Who is too remote for such a relationship. Thus, our connection with Elohim is based on awe or fear. God’s immanence is the notion that He is closely involved with man in this world. The transcendence of God is the idea that He exists beyond and independent of creation and surpassing all worldly limits. God is described in the Torah by two different names because His immanence and transcendence are mutually exclusive concepts.

This contradiction underlying the nature of God was appreciated by Maimonides when he discusses the Torah’s injunctions to fear and love God in his Mishneh Torah, a book that summarizes much of the Jewish written and oral law. The following paragraph was not written specifically about the names of God, but does illustrate this point:

What is the path [to attain] love and fear of Him? When a person contemplates His wondrous and great deeds and creations and appreciates His infinite wisdom that surpasses all comparison, he will immediately love, praise and glorify [Him] yearning with tremendous desire to know [God’s] great name. . . When he [continues] to reflect on these matters, he will immediately recoil in awe and fear, appreciating how he is a tiny, lowly and dark creature, standing with his flimsy, limited, wisdom before He who is of perfect knowledge.6

It is noteworthy that when discussing the love of God, the Torah uses only the name YHWH and not Elohim, since the Creator of the universe is too distant for such a relationship.7 The fear of God, on the other hand, concerns both YHWH and Elohim, since both names relate to the moral universe.8 There are two aspects to fear of God — one is fear of punishment and the other is awe in being in His presence.

An example of how the names of God pertain to our lives nowadays would be viewing a wonder of nature, such as the Grand Canyon in the United States or the makhtesh or crater of Makhtesh Ramon in Israel. One immediately feels awe of Elohim at the splendor of His creations. Then the Jew realizes that it is time for mincha, the afternoon prayer. This is not directed to the creator God Elohim, since He is too distant for an intimate relationship, but to the aspect of God YHWH.

It is because of this contradiction in the nature of God that there are two narratives running through the early stories of Genesis, one about the relationship of man to Elohim, and the other about man’s relationship with YHWH. These are expressed as twosomes in many of the biblical accounts.

Thus, the creation of the world is described by two narratives. The first is an Elohim account about the creation of the world, while the second is a YHWH-Elohim account describing events in the Garden of Eden. In this second story, both names of God are linked together as YHWH Elohim, with the name YHWH first. This story is primarily about the fall of man and the consequences of this for mankind. It is not immediately obvious, but the Noah narrative is composed of two interlocking Elohim and YHWH accounts. It is even possible to prize them apart, and to an extent each can stand alone, although both are truncated compared to the complete narrative. As in the creation stories there are contradictions between the two. Thus, YHWH-passages provide no instructions to Noah as to how he should build the ark, and he, his family and the animals enter into a ready-made ark so to speak. Instructions about construction of the ark are contained in a previous Elohim-passage. There are also contradictions in the number of animals that will enter the ark and how they will arrive.

Two covenants are bestowed upon Abraham — the Covenant between the Pieces given over by YHWH, and a Covenant of Circumcision contracted by Elohim. Abraham and Sarah are also informed twice that they will have a child in their old age, once by Elohim to Abraham following the Covenant of Circumcision and then later to Sarah by YHWH.

These two-fold narratives are not oddities left by a human redactor of the Bible but an essential aspect of the Torah’s composition, which is building up to the dual role of Abraham and later of the Jewish people. On the one hand, Abraham has the mission of beginning a covenantal community based on righteousness and justice which will recognize YHWH as its tribal God. On the other hand, this world was designed for all the nations of the world and not just the Jewish people. The Jewish people are given the role of being “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:6) and are to be a model to the other nations of the world. This global function is recognized In the Book of Genesis by the name Elohim.

The primary audience for whom the Torah was written was the generation at Mount Sinai and the Israelites entering the land of Canaan, and the Torah needs to be interpreted from this perspective.

Cassuto gave new meaning to the literal understanding of the Torah, often called p’shat, by stressing that the Torah was written in the language and the format of the ancient world.

In contrast, much classical Jewish biblical exegesis is based on what is called midrash. Midrash provides Imaginative explanations to make the biblical world more vivid and relatable. Thus, aggadic (or non-halachic) midrashim (plural of midrash) may teach moral and ethical lessons via parables only loosely tied to the text. Profound theological insights are also revealed in an accessible way by stories, metaphors and imagery. Midrash also fills in gaps in the biblical text, such as Abraham’s early life, which is otherwise a blank in the Torah. In sum, midrash enabled generations of Jews to interpret Scripture within their own context and kept the Torah alive and meaningful.

The biblical commentator Rashi often uses midrashim in his commentary and he popularized many midrashim. Rashi’s commentary can provide a useful gateway into midrashic interpretations, and I often quote him and other Medieval commentators to contrast and thereby highlight p’shat-based explanations.

I am certainly not claiming that one method of interpretation is superior to another. Midrash and p’shat are different. There are numerous Jewish books that are based primarily on midrash. This book makes no attempt to duplicate them. Rather, most of the chapters are explained on the basis of p’shat. A major advantage of this form of interpretation is its ability to unify the entire Torah text, an aspect which is not necessarily offered by midrash.

There is a discussion in the Talmud between R’ Ishmael and R’ Akiva as to whether the Torah is written in the language of man or whether meaning can be derived from each extra word or letter in the Torah.9 Cassuto has added an extra dimension to this debate by proposing that the Torah is not only written in the language of man, but this language is from a specific historic period.

The very early stories of Genesis were not intended to be taken as factual accounts but as allegory.

This topic is discussed in greater detail in the chapter “Allegory in the early stories of Genesis.” It is my belief that an allegorical format continues until the stories about Abraham, and from this point on the Torah is mainly factual. This includes the stories about the forefathers, the exodus from Egypt and the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert.

Some of the early stories of Genesis, such as the creation accounts and the story of Noah, have an underlying base of Mesopotamian mythology.

This is discussed in detail in the chapters “Mythology and the First Creation account” and “The Noah story: An epic poem of mythological proportions.”

There is an excellent example of this in the first creation story, which tells us that:

And Elohim created the great sea monsters (et hataninim hagdolim) and every living creature that creeps, with which the waters swarmed, according to their kind, and every winged fowl according to its kind, and Elohim saw that it was good (Genesis 1:21).

But what are sea monsters doing here? They are the only species other than man mentioned in the first creation account. The answer provided by Cassuto is that the ancients believed that the gods battled sea monsters.10 As an anti-myth, the Torah is telling us that the great sea monsters were not independent creations but were created by Elohim. Without Cassuto, their mention here would be a mystery.

The implications of this approach are quite radical. Namely, that to fully understand some of the early stories in Genesis one needs to look to Mesopotamian mythology, such as creation myths and the Gilgamesh myth, a myth that bears a strong relationship to the Noah story.

Does this mean that reference to ancient mythology is a legitimate means of biblical interpretation? I would argue that it is. Clearly, this direction is not for everyone, and many will regard it as no substitute for the ethical messages built around the text by midrashim. Mythology also has nothing to teach us about ethical behavior. To the contrary, the gods were often power-driven and violent. Nevertheless, for those wishing to fully understand the Book of Genesis and the messages it was trying to impart, I propose that there is a definite place for this type of analysis.

And last but not least

The stories in the Torah constitute a unified whole.

There is a unity to the entire Torah. It will be important, therefore, to understand how each story is part of the progression of the Torah’s underlying messages, particularly in the Book of Genesis.

References:

“Genesis and the Big Bang. The Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Bible” by Gerald L. Schroeder, Bantam Books. 1992.
The notion of chaos is reflected by the words “tohu” and “vohu” in Genesis 1:2. The precise translation of these words is unclear since they are not found elsewhere in the Bible other than as an allusion to Genesis. Rashi, following a midrash, translates them as “astonishment and amazement” or “astonishingly empty,” this being the reaction a person would have on seeing this chaos. Targum Yonasan translates the words as “emptiness and desolation” and the Kuzari as “absence of form and order.”
Creation, Genesis 1-4 in Understanding Genesis. The Heritage of Biblical Israel by Nahum M. Sarna, Schoken Books, New York. 1970.
A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. Part One. From Adam to Noah and Part Two. From Noah to Abraham by U. Cassuto, the Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1998.
Cassuto, Umberto. The Documentary Hypothesis and the Composition of the Pentateuch. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961 (English translation of his 1941 Hebrew lectures). In Lecture VI, p113 he wrote: “We must assign the composition of the Pentateuch to the period of the early monarchy in Israel, the age that immediately followed the settlement in the land and the establishment of the kingdom,” and in lecture VII, p119: “The Pentateuch, in the form in which it has come down to us, was composed in the period of the early kings of Judah, before the division of the monarchy.”
Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah 2:2.
Examples of love of YHWH in the Torah are Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (the Shema), Deuteronomy 10:12, Deuteronomy 11:1, Deuteronomy 13:3-4 and Deuteronomy 30:6.
Examples of the fear of YHWH in the Torah are Deuteronomy 6:13, Deuteronomy 10:12, Deuteronomy 13:4, Exodus 20:20, and Leviticus 19:14. Examples of the fear of Elohim in the Torah are Genesis 22:12, Genesis 42:18, Exodus 1:17, Exodus 18:21 and Leviticus 25:17.
TB Nedarim 3a and Sifrei to Deuteronomy, Parashat Re’ah, 112.
Umberto Cassuto, “A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part I: From Adam to Noah (Genesis I–VI), trans. Israel Abrahams, Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961, pp. 53–55.

An introduction to this website

An introduction to this website

References:

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