Jews Believe The World Is 5769 Years Old – Or Do We?

Every Jewish calendar says this is the 5769th year from creation. But is it? More importantly, did Jews always count years this way?

Palestinians busted trying to sell 2,000 year-old Hebrew scroll
By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz

Two Palestinians were arrested Tuesday for allegedly stealing a rare antique Hebrew scroll and attempting to sell it for millions of dollars.

Police apprehended the two suspects in Jerusalem after an intelligence tip allowed police forces to trace their tracks and intercept the document's sale.

The rare historical document, handwritten in Hebrew on papyrus paper and estimated to be more than 2,000 years old, is a bill surrendering property rights. The document was written by a widow named Miryam Ben Yaakov, and hails from a period in which the people of Israel were exiled from the area and very few Jews remained.

The scroll also, unusually, clearly indicates a precise date on the first line: "Year 4 to the destruction of Israel". The intention is, presumably, either to the year 74 C.E. (the year when the Second Temple was destroyed during the Great Revolt) or to 138 A.D. (the annihilation of the Jewish settlement following the Bar Kokhva revolt).

The Israel Antiquities Authority said on Wednesday that the scroll was an "exceptional archeological document, of the like but a few exist," adding that similar scrolls had been sold worldwide for sums as high as $5-$10 million.

The IAA estimated that the seized document was indeed authentic, but the final verdict will arrive only after it returns from a series of laboratory tests.

The document was apparently stolen from a cave within Israel's borders where antiquities raiders were digging.

"We don't know from which cave it was exactly stolen, "said Amir Nur, director of the anti-antiquities theft division.

"If we had known we would have searched for more scrolls in that area."

Police investigator Eli Cohen said Wednesday that officers was looking into how the suspects arrived at the scroll, and were they involved in other antiquities robberies.

The current scroll came undone somewhat while it was excavated, something which wouldn't have happened, according to the AA, if it would have been removed in a professional excavation.

According to the Antiquities Authorities' law all of the archeological artifacts within Israel's borders, excavated or otherwise, are state property and fall under the responsibility of the Antiquities Authority.

In fact, any trading in artifacts is considered illegal in Israel, with the exception of a small number of cases authorized by the IAA.

For most of the time before the destruction of the Temple, Jews dated their legal documents by the year of the king's rule or, when their was no king, by the year of the High Priest's reign.

After the destruction, they dated them in years from the destruction – except for the brief time Bar Kokhba ruled. During his rule Jews dated documents by the year of his rule.

This pattern continued until approximately 1000 CE, when our current system became standard. This true even though Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, a teacher of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, (apparently) calculated the years from creation in Seder Olam Rabba in approximately 160 CE. But that calculation was not used for dating legal documents until many years later.

The point is, there is no tradional count calculating the supposed age of the universe pre-dating rabbinic Judaism, and even the calculation of Yose ben Halafta was not accepted as usable for legal dating until many years afterward.

The hardening of this near-6000 year old date came in part from the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria. The Ari dismissed ancient Jewish teaching about a very old universe, instead insisting those many thousands of years (or billions in one ancient calculation) were all "spiritual" and had no physical presence. In the Ari's mind, the world was physically young.

The Ari's system of kabbala became the accepted for of Jewish mysticism and served as the basis for the messianic pretentions of Shabbatai Tzvi and the theology of the hasidic movement. It also became the normative kabbala of the non-hasidic rabbinic elite in both Europe and the Middle East. This coincided with Christian attempts to date creation, the most famous of which is that of James Ussher, which roughly corresponds to Yose ben Halafta's.

This, I think, led to the notion that a near-6000 year old universe was an undisputable halakhic fact even though nothing could be further from the truth.

When certain haredi rabbis – Rabbi Elyashiv, for example – insist that a 5769 year old universe is the halakha, and that any devience from it is heresy, they are basing this 'halakhic' judgment on very flimsy grounds.

What Jews believed about the age of the universe before the Ari.

Comments

[Yochanan Lavie]

It is ironic that Palestineans were caught with a scroll dated from the destruction of (ancient) Israel!

Isn't it true that some of Chazal thought the "years" of Bereisheet allegorical? If so, Elyashiv's extreme machmer position is just one amoung many, and not Jewish dogma.

Parody to follow.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Recounting the years (apologies Steely Dan)

Your everlasting tradition
I can see it fading fast
So you grab a piece of something
That you think is gonna last
You wouldn't know a torah
If you held it in your hand
The things you think are kodesh
I can't understand

CHORUS:
Are you countin' up the years
Stowin' away the time
Are you gatherin' up the fears
Are you in some sort of bind?

You been tellin' me you're an illuy
Since you were seventeen
In all the time I've known you
I don't know what "Daas Torah" means
The Shabbos at the kollel
Didn't turn out like you planned
The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand

CHORUS

I learn a lot of torah
And I spent a lot of time
The trip we made to Qumran
Is still etched upon my mind
After all the things we've done and seen
You diss the temple priests
The things you think are mesorah
Are beyond belief.

[omg]

YL, you are amazing!! Thank you for your expressed talent.
It would be funny if all this time, thinking its one year, its realy another. Just goes toshow, you never can tell.
Actually, when you think about it, why should there be agreement amongst Jews in this area,when there is hardly agreement in any other??

[critical_minyan]

another great article. shmarya you do a great service enlightening us that the accepted halacha of today is not always the accepted halacha of the past.

[Yonah]

Yeah, fascinating. It also seems to accord with many other ancient civilisations' dating systems - the Romans, for example, normally just noted who was consul at the time.

In the ancient context, it just makes more sense to refer to things which everybody for sure knows, as opposed to large numbers calculated by some scholars which need to be kept track of independently (ie without reference to changes in your community's life). Tying the date to events, such as "the destruction of Israel," is also a way of remembering your history.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thanks OMG.

Personally, while I wouldn't want a full return to temple Judaism, I would like more biblical flavor in today's rabbinic Judaism.

[shmuel]

YL, we have that Biblical, old-time religion! Charedim stone people who drive on Shabbos. That has to be worth something. And charedim beat up improperly dressed women. Things were tough then, they're tough now!

[Successful Messiah]

"The hardening of this near-6000 year old date came in part from the Ari, Rabbi Isaac Luria."

That is false. The hardening of the near 6000 year old date is at least from the times of the Rishonim. The are a number of Rishonim who have written about the time of creation using the near 6000 year old figure (though obviously it wasn't as near 6000 years at that time).

"The Ari dismissed ancient Jewish teaching about a very old universe, instead insisting those many thousands of years (or billions in one ancient calculation) were all "spiritual" and had no physical presence."

The theory of an ancient universe still exists and is irrespective of what we believe the age of the current world is.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Shmuel: How is getting stoned a punishment ;)

[Nachum]

Shmarya, you didn't mention the most common system used by Jews, the Seleucid Era. It was actually used by most peoples in the area and began in 311 BCE (or 312 in Macedonia). It was used by Jews well into the Middle Ages and by Yemenite Jews (many of whom were untouched by Kabballah) until recently- R' Kapach uses both it and "creation" dates on the copyright pages of his works.

That said, many of us use 5769 in much the same way Christians use 2009- we know it doesn't really mean anything, but it's handy.

[Yochanan Lavie]

The Stay-lucid Era? No one getting stoned back then!

[shmuel]

LOL!

[shmuel]

On a serious note, doesn't Azarya deRossi (16th cent.) in his Meor Eynayim take pains to show that the 6000 year tradition is not accurate?

[Chicago Samson]

++ Azarya deRossi (16th cent.) in his Meor Eynayim take pains to show that the 6000 year tradition is not accurate?++

And R. Yosef Karo banned his writings for this and other reasons. Azaria was centuries ahead of his time and really would fit quite well in the modern era we now live in.

[Yochanan Lavie]

CS: Didn't some of Chazal think the early biblical "years" were allegorical constructs?

[Ben]

Are you saying that creation happened more then 5769 ago and dinosour bones were not placed in the earth by the Creator simply to decieve scientists and to test the faith of us believers?

[Archie Bunker]

Shmarya, for the umpteenth time, secular academics have a way of spinning things to "conform" to their views. And you have no scholarly credentials whatsoever which means that any "weight" you throw behind them is completely laughable and useless.

THen you go on to attack Rabbi Elyashev again? You are not even worthy of being the dirt under his fingernails.

[S.]

>On a serious note, doesn't Azarya deRossi (16th cent.) in his Meor Eynayim take pains to show that the 6000 year tradition is not accurate?

No; his critique of rabbinic chronology concerns the length of the 2nd Temple period.

[dovidk]

A careful (unbiased) reading of beraishis will show that the 6000 years are calculated from Adam and Eve. The universe could have been around much longer. To post the entire explanation would take hours, but it can be explained.

[Y. Aharon]

Of course, the system that we currently use for Jewish dating (anno mundi - AM) is not very ancient, but it is certainly more ancient that the Ari who lived in the 16th century (CE). You can find the AM calculation in the Rambam's Mishne Torah, hilchot kiddush hachodesh and its relationship to the prior system of document dating according to the Seleucid Era (minyan shtarot). You will also note in formal documents such as ketubot and gittin that the language used with the AM date is "according to the dating system used here". In other words, no assertion is made as to the accuracy of the AM count (i.e. 5769 from the creation of Adam), only to the fact that it is the conventional date in use.

Y. Aharon

[Ben]

dovdk writes: "The universe could have been around much longer. To post the entire explanation would take hours, but it can be explained."

Don't even try to explain it. All these explanations have no scientific value. They all are from the category of "fitting evidence to reach desired answer". Even when biblical apologists come with the same age of universe as modern science does, their discoveries are of no value, because they are all "after the fact". These people didn't find age of universe based on description in Bereshit. The scientists made the discovery and all the hard work. The biblical apologists simply tried to manipulate the text to fit the known result.

[Archie Bunker]

Isn't that funny. Ben took what I said and spun it in reverse to tar religious people.

G-d gave us a choice to be believers or heretics who want to deny the truth in order to make it easier for themselves. This "debate" will never die until the coming of the Messiah.

[pierre]

*reckoning* by events, kings, even non-jewish, etc, is in Tanach itself. It's a less-certain way of orienting in time - but is a very useful means of orienting none the less, especially when Judaism also has it's cycles, recurring patterns, the life of the avot metting out in their children, etc (cyclical is considered a more 'primal' or "tribal" way of relating to 'time'). Even our loshon about time... over time...has been more ambiguous than prevailing religious moods dictate that it "has always been"...There was a book devoted to Judaism and time;
Time and Process in Ancient Judaism by Sacha Stern...

http://www.littman.co.uk/cat/stern-time.html

Here a fascinating review by a former librarian at Ner Israel (Baltimore; http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.php?id=10382

One way time can be conceived as cyclical and still progressing (with a timeline that we selectively make use of), is a helix. the common error of saying someone "did a 360" (when you really mean to say a 180) and "changed his ways" can indeed make sense - in a helix. You're not on the plain you were before making the 360.

[mitch morrison]

deRossi and his subsequent cherem is important but he is hardly alone... read Mitchell First's very excellent book Jewish History in Conflict, which surveys the viewpoints of more than 100 rabbis over the 2,000+-year period of the Talmud to the 20th century. you'll find that many don't hold Seder Olam as sancrosanct concerning the age of the world

[ML]

And Archie begins his long anticipated slide into his former self.

He has added nothing of worth here as all his comments are personal attacks on someone. Sad.

[Archie Bunker]

Whatever you say ML.

And when Shmarya constantly attacks ALL orthodox Jews with one fell swoop, instead of just some "one", there is nary a whimper of protest from you and Shmarya's other self-appointed standard bearers.

[Chicago Samson]

++CS: Didn't some of Chazal think the early biblical "years" were allegorical constructs? ++

Philo of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, and others maintained that the “day” ought not to be interpreted literally. Indeed, there are many reasons for this viewpoint.

The Hebrew word for “day,” יוֹם (yœm), is used in five different ways in the first two chapters of Genesis. Simply defined, יוֹם denotes a measurement of time; i.e., an indefinite time period, ranging from relatively short to very long years and beyond (Exod. 2:23); יוֹם יוֹם (yōm yōm) “day after day,” or “daily,”; i.e., a relatively long period of time (Gen. 39:10). Its usual meaning is a time of daylight as distinct from a period of darkness; namely, night, as is the case here.” In v. 14, יוֹם stands for what we know as 24 hours; in v. 16, יוֹם means the illuminated part of the day; while in 2:4, יוֹם connotes the entire period during which the heaven and the earth were created. There are numerous examples of how the term יוֹם by itself, refers to a general time period or era unless it is otherwise specified.

Here is a nice piece from the Wikepedia that is relevant to the discussion dealing with the problem of evolution and the "six days of creation."

"In his commentary on the Torah, Rabbi Bahya ben Asher (11th century, Spain) concludes that there were many time systems occurring in the universe long before the spans of history that man is familiar with. Based on the Kabbalah he calculates that the Earth is billions of years old.

Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh, an Italian Kabbalist, wrote that were evolution to become a mainstay of scientific theory, it would not contradict the Torah as long as one understood it as having been guided by God.[4]

Rabbi Israel Lipschitz of Danzig (19th century) gave a famous lecture on Torah and paleontology, which is printed in the Yachin u-Boaz edition of the Mishnah, after Massechet Sanhedrin. He writes that Kabbalistic texts teach that the world has gone through many cycles of history, each lasting for many tens of thousands of years. He links these teachings to findings about geology from European, American and Asian geologists, and from findings from paleontologists. He discusses the wooly mammoth discovered in 1807 Siberia, Russia, and the remains of several then-famous dinosaur skeletons recently unearthed. Finding no contradiction between this and Jewish teachings, he states "From all this, we can see that all the Kabbalists have told us for so many centuries about the fourfold destruction and renewal of the Earth has found its clearest possible confirmation in our time."

When scientists first developed the theory of evolution, this idea was seized upon by Rabbis such as Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, known as the Netziv, who saw Kabbalah as a way to resolve the differences between traditional readings of the Bible and modern day scientific findings. He proposed that the ancient fossils of dinosaurs were the remains of beings that perished in the previous "worlds" described in some Kabbalistic texts. This was the view held by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (1934-1983)."

[Paul Freedman]

imo young earth old earth middle earth a red herring for kabbalah--you can walk that puppy backwards about as many ways as your inclination as long as it is understood as falling under hashgacha generally--allegorize as necessary--more relevant topics would be First Adam etc.--chronology of human beans--now old are we--then maybe you can rustle up a dispute--but often the argument about evolution is itself a red herring used to disguise that the torah stira is a torah not of scientific causality but of human futility; just as some religious I guess are less interested in man's obligations before HaShem than they are in mans ability to display book learnin

[Paul Freedman]

then again, the older I get the part about evolution that is the most interesting is how cleverly, inexorably, and indefatigably each individual special unit is programmed to self-destruct--sort of like Rube Goldberg meets Final Destination--that Kohelth feller may not be a jacknapes GE College Bowl Jepoardy champeen ilui but hey of making many books there is no end....

[A. Nuran]

CS, all of these men, wise, humane, knowledgeable and pious as they undoubtedly were, are being intellectually dishonest. They were caught out by inconvenient facts and then backfilled in order to prove that the recent evidence confirms their bias.

I've had to give variations of the following talk to Priests, Rabbis, Shaykhs, Roshis and Ministers. It's not a reflection on your character any more than it is on theirs. It's just that their areas of expertise are outside of science. They aren't familiar with how that discipline approaches things.

If their study of Talmud and tradition and so on had produced evidence for what we now know to be true and if they had demonstrated it in advance of the science you'd have a point. As it is, they're just shooting, arrows, drawing the circles around them and claiming to have hit bullseyes.

The problem with this sort of reasoning is that it makes for bad science and worse religion.

Science is fundamentally self-correcting. Any theory can and ultimately will be refined or completely overthrown as we increase our ability to gather and interpret information in order to come up with theory. I mean theory in the technical scientific sense, not the common version which is closer to "next stage up from a wild-ass guess." The conclusions are always in flux. Understanding is contingent. And an inconvenient fact can always upset the applecart. Injecting religion into science - not into the ethics of "should" but into the process of "what is" - destroys the entire process. If the data and the explanation cannot be reconciled after the data are checked it is the explanation which must be abandoned. To do otherwise is to put lies above the truth. There is no greater crime.

In revealed religion the opposite is true. That which is revealed is never in error. If observation, facts and patterns seem to disagree they must be incorrect.

Do you see the difficulty?

When religion uses science as confirmation it sets itself up for a terrible fall. If the facts contradict the revelation they must be thrown out or perfect imperishable doctrine must change. This can be a problem if your religion believes that the world is a turtles all the way down or that lice are spontaneously generated from sweat. If a particular scientific result is used as evidence and is later abandoned because of normal scientific progress the whole thing ends up as evidence against the supposedly perfect truths. Either way religion is left with it's ass flapping in the breeze and looking silly. And given the nature of scientific endeavour it can be assured that that will happen repeatedly.

[Ben]

Archie Bunker, you want to say that you operate under 2 names here? Archie an dovidk?

[Ben]

Nuran, I like your explanation of science and religion incongruety.

[Paul Freedman]

Nuran, so what is all that dark energy? can reductive enumeration of characteristics of building blocks w/statistical or analytical tools of mathematics give us the complex behavior of interrelated systems? physical or biological? when I was a teenager promises were made that computer science would not only lead to a presumably equivalent understanding of how biological matter thinks but deliver true AI--true mechanical minds. Interesting results have been achieved, even breathtaking, but not that one.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Dark energy? No wonder racists are paranoid (/humor).

[Michael Makovi]

But like all midrashim, Seder Olam is speculative. One can even tell from the text itself! For example, when considering the Biblical character Peleg, born around the time of the Tower of Babel, and whose name ("Division") is considered a reference to the Dispersion, Seder Olam says something like (paraphrasing from memory),
"Could Peleg have been born just immediately before the Dispersion? No, because his younger brother Yoktan was also born before the Dispersion. Was Peleg born during the Dispersion? No, we are trying to make this dating calculation simpler, not more complex. [I.e., if he was born during the Dispersion, we have to ask exactly when.] Therefore, Peleg was born immediately after the Dispersion."

One can see from this excerpt just how speculative Seder Olam is. Now, there is nothing wrong with this. Today, we are much more scientific, and we'd rather preserve ambiguities (by listing every possibility, using copious footnotes, etc.), but this was the "scientific" method back then. We cannot fault Hazal for having the same intellectual level as mankind in general did.

Moreover, as I said before, Seder Olam is speculative just by virtue of its being a midrash. The Gaonim called midrash "umdana" (theoretical speculation based on what is reasonable, not what is proven), and ALL the Rishonim followed the Gaonim on this. For an accessible example, see what Rabbi Shmuel haNagid writes in the back of Berachot, in his Mevo haTalmud, translated in Rabbi Aryeh Carmell's little booklet on learning Gemara. Also, Rabbi Hirsch's famous teshuva on the topic explicitly follows the Gaonim and Rishonim on this; Rabbi Hirsch, at great length, elaborates how the student is perfectly permitted to say that a given midrash was a joke, or the erring opinion of a sole scholar, or something seen in a dream, something said to awaken the audience, etc. In any case, says Rav Hirsch, the aggadot remain the opinions of those who said them, and they were not said from tradition. Famously, the RambaN, in the famous Disputation, said the aggadot were like the sermon a priest might give. Rabbi Shelomo Danziger quotes Otzar haGeonim to corroborate Rav Hirsch. Rabbi Azaryah de Rossi also follows the Gaonim and Rishonim, and it is only the Maharal's revolutionary and unprecedented opposition to de Rossi, followed by Haredim today, that declared aggadah and midrash to be dogmas whose denial is heretical. In an article in Hakira magazine, some 20 or 30 pages of text are devoted to quoting and referencing the Gaonim and Rishonim on this subject.

For all of the above, I have collected material and URLs, at http://michaelmakovi dot blogspot dot com/2009/01/midrash-aggadah dot html. See there for quotations and URLs for everything I have said above.

[Michael Makovi]

We thus realize that all the aggadot are speculative.

We also internalize that which was originally said by Rambam, and later amplified by Rabbis Kook and Hirsch, namely that the Torah comes to teach us morals and not science or history, and that Hazal were fine with any cosmology that posits G-d as the origin and creator. Thus, Judaism, as Rav Hirsch says, is not troubled at all by the millions or billions of years bandied about by scientists. And as Rav Kook says, we must first ascertain whether something is heretical or not, before we seek to verify its veracity; having established that evolution is not heretical, Rav Kook says we may dispassionately analyze whether it squares with the Tanakh's actual text. Rav Kook says it really does not matter whether the Garden of Eden really existed; so long as we learn the relevant moral laws, the actual historicity is not so important. Rav Kook ultimately upholds the historicity of Eden and rejects evolution, but he admits that really, there is nothing heretical about the converse, and Rav Kook says he only took the Tanakh literally because there was no strong scientific basis (in his day) not to. All this is based on Rambam, who said that if Aristotle had proven the eternity of the universe, he (Rambam) would simply reinterpret Genesis chapter one allegorically.

Once we realize all this, the Haredi opposition to evolution is rather peculiar.

See what I write at http://michaelmakovi dot blogspot dot com/2009/02/scientific-developments-that-contradict dot html

[Michael Makovi]

See also what I write at http://michaelmakovi dot blogspot dot com/2009/03/genesis-chapter-one-and-science dot html

There, I bring two different approaches to solving the discrepancy between Genesis and science:

1) Following Rambam and Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan: the six days of creation are not temporal. Rather, they are a mental non-temporal out-of-order hierarchical establishment by G-d. Afterwards, G-d "activated" His thoughts.

2) The Torah simply copied the Babylonian creation myth (I am indebted to Professor Yaakov Elman of YU for this insight), and "kosherized" it. Therefore, we shouldn't try to make Genesis 1 agree with science, because the Torah simply copied what the Babylonians said, accepting the "science" of the day. This approach has basis in the writings of Rav Kook.

[ML]

Archie, it's his blog. If you want your own blog start one. Otherwise, stay on topic and relevant, please.

[Yochanan Lavie]

MM: Very interesting!

[Chicago Samson]

++2) The Torah simply copied the Babylonian creation myth (I am indebted to Professor Yaakov Elman of YU for this insight), and "kosherized" it. Therefore, we shouldn't try to make Genesis 1 agree with science, because the Torah simply copied what the Babylonians said, accepting the "science" of the day. This approach has basis in the writings of Rav Kook.++

With all respect to Prof. Elman, it has never been scientifically proven beyond any doubt that the Genesis creation story is based on the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma elish; although there are certainly similarities but the differences are indeed very striking.

[Chicago Samson]

Michael, you have a very nice blog; you are a very fine enterprising young man, but you posted or wrote something on your website that really needs correction.

"Rabbi Tzvi Freeman of Chabad.org was asked about this by a friend of mine. Rabbi Freeman answered that he too had been troubled by this, but that he resolved that the Tanya wasn't speaking ontologically. Rather, the Tanya was saying that the gentiles of those times, by being willingly immersed in immorality and sinfulness, caused their own souls to be in the klipot. Since today, the gentiles have willingly chosen to be moral (of course, the Torah was the catalyst, but that's not the point here), they have removed their own souls from the klipot, and what the Tanya says isn't true anymore.

The point of course isn't whether this is actually what the Tanya meant; rather, what is important is that some/many(?) Chadabniks have embraced this very reasonable approach."

There can be no doubt that the Chabad philosophy IS based on the ontological distinction that Rabbi Freeman rejects; in the Introduction to the Tanya, the late Rebbe says that the soul of a Jew is truly a portion of the Divine--he's speaking ontology; and this view is echoed in nearly all the Hassidic writings of Chabad outside of the Tanya as well.

[Michael Makovi]

Chicago Samson,

Thank you for the compliment.

Re: Babylonian creation myth: Obviously, we cannot prove which came first. That is, so much oral tradition has been lost over time, we cannot prove whether the Babylonians invented their creation story, or whether it was a mesorah from Adam haRishon, etc. Everything here is speculation.

(Actually, Rav Kook, besides suggesting that the Torah "kosherized" the regnant (but erroneous) wisdom of the past, also suggests that the Babylonians received their wisdom from Adam and Noah. So if the Torah and Hamurabbi resemble each other, it is either because the Torah (a) took what Hamurabbi said and kosherized it, or (b) Hammurabbi took what Adam and Noah said. The first approach, (a), would underline a lot of what the Hertz Humash says.)

Anyway, my point then is, that even though we cannot be sure where the Babylonians got their myth from, nevertheless, the fact that it is so similar to the Torah creates the *possibility* that the Torah simply copied an erroneous myth, in an effort to kosherize it.

(Of course, on the other hand, perhaps the Babylonians copied the wisdom they received from Adam. I don't believe this, but I cannot prove it false.)

Professor Marc Shapiro, for example, suggests the Flood never happened. Rather, he says, the Torah wants to teach a moral point, and it did so by "correcting" the Gilgamesh myth. Now, my difficulty with this is an exegetical one; did the Torah really mean that the whole Flood is an allegory? This is hard to fit into the text. But theologically, it fits perfectly, and I can see no theological objection to the idea that the Torah simply copied erroneous wisdom of the past, in order to make its own moral point.

Hazal did this too. Rav Hirsch points out that Pliny says the spine turns into a snake after death, so Hazal repeated this, adding that this is prevented by bowing at Modim during the Amida. The difference would be that when Hashem copied the ancient wisdom, He knew it was all bologna, but He copied it anyway, since His concern was with morality, not with science and history.

As for Habad, I really don't have much personal experience, so I'll readily admit errors.

[A. Nuran]

Ben, thanks for the kind words. I only wish I didn't have so many chances to restate and refine the thoughts behind them :-(

Michael, that is a very interesting collection of thoughts. More of this humble, realistic approach leads to better science and better religion, something which I heartily applaud as a scientist and a Jew. Why have so many taken the particular opinions of these men as dogma while ignoring the nuanced intelligent approach they took towards framing the important questions?

Paul, these days I'm a systems/network engineer who maintains a strong layman's interest in the subjects from those other lives. I no longer follow the professional physics and biology journals very often. All I can say for sure is that we are learning more. There's been a lot of progress just in the last ten years in understanding the emergent properties of the brain that give rise to thoughts and consciousness.

Dark energy? Well, cosmology gets torn down and rebuilt every few years. I don't have the math to follow the current debates. From what I am able to understand it seems that there's more (indirect) physical evidence for the existence of dark matter and dark energy. But there's an awful lot of uncertainty as to what it implies about their structure and behavior. And that doesn't even touch on the ways in which they could theoretically change the way they act. I wish I followed this more closely. There are only so many hours in a day.