Religion & Beliefs
The Evolution of Jews… and Evolution
By Laurel Snyder / April 30, 2007
This article in the Chicago Tribune has got me thinking… about religion and books. Religion and science. Religion and secular ideas…
Those wearied by the current feuding between partisans of science and devotees of religion can take heart from an exhibit at the Loyola University Museum of Art. It shows there is a happy ending for some stories—or at least, for some chapters of some stories. The exhibit showcases books that were once on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Roman Catholic Church's list of works forbidden to the faithful lest they lead readers down the road of heresy.
The story touches (among other things) on the relationship between the printed word and the development of religion, on Luther (I'll be talking about him more later) and how the spread of printed matter forced Christianity to open up, mutate, etc.Â
And that's interesting, but it's not what I'm thinking about today. What I'm thinking about is Judaism and science…. evolution in particular.
And about how interesting it is that a religion with such a literal tradition, a belief in the Torah as the word of God, has found ways (even within that literal tradition) to embrace scientific discoveries and theories that refute the simplest interpretations of the Torah.Â
Because, perhaps, we have such a tradition of dialogue, debate as philosophical process, verbal combat as a tool to moving forward.   We aren't historically afraid of complicated solutions to hard questions.
Of course, we aren't talkiing here about Reform or Conservative Jews. They all buy the evolution bit, and they have for nearly a century. But I want to take a minute to talk about how Orthodox Judaism has developed a comfort with evolution, despite the presence of important Haredi Rabbis who have fought evolution tooth and nail.
The vast majority of classical Rabbis hold that God created the world close to 6,000 years ago, and created Adam and Eve from clay. This view is based on a chronology developed in a midrash, Seder Olam, which was based on a literal reading of the book of Genesis. It is attributed to the Tanna Yose ben Halafta, and covers history from the creation of the universe to the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Today, this chronology is not as widely accepted in Orthodox Judaism as it was in the past. Orthodox Jews are split on the matter of a literal approach to Genesis, but most of them do not hold that a literal approach is necessary.
I think it's important that we all, as Jews, remember that we have our own fundametalist views. That we have a tradition as obstinate (in ways) as Christianity. That we too have banned books and feared secular discoveries… I think often we sit in our coccoon of humanist tendancy and pat our Jewish selves on the back for being "advanced" and "sane" as a religion.
But I also think it's good to know the facts. To read up on how we HAVE stretched our Jewish brains for thousands of years to accomodate hard ideas. To be proud that the in-fighting we've undergone on how to exchange ideas with the non-Jewish world has never splintered us completely.
Further reading:
The Official Position: From the Rabbinical Council of America Intelligent Design From Cross Currents (I enjoyed this a lot… got me thinking about chance and purpose) Ari Kahn on Evolution in the Torah From Aish The future of Jewish Evolutionary Theories From Shamash
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It’s rather ironic that Christianity, which quite early was paird with an exegetical philosophy of allegorizing Scripture so as to coincide with Greek philosophy (witness their appreciation of Philo), is often so fundamentalist today.
Of course, there are Orthodox Jews who are similarly fundamentalist, but nevertheless, for at least Modern Orthodox, the same methods as used by the Medieval Jewish philosophers, are still used today. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (late 19th century) and Rav Kook (early 20th century) both made the exact same arguments, viz. that the purpose of the Torah is to teach moral truths, not historical ones. Rav Hirsch says that our Rabbis were not so concerned with the specifics of Creation, so long as it acknowledges that one way or another, G-d was involved.
Such approaches could be easily traced back to Rambam, who, in the Guide for the Perplexed, notes that Aristotle hadn’t proved the eternity of the universe, so Rambam said he’d go with the literal meaning of Genesis 1. But, said Rambam, were Aristotle to prove his thesis, then we’d simply allegorize Genesis 1 and accept Aristotle’s theory that there is no such thing as creation ex nihilo. The only thing Rambam rejected was Plato, that the primordial matter is ontologically independent of G-d; Rambam said that in the end, we must say that ontologically, G-d is prior to the matter, even if chronologically, they are both parallel and equally eternally preexistent, and that G-d is ultimately the one who shaped the matter into the form we see today. (Not that I completely understand this; I am far from being a student of Greek philosophy.) Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein (late principal of the Rabbinic school at Jews’ College), in his The Faith of Judaism, explicitly relies on Rambam’s view here, for the purposes of accepting evolution.
Rabbi Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) goes even further, and argues that for G-d to create ex nihilo is as impossible as it is for G-d to create a four-sided triangle or to create another G-d like Himself. In other words, Gersonides holds that creation ex nihilo is intrinsically impossible, period. But just as it is no weakness in G-d that He cannot create a four-sided triangle, it is no weakness that He cannot create ex nihilo. Gersonides accepts the view that Rambam said is possible to accept, viz. that the matter is primordialy eternally preexistent, but that G-d nevertheless is soley responsible for shaping it according to His will. It is no weakness in the potter’s ability that he cannot create the clay he uses.
Even if no one accepts Greek philosophy anymore, the methods used are still applicable today. It is the sort of discussions above that prepared us for the scientific findings of today.
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