Prof. Dr. Eli Lasch The Creation of Animals and Man Part I
By Dr. Eli Lasch
The fifth and the first half of the sixth day follow exactly the accepted scheme of evolution. Having disengaged itself from rootedness life started moving: The first to be created were “the animals of the sea”, then the dinosaurs – the Torah designates them as “the big Taninim” usually translated as “crocodiles” – then the birds appeared and finally did the mammals. How did the author van der Post[i] characterize evolution: the laboratory of nature on the way to the carrier of consciousness, to man. As already shown previously, and in contrast to Darwinism, evolution in the Torah is however not caused by a successive transition from one species to another – each one was created directly by God and each at its proper time, and we are back at the idea of a time line underlying it all. This is also the answer to the most confounding question – how did intelligence arise? Animals, however advanced they may be, are lacking what makes man to become what he is: self-consciousness – awareness of time, the ability to speak and the skill of writing are probably all a part of it. Now time was ripe for the next step, for the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness, from animal to man: a quantum leap!
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea …” “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”[iii]
At this point, we first have to ask ourselves what it means to be human; especially we should be concerned with the question regarding the difference between man and animal. Among all the living beings on Earth, only man has got self-consciousness and an awareness of time, only man knows the difference between past and future.
