This is a regular feature on IsraelSeen by Dr. Yitzkak Hayut-Man. An innovator, futurist, visionary and Bible scholar. I have the utmost respect for the man I consider a friend. He is among the few that is courageous enough to allow the “open source” of the Torah-Bible to be presented in new and interesting ways for our greater understanding. for more go to his web site: http://www.global-report.com/thehope/a78-re-genesis-now-project-preface-introduction
According to the Jewish tradition, Adam was created on the first of Tishre, which is the first of the Jewish year. Our New Year day is not a sign for the beginning of the Creation, but we see the beginning in the Sixth Day – the day of the Creation of Adam, the Adam of our image and likeness. Not a Cro-Magnon, not a Neanderthal, not the resident of a paradisiacal garden of nomadic gatherers, but a human being who is concerned with the same problems that beset us to this day.
Ha’lam haZeh, “This World”, is thus a human world, with human dilemmas, and not the set of geological structures of billions and millions of years. Nevertheless, we think that there is a certain similarity between the order of cosmic to the order of cultural processes. One is the reflection of the other, even if on a much smaller scale. Like the others in the modern world, we too draw upon examples from the newer sciences to illustrate this.
The new approach to the geometry of nature which is connected with the name of Benoit Mandelbrot, called “fractal Geometry”[14] presents – through amazing computer graphics – a law which applies to our case: an overall figure (which in the case of the special mathematical set called “The Mandelbrot Set” looks much like a sitting Buddha figure), is repeated innumerable times in reduced copies, all connected to the large figure by invisible filaments, and the shape of the small figures is quite similar to that of the large figure. Each figure is unique and not identical with another, but the changes call for acute discrimination.
Let us return to the Midrash we dealt with above, according to which “God was looking at the Torah and creating the world”, and try to see how the general divine patterns reappear – just as with the fractals – even in the minutest details.
In a fairly simple way we can find this pattern in the subject of “the Sabbatical Cycles” which we have already touched. According to the conception of the Jewish tradition, cycles of seven “days of creation” appear alike in the formation of the universe and the stars, in the formation of human history as well as in the sabbatical and jubilee – which are the laws of the proper maintenance of the earth, the source of sustenance – and the structure of the week, of the six workdays and the Sabbath – which are the proper maintenance laws of humans.
Also when we examine the literary structure of the Book of Genesis, we can discern a definite repetitive pattern, where in the course of detailing there is also apparent a trend of development.
The very Story of Creation is told in three versions which, on the face of it, are entirely different from each other. Many Bible critics see in this evidence to the addition of different sources, but from our point of view this has a literary aim, and even necessity.
The first version is that of the story of Creation in six days, which can be divided to three and three. Three “days” for the appearance of the Earth, or the Adamah, and three for the appearance of the living, which climaxes with humankind, or Adam. The emphasis is structural, even mathematical; the style is lofty, but without drama.
The second version is the story of the Garden of Eden, according to which the whole creation occurred in one day (“in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens”), the creation of Adam occurred before parts of the creation of the earth (“And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field has yet grown”, and even the name of the Creator has changed. The protagonists of the story are three: Adam, Eve and the Serpent, and there later join their two contending sons, and then the children of Cain.
The third story is the story of the third son – Seth – the grandfather of Enosh, namely, the progenitor of the Enoshut – humankind. Again the story opens with a one-day creation – “This is the book of the generations of Adam (Man). In the day that God created mankind” (Gen. 5:1). Adam is a marginal figure in this story, Eve and the other characters of the last story – are not mentioned, or even do not exist.
For each of these three stories there is also a characteristic ending.
The ending of the first story is idyllic – “Thus the heavens and earth were finished, and all their host….. and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done”.
The second story – which contains three sub-narratives – also has three endings, all of which tragic. Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, Abel-Hevel is killed, Cain-qayin is sentenced to wanderings. Yet in the end there is also hope: Cain builds the first city and it is dedicated to his son anokh (Enoch) and thus also to Hinukh – education.
The third story ends with the birth of Noah – the one who will survive while all his generation will be exterminated in the Flood.
We shall dedicate extensive discussion of these three stories in the next chapter. It is worth mentioning here the parallel between the story(s) of the Creation to the building of the Mishkan – Tabernacle – (which is mentioned by many interpreters and in great detail in the Book of Zohar). There are, as mentioned, three stories of creation and three repetitions about the building of the Tabernacle. These three repetitions parallel the distinction we made between the Beri’ah-Creation (the concept of the Mishkan and its pattern, which is imparted through divine inspiration), the Ye?irah-Formation (Be?al’el who plans and builds the Mishkan, and the Assiyah-Making (the materials are gathered from he people and the Levite priests come to worship at the Mishkan). But in the three accounts of the Mishkan the process is reproduced with high fidelity from the divine inspiration to the work on the ground, whereas in the usual processes of the world and of human history there occurred defects and corruption.
An additional viewing will show us that that not just the creation narrative(s), but also the whole book of Genesis is divided to three stories, where the end of one story brings to the beginning of the other, which will be an attempt to improvement and development.
The first story, the story of the children of Adam, reaches its tragic ending in the flood. This is the first millennial Day of Creation, the first millennium of the two thousand years of Tohu.
The second story, the story of the children of Noah, reaches its end – which is perhaps tragic, but perhaps shows a breakthrough – with the generation of the Tower of Babel. This is the second millennial Day of Creation, the second thousand years of Tohu from which there start the two thousand years of Torah.
The third story of Creation start at the beginning of the two thousand years of Torah is the story of Abraham and his children. Also this story is divided – in the manner of fractal geometry – to three sub-narratives – the stories of the three patriarchs.[15] And in spite of the varying characters, there is one pattern that repeats in them again and again. There are instances when the characters fail, in others they rectify, but clearly there is no “Original Sin” that condemns them for ever. Human conduct is improving, and understanding progresses, to our days.
Indeed, also the story of our generation is inseparable from the story of the Creation. We are now within the third story of the creation, after the two thousand years of Tohu and two thousand years of Torah (the second half of which was the days of the two temples and the editing of the Torah), we are now within the two thousand years of the Messiah. The Fifth Day was the time of the formation of the Talmud and the Midrashim, and now – on the Sixth Day – “Let’s make Adam”.
In the course of the next chapter I shall try to assert, and demonstrate, that the meaning of these interweaving and repetitive patterns is quite different from what was asserted by the traditional Jewish exegesis. The tradition sees in the stories of the Bible a continuing process of Berur (selection and choice), of ever narrower selection: from all of humankind, the nation of Israel was “chosen”, and from Israel – the Jews, who are the only people to know and keep the Torah. This approach was appropriate to a persecuted and humiliated people in exile. But the Torah was given to Israel on the threshold of entering the Land, and was later purveyed from the Temple!
In our view the Torah attempts to present a principle and instances that exemplify it (the whole of humankind is Adam, and the wide detailing is expressed in the figures of Judah and his brothers). But figures that were left behind in this account may still integrate into this meta-historical process and progress by the same pattern. Thus, for example, when the prophet Muhammad spread the religion of Islam, he redeemed the forgotten figure of Yishm’el (Ismael), and joined the Arabs to the Children of Abraham.
Our claim is that nowadays – when we are again in the stage of transition between exile and settlement in our land – the Torah may well guide us in ways that our forefathers have never conceived of. This may happen by dint of our residing in the Land of Israel and free from the fears, the pains and hatreds, of the exile and freely using the language of the Torah as our mother tongue.
An evident support for our approach, of studying the Torah as if it was given really for the future, as an instrument that would become relevant specifically for our generation, has to do with the very connection of the language.
Each Hebrew speaker is aware of the clear division to tenses and times. Were the writers of the Torah not aware of the same?
The Torah opens, as might be expected, in past tense. “Bereshit Bara Elohim…” (Initially created God….) but immediately it adopts a present continuous tense “…veRu’ah Elohim meraefet l pnei haMayim” (and the spirit of God is hovering over the face of the Deep..). Then from there onwards, in all the chapters of the humash (Pentateuch) – the writing is future tense, “va’yomer Elohim….” (and God would say….). It is true that no translation paid attention to this, and many generations of linguists regarded that form as “inversion” (vav haHipukh), but this is just a name that does not explain any thing. It is much more accurate to regard this letter vav (translated as “and” in English) as “vav haibur” (the hook of joining) of times – joining between events in This World with an eternal (or archetypal) world of revelation which is beyond time, and in which past, present and future are one.
It is therefore also valid to read the entire Torah as written in a prophetic tense which is a future tense in relation to the Torah which was recognized in the past and becoming a present in our times.
Let us go then to examine the story of Genesis in light of this possibility.
Notes:
[1] See David Flynn: “Temple at the Center of Time – Newton’s Bible codex deciphered and the year 2012”. Official Disclosure Anomalos Publishing, Crane 65633, 2008
[2] To the consternation of the complacent ignorant attitude of “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it is good enough for me”.
[3] James Strong: Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Hebrew Lexicon & Dictionary, World Bible Publishers, Iowa Falls, Ia, 1986.
[4] As a characteristic example, let’s take the word “Chabad”, which already appeared and appears in the next section. This is the name of perhaps the most important Jewish organization that distributes Torah insights all around the world. Yet this movement’s rendering of its own name disregards the above mentioned transliteration rules (and the State of Israel, to this matter). The name is, in Hebrew, abbreviation of the three words ?okhmah Binah Da’at (Wisdom, Understanding Knowledge, ???? ???? ???), but this meaning is lost in their translation. In the following it is referred to as Chabad (?aBaD ??”?), while the academy transliteration would put it as “?abad”.
[5] The Hebrew script (as noted in the preface), including the Biblical text, has no vowels written down, so though there is an accepted reading, a Hebrew word (here ????) can legitimately be read in a variety of ways by using different vowels.
[6] According to Gershom Shalom: “The Qabbalah of the Sefer haTemunah and of Abraham Abulafia”, 8-9.
[7] “yar haayim” by R. Yitzhak of ?kko, manuscript No. 775 Ginzburg Library within the Lenin Library in Moscow; surveyed in Kaplan, Arie (1993): Immortality, Resurrection and the Age of the Universe. Ktav Publishing, New Jersey.
[8] See Raphael Shohat: “A World Hidden in the Dimensions of Time: the Redemption Doctrine of the GRA of Vilna, its sources and influence over generations” (In Hebrew). Bar Ilan University Press, 2008.
[9] Israel Knohl, “The Temple of Silence”.
[10] The many ways to read these three-in-one words also include “Counting”, “Account” and the gamut of meanings of “Sefirot”, which is perhaps the main – and most variegated – concept of the Qabbalah.
[11] Zion – Hebrew ?ion – is not just a place. It also has to do with Distinction – iyun and Excellence – MeHuyanut
[12] Professor Me’ir Bar Ilan, the Talmud department at Bar Ilan University (called so on the name of his grandfather). The relevant (Hebrew) book are “Genesis Numerology” 12004 and “Biblical Numerology” 2005. See his articles about numerology http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~testsm/bar-ilan_flyer2.pdf; http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~barilm/numfr.html.
[13] See Appendix ‘B’ to chapter 1.
[14] Mandelbrot, B.: “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”. W.H. Freeman & Co. NY.1983
[15] The story of Joseph could be seen as a fourth sub-narrative, that of Joseph as patriarch. But the Book of Genesis keeps to the tree-part scheme, and the end of the book is about the end of the life of Jacob, only after his twelve sons reached their reconciliation and collective identity.
