by Rabbi Moshe Dror PhD.
One of the most problematic issues of our day is that of global sustainability.
How are we going to maintain all of the species of living organisms on the planet?
With global warming increasing and all of the other environmental problems that we as humans are creating—are we destroying the earth and its biosphere?
The Bible has basically two creation narratives. The first is the creation epic in the opening chapters of Genesis.
The other is at the time of Noah. Ten generations after Adam the earth was so corrupt that for whatever reason God decides to destroy the earth again by returning it to its original Pre-creation status , namely to some form of chaos. The classical metaphor in the Biblical period seems to have been associating water sea water with chaos.
Noah, and his family and pairs of all of the animals are saved through all of them being in the Ark that floated out the chaos of the water and were saved.
This was in effect a re-creation of the world.
Phillip Ratner sees this in an interesting way and Re-interprets it in a fascination retelling of the story.
In the Biblical narrative there is a huge ark that saves the world. But in our future there if there is going to be an environmental catastrophe, it will destroy all of the planet and one of the often suggested options to save the planets biosphere is to go into some orbit with a satellite or settle some other planet.
Here we see Noah as a lab technician with surgical gloves and a surgical mask with a satellite hovering above him. How can he possibly get all of the animals into this hovering satellite?
Look at what does he has in his hands?
He does not need to take all of the animals themselves into the satellite –all he needs is their DNA, each in its test tube.
Seems strange?
Perhaps
Impossible?
Think again.
Scientists are using a diverse collection of cryogenic cells called the frozen zoo to help save vanishing wildlife. The Frozen Zoo is one of the largest inventories of living cells in the world, yet the entire collection fits into a one-meter-square metal tank at the Zoological Society of the San Diego Zoo in San Diego, California. This has been going on since 1975.
(From: The Futurist, August-September, 1999; see: www.sandiegozoo.org)
The Bible suggests that the earth was filled with evil.
What kind of evil are we doing now to our planet and what can YOU do to help prevent our being forced to seek other sites for ourselves and our living organisms?
The Bible also suggests that Noah was A righteous man in his generation
What sort of righteousness would WE need in order to maintain our biosphere here on earth?
The choice is OURS!
