The Age of the World and Allegorization
Hello.
First of all, I enjoy and look forward to your articles and answers.
Secondly, I wanted to know how we deal with archaeological findings and their dating against the Torah?
In one of your answers, you quoted a professor who said: “As a religious man, he believes that the world was created six thousand years ago, and as a scientist, he believes that the age of the world is several billion years.”
How can this really go together? As far as I understand it, either the world was created six thousand years ago or billions of years ago.
Best regards and many thanks.
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0 Answers
This is a quote I remember from Leibowitz, but I didn’t find it explicitly in his writings. By the way, it has nothing to do with archaeology, but with physics and geology. Archaeology deals with human history.
Clearly, this simply does not go together. Leibowitz’s approach is that the Torah does not deal with facts, and therefore the 6,000-year-old tradition should not be treated as a fact, but rather as some kind of religious narrative. Just as other events in the Torah are parables (Rambam believed this regarding the angels with Abraham and more).
And yet, even on the factual level, there are several ways to reconcile the two things: the slowing down of time with the expansion of the universe (the rate of time flow varies with the density of mass in the universe), the creation of a ready-made world (at 15 billion years old. In the Midrash: “in their stature they were created”) 6,000 years ago, a day in the days of Genesis is a long period, etc., etc. I have no idea which of the answers is correct, if any, but it doesn’t bother me as long as there is no contradiction here that cannot be answered.
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Asks:
Strength.
Regarding the issue that the Torah does not deal with facts, seemingly there is no end to the matter, perhaps the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Mount Sinai are just some kind of narrative? And perhaps even all the commandments. In other words, the commandment of tefillin does not mean that one must actually put on tefillin, but rather that it is meant to convey a certain idea (just as God puts on tefillin)?
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Rabbi:
A distinction must be made between the question of whether the Torah deals with facts and the question of whether the Torah can be interpreted allegorically. As for the commandments, if they offer a reasonable interpretation, it can be considered. Usually, a good reason is required to take things out of their simple form. As for facts and events, see Rabbi Amit Kola’s book, Whether It Was or Wasn’t, and my review article on it .
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