Q&A: Primitive Man
Primitive Man
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I was able to understand the explanation of the possibility that the world has existed for millions of years (according to science) together with the description of creation in Genesis. I also saw discussion of this in your trilogy. There is no doubt that there is no contradiction here, or at least not necessarily a contradiction.
But I still can’t understand how this can be explained in relation to the findings about primitive man (as in this link) https://he.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%90%D7%93%D7%9D_%D7%94%D7%93%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%91%D7%99
Here, science does not fit with religious theology, which describes the first creation of man, and from that creation there is seemingly a defined count of days and years.
One can explain that the world was created with matter in nature already at an advanced stage of development, and that in creation the Holy One, blessed be He, provided materials already in an advanced process of decay, or that the days of creation were very long periods, etc.
But it does not seem likely to me (at least based on my basic intuition) that the Creator would have any interest in creating a world with ancient jaws and bones of prehistoric human beings. Also, the Torah explicitly says that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to produce a human being (in the human image, which did not exist before).
Thank you.
Answer
It seems to me that this is also written there. In general, it depends on the model by which you reconcile the age of the world with science. One can fully accept the scientific description, including the age of the world, and see the biblical description as an educational myth, for example.
Discussion on Answer
Indeed, it sounds forced. That is only one possibility. It may be that all those additions are late and are not from Sinai. Many things are possible.
Precisely regarding the years of people’s lives, one should note what Rabbi Prof. M. D. Cassuto suggested in his book: that all the numbers there are symbolic (multiples and combinations of “important” numbers in the context of ancient Near Eastern thought), and the reasoning he offers for this. If his words are correct, it turns out to be the opposite of an attempt at dating. It is not real dating, but rather a literary device whose role is to express an idea. This device would have been clear to a reader from the ancient Near East and of that period, but to modern Western eyes, which are unaware of its existence, the text mistakenly looks like an arithmetic exercise for calculating the age of the world.
I don’t see the difficulty. The man the Torah is speaking about is Homo sapiens.
On the contrary, the whole idea of primitive man actually has support from Sforno (who lived long before people started thinking about evolution): that there was an animal called man, and the Holy One, blessed be He, placed a soul in it and turned it into what we have today.
That is, there was a different primitive man, and in the end a human being like the one we know was created.
What is the source for this Sforno? Very interesting. I’d be happy for the source, thanks.
Genesis 1:26
“Man—one of the species of living creature that I created, whose name is man, as it says, ‘and the man became a living soul’—let us make him in our image, meaning that he is an intellectual and eternal essence. And in this the blessed God opened a way in His Torah to acquire knowledge of the separate immaterial beings through knowledge of our own soul.”
Suppose it is an educational myth; then why state years so precisely, the ages of all the generations? That implies they did want to give perspective and dating. It sounds a bit forced to explain it that way.