Kehat, language existed long, long before that. That is clear and agreed upon.
The earliest script known to us is Sumerian cuneiform from the fourth millennium BCE.

With God’s help, 3 Elul 5778

To Kehat — greetings,

The proposal that the human being spoken of in the Torah is the intelligent human, capable of expressing himself through writing, is the proposal of the zoologist Professor Mordechai Kislev (published in Shanah BeShanah 5761, pp. 329–348), and indeed the earliest findings of writing are from about 5,700–5,800 years ago.

The archaeologist Dr. Yitzhak Mitleis, who brings a summary of Professor Kislev’s remarks (in his book Crossroads — An Archaeological and Geographic Perspective on the Weekly Torah Portions, pp. 7–8), adds that the ability to write is what also marks, among researchers, the transition from prehistory to history. Additional traits that developed in man at that same period are: weaving clothes, planting fruit trees, and producing metal tools.

The Torah’s concern is the moral straightening of the intelligent human being, and therefore history, from the Torah’s perspective, begins with the emergence of the intelligent human being.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

Professor Mordechai Kislev’s article, “The Age of Man — 5760 or a Million Years?” (published in Shanah BeShanah 5761), can be viewed on the Da’at website of Herzog College.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

Hi S. Z., thanks for the response.
In the article by Professor Mordechai Kislev that you referred me to, at the end he says that man began working the land more than 12,000 years ago.
I didn’t understand how he bridges the gap when the sixth day, on which man was created, comes out to the year 5770.

My friend Gilad Stern recently wrote at length, and excellently, exactly on this topic. Contact him privately and he’ll probably send it to you (his email is floating around in some of the threads on the site. Search the threads on archaeology).

Kehat,
Chapter 2 of Genesis is pretty clearly a parable (a talking snake, and so on). Researchers also identify several different independent centers where agriculture developed — Mexico (corn), the Andes (potato), sub-Saharan Africa (millet), the Fertile Crescent (wheat), China (rice), Papua New Guinea (sweet potato), and various other secondary developments. The wise Jared Diamond expands on this in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

The important point is that the Torah was not given in a cultural vacuum or in jahiliyyah (ignorance), as Muslims view it. There was a first man. There was Noah (and right now the factual background of the flood, whether it was in the Black Sea or in Mesopotamia, does not matter). Rabbi Kook expands on this in relation to the Code of Hammurabi in the book Adar HaYakar (Rabbi Kook was an early version of Rabbi Michi who lived in the Land of Israel at the beginning of the twentieth century).
The Torah opposes idolatry, murder, and violence — not human culture. If idol worshippers abandoned it, there is no commandment to destroy the statues. You can go to the Israel Museum with the kids and enjoy the archaeology exhibit. Unlike ISIS, who destroyed Palmyra, or the Taliban, who blew up Buddha statues, Judaism is not threatened by culture. I’m waiting for the moment when secularization kills Christianity and then we can travel to Italy and enjoy Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel.

With God’s help, 3 Elul 5778

To Kehat — greetings,

If I understand correctly, Professor Mordechai Kislev bases himself on the words of the Sages that “the script and the writing” were created on the sixth day at twilight. Just as he understands that all six days of creation are not days in their literal sense, but rather extended periods, so too he understands the creation of man on the sixth day as an extended process, at the end of which man received writing, and from that point history began.

According to this, one must say that there is a distinction between the counting of time during the six days of creation, which is not literal, and the counting of years from Adam and Eve onward, which is literal. And this seems reasonable on the basis of the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (the 83rd anniversary of whose passing falls today), that the “Account of Creation” belongs to the “secrets of the Torah,” in which the Torah speaks in hints and parables (Letters of Rabbi Kook 95). By contrast, the order of generations of the “intelligent human” already belongs to the revealed domain.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

By the way, from Professor Kislev’s remarks it emerges that there is a mismatch between time measurements by carbon-14 and measurement by tree rings, except that researchers have some sort of “calibration” method to reconcile the contradictory timetables. It seems to me that even scientifically, things are far from being “locked in”…

A detailed analysis of Rabbi Kook’s approach to the issue appears in the article by Rabbi Eli Horowitz, of blessed memory, “The Age of the World According to the Torah,” on the Ratzio — Faith, Research, and Science website.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

As for M’s suggestion to contact Gil-Ed Stern, who wrote on the topic: since he serves as coordinator of the “Torah and Science” field at the Yedaya Institute, it seems possible to contact him through the Yedaya Institute website.

M, we’d be happy if you posted it here.

I’m not authorized to publish someone else’s materials.

With God’s help, the material will be published soon, and if God decrees life, I’ll post a link. Just one important point to note: even if an earlier script is found, that would not refute this. All the historical revolutions to which the Torah points mark only the endpoint events, when the episode became a central factor in culture. The development of writing and its becoming a springboard for human literacy, memory and learning, trade, economy, and urbanization — in short, for historical man — took place as a trend only in the fourth millennium BCE.
A second important point: the first man is not the objective one, but the subjective one, relative to humanity’s collective memory at the time the Torah was given. Both Israel and the people of the ancient Near East counted two series of ten genealogical generations, in which the eponymous figure is Adam/Adamu. From this it follows that he is the first in the genealogy, and whatever came before him was forgotten because it was not historical and was not documented. This transition from cyclical existence to linear existence is what the Torah marks in chapter 5 with the first man, with the discovery of writing and genealogical records. In chapters 2–4 another “adam” is described as a collective name for hunter-gatherers in transition to agriculture. And in chapter 1 yet another “adam” is described, one that precedes even that.

With God’s help, 4 Elul

To Gil — Gil-Ed,

The man who stands at the head of the chain of ten generations is known by his own name, by his wife’s name, by his sons’ names, and by his age. He is not a primitive creature but a prophet; he, his wife, and his sons hear the voice of God and receive messages from Him.

In chapter 1 their Creator commands them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens…” In this chapter their destiny as leaders of the living world is mentioned. In chapter 2, their creation and placement in the Garden of Eden “to work it and to guard it” are described in detail (as is the way of the whole book of Genesis, “general statement and detail”), and here too they receive commandments from God, as well as rebukes and punishments when they transgress His commandments. They also know how to speak with animals (which is not surprising when dealing with a prophetic couple).

Their sons too, Cain and Abel, are privy to the counsel of God and know whether God accepted their offering or not, and to Cain too God appears and speaks, first in words of consolation: “If you do well, will you not be lifted up?…” But his terrible disappointment at the relative distance his God adopts toward him leads him to rise and kill his brother. A dreadful quarrel over closeness to God.

After the terrible corruption brought by the quest for prophecy, the gates of prophecy were locked for many years. Enosh began “to call in the name of the Lord,” to pray to God, but he receives no answer. Lamech asks that his son bring comfort to humanity from the toil of its hands, and indeed Noah “walked with God,” and close to the flood he hears the word of God, commanding him to return to man’s original destiny of leading the living world. But after the flood the silence returns, and prophecy returns to humanity only in the days of Abraham.

The human being described in the Torah is certainly not a “hunter-gatherer” (after all, hunting animals for food was permitted only after the flood), but he is not merely a farmer or a man of culture. He is something unique: “Homo Propheticus.” Have archaeological remains of a “prophetic man” prior to Adam and his descendants been found?

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger

It stands to reason that “Homo Propheticus” would appear after his relative, “Homo sapiens,” reached the stage of creating “culture”; prophecy depends on intellectual maturity, as Maimonides explained.

Paragraph 4, line 1:
After the terrible corruption brought by the quest for prophecy…

There, line 2:
… but he receives no answer. Lamech asks that his son bring comfort…

Paragraph 5, line 1:
The human being described in the Torah is certainly not a “hunter-gatherer”…

It should be noted that the phrase “And God blessed them” is also said regarding the animals created on the fifth day, but in the case of man there is added “And He said to them,” in order to emphasize that this is an explicit statement that also has the meaning of a command.

A command contains several elements. On the one hand, in “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth,” man is given rule over the animal world. On the other hand, in the second “And God said,” human beings are compared to animals in that they are permitted to eat grasses and the fruit of the tree, and from the positive one may infer the negative: food from animals is forbidden to both humans and animals.

Man’s destiny as ruler of the animal world is for the benefit of his “subjects,” not for their destruction.

Best regards, S. Z. Levinger