Re: Darwinian exegesis (along with some 24-hour insights)

Here is an excerpt from a response I received from a rabbi friend
regarding a 24-hour day Creation. He embraces a fair amount of the
mystic perspectives. It is included here primarily because it speaks to
levels of understanding, but the overall insight is interesting as
well. JimA
<>
"... Within the Jewish world, the Orthodoxy, which constitutes the
majority of Rabbis in Israel, will accept the "24 hour day" definition
for the word "yom"....However, the Torah traditionally contains four
different levels known as "Pardase". These levels were given to Moses
at Sinai with only the first level being the story that is revealed in
writing in the Torah. The other levels were maintained in a strict oral
tradition that was actually forbidden to write down and so was
transmitted and memorized from generation to generation. In these
deeper levels of understanding of Torah there are different teachings
that hang on the same words that make up the story but reveal a much
wider body of knowledge. So the phrase, " It was evening and it was
morning" actually refers to the process of emanation of an Essential
light (Divine quality) which is called a "yom" (day) as it moves from
evening (concealment) to morning (revelation). It is not a measure of
time. Only those teachers who have received initiation into the deeper
levels will be aware of this. Of course, in response to the argument
between science and religion about the age of the world, defenders of
the 7 days as time have had to either close their minds or search for
some stretch to explain away dinosaur bones. ..."

RFaussette@aol.com wrote:

>Jan wrote:
>Yes, Darwinian exegesis exists, but I believe that all of us on this forum want to be true to the original text. However, the people who wrote down the first time the chapters of Genesis etc. looked at the world in a different way than we do, they spoke a language we do not understand, and lived in circumstances we cannot imagine.
>
>rich:
>Yes, but you imply that Darwinian exegesis is not true to the original text. I have studied what Jewish mystics have determined about genesis and they say there is a science of nature in genesis that is deliberately concealed. Have you explored their contention? They read in the original language. I don't know anyone who has done Darwinian exegesis but me, (please identify someone) and if you haven't read my paper, you can't say it's not true to the texts. I see things in the text none of you have talked about here and as a Christian on Bible history lists I have had to deal with theories about the text that are more startling even than what I've presented here. For example, Biblical minimalists believe the OT was re-engineered by Ezra at the behest of the Persian kings to empower a buffer state on the fringes of the Persian empire that would threaten Egypt. In other words, Genesis is a primer for empowering a people to conquer. I'm not even going that far. I'm simply saying!
> that there is a Darwinian thread in Genesis that runs from the fall to Joseph that deals with personal and social success. I don't create that thread. I simply point it out and show quite simply how it perfectly conforms to Darwinian selection and to Christology. Its not rocket science and its not sleight of hand.
>But no one here will even talk about it on the list.
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>rich
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Received on Thu Mar 3 13:57:39 2005