The First Six Days

by Nathan Robertson

  The arrival of Abba Arika is recorded as the starting-point in the chronology of the Talmudic age. It was the 530th year of the Seleucidan and the 219th year of the common era. Rav first chose Nehardea, where the exilarch appointed him agoranomos, or market-master, and Rabbi Shela made him lecturer (amora) of his college (Jerusalem Talmud Bava Batra v. 15a; Yoma, 20b). Rav then moved to Sura, on the Euphrates, where he established a school of his own, which soon became the intellectual centre of the Babylonian Jews. In fact, it was at the school of Rav that Jewish learning in Babylonia found its permanent home and centre. Rav’s activity made Babylonia independent of Jerusalem, and gave it that predominant position which it was destined to occupy for several centuries.

  Rashi

  Rashi is a Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, or Rabbi Shlomo Yarchi, born February 22, 1040 and lived until July 13, 1105. The acronym is sometimes also expanded as Rabban Shel Israel, Teacher of Israel. Rashi was the author of the first comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud (Oral Law plus early commentaries) and Tanakh (ancient scripture consisting of the Five books of Moses, the ‘Prophets’ and the ‘Writings’). Renowned for his ability to present the basic meaning of the text in a concise and clear way. Rashi’s commentaries, which appear in all printed editions of the Talmud and Torah, are an indispensable companion to all students of Judaism.

  Rashi first learnt Torah from his father on at the age of five. His father was his main Torah teacher until his death when Rashi was still a youth. At the age of 17 Rashi married, and in the manner of young Torah scholars of the time, went to learn in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yaakov ben Yakar in Worms. When Rabbi Yaakov died in 1064, Rashi continued learning in Worms for another year in the yeshiva of his relative, Rabbi Isaac ben Eliezer Halevi, who was also chief rabbi of Worms. Then he moved to Mainz, where he studied under another of his relatives, Rabbi Isaac ben Judah, the rabbinic head of Mainz and one of the leading sages of the Lorraine region between Germany and France.

  Rashi's commentary on the Torah is believed to have grown out of the lectures he gave to his students in his yeshiva, and developed with the questions and answers they raised on it. Rashi only completed this commentary towards the end of his life. It was immediately accepted as authoritative by all Jewish communities, Ashkenazi and Sephardi alike.

  Time

  One of the very first apparent contradictions with Bereshis and current scientific thought is the time taken for the universe to come into being and evolve into what we see around us today. From a very simple reading of the text it appears Hashem had made the heavens and the earth in six days. What were these “days” and what is a day to Hashem? Hashem as the creator of time would also be beyond time and finally the first three days occurred before the creation of the earth, the rotation of which determines a day. The Hebrew for the word day is “yom” and it uses the same word here, but we should examine exactly what is being described as a day in the text.

  It states after each “day’s” events there was evening and there was morning, one day. This was after Hashem calls the “light” day and the “darkness” night on the very first day. Therefore it appears that a day begins with a period of darkness, evening, and then light prevails to give a morning. Or more simply put, a day consists of first darkness then light. The word for evening “erev” has another meaning, to confuse or intermingle. The word “boker” is connected to the word “bikoret”, meaning, to clarify. Therefore each day is a transition from a chaotic mixed state (evening) to a clarified state (morning). Another way to look at this is also a transition from hidden (darkness) to revealed (light), essentially this is what Bereshis is all about, the hidden potential of a universe being revealed in a series of steps much like a series of advancements akin to evolution. In fact this is what I will be drawing parallels to in this book: the uncanny likeness of the evolution in bereishis to the scientific evolution, not just of life but also of matter, and the universe itself.

  Therefore I would describe a day in Bereshis as more of a process of bringing in the actual from a state of potential and it seems to have gone through six different stages or six “days”.

  Also if one reads Bereshis closely there appears to be a switch of perspective, the first section describing the six days of creation including the forming of Adam, the first man. After the description of the 7th day (Shabbat) and summary of creation the perspective shifts to that of Adam himself. The Hebrew year we are in now is 5766, and this represents either the time from creation or the time from the creation of Adam, depending on different opinions. In this book I follow the line that the Hebrew calendar began at the creation of Adam and not of creation itself.

  Ramban states clearly in his commentary to Bereshis that the account of creation is a deep mystery and cannot be understood by merely reading the verses.

  There are many allusions in the Torah and Talmud that reveal a much longer creation period than a literal six days on earth and I have included these below.

  Ibn Ezra states that “A secret about the age of the universe is alluded to here”1 while discussing shmita, and the idea of sabbatical cycles.

  The shmita (year of remission) occurs every seven years and seven shmita’s culminates in the yovel (jubilee) on the fiftieth year. The farmers within Israel leave their land fallow every seventh year (shmita) as it is a shabbat for the land.

  Ramban states “And the seventh was chosen for days, for years, and for shmita but it all relates to another matter and this is the secret of the age of the universe (sod y'mos ha'olam)”2. Also alluding to shmita and the significance of the seven cycles, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi also said: "When Moses ascended on high, the ministering angels spoke before the Holy One, blessed be He: “Sovereign of the Universe! What business has one born of woman amongst us? He has come to receive the Torah,” answered He to them. Said they to Him, “That secret treasure, which has been hidden by Thee for nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created.”3

  Rabbi Shimon the Pious said: “These are the nine hundred and seventy four generations who pressed themselves forward to be created before the world was created, but were not created.”4

  The medieval Spanish Jewish writer Yehuda Halevi stated “If a Jew who believes in the Torah thinks that the world was created from primeval matter, and that many worlds, made from the same primeval matter, existed before this one, this would not be considered a flaw in his faith.”.5

  As it says in the tehillim “For a thousand years in Thy sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night.”6

  Also in tehillim “He remembered His covenant forever…the Word he commanded for a thousand generations”.7 The Talmud reveals that this verse indicates that the Torah was given to Moses and all the Hebrews at Mount Sinai after the elapse of 1,000 human generations. Since Moses was of the 26th generation following the first progenitor of the human race, this indicates some 974 generations before Adam. 40 years represents a generation traditionally and therefore 974 ´ 40 = 38960 years up to the time of Adam.

  In Otzar haHaim, Rabbi Yitzchak of Akko (a close student of the Ramban) 700 years ago also postulates a novel way to calculate the divine period of time related to creation. Rabbi Yitzchak derived from the ancient Kabbalistic work, Sefer haTemunah, the work of the first century Rabbi Nehunya Ben haKanah, a chronology using the 'divine year' taken from Psalms 90:4 (a 'divine day' equals 1000 earth years; a 'divine year' is thus 365,250 earth years).

  The Talmud8 states that “The world will exist for six thousand years and in the seven-thousandth year, it will be destroyed.” Rabbi Nehunya Ben haKanah writes that there were 6 cycles of 7,000 years each which preceded our present cycle of creation and that the world will be in existence for seven 7,000 year 'Sabbatical' or Shemita cycles, each one different than its predecessor. Moreover, it will become desolated during every seven-thousandth year. Rabbi Yitzchak concludes that, as there are seven Sabbatical cycles in a Jubilee, the world will exist for 49,000 years. Human civ
ilizations will thus also rise and fall seven times during this period.

  The Shmita Theory became known as the Shitat Sefer Temunah. Many pre-Ari kabbalists accepted the Shitat Sefer Temunah, including the Ramban and the Radbaz.

  Rabbi Moshe Ben-Yehudah, a modern Kabbalist living in Jerusalem, sums this up very concisely: “With the completion of each succeeding cycle of 6,000 years, the entire creation is brought one step higher in its (never ending) process of Tikun (Rectification), Birrur (Purification) and Aliyah (Elevation). This occurs in such a way that each particular level is elevated to the position of the one above it.”

  There is some dispute as to which cycle we are now in; some Kabbalistic sources maintain that it is the second cycle, while others believe we are already in the seventh and final cycle. Rabbi Yitzchak's calculations made over 700 years ago are based on the notion that we are already in the seventh cycle, and that Adam would thus have been born when the earth was 42,000 years old, which agrees very well with the 974 generations before Adam. However, he writes further that, according to Sefer haTemunah, the first 42,000 years before the creation of our present human race should be taken as divine years, i.e. 365,250 earth years. The universe can then be calculated to be 42,000 x 365,250 years old, which equals 15,340,500,000 years, or 15 billion years.

  In fact Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan calculates the time period of creation based on exactly this method, which reveals a time period almost identical to cosmological prediction.

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  1Va'yikra 25:2, Ibn Ezra.

  2Shmos 21:2, Ramban.

  3Talmud Shabbat 88:B.

  4Talmud Chagiga 13:A-B

  5Kuzari 1:67

  6Psalms 90:4

  7Psalms 105:8

  8Talmud Sanhedrin 97:A

  Day 1

  “In the beginning Hashem created the

  heavens and the earth”

  This statement clearly defines a starting point for the universe at time = 0. This is crucial as for much of scientific cosmology the main belief was that the universe was always here and always will be. The first statement identifies that the universe unfolded from nothing, creation ex nihilio, and Ramban goes on to say that someone who denies creation and believes that the world has always existed eternally denies a main principle of Judaism.

  On Rashi’s discussion of the lights in the firmament formed on the fourth day, Rashi states that they had been created on the first day and on the fourth day he commanded them to be suspended in the sky. Rashi goes on to describe that all the things generated from heaven and earth were created on the first day and then each and everything that exists was fixed on the day upon which it was decreed for it. Rashi’s description here shows that the initial substance created on the first day went on to develop into everything contained in the universe. Essentially everything was created on the first day but only as potential, then as the universe developed everything actualised from this potential to be. Closely mirroring the Big bang where the matter that constitutes everything in the universe was formed in the initial moments of expansion.

  Also as stated clearly in Bereshis and a principle of Jewish thought is that Hashem spoke the universe into being, resulting in the ten sayings of creation. That is the words themselves were the creation. Speaking involves stringing a number of words together in a linear fashion, one cannot say a sentence in one sound, it would just be noise. Therefore a deeper understanding of Hashem speaking into existence the creation is that it was to be done as a linear progression of events, one after another, revealing over a period of time everything that was to be, just as one would do when speaking a sentence.

  Ramban explains that the Hebrew word “bara” (ÑÚÐ) in Bereshis is used when creating something from nothing. Ramban goes on to say that on the first day something has been brought in to being from absolute nihility, an exceedingly fine primary essence with practically no substance. This substance is the potential for bringing forth, ready to receive form and to emerge from the potential to the actual.

  After the word “bara” is used on the first day the language shifts to the use of “yatzar” meaning forming from something that already exists and “asah” meaning completing or making from existing material. These clearly signify that everything was created on the first day from nothing, and then everything came into being from the initial substance at its decreed time. These phrases also correlate to the three worlds Beriyah (world of creation), Yetzirah (world of formation) and Asiyah (world of action).

  This closely reflects scientific belief on the evolution of matter and life itself: all the energy was there at the very beginning but only through a series of developments did matter evolve into more complex forms and eventually into simple life-forms. These simple life-forms further evolved into higher forms of animals and eventually humans. An unravelling of creation, which Torah and science state explicitly. The only difference between Torah and science is that science attributes these events to random interactions of molecules over time. In Torah the unfolding of the universe is a direct manifestation of Hashem’s will.

  Only in the last 50 years has the scientific community resolved the crisis of whether the universe was always here as it is today or it began somehow at some specific point in the past. The steady state theory postulates that the universe is infinitely old, infinitely big and will exist forever. This was the main scientific model until evidence during the first half of this century began to contradict steady state theory and a new theory called the Big Bang model (by George Gamow) was named to fit these new observations.

  Astronomer Edwin P. Hubble first observed the distribution of galaxies in space in 1929. Hubble found that most of the galaxies outside of the Local Group are receding from us, and the ones farther away are receding the fastest. From Hubble's observations, scientists discovered that the Universe is expanding.

  If the universe is expanding and the galaxies are moving further apart, or to be more exact points A and B at any location in space are always moving apart. Then if you hit the rewind button on the universe watching everything get closer and closer together, at some point in the universe’s history, points A and B will be on top of one another, all points in the universe will be in the same point. This is called a singularity, an infinitesimally small volume comprising everything that will unfold into the universe as we know it, time = 0.

  Big bang theory states that the universe erupted from a singularity with enormous energies and expanded and condensed into the matter, stars and galaxies. If such an event occurred then the energy of this cataclysmic “explosion” should be detectable still throughout the universe. If no such event occurred then the temperature of empty space should be -2730C or 0 Kelvin (K), absolute zero. Since the Big bang occurred between 10 to 20 billion years ago the expansion of the universe would have cooled this radiation down immensely, just like a gas cooling as it expands, but it should be detectable as a form of background radiation.

  This cosmic microwave background was first postulated by George Gamow and first observed by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The universe was found to be emitting microwave radiation showing a temperature of empty space of 2.7250C above absolute zero. This may not sound like much but this was a nail in the coffin for steady state theory and the Big bang theory is now the accepted model of the universe.

  The Big bang theory idea runs parallel to Bereshis, showing that the universe began from a singularity at a defining moment and expanded, evolving to what we see today. The primeval fireball expanded, cooled and congealed to form galaxies, stars and planets.

  “And the earth was tohu and bohu with darkness upon the surface of the deep and the wind from Hashem hovered upon the surface of the waters”

  Ramban discusses that the tohu is the pure potential and that even the ancient Greeks had a similar idea with a substance they called “hule”. After this Hashem formed and made things from the tohu or hule. Ramban further states that with this creat
ion of tohu, which was like a small fine speck and had no substance, were created all the creations in the heaven and the earth. Ramban compares this fine speck is to the size of a tiny mustard seed. This process describes that the seed expanded, and the matter within it became "tangible" and formed the heavens, as we know them. Ramban explains that bohu is taken from tohu and that bohu is used in the building process. So we have a process of tohu being created that has no substance, which is converted to a more material or actual form that is used for building.

  Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan1 states that kabbalistically tohu is seen as an intermediate state between potential and realisation. In the initial state the vessels (sefirot, see chapter 7) only had potential existence. Their state of realisation is that of bohu, tohu is the intermediate state between these two.

  I will parallel this with current accepted theory. The universe began infinitesimally small with temperatures in excess of a trillion degrees. Intense heat would have blasted matter into its elementary constituents and atomic nuclei could not exist at these temperatures, atoms would be ripped apart into protons and neutrons. Today we are formed from the matter that condensed out of this energy after billions of years of expansion and cooling. To give an indication of the temperatures involved, if we extrapolate back to 100,000 years after the big bang it was 5,800 K, which is like the surface of the sun. One year after the Big bang it was 2x106 K, or 2000000 K.

  Within the first second of the big bang pure energy condensed into neutrons, protons, electrons and other elementary particles. After one second the rate of nuclear synthesis, production of protons, neutrons and electrons (the building blocks of the universe) had slowed to almost nothing. Fifteen seconds after the big bang the universe cooled enough to allow simple helium nuclei to form, but these are not at the beginning of the chain, see Fig.1.2. Everything we see in the universe is made from these initial neutrons, protons and electrons. The process of nuclear synthesis described above represents the change from tohu to bohu.