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Creation

From the Primordial Light to Shabbat: How Creation Became Seven Days

The creation account was divided in the post-exilic period into six days to provide an etiology for Shabbat. This necessitated creating light on day one to distinguish between day and night. In turn, it required assigning significance to the sun and moon on day four beyond their role as sources of light.

Prof.

Christoph Berner

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Genesis’ Two Creation Accounts Compiled and Interpreted as One

Already the editors of the Torah recognized the discrepancies between the two creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2–3 and made redactional alignments so the two stories would read better next to each other. Such awareness is also evident among the earliest interpreters of the Bible, including the book of Jubilees and the Septuagint.

Prof.

Konrad Schmid

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The Etrog: Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

The etrog tree, according to midrash, fulfilled God’s command in creation, such that the tree tasted like its fruit. It was also the tree of Knowledge from which Eve ate. By taking the etrog on Sukkot along with the other species, we atone for this primordial sin.

Prof. Rabbi

Rachel Adelman

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Enuma Elish: Babylonia’s Creation Myth and the Enthronement of Marduk

The new year and Akitu festivals in Babylonia were celebrated in the spring, during which the high priest of Marduk’s Esagil temple would read the Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish. This narrative tells how the young god Marduk became king of the gods by saving them from Tiamat and her army of monsters.

Prof.

Wayne Horowitz

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The Genesis of Creation

God creates life in the heavens and the earth: the first three verses of the Bible explained.

Dr.

Lisbeth S. Fried

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Why Is Creation in the Torah?

History according to Rashi, science according to Maimonides. In Maimonides’ view, the Sages knew that hidden behind the allegorical language of the creation account is Aristotelian physics. This knowledge was lost until he (Maimonides) figured out the secret on his own.

Prof.

Menachem Kellner

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Creating Order from Tohu and Bohu

God encounters the primordial תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ (tohu and bohu), dividing it into its constituent parts and reshaping it into a wiser, more orderly world, a task entrusted to humans thereafter.

Prof.

James A. Diamond

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Making Kiddush: Mysticism in the Age of Science

The Torah describes God creating through speech, midrash mores specifically understands creation through the letters of the aleph-bet, and the kabbalists envision it as a series of divine emanations, contractions, and primal pairings. What meaning can we find in these ancient creation myths in light of evolution?

Prof. Rabbi

Arthur Green

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The Torah Begins with Creation to Defend Israel’s Right to the Land?

The theme of a divine creator’s right to assign territory to his people is pervasive in the Bible and ancient Near Eastern literature. Perhaps the rabbinic midrash which suggests that the Torah begins with creation to defend Israel against the accusation they stole the land of Canaan were onto something.

Prof.

Jason Radine

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The Genesis of Time

The simple meaning of Genesis 1–2:4 is that God created the world out of primordial elements. And yet, one important new initiative was the construction of time, embracing the day, the month, the year, and the week. The week, however, does not depend on a cosmic phenomenon but served to introduce the concept of a people holy to a creator God.

Prof.

Jack M. Sasson

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Creation from Primordial Matter: Did Rashi Read Plato’s Timaeus?

Rashi interprets the opening verses of the creation story as describing God’s use of primordial substances to form the world. This idea appears in various forms in rabbinic literature but some of Rashi’s particular notions are only found in Plato’s Timaeus. Could this be one of Rashi’s sources?

Prof.

Warren Zev Harvey

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Yom Kippur’s Seder Avodah Begins with God’s Creation of the World

Arguably, the highlight of the prayer service on Yom Kippur is the Seder Avodah, a type of piyyut (liturgical hymn) that poetically reenacts in every detail the ritual service performed by the high priest on Yom Kippur in the Jerusalem Temple. But why do these poems begin with the creation story?

Prof. Rabbi

Dalia Marx

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Does a Day Begin in the Evening?

Close reading of the relevant biblical texts uncovers friction, maybe momentous historical reform.

Dr. Hacham

Isaac S. D. Sassoon

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Invoking Creation in the Story of the Ten Plagues

Demonstrating God’s control of the world

Prof.

Ziony Zevit

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Torah’s Dynamic Truth

Judy Klitsner

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The Gender of God

What is the gender of the God of creation? Of YHWH in general?

Prof.

Marc Zvi Brettler

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Mother and Child: Postpartum Defilement and Circumcision

Dr.

Tzvi Novick

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Before the Beginning: Between Ancient and Modern Cosmology

Prof.

Ziony Zevit

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If the Sun Is Created on Day 4, What Is the Light on Day 1?

Commentators have struggled with this question for centuries, but ancient cosmology offers a compelling solution.

Dr. Rabbi

Zev Farber

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In Search of the Soul: Between Torah and Science

A pediatric neurologist searches for the soul through the lens of current neuroscience.

Dr.

Joel Yehudah Rutman

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Non-Gender Equality at Creation

The “Other” Benefits of Partners

Prof. Rabbi

Tamara Cohn Eskenazi

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The Making of Adam

Dr.

Malka Z. Simkovich

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Rosh Hashanah: Celebrating the Creation of the Individual or the Community?

God creates “the human... male and female” (Genesis 1), which we typically understand to mean the first human couple. However, a look at the creation of other species in the same chapter suggests otherwise.

Prof. Rabbi

David Frankel

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The Exposition of the Garden of Eden Story

The Garden of Eden story includes a lengthy introductory exposition (vv. 2:4b-3:1a), whose seemingly tangential details contrast the utopia of Eden with the dystopia of the real world.

Prof.

Yairah Amit

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Gender Equality at Creation

A methodologically rigorous reading of the account of the Woman's creation reveals a fundamentally egalitarian view of the sexes that is both nuanced and psychologically sensitive.

Prof.

Raanan Eichler

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Did God Bless Shabbat?

“And the Lord Blessed the Seventh Day and Consecrated It” (Genesis 2:3). Can time be blessed?

Prof. Rabbi

David Frankel

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The Tabernacle, the Creation, and the Ideal of an Orderly World

The account of the Tabernacle’s construction echoes the creation story in Genesis 1-2:4a, providing an interpretive key to the ancient understanding of this structure. Ritual theory provides further insight into what Israelite readers may have found meaningful about the Tabernacle as a ritual place.

Prof. Rabbi

Naftali S. Cohn

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Differing Conceptions of the Divine Creator

The two creation stories of Genesis, chapters 1 and 2-3 (P and J) introduce two long narratives which continue throughout much of the Torah. Each is working with a different conception of the creator—a rather human-like God versus a majestic and distant deity.

Prof.

Marc Zvi Brettler

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In the Beginning There Is the Question

The bridge that enables the annual traversal from the ending of the Torah back to its beginning is the anticipation of new questions.

Prof.

James A. Diamond

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Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Questioning the Centrality of Empirical Data

Prof.

Tamar Ross

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My Encounter with the Firmament

The Torah describes God’s fashioning the firmament (רקיע) on the second day of creation. This piece of the universe, however, doesn’t actually exist—a problem obfuscated in my yeshiva education.

Oren Fass M.D.

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