Creation

Is there a common conception behind the “lights” of the Priestly redactors, the “flaming wheels” of the Ionian philosophers, and the “lamps” of the Mesopotamian commentators?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

Demonstrating God’s control of the world

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

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

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

The “Other” Benefits of Partners

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.