Rabbi David E. Ostrich, Congregation Brit Shalom
Clergy Column for The Centre Daily Times
Published October 20, 2024
When many of us think about Genesis, our minds immediately go to the miracles. Everything is created in six days. There are incredibly long lifespans: 930 years for Adam, 950 years for Noah, and 969 years for Methuselah. There are some miraculous pregnancies. There is an incident of fire and brimstone—and an overly curious lady being turned into a pillar of salt.
Many of us find it hard to get past the miracles, and we are not the first ones to get stuck on their sheer unbelievability. Some Sages, like the pious French Rabbi known as Rashi, focused on the mitzvot, the commandments that help us to lead moral and holy lives. As he put it, if you find the miracles of Genesis unbelievable, do not believe them. Skip the whole book of Genesis and go straight to Exodus 12 where we have the first mitzvah: “This month shall be the beginning of months for you.” Pay attention to the mitzvot, not the miracles.
There are those who expect Genesis to be a scientific textbook—and one figures that God could have written such a book. As the inventor/creator of physics, chemistry, fluid dynamics, and electro-biology, God could have included them in the Bible but instead chose a different approach. Perhaps it was because our ancient shepherding ancestors did not understand such things as billions of years, molten plasma, and atomic structure. In any event, God decided to write a book more relevant to their lives—with simple explanations of the creative process and examples of human strength, weakness, morality, and the lack thereof. For whatever reason, God decided not to write the Bible as a physics textbook or chemical treatise. Trying to find science in the Bible is missing God’s point.
Another thing about God: I believe that God is at least as a good a writer as William Shakespeare. As the inventor of language, God knows how to use it in all sorts of illustrative and inspiring ways—many of which are not literal. Take, for example, Genesis 4 where Cain gets jealous of Abel and, projecting his disappointment, kills his brother. In writing of the cosmic outrage of such a terrible thing, God chooses some literary techniques. First, God asks a rhetorical question: “What have you done?” God knows the answer, but such a question is asked to focus the reader’s attention. Then God selects two metaphors: “Hark, your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground...which opened its mouth to receive it...” Science teaches us that the ground does not have a mouth, nor can liquid like blood speak, but that is not the point. The metaphor and anthropomorphism are intended to communicate that an outrage has occurred—one so egregious that even the inanimate world is overwhelmed with shock and grief. Reading this passage literally and as though it were a scientific explanation misses the author’s point and denies both God’s message and method.
The same can be said for Psalms that proclaim, “The heavens declare the Glory of God.” These are not literal statements but rather poetry and metaphor. The marvels of creation are so profound that, could the sky speak, it would burst out in song. The message is clear: if inanimate objects would be amazed by God’s wonders, should we not pay attention and respond to God’s creations with praise?
Trying to read every word of the Bible literally denies the method and the message that God intended—intends. God’s point is to give us guidance and help us to be good and holy. Through stories of human strength and weakness, we are given examples of the kinds of challenges we humans face and of the various ways that we can respond. As God puts it in Deuteronomy, “I set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life that you may live.”
There is certainly a time for science, but science and natural history can be covered in other books. The Bible is a book about morality and holiness and the possibilities of godliness on earth.