Bereishit 1 and the Creation of the Universe

Up to now, my posts have been mostly against an Orthodox position. In this post, I will, at least mildly, support one.

I'm sure most readers are aware of the apparent contradiction between Bereishit 1 and the scientifically established date of the Universe. The Torah says the world was created in six days; science, over billions of years.

There are several ways in which Orthodox Jews have attempted to tackle this very strong challenge. I will start with that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who stated that the world, indeed, was created in six days, but was made to look a lot older in order to test us.

This response has come under a lot of fire. Rabbi Slifkin, I believe, responded by saying that one could just as well say that the Torah was given to test us to see how foolishly we would act in believing something against all empirical evidence. After all, God established both the Universe and the Torah, which seem to contradict each other; how do we know which one is right?

Bertrand Russell's Omphalos Hypothesis is another way of responding. He suggests that it is also possible to say that the Universe was created 5 minutes ago. You may respond, "but I remember events that happened more than 5 minutes ago!" This, however, is not a valid reason to reject the hypothesis, as everything was created 5 minutes ago as if it had existed for much longer. By performing a reductio ad absurdum, Russell shows that both hypotheses are absurd, and one should just follow the empirical evidence.

The second approach is to say that "days" in Bereishit 1 are not really days. After all, how could they if there was no sun until the fourth day?

This approach overlooks an important, but not well known fact of ancient cosmology: many people did not think that the Sun caused the light of day, but rather coincided with the light of day. After all, on a cloudy day, it is still light, but there is no Sun! And at dawn and dusk, it is also light, but there is no Sun! Let us examine Bereishit 1, and see how this fits in:
1:5 God calls the light, day, and the dark, night. No mention of the sun here; it just seems that light=day and dark=night.
1:14 God creates the heavenly beings to separate between day and night. It does not say that they are the essence of day and night.
1:15 The heavenly beings are to shine on the Earth - the Moon at night, the Sun during the day. This is more evident during the next Passuk:
1:16 The Sun reigns over the day, and the Moon reigns over the night. Nothing about their appearance that causes it to be day or night; after all, the Moon can appear during the day, but that does not make it both day and night!

I admit that the evidence is certainly not conclusive in favor of the hypothesis offered here, and I don't remember the source where I saw this, so don't trust me on it. Please try to look up the source if you are interested.

There are other problems, though, with the "days are not days" approach. The order of creation seems to be completely off. Trees and other plants form before the Sun does. What is their source of light? Is it the original light of day? Then we have the problem that I raised earlier about what defined the day in ancient times. Also, there is no water above the sky (you may be inclined to say that this is a mischaracterization of Day 2, but we see from the story of Noach and Iyov 38 that it almost definitely means a body of water above the sky). The order of the creation of the animals is questionable, but not conclusive either way.

The final approach that I will bring up is that of Cassuto and others, that the Torah is not trying to actually describe creation in Bereishit 1, but rather trying to play off of the existing mythologies of the ancient world for its own theological purposes. Bereishit 1, indeed, bears somewhat of a resemblance to the Enuma Elish, which describe the theogony/cosmogony of the ancient Mesopotamians. The Torah could be, for instance, trying to reverse the theology of the ancient Pagans, by stating that it was not the cosmos which created the gods, but rather God who created the cosmos.

This last approach is, I believe, tenable, and therefore is the one I would support if holding an Orthodox Jewish opinion.