On Ralbag and the Creation Sequence

Scene 1: “Dad, phone call from Joe.” “Tell him I’m not home.” (Dad lies.)

Scene 2: “Dad, phone call from Joe.” “Give me half a minute to get out of the house. Then tell him I’m not home.” (Dad avoids lying.)

In scene 1 dad has his son say something that isn’t so, (for whatever purpose). In scene 2 dad avoids falsehood yet realizes his goal of not speaking to Joe by adjusting himself to the message that he wishes to convey.

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Ralbag says that the torah puts the creation of the luminaries on the fourth day, after the creation of vegetation, though this isn’t so, in order to convey a crucial message to sun-worshippers in general, and particularly to the Jewish nation that had spent some two centuries in sun-worshipping Egypt, that the sun is only fourth rate. Ralbag’s interpretation has a certain beauty.

1. It is consistent with science.

2. It is consistent with R. Hirsch’es observation that a creation story where G-d made an ingenious system of progression from the simple to the complicated—[from bang to amoeba and] from amoeba to all life—would inspire us to even greater reverence of the Creator.

3. It is consistent with R. Yerucham Levovitz’es understanding that G-d prefers to work through nature.

But it has an obvious drawback, it has the torah writing something that isn’t so.

I therefore humbly suggest a modification of Ralbag much like the way scene 2 modifies scene 1. That is, it was crucially important to convey the message that the sun is only fourth rate and therefore the Creator indeed created it on the fourth day, after vegetation on the third day. The vegetation thus existed and survived on day three without the sun, who needs the sun?! -another demotion for the sun. And if “day” three was longer than 24 hours, the vegetation “snubbed” the sun that much longer.

The weakness of this modification is that it goes against R. Hirsch and R. Yerucham. Yet the message of not worshipping the sun might be valuable enough that the lessons derived by R. Hirsch and R. Yerucham will just have to be set aside. Ralbag allows this message to set aside the torah’s moral “obligation” to only write that which is so, so important is this message. One might argue that if this message is important enough to do that, it is certainly important enough to set nature aside.

It would seem that Ralbag only addresses the science of his time, though his interpretation is a cure-all for any conflict between the torah’s creation account and science. If in his day science thought that the earth was created before the sun, then the torah’s placing the creation of earth before the creation of the sun would be consistent with the facts. If not, the torah’s sequence would be to demote the sun to fourth place. According to my modification, the earth was indeed created before the sun to convey the very same lesson. I am unaware, but I claim no erudition on this point, of a way the sun could be dated against original vegetation whose descendents fill the world. The primordial vegetation is perhaps gone without a trace, perhaps like many of the missing links, and cannot be dated.

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After the sin of the golden calf, Moshe prays for forgiveness for the Jewish people. “If You will not forgive them”, he says to Hashem, “erase me from the book that You have written.” What is “the book that Hashem has written”? Rashi says that this is the torah. Ralbag says that “the book” is an allegory referring to creation, which Hashem has “written”.

The torah and creation, the “books” of Rashi and Ralbag, or more specifically the torah and the laws of nature that govern creation, are in conflict about whether vegetation preceded the sun or vice versa. Ralbag, in a sense, sees the book of the torah conceding to the book of creation, to teach a crucial lesson. Our modification sees the book of creation conceding, bending over backwards, to the book of the torah, to allow it to teach a crucial lesson. We would claim that though creation might be the more concrete of the two, the torah is more fundamental, and creation should thus bow to the messages that the torah seeks to convey.

(Rashi (2:5) says that although vegetation was created on day three it did not come out of the ground until later. That view would be a discussion unto itself.)

(Based in part on http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/772116/Rabbi_Nosson_Slifkin/Dinosaurs_and_the_Development_of_the_Universe )