Dear Tim Scobey—



You are absolutely correct in saying that neither of the two Creation accounts in the book of Genesis expresses the view of creation ex nihilo or presupposes such a view. Some of the medieval Jewish commentators had a great deal of trouble with this and did much to squeeze the ex nihilo notion into their interpretation of the text — with results which you rightly criticize (the Ramban’s claim that bara’ denotes creation from nothingness flies in the face of Numbers 16:30, as you can easily see). Others felt no difficulty with creation from pre-existent stuff and so had no need for mental acrobatics of this kind — although Rashi was much disposed to bring Midrashic/allegoric interpretations even for those texts, the simple meaning of which is perfectly clear. Why he did it is a good question. One has to remember that by Rashi’s time the earlier Rabbinic Midrashim had reached canonical status in themselves, and Rashi presumably labored to show how the later body of canonical writings — viz., Rabbinic writings — is based on the earlier body of canonical writings — viz., the Bible. But he had clearly distinguished between the literal meaning of the biblical text and the Midrashic interpretation.

It is precisely the lack of such distinction that plagues Schroeder’s book. He works out a kind of midrash and then claims that this is what the biblical text actually says (and that only for Genesis 1; he never really gets to the contradictions between this account of the Creation and the one in Genesis 2). Well, what reasons does he have to suppose that a day consisting of evening and morning is anything but the regular earthly day, or that the biblical story presumes some frame of reference different from that of the Earth?

Moreover, it should be mentioned that the traditional Jewish calendar is built on the assumption that the six days of Creation were regular 24-hour days, and it takes the sixth day — the day of the creation of Adam — as the first Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s Day. This admittedly has no bearing on a literal understanding of the biblical text, which should be analyzed on its own merit, but would the rabbi who referred you to Schroeder’s book consider abandoning the Jewish calendar? (Actually, there are vestiges of two mutually contradictory calendrical systems in the Jewish calendar – but that’s another story; see our Pamphlet 6.)



Regards,



Daat Emet

Dear Tim,



Man’s consciousness and his acknowledgement of his very existence cause him to wonder and speculate on “how he exists,” but beyond the sense of wonder, all concern with this question is nothing but an intellectual game with no possibility of solution. Man’s intelligence cannot comprehend nor grasp creation ex nihilo or infinity. From a religious faith standpoint, this question has no relevance, either, and there is no distinction between one who fulfills the commandments and thinks that the world is primordial and one who fulfills commandments and thinks that the world was created ex nihilo.

As for your question, in the book II Macabbees (7:28) it is written, “Look at the Heavens and the Earth…the Lord has created them from nothing.” This formulation is not unambiguous; it can be read as a rhetorical question or as a statement of opinion. But this is not the true concept of creation ex nihilo, and one can always say that He created the world from within Himself (for example, as Plotinus, of the third century CE school of neo-Platonism, suggested in his theory of conferring), and so this is not true creation ex nihilo. In any case, the Church Fathers understood it as a statement of opinion, and explicitly saw it as an expression rejecting the Aristotelian theory of the world’s eternity as well as the Platonic idea of creation from pre-existing matter, and coined the term “ex nihilo.”

This principle is also found in Sefer HaYetzira (first centuries CE) “and He made what was not into what was.” Rabbinic philosophers like Rabbi Saadiah Gaon (commentary on Sefer HaYetzira 1:1) expressed this principle in words: “Created things not of what was,” and Maimonides wrote: “The world as a whole…G-d invented it after an absolute lack of what was finished…through His will and desire, not through things” (Guide to the Perplexed 2:25). The Hebrew expression for this principle, briyah yesh m’ayin, is first found — according to Prof. Yehuda Libes of the Hebrew University — in the work of Shlomo Ibn Gavirol (in his poem Keter Malchut).

See also: H. Wolfson, Mediaeval Studies in Honor of J. D. M Ford (Cambridge, 1948) pp. 355-370, or in Hebrew, Wolfson, Jewish Studies in the Middle Ages Jerusalem, 1998, pp. 104-110.



Sincerely,



Daat Emet