In ninth grade I submitted my first take on the creation story to my young Bible teacher, Yossi Ofer. Now a prominent professor, Ofer had just begun his first teaching job; his approach sparked my lifelong love-affair with the Hebrew Bible. His sensitive response to my comparison between Genesis and the Big Bang included, however, a warning: “It is precisely those commentators who tried in the past to be ‘modern,’ to base their exegesis on the ‘latest science’ of their day, it is they who got antiquated.” Over 40 years later I’m still chewing on the very same questions, and his warning still rings in my ears.
Yet, despite the reasons for skepticism, in this essay I am going to offer a novel reading of the first eleven chapters in Genesis precisely in light of modern discoveries in evolutionary biology, geology, and human development. My goal is not to reconcile the Bible with science.
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