Judaism & Teachings About the Universe (Edexcel GCSE Religious Studies B): Revision Note

Jewish teachings about the origins & value of the universe

• Jews believe that God created the universe and that the Torah explains this in Genesis chapters 1 and 2

• Genesis 1 focuses on the order of creation and the time it took God to create everything

  • Over seven days God created light and dark, the heavens, land, sea and vegetation, sun, moon and stars, birds and fish, land animals and humans

    • Day 1 – light and darkness

    • Day 2 – skies and oceans

    • Day 3 – land and plants

    • Day 4 – sun moon and stars

    • Day 5 – birds and fish

    • Day 6 – animals and humans

    • Day 7 - God rested

  • Genesis 2 describes how God created man, then woman, and his relationship with the people he had created

    • The Bible states that God made Adam and Eve on the 6th day

    • God creates Adam from clay, and ‘breathes life’ into him suggesting a personal relationship

    • God created man in his image and made woman from man

• Adam was tasked with guarding the Garden of Eden and was told not to eat from the Forbidden Tree

• The Genesis accounts are also in the Old Testament of Christianity, and so both Jews and Christians have the same accounts of how God created the world

• Within Judaism, there are different ways of interpreting the Genesis account

  • Many Orthodox Jews believe that the Torah is the literal word of God, revealed to Moses, and therefore the account should be taken as the literal truth about creation

  • Other Jews, including Liberal and Reform Jews, would say that the Torah account is a metaphor and is open to interpretation. They would say that it needs to be interpreted in the light of the scientific evidence about the origins of the universe that have been uncovered since the time of the Torah

Scientific explanations of the origins of the universe

• Science teaches that the universe started around 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang

• Matter was concentrated into one extremely small hot point and this began to expand and cool

• The expansion continues to this day

• The stars and planets were all formed by clusters of the cooling matter and more diverse atoms forming and condensing

• Scientists offer evidence for these explanations that include

  • The ‘ripple’ in space – the background radiation that can be detected

  • The fact that the galaxies are moving away, shows that the universe is still expanding from a central point

Jewish responses to scientific explanations of the universe

• Some Orthodox Jews might find it hard to accept scientific arguments about the origins of the universe

• They would say that the truth about the origins of the universe was revealed to them in the Torah, the divinely inspired message given by God to Moses

  • As the holiest part of the Tenakh, the Torah contains the 613 mitzvot which are central to Jewish life and identity

  • Keeping these laws defines Jews and means that they are truly living as God's chosen people

  • Therefore Ultra-Orthodox Jews might have problems accepting scientific arguments since they are not identical to the accounts in Genesis

  • Their belief that God is omnipotent means that it is perfectly possible for him to have created the universe in such a short period of time as seven days

• Other Orthodox Jews would accept that belief in the Genesis account need not necessarily contradict the scientific evidence for the Big Bang Theory

  • They might say that the references to the days of creation might be an allegory, referring to the 'stages' of creation

  • Each day might represent a stage of creation which may have taken many millions of years, this means the Genesis account need not necessarily contradict the scientific evidence for the Big Bang Theory

  • As the stages of creation outlined in Genesis roughly match the order in which scientists believe life developed in the universe, there is no contradiction in accepting the truth of both

    • For example, there is not necessarily any conflict between saying that the universe began by God saying 'Let there be light' and the Big Bang, since both are differing descriptions of the same event

• Many Jews, including Liberal and Reform Jews, would argue that the Torah account of the origins of the universe is a metaphor and therefore is open to interpretation

  • They would say that even if it is not literally true, the Creation account is a story with meaning

  • The Genesis account teaches Jews that:

    • God was the creating force behind everything

    • humankind was given the responsibility of caring for everything in creation

    • everything in the world is created as God intended

    • God values everything in the world and sees it as 'good'

• Most Jews believe that religion and scientific beliefs about creation can work together and that accepting scientific accounts does not have to affect their belief that God was the creator of all things

Jewish responses to the view of the universe as a commodity

• Jews value the world because it was created by God, and it is his:

• Jews believe that humans were given stewardship of this gift

• No Jews should use the world as a commodity since the world is a gift to care for and should remain in the state in which God created it. Humans have no right to abuse God's gift

• The Jewish Declaration on Nature (1986) said:

• As custodians of the earth, Jews believe that they should try to make the world better. This idea is known as tikkun olam, which literally means 'mending the world'

  • Tikkun olam means caring for the environment, but it has a wider meaning of caring for everything and everyone in the world, including people

• Jews recognise that everything in nature is interdependent. Trees are seen as being of particular importance

  • Since 1948 when the state of Israel was created, millions of trees have been planted to rebuild the nation and try to reclaim the desert