13th century rabbi says universe billions of years old

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Anyway, he has found no evidence of old-earth views predating the 18th/19th (even 19th I think) century scientific revelations. Therefore this is an interesting post, and it is groundbreaking evidence if true.

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Anyway, understand that the OP posted something that would be groundbreaking, if true (and it might be).

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Old Earth view before the Eighteen Hundreds ? Hugo St. Vincent (AD 1097 - 1141) - "Flemish scholar of the Augustinian Monastery of St. Victor and later Prior of the monastery in Paris. " - Arthur Custance Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Welcome to the Forum. I have been absent for a long period.You are probably aware of MIT physicist and Orthodox Jew - Gerald Schroeder ?
I have read his book The Science of God.I have also read the chapter from Arthur Custance's book Without Form and Void which chapter is entitled "A Long Held View"Custance refers to an influential rabbi by the name of Akiba ben Joseph who was president of the School Bene Barek near Saffa. Custance claims that this rabbi laid the foundation of the Mishna. He was executed in 135 AD when Barcochebas rebelled against the Romans.According to Custance he had a disciples named Simeon ben Jochai commenting on Genesis 1 verse 2 in a book believed to be authored by him called Sefer Hazzohar ( or Zohar for short) and wrote as follows: In other words, before the world seen formed in the first chapter of Genesis 1 other worlds and ages existed which God had destroyed, making the age of the universe older than what could be assumed dating creation to the first man Adam.If you read ancient Hebrew perhaps you could locate that portion of Sefer Hazzohar and comment if you agree with the English translation. Custance says that it is difficult to follow.This would be an ancient earth view going back to the late first century CE and early second century CE, long before the 1800s and its geological theories. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

Concerning the statement that "Of course the Torah is not the literal truth ... ":Can anyone site me an undisputed scientific fact that proves conclusively beyond any possibility of doubt that God did not create the heavens and the earth in the beginning ? ( Gen. 1:1).What do modern scientists know for certain that makes Genesis 1:1 impossible to be the literal truth ? Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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They know for certain that the heavens are over 14 billion years old and that the earth is only 4.5 billion years old.

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Look again at my question. It says nothing about how long ago "the beginning" was.What science fact makes the creating of the universe by God, in the beginning, impossible to be a fact? Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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They know for certain that the heavens are over 14 billion years old and that the earth is only 4.5 billion years old.

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I take that as an admition that you really cannot point to something known today which makes Genesis 1:1 impossible to believe as true. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

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Can anyone site me an undisputed scientific fact that proves conclusively beyond any possibility of doubt that it's not invisible virtual turtles all the way down?

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I was waiting for someone to write something like this.
I thought "Let me see. Will it be the flying spaghetti monster or is that too old? Will it be the invisible pink unicorn or the floating teapot between Mars and Jupitar?"Surprise! We have a new one - the invisible virtual turtles. Or is that old?

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Seriously, science never proves anything "conclusively beyond any possibility of doubt." Science is tentative about everything.

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That's a good point. Of course I could have just said that when it was said "We know the Torah is not literally true" or however it was put.Then again someone could have just as easily said "Actually, we don't KNOW that it is not true, particularly about the least poetic statement in the chapter, that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

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Even what seem to us as undoubted scientific axioms and are treated thus in almost all scientific endeavors are questioned in some scientific quarters, such as that scientific laws are the same across all time and space.

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Attempts to resolve the contradictory notions of science and religion usually take one of three avenues:

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1. Science and religion will eventually become mutually consistent through scientific and religious study, a la Thomas Aquinas.
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2. Science is useful and important, but where science and religion differ religion must take precedence, a la the Oxford school of thought.
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3. Separate magesteriums a la Stephen Jay Gould (and probably some earlier philosopher). They govern separate realms that need not ever meet and need not ever be reconciled.

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I sense you're inflexible concerning a conservative literal interpretation of Genesis, and that means you're left with number 2, because number 1 will never happen (when tried the result is religious restrictions on scientific efforts and ideas a la the Spanish Inquisition and Galileo) and number 3 must be unacceptable to you (and isn't realistic anyway).

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--Percy

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No I am not inflexible really. Most of the statements after verse 1 are poetic and obviously spoken from the standpoint of one who is human with human order in view.Verse 2 - "And the earth was empty and without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." I am flexible enough to recognize that the speaker is talking from a human standpoint in a world suited for human life and order. It was a mess - in terms of man's existence. It was without form - in terms of our human existence. It was dark, chaotic - in terms of human existence.This appears to me to be local and poetic as if a man was seeing a vision. But the first statement is just an identifier of where all time, space, matter came from. And we cannot say we know it is not literally true.It is put well, IMO, by Jay Pye Smith in about 1839 Edited by Admin, : Fix quote of list items.

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Yes, you could have just said that. That would have been more of a challenge. I suppose my response would be that both the description of the sky as a dome, and the discussion of events that occurred on Day 4 are quite unlikely to be literally true. Nor is the order of events on Day 4 with respect to events of Days 2 and 3 literally true.

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This is the complaint that the making of the sun is mentioned after the description of light. But the word for the fourth day lights is not the same as that for "light" in the second verse.The term is more like "light-holders" or "light-bearers".Anyway, the Recovery Version has this translation: So what the seer could have seen in this succession of visions is a general diffuse light on the second day but a more localized and embodied light-holder/s on the fourth day.Verse 16 - What was a diffuse and sheet like glow could have been now seen more definitely as a localized concrete source - a light-bearer. And the word there is not that God CREATED them but MADE them. Though some overlap of the two words might be argued for in the Hebrew Bible, not every instance may mean synonymous meaning.So, Nonukes, I understand that the seer saw the sun, the moon and the stars as light-bears that God had made on the fourth day. At present I lean towards a view that God showed the prophetic seer this preparation of the world in seven visions or "days."I don't have a literal problem with the Bible saying God created the sun after there was an evening and morning in the two previous days. What was a diffuse light may have just appeared to become definite light-bears, localizing the light so that he could clearly see its source.And it would not be untrue that to him God MADE them on the fourth day.

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Beyond the creation stories and the Flood and post Flood descriptions, there is very little in the Torah that is even within the realm of science to contradict or confirm. But there is plenty of poetic language that is not intended to be taken literally.

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Alright. Alright. I give up. I win (smile).I came to the Old Testament through the the New. First the integrity of Jesus won my confidence that He was above reproach. Then I noticed that so much of the Old Testament He took seriously. So slowly I decided that if it was good enough for Jesus (including the flood) then it must be true.I came to Genesis by first being subdued that the integrity of Christ was reliable. Then it was a process of accepting what Christ accepted. I think what I should get from the account is that the world was judged and an ark of Noah saved men and land beasts.The ark is a type of Christ. And Christ's salvation includes justified humans and extends to the environment and even the planet. He has created it for His eternal purpose. So the rainbow of mercy seen after the flood assures that He will not totally destroy the human environment which He did create for His eternal purpose.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : succinctly changed to definitely
sense changed to seen

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It is a complaint that there is any discussion of night and day at all before the existence of the Sun. This discussion is too far off of the topic, so this will be my last response along these lines. Maybe in another forum.

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It is far from the topic. But I too have a last word on the fourth day.I don't think that for the seer to speak of the evening and morning before the sun appears to have been MADE ... [ not created (bara) but made (asah) ] is not really unscientific.By modern standards of cosmological talk it may be perculiar. But so would it be to speak of "sunrise" when the sun does not really rise. The earth rotates. Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.