“Those who claim that the Torah gives an account of evolution, are incorrectly insinuating that the sages didn't understand Genesis.”
This is a claim I made in my ‘lashon hora’ post and this my clarification.
The meaning of the text is what is given by, and through, the mefarshim. End of. If the sages didn’t interpret it as giving a scientific account of evolution by natural selection, that is not what the text means.
Of course, one can read into a text what one likes, but on what basis should we take that as the lesson of the text? Why choose one interpretation over the other? The Protestant line that Jesus speaks to us through our personal reading of the gospels, with the value of the interpretation being its transformative effect on me, is unparalleled in Judaism. The written Torah has no meaning when placed outside its interpretative tradition- the Oral Torah.
II
FIRST- there is no objective meaning in the text itself. We cannot say “that’s a nice explanation, but really the author intended this” and do so simply by pointing to something in the text. One can only do this if we take a text as a more-or-less complete representation of what was going on in the author’s mind when they wrote it. “This sentence structure, this word and that metaphor is evidence that he meant x. Explanation Y is a nice moral you can get from the story, but that’s not what he thought when he wrote it”.
However, you can’t do that with the Torah as it is a finite representation of the will of an infinite Author. We cannot ‘pin down’ G-d’s motivation with the text. To do so, would be like saying “If I wrote this sentence, at that time, I would have meant x”. However, as G-d says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts”. *
SECOND- just the meaning isn’t what is OBJECTIVELY “out there” in the mind of G-d; it isn’t simply SUBJECTIVELY what I take it to mean “in here”. The fault is the same as above- it takes ‘meaning’ to be atomic and to be fully contained in what a single human can think or feel. However, the meaning of a Jewish text is inter-personal and inter-generational. It is not fully contained by any one individual or any one generation. It exists outside ourselves in the writings, actions, debates and decisions of a million (unfortunately only male) voices.
The key question is how did people understand the text in a way that made sense of their life as a carrier of a Divine Law? Thus, the meaning is revealed in how G-d’s will has played out in the history of the Jewish nation. As such, the Jewish meaning of the text cannot be divorced from the exegesis (and also halachic decisions) of Chazal, the Rishonim and Acharonim etc.
III
To claim that evolution is the meaning of Genesis is to make one of two claims. Either you are saying this what the text really means, or you are saying that is what the text means to me. If the former, you are claiming you have the objective meaning whereas Chazal were completely wrong. If the latter, you may concoct a wonderfully consistent explanation, but give us no reason to accept it. This is because, whilst all well and good, it divorces the meaning of the text from any lesson as to how live as a bearer of tradition. Here Chazal aren’t wrong but are irrelevant to the meaning of the text. I take both claims to be insulting. ** Maybe you can read the texts in this way, maybe you can mind-read, and maybe personal salvation or gratification are important. But this isn’t the Jewish way.
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*As part of an interpretive tradition, the level of pshat is very important; and with all levels of interpretation, arguments about sentence structure (etc.) are important. However, their importance lies not in coming to know what G-d really meant; but in understanding, how WE should understand it, and integrate it into our lives. What part does it play in the lives of the interpreters?
**This doesn’t mean that we cannot add to the interpretation of Chazal. Nor does it mean we can’t understand it in a different way. Nor does it mean that our understanding can’t build on their understanding. Nor even challenge them where necessary. In fact, if I’m arguing that the meaning is revealed through Jewish history, and is the bearer of many generations, it follows that we are no less able to be a distinctive voice (women as well as men) in that process. However, it has to be chiddush- new from old as part of a tradition- and not creation ex nihilo- a free and spontaneous product of our minds.
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