Rethinking the (Supposed) Conflict of Science and the Bible

Seeking a way out of futile debates over the discrepancies between the conclusions of modern science and the Bible, Jeremy England suggests a novel approach that begins with the way the biblical account of creation understands language:

What does it mean to “create the heavens and the earth”? . . . . From [the first chapter of Genesis] we can already infer that creation ([denoted] in Hebrew [by the verb] bara) is first and foremost about giving names to things that are distinguished by recognizable properties. A few chapters later, this inference is resoundingly confirmed: “When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God; male and female He created them. And on the day of their creation (hibaram), He blessed them and called them Man” (Genesis 5:1–2). As before, naming goes hand in hand with creation, this time at the moment when the clearest and brightest distinction is being drawn between different kinds of humans. Another riff on the same idea plays out in the Garden of Eden, when the first human being is tasked by God with naming all the animals in the world while in search of an “opposite companion” (Genesis 2:18).

This role granted to people in giving names to living creatures is worth dwelling on, for it reverberates backward to the very first moments described in Genesis. It is by having the capacity for language that man is able to join God as a fully fledged participant in the work of creation—for it is through language that man develops the taxonomy that allows the naming of diverse phenomena. It should come as no surprise, then, that the first recorded action taken by the Creator at the beginning of the world is to speak: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). We have heard this phrase so many times that by the time we are old enough to ponder it, we easily miss its simplest point: the light by which we see the world comes from the way we talk about it.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Creation, Genesis, Hebrew Bible, Religion & Holidays, Science, Science and Religion

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF