In his essay “How Evolutionary Biology Unlocks Genesis’s Theory of Man,” Ethan Dor-Shav offers a reinterpretation of the biblical creation narratives through the lens of evolutionary biology. Drawing inspiration from Sefer Yetsirah, an early kabbalistic text, Dor-Shav proposes that the seemingly contradictory creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2–3 are in fact complementary narratives that together describe the evolutionary journey from cosmic origins to the emergence of human consciousness. His central claim is that the Garden of Eden story represents not a moral fall but the biological development of consciousness, with key biblical figures symbolizing evolutionary transitions: Adam as the first animal organism, the serpent as the reptilian brain, and Abraham as the culmination of human consciousness.

Dor-Shav’s methodology combines close textual reading with scientific frameworks, revealing patterns previously obscured. He restructures the biblical timeline, extending the second creation account beyond Eden to include Noah and Abraham, with the seven days of creation corresponding to major evolutionary transitions. Most provocatively, he reinterprets biblical concepts like “sin” and “fall” not as moral failings but as natural developments in evolutionary history.

Dor-Shav’s novel reading is textually compelling and intellectually stimulating. It harmonizes modern scientific understanding with ancient text in ways that neither diminish the scientific evidence nor trivialize the spiritual significance of the biblical narrative. Rather than imposing modern science onto the text, it reveals developmental patterns already encoded in the narrative structure. The progression from simple to complex life forms, from unconscious to conscious beings, was observable to ancient peoples even without an explicit evolutionary theory. The innovation of modern science has been to identify the mechanisms of this development, not the pattern itself.

Nonetheless, we need not view this interpretation as the sole correct reading that invalidates other approaches. As the rabbis teach, the Torah has “70 faces.” Each interpretive lens detects distinct facets of the text’s multidimensional truth, revealing different aspects to different generations according to their respective conceptual frameworks. Maimonides, writing in the 12th century, already argued that the creation narrative contained allegorical dimensions that should not be read literally—an approach that anticipated modern interpretive challenges.

Thus traditional readings, focusing on moral dimensions or mystical interpretations, remain valuable alongside this evolutionary framework. A purely scientific account of the world cannot instruct us in how to live. Darwinism describes fitness as a criterion for survival, but makes no direct moral recommendation to us, in stark contrast to the moral grandeur of the Torah. Yet Dor-Shav’s innovative interpretation opens the text to new readings of its moral content. In what follows, I wish to explore that content through three interconnected concepts—Shabbat, Abraham, and the tripartite soul—before extending Dor-Shav’s framework through the philosophical lenses of Charles Darwin, G.W.F. Hegel, and Friedrich Nietzsche, considering its implications for the dialogue between science and faith.

The Awakening of the Human Soul

In Dor-Shav’s framework, Shabbat gains a new significance. Rather than merely divine rest, the seventh day represents the developmental space for the emergence of higher consciousness. Day Seven spans from the appearance of homo sapiens (Noah) to the spiritual awakening of Abraham. During this period, unlike previous days of active divine creation, “God did not intervene; He let history, or nature, take its course.”

This reframing transforms our understanding of Shabbat from passive cessation to active anticipation—a pause that allows for the natural unfolding of humanity’s highest faculties. Shabbat becomes constitutive of ongoing human development.

The Talmud teaches (Beitsah 16a) that on Shabbat Jews receive a n’shamah y’teirah, an additional soul. Seen through Dor-Shav’s lens, this tradition suggests that Shabbat enables access to our highest cognitive and spiritual capacities. By stepping back from intervention in the world, we create space for reflection, awareness, and spiritual growth, mirroring the divine pattern established in creation.

Abraham emerges in Dor-Shav’s reading as the first fully conscious human being. Dor-Shav writes that “only with Abraham’s enlightenment does God’s forming of nature end, and human history begin.” This places Abraham at the threshold between evolution and covenant, between biological development and spiritual awakening. Abraham’s ability to “perceive,” “understand,” and “appreciate” represents the neocortical functions that define human spiritual capacity.

This interpretation resonates with midrashic accounts of Abraham’s self-discovered monotheism. His recognition of a unifying divine presence beyond the multiplicity of idols parallels the neocortex’s capacity for abstract thought and pattern recognition beyond immediate sensory data. Abraham doesn’t believe differently; he thinks differently, representing a shift in human cognitive capacity.

Dor-Shav reads the traditional Jewish understanding of the soul through the lens of evolutionary neuroscience. He identifies three levels of soul development:

1. Nefesh (Reptilian Brain): Basic consciousness and survival instincts, developed during Day Five with the serpent in Eden.
2. Ruah (Limbic Brain): Emotional and social intelligence, developed during Day Six with Noah and early humanity.
3. N’shamah (Neocortex): Abstract thought, moral reasoning, and spiritual awareness, culminating in Abraham during Day Seven.

In his framework, human spirituality is not opposed to animality, but a development of it. Being created in “the image of God” is an accomplishment of evolutionary process.

Darwin, Hegel, and the Purpose of Things

That process brings us to Charles Darwin, who, educated for the clergy at Cambridge, initially embraced natural theology’s argument that biological complexity evidenced divine design. His discoveries gradually led him away from traditional Christianity, but Darwin never fully abandoned the notion that the evolutionary process might reflect some form of divine purpose, writing in the conclusion of On the Origin of Species: “There is grandeur in this view of life . . . having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one.”

Darwin’s intellectual journey mirrors the tension that Dor-Shav’s reading addresses: how might developmental processes reflect divine purpose without requiring constant supernatural intervention? Darwin’s theory challenged not the existence of God but the nature of divine action in the world—precisely the theme Dor-Shav identifies in the Shabbat narrative, where God steps back to allow natural development.

It’s long been understood that both Darwin and Genesis present narratives of emergence and development, only with different framing and emphasis; Dor-Shav shows us what it would look like to synthesize those framings.

In this way, Dor-Shav’s theistic understanding of evolution differs sharply from the anti-evolution arguments known as intelligent design. While these arguments posit that direct divine intervention is necessary to explain biological complexity, Dor-Shav’s reading suggests that the divine plan operates through natural processes. God’s intelligence is manifest not in circumventing natural laws but in establishing processes that inherently tend toward increasing consciousness. The “design” is found in the system’s fundamental parameters rather than in specific interventions.

The implications of this approach go beyond creation itself, inviting us to consider the relationship between Hegel’s teleological view of history and Darwin’s non-teleological view of evolution. In Hegel’s theory of history, a dialectical progression of consciousness moves purposefully toward an end goal—the realization of freedom and self-consciousness. Darwin, by contrast, describes evolution as undirected, with natural selection operating without purpose or endpoint.

Dor-Shav harmonizes these two contradictory frameworks by presenting biological evolution as the vehicle for the development of consciousness, suggesting that the apparently non-teleological processes Darwin identified ultimately serve an identifiable end. In this view, Day Seven—where “God did not intervene”—becomes particularly significant. Divine restraint allows natural processes to unfold according to their inherent logic, yet these processes ultimately fulfill a divine purpose. This interpretation of God’s role in the universe offers a third way beyond both scientific materialism and interventionist creationism: a view where natural processes themselves carry teleological significance without requiring supernatural disruption of causal chains.

Shifting back from Darwin’s non-teleological biology to Hegel’s teleological history, we can attempt to read the Eden narrative in a way that helps us understand the evolution of consciousness, and its relationship with social life, in greater depth. Hegel teaches that self-consciousness emerges out of a struggle between master and slave, through which each comes to define himself in relationship to the other. Reading Dor-Shav’s version of the Eden narrative through the lens of the master-slave dialectic, the confrontation between human and serpent represents the primal struggle for recognition that Hegel identifies as crucial for self-consciousness. The serpent, representing the reptilian brain (nefesh), challenges the human to a battle of wits—a struggle for supremacy in consciousness.

Initially, humans appear to lose this battle, being deceived by the serpent. But in this very defeat, a higher consciousness emerges. Just as Hegel’s slave achieves a form of freedom through labor and recognition of mortality, Adam and Eve gain self-awareness through their apparent fall. Their expulsion from Eden represents not punishment but the necessary separation from immediate unity with nature that allows for true self-consciousness.

God’s pronouncement “Behold, the human has become like one of us, knowing good and evil” can be read as recognition of this new dialectical consciousness. The divine plural “us” suggests a relationship of recognition; humanity has entered into a new relationship with divinity based on mutual awareness rather than simple obedience.

A Will to Power or a Will to Transcendence?

If Darwin and Hegel provide complementary perspectives on development (purposeful vs. undirected), Nietzsche offers a third way that illuminates Dor-Shav’s reading. Nietzsche rejected both theological teleology and scientific determinism, positing instead that meaning emerges through the will to power, the drive to overcome limitations and transform oneself.

In the opening of the Star of Redemption, the German Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig claims that Nietzsche’s critique of God was not that God is non-existent, but that “if God exists, how can I bear not to be Him?” In other words, Nietzsche’s perspective comes more from a struggle for recognition, ironically, a continuation of the theme of Genesis 11 when the builders of the Tower of Babel seek to make a name for themselves by building a tower with its head in the heavens.

For Nietzsche, the “death of God” left humanity responsible for creating meaning rather than discovering predetermined purpose. This perspective resonates with Dor-Shav’s depiction of Day Seven, where divine restraint creates space for human agency. When “God did not intervene,” humans must define their own purpose.

The evolutionary progression from nefesh to ruah to n’shamah can be read through a Nietzschean lens as sequential acts of self-overcoming. Each transition represents consciousness transcending its previous limitations, culminating in Abraham’s spiritual awareness, as he ironically becomes a kind of evolutionary “Übermensch” who creates new values.

Where Darwin emphasized adaptation as a driver of evolution, Nietzsche argued evolution would come through creative overcoming of limitations and heroic expressions of agency and courage. Dor-Shav’s Genesis presents both: adaptation through natural development and creative transcendence through covenant. One could, working from this interpretation, imagine building a moral theory that reconciles Nietzsche’s understanding of human drives and desires with the biblical morality he railed against.

Dor-Shav’s reading of Genesis, especially when enriched by philosophical perspectives on consciousness and recognition, provides an anthropology that integrates our biological heritage with our spiritual potential.

By seeing the tripartite soul as emerging through evolutionary development, we gain a more holistic understanding of human nature. Our reptilian impulses (nefesh), emotional needs for recognition (ruah), and capacity for spiritual awareness (n’shamah) must be integrated into one unified, if layered, sense of self.

If our highest spiritual capacities emerge from our evolutionary history rather than in opposition to it, we might cultivate greater integration between our animal nature and spiritual aspirations. Rather than suppressing the passions of the ruah in service of abstract spiritual ideals, we might channel its energy toward higher forms of recognition and relationship. Such an approach aligns with the mystical teaching of Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Hasidism—a teaching both theologically embraced and practically implemented by his followers—that God resides precisely in those places regarded as most lowly or distant from the Divine (dira b’tahtonim).

The Sabbath, in this light, becomes the paradigmatic practice for cultivating the fully integrated human soul. By ceasing intervention and control, we create space for reflection, relationship, and fuller awareness, mirroring the very divine restraint that allowed human consciousness to emerge fully in Abraham.

Combining elements of Hegel’s teleology, Darwin’s naturalism, and Nietzsche’s will to transcendence, Dor-Shav’s reading suggests a fourth path: purposive development through natural processes, where the end goal is not predetermined but emerges through the interaction of divine purpose and human freedom. This vision offers a framework for religious naturalists and traditional believers alike.