My recent essay, showing how the biblical creation story is an allegory of biological evolution, was years in the making, an exhilarating intellectual journey. As an independent scholar, it was also a lonely one. I’m doubly grateful, therefore, to Dru Johnson, Zohar Atkins, and Jeremy England for taking the time both to study the essay thoughtfully and to engage in further dialogue. It’s a weight off my shoulders no longer to have to wrestle alone with my thesis, and with the ideas that arise from it—which, even to me, sometimes seem like crazy riddles.

A discernable thread runs through all three responses, which doesn’t deal with the specifics of my interpretation, but the more abstract issue of what it means for an interpretation to be “true.” In addition, they raise a narrower question, one that must be addressed head on: since the scientific theories on which my interpretation is based were unknown when the Hebrew Bible was written, how, indeed, can such a correlation have ever possibly come to exist?

Thankfully, they don’t accuse me of hermeneutic alchemy; of imagining a correlation that I desire where none is apparent. I take courage from the fact that the correlation does not come across as contrived to any of them. Johnson “recognizes the explanatory power of many [of the essay’s] insights.” Atkins finds my thesis “textually compelling and intellectually stimulating, . . . revealing patterns previously obscured.” And England describes it as “insightful, enjoyable, and novel.” So I can sleep at night assured that my admittedly idiosyncratic argument has passed some basic test of intellectual muster. Considering how greatly my suggested reading diverges from both traditional and academic approaches, this is no small matter.

In their responses, both Zohar Atkins and Jeremy England mention a famous rabbinic teaching that “there are 70 facets to the Torah.” Their intention is to say that the suggested theory, as an interpretation of Genesis 1–11, can only stand alongside other readings. It cannot claim to be “the truth.” Johnson struck a similar chord; though “grateful” for my reading, he can’t “reconcile allegorical approaches like Dor-Shav’s with an approach that gives credence to the intentional and deep literary structures” of the text. Unlike the two rabbis, however, Johnson is more reluctant to accept multiple intentions behind the text.

Atkins explains further: “We need not view this interpretation as the sole correct reading that invalidates other approaches. . . . Each interpretive lens detects distinct facets of the text’s multidimensional truth, revealing different aspects to different generations according to their respective conceptual frameworks.” With this, I am in complete agreement. Traditional rabbinic interpretations certainly occupy some of these 70 facets, and so do some original ones.

Yet a line must still be drawn between pluralism and relativism. The claim that the Torah allows for 70 interpretations does not admit the existence of multiple truths, but of multiple angles from which the truth can be seen. So while I can agree with England that “the true facets of the Torah’s meaning” are many, constituting a “kaleidoscope that hides different parts of the message in different rotations of the lens,” I cannot accept that they are “as manifold as the perspectives of its interpreters.” The facets of the Torah are only as many as there are good interpretations.

Looking at this talmudic metaphor more closely, we see that it parallels the notion (based on descendants of Noah enumerated in Genesis 10) that there are 70 nations with 70 tongues: “Each and every utterance that emerged from the mouth of the Almighty [at Sinai] divided into 70 languages,” the sages say (Shabbat 88b). Several Jewish mystical texts go further, claiming that “all treasures of wisdom were revealed to Moses at Sinai, until God taught him Torah in 70 facets of 70 tongues” (3Enoch, Alphabet of Rabbi Akiva, Zohar). The point the rabbis are making is not that 70, or 70,000, interpretations of a specific passage are each “true in its own way,” but that the various facets of Torah represent various kinds of human understanding of a single, glimmering truth. At least in theory, these interpretations don’t merely coexist, but make up an integrated whole. In this vein, we should see science as one of these 70 languages through which Scripture can be interpreted.

The power of my thesis stands on the ground of its comprehensiveness: it is one idea that can explain numerous stories across eleven chapters. Other “facets” must at least meet that standard.

I’ll now take my interlocutors one at a time, beginning with Dru Johnson.

First I must say that it was a joy to see my younger self—that of a conference held fifteen years ago—through Dru’s eyes. With an enviable vividness of memory, he described his reaction to my talk on the tripartite Hebrew soul: “We rode his enchanted rollercoaster, and I was dizzied with new questions about my own methods and thinking. . . . It was a view as exciting as it was odd—but certainly not to be discounted.” The rollercoaster is the very metaphor that comes to my mind to describe the how I felt when I discovered the parallels between the Torah and scientific theories, and within the biblical narrative, that form the basis of my essay. Likewise, when Johnson writes, “I cannot cover the breadth of my swarming questions that follow every move,” he captures something about my own feeling of confronting the biblical text. I regret not having yet read Johnson’s own writings on the relation of Scripture to Darwin, a circumstance I hope to remedy soon.

At the heart of Johnson’s response is the question: “To whom is Genesis speaking?” It’s not just that authors of antiquity couldn’t know astrophysics or biological evolution, but also that their original listeners couldn’t be expected to understand many of the concepts involved. Teasing with an accusation of “chronological snobbery,” Johnson assumes I’d say that the hidden message of evolution was directed, a priori, at “us today.” While I admit that there is a deeper level of understanding that is “expected by Torah” in each new generation, in some regards—astrology, the tripartite soul, or the four elements which compose all things—earlier cultures understood the Bible better.

But I think Zohar Atkins provides the best rejoinder to Johnson when he writes that, “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.” This can perhaps explain how the ancients described a model of biological evolution without realizing it themselves. Likewise, ancient people, familiar with pregnancy, birth, and child development, could imagine the development of species following the same route.

The great medieval philosopher, poet, and exegete Abraham Ibn Ezra, for one, didn’t know of Darwin but went to great lengths to explain that the two creation stories indeed line up according to my essay’s model. One might even go so far as to say that the Bible was working intentionally in the subconscious of Darwin: that the ideas embedded in Scripture goad us to explore the order of the natural world, and to find its order of development.

I was moved by how sympathetic Zohar Atkins was in his response, examining what would result from embracing my thesis, rather than finding faults. Building on my interpretation, Atkins lays the groundwork for a new symbiosis among science, philosophy, and Torah. Specifically, he seeks to harmonize the apparently nonpurposive process of natural selection described by Darwin with the claim of most religions and many philosophers that creation serves a purpose. I would just raise the possibility that further investigation of the angelic assemblage of the Merkavah, the divine chariot, could provide an additional dimension to this analysis—but perhaps that’s an essay in itself.

This brings me to Atkins’s sublime notes about Shabbat as “constitutive of ongoing human development.” Atkins pinpoints the power of realizing that God’s setting down of his cosmic artwork didn’t occur in some obscure past, billions of years ago, but rather is something almost immediate, a few short historical breaths before Moses. Although not especially diligent in religious Jewish practice, for a long time I couldn’t allow myself to skip the post-Shabbat havdalah ritual, fearing that I was the only one who would imbue it with an awareness of its relationship to the election of Abraham at the watershed of human history. From now on, I will feel that I have Atkins as my partner in this understanding.

In the final response, Jeremy England asks if he was convinced by the case I made in the essay. His answer: “I suppose that depends on what we say is at stake.” If I understand correctly, England is ready to be convinced so long as I don’t claim that I had “finally revealed the single meaning of Genesis,” don’t attempt to “test the Torah’s truth against things scientists write,” and find practical implications to the new reading. It should be clear from what I’ve written above that I meet the first criterion. Allow me to quote Atkins in addressing the other two.

While for England “it would seem very odd if the hidden message of revelation was only meant to prove to us that the text knew things about science,” Atkins says: “Rather than imposing modern science onto the text, [the essay] reveals developmental patterns already encoded in the narrative structure.” I have no desire to prove the truth of biblical prophecy, only to decipher it correctly, as any traditional Jewish commentator would strive to do, and I don’t have stock in any claim that the author of Genesis hid evolution “only” so that “one day” the correlation will demonstrate the Torah’s veracity; surely many other intentions are embedded in the text. I do, however, believe that without the benefit of science we would miss out on an underlying construct of brilliant biblical allegory—one that it is our job, as recipients of the covenant, to crack.

That being said, would it really be so “odd” (to use England’s word) for the author of the Torah to have intended just that? The Hebrew Bible is rife with stories in which the truth of prophecy is promised to be revealed in order to prove that God’s prophets and His messages are true. Why couldn’t modern science serve as proof of the truth of Genesis?

I am least amenable to England’s final critique, of which he makes the most. England writes that “Judaism is uninterested in . . . the inner nature of what is,” but only in “how people ought to conduct themselves.” Even when legitimately working science into the biblical interpretation, he says, “the aim of such readings should be to help those trying to know God and keep His laws.” England brings as an example my claim about the biblical tripartite soul: nefesh being the function of our core reptilian brain (da’at, knowledge), ruah the function of the mammalian brain (binah, awareness), and n’shamah the function of the human neocortex (hokhma, wisdom). Regarding this model England asks: “what should I do differently now that I possess this knowledge?” For me it’s enough that we can read correctly and consistently the hundreds of verses in which these terms are used, which Jewish commentators have puzzled over for millennia. But let me again call Atkins to my defense: “Dor-Shav’s innovative interpretation opens the text to new readings of its moral content. . . . 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. . . . The evolutionary progression from nefesh to ruah to n’shamah can be read . . . as sequential acts of self-overcoming.” In other words, I believe my interpretation to be ethically meaningful, even if it is not prescriptive in a concrete sense.

While I see myself as trying to explicate the Hebrew Bible rather than Judaism, I think England’s claim about Judaism’s interests run against the grain of much of the Jewish tradition. Not only do rabbinic commentators of all eras delve deeply into the nature of creation, it can even be said that God’s commandments are a means to achieving the end of wisdom. “Minds follow deeds,” the Sefer ha-Hinnukh, a classic medieval halakhic work, teaches. Orthodox Jews like thinking there is something unique about halakhah because of its detailed prescriptions for every aspect of life,  while in fact this is true for most religions and many other lifestyles as well, from Buddhist monks to Olympic athletes to butlers at Buckingham palace. What makes halakhah unique is that its various commands and prohibitions come together to form an apparatus for the ongoing assimilation of wisdom, intended to imbue every act with moral and spiritual meaning. But set this argument aside and look at the Hebrew Bible itself, teeming with narratives devoid of any clear practical lessons but filled with metaphysical meaning—from the Creation story itself to Ezekiel’s description of the Divine Chariot.

Thus I’m left with a simple question for England: if we agree that other legitimate layers of meaning exist, and if the goal of my exegesis is not to prove Torah but to decipher it, and, if thinkers can find moral implications in my interpretation, will you now say outright that Genesis 1-11 is an allegorical theater of our true biological evolution?