Sure. It’s the date.
Only in the sense that last year, it was 5764.
Zev, to translate Apos’ explanation of abiogenesis into English, it just means the beginnong (or creation) of life from non-life.
Evolution is a separate question from abiogenesis because evolution only talks about what happened after life began on earth. How it began the abiogenetic question. Technically speaking, a belief that God created the first living organisms does not conflict with evolution.
Just to clarify what I meant (and expand upon Apos’s subsequent post):
In my own taxonomy, I differentiate Creationists from Theistic Evolutionists. By Creationist (“Big-C Creationists”, as Apos says), I mean someone who believes in some form of special creation: God directly created, if not individual “kinds”, the first life forms. Evolution may or may not have taken over thereafter (depending on the particular flavor of Creationist; YECs would typically fall into the “may not” category, while OECs would often fall into the “may” category).
Other Christians / Jews / Whatever may believe that God’s intervention was either further back (e.g., the Big Bang), or in simply creating the laws which govern the universe (with a possible assist where humans are concerned). I don’t consider those folks to be Creationists (though they may well be “creationists”), but rather Theistic Evolutionists (that is, they accept not only that evolution via natural selection is the mechanism explaining biological diversity, but that God exists and initiated things in some fashion).
My English is still superior, because if you read Genesis, you’ll see god creating life from non-life right there in front of you. But, it’s not, strictly speaking, abiogenesis.
I didn’t mean any insult, dude. I just wanted to clarify what the abiogenetic debate means in its simplest terms.
You’re one of my favorite posters, btw. It was not my intent to diss you.
A question for Zev (but others may chip in, of course):
Are there any Jews who hold an Old Earth Creationist position who also believe that human beings were created by God at the same time as all the other animals?
And I wasn’t taking offense. I’m was just taking some time out to again herald the fantabulous wonderousness of my King’s own English.
Ok, well I will concede the technical point that abiogenesis is the arising of life from non-life without divine intervention. You are correct, sir.
I don’t think so. It’s generally accpeted in Jewish tradition that Man was the last “animal” created. I don’t think that any Jewish OEC would maintain that Man existed at the same time as the dinosaurs or even earlier.
Zev Steinhardt
If we are defining abiogenesis as the creation (origin?) of life without Divine intervention, then the answer is catagorically no - abiogenesis is not taught. Just about all (religious) Jews will maintain the position that all life was created by God. We may differ in how cows got here, but in the end, whether we believe that they are the last in a long series of mutations (mootations 
) or whether they showed up in their present form, in the end, it can be traced back to creation by God.
Zev Steinhardt
When I went to Hebrew School mumble mumbl large number mumble mumble years ago, there was a distinction between the Bible and history. It was a Conservative school, but on the Reform side of Conservative - men and women sat together in services, for instance. It was also only concerned with religious education and teaching Hebrew. The history book started with Abram, and never treated Creation as happening (or not happening.) I never remember anyone saying anything one way or another about evolution. My sense was that there was no attempt to teach literalism in the Christian sense. I always got the impression that the complexity of God’s word was so great that it would be foolish to go by a simple reading - certainly the mountains of interpretation would argue against that approach.
My personal testimony is that nothing I read of in science then or after ever conflicted with what I was taught. What has conflicted is the evidence that there was no Davidic empire - that was a shock.
That’s disgusting. There is no excuse for eating pork.
I vaguely remember the story of creation being taught as probably not factually true, along with some Old Earth Creationism, and that the story had great value as a parable.
Re Final Fantasy
I haven’t played any of the series. But, Kabbala was something of a fad in Japanese pop culture (it may still be). It popped up in plenty of games, anime and manga. Neon Genesis Evangelion (I still haven’t seen most of it) had numerous Kabbalistic images in the opening credits. These include a picture of the Tree Of Life, the group of all ten sephiroth. The dark boardroom NERV leaders meet in has the seats arranged in the same pattern.
I have heard differing beliefs on creation based on the translation of ‘b’reisheet’. This is usually translated as ‘in the beginning’. However, it can also be translated as ‘When G-d began to’ which some people have taken to mean that something else had already been created before “Let there be light.” or that others were also creating at the same time.
I think that most Conservative and Reform Jews would not interpret the biblical creation stories as being literal, but as being poetic, and therefore not inconsistent with science (i.e., evolution.) “Let there be light” is a poetic expression for the big bang, understandable to those who don’t (or didn’t, centuries ago) know anything about physics, and still a poetic interpretation for those who do know physics. The creation of mankind from dust can be seen as a poetic description of the evolution of mankind from some primordal, chemical glop. And so on.
Once we by-pass the biblical story as literal, and accept it as poetic (metaphor, etc), there’s no conflict with that story and with science.
I think that most Conservative and Reform Jews would accept that evolution has some intelligence starting it and guiding it, even if that guidance is through “natural laws” rather than through direct manipulation.
Within Orthodoxy, I suspect that there are those who would agree with the Conservative/Reform position, and there are those who insist upon the bible as literal truth.
I should note that this is not different from Christianity – there are Christians of all denominations on both sides of this question. Howcome there’s no thread on “Do Episcopaleans believe that God created the universe? Or do they believe in Episco-paleontology?”
It’s important to remember that literalism is a fairly rare strain, even among Christianity. I think a lot of people think that all “real” Christians are literalists, and since they vaguely know that Jews believe “in the first half of the Bible” they assume that they should have the same proclivity for literalism. But literalism was a historical development in Christianity: there’s no guarantee that it is the same in Judiasm.
I have great respect for Judaism and am ever mindful of the Jewish roots of Christianity. Plus, I like the way they debate.
Nice play on words, too.