Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation

This monograph presents a comprehensive historical analysis of creation doctrine in Jewish thought from biblical times through contemporary philosophy of science. Samuelson traces how Jewish intellectuals have continuously reinterpreted genesis narratives in dialogue with prevailing philosophical and scientific frameworks, demonstrating that creation theology has never been static but rather dynamically responsive to intellectual developments.

The work begins by examining biblical and rabbinic creation texts, showing how early Jewish sources already contain multiple, sometimes contradictory cosmological accounts. Samuelson argues that this interpretive plurality established a precedent for later Jewish thinkers to engage creation questions with considerable philosophical flexibility. He then tracks medieval encounters between Jewish theology and Aristotelian science, particularly analyzing how Maimonides navigated between biblical creation ex nihilo and Aristotelian eternal universe theories.

Central to Samuelson's analysis is the claim that Jewish creation doctrine has functioned less as fixed dogma than as an evolving conceptual framework for relating divine agency to natural processes. He examines how Gersonides developed sophisticated theories reconciling biblical creation with Aristotelian physics, how Kabbalistic thinkers proposed emanationist alternatives to creation ex nihilo, and how Spinoza's naturalism emerged from but ultimately challenged traditional Jewish cosmology.

The monograph's latter sections address modern Jewish responses to evolutionary theory and contemporary physics. Samuelson analyzes how twentieth-century Jewish thinkers like Mordecai Kaplan and Hans Jonas reconstructed creation theology in light of scientific naturalism, while others like Abraham Joshua Heschel maintained more traditional theological frameworks while acknowledging scientific discoveries. Throughout, he emphasizes that Jewish thought has typically approached cosmological arguments not as proofs for divine existence but as explorations of how divine creativity might relate to natural order.

Samuelson's textual analysis method involves close readings of primary sources in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, situating each thinker within their historical context while tracing conceptual developments across periods. His work contributes to understanding how religious traditions negotiate between authoritative texts and empirical knowledge, showing that Jewish creation doctrine exemplifies neither simple fundamentalism nor uncritical accommodation to science, but rather sustained intellectual engagement with cosmological questions. The study illuminates how theological traditions can maintain continuity while adapting to radically different worldviews.