The Age of the Universe has been debated for millennium. The Jewish perspective through the years has been, for the most part, that the universe was created approximately 5781 years ago. The Non-Jewish perspective has shifted from Eternal, popularized by the great philosophers Aristotle and Plato, to a more finite number in the mid 19th century, which has slowly (and sometimes quickly) grew from 10's of millions, to the current number scientists run with today; 13.81 billion years old.

As we know, the scientific assumption has never really matched, or been close to the number a literal reading of Genesis will give us. So what do we do.....

Well, the simplest thing to do, when dealing with an issue of a text and empirical data, is reinterpret the text. Unfortunately, in this case, the text is the Torah, and the writer was the greatest prophet in history, transcribing Hashem's story to the Jewish people, making it more difficult to just allegorize.

In "The Age of the Universe: Part 1", we go in depth into the four rules of reinterpretation, so beautifully categorized by the Great 10th century Rabbi, Rav Saadia Goan, in his magnum opus, Emunos V'Daos. Think all Verses are literal? Think again! Think no verse needs to be understood literally? Think again! Learn (or hear again) the difference between logic and reason, vision and extrapolation, Aristotle and Plato, and much much more in the latest episode from JewishThoughtFlow! This podcast has been graciously sponsored by JewishPodcasts.fm. There is much overhead to maintain this service so please help us continue our goal of helping Jewish lecturers become podcasters and support us with a donation: https://thechesedfund.com/jewishpodcasts/donate