Creation is completely different from “natural birth”. At birth and through natural development, a person’s age, for example, begins from the moment one is born. Thus, at 50 years from the moment of birth one will be 50 years old. The act of Creation, however, presents us with a different reality. Let’s see.
Divine Creation was an act that escapes our analysis and even our imagination. We have never seen or experienced an act of creation as it happens. But by tradition we know, however, a couple of details of this act. First, that Creation was ex-nihilo, that is, from nothing previous. “To create” ( the Hebrew verb libro), means bringing something material into existence from non existence. This verb is only applied to Divine actions, and never to human actions.
Secondly, we know that when God created the Universe, things appeared already developed, and not at point zero. While the Tora does not abound in details, much less during the brief chapter devoted to Creation, the Tora described the state of one of its creations at the time of their appearance: the trees. In Genesis 1:12 the Tora says: “And the earth produced vegetation: herbs that give seed according to their kind, and trees bearing fruit with their seed in it, according to their kind …” . The trees were not created as seeds or shrubs, but as mature trees, in their fullness, and loaded with their fruits.
More than 1700 years ago, the Sages of the Midrash formulated the following idea based on the detail provided by the Tora about the trees: כל מעשה בראשית בקומתן נבראו. “Everything God created was created in its fullness.” The Tora circumstantially mentioned the maturity of the trees, but in reality everything was created by God in its state of maturity and development. This not only solves the enigma of the egg or the chicken (finally we can congratulate the chicken!:), but it also helps us to understand that not only is it possible but rather necessary that science would attribute to the world, and what it contains, an age older than what it has.
If we would travel in the time-tunnel to the day when God created the trees, and we would examine the first tree, five minutes after its creation, we will find a tree full of fruits. And if we would cut down the tree, we will find, say, fifty rings. Now, if we evaluate this tree from a scientific perspective, we will necessarily conclude that this tree is fifty years old … Are we wrong? Yes. And No. And this is the paradox that occurs as a consequence of “Creation”: The tree was created 5 minutes ago, but it is 50 years old.
Once again: it is inevitable then, that there would be a difference between the scientific measurement of the age of the tree (development from the point zero) and the biblical / rabbinical perspective (mature creation) of the age of the tree. The difference between the five minutes and the 50 years is a direct and inevitable effect of the “supernatural” act of Creation.
If Creation was carried out in the way the Tora describes it, then, inevitably, two simultaneous different ages will coexist in every created thing: 1) the chronological age, estimated from the moment of its Creation / appearance, that in the example of the tree would be five minutes, and 2) the internal and apparent age, fifty years; that is, the virtual or hypothetical age of the tree —the time it would have taken the tree to evolve from a point zero to its present state, if it had not been created. The same happens with a mountain, with planet earth, with a star that is 1 million light years from our planet, etc.
In conclusion: What science might affirm about the age of the World or of any creation, even millions or billions of years, it does not contradict what the Tora affirms. The difference is what our starting point is: If our premise is that the world generated itself —it was born/generated by itself, and there was no act of Creation (by the way: there is no scientific evidence to deny an act of Creation ) — then, the age differences between what science says and what the Tora says are irreconcilable. But when our point of departure is the Act of Divine Creation, as described by our sources (ex nihilo and mature creation), the age differences that we find are logical and necessary. It is exactly what we were expecting to find!
