Translation of B'Toraso Shel R' Gedaliah II

(This is the second and final part of the translation of small parts of B'Toraso Shel R' Gedaliah that I did a few years ago. The complete Hebrew work can be downloaded here.)
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The word “day” can also be explained as a period… There are many different scientific proofs, via precise methods that are tried and tested… that millions of years have elapsed… It is folly to think that it is all falsehood.

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The Formation of Man

When the Torah says “And God created the man” it does not refer to one person whose personal name was “Adam.” “The Man,” with the definitive “the,” is the name of the species, as in the previous verse, “Let us make man in our image, as our form, and he shall reign over the fish of the sea etc.” – “Adam” is not a personal name, but refers to the species of man. Similarly, in the continuation, “And Hashem, God, formed the man of dust from the earth, and He breathed the spirit of life into his nostrils, and man became as a living soul.” The description of the formation of man from the dust is by way of allegory and parable. The Holy One did not take a spoonful of dirt and knead it with water, as children do in kindergarten. The “dust” here is raw material, from which animals were also formed.

…Regarding the basic understanding [of Seforno], that the creation of man in the image of God was the end of a long process, which originated in a non-intelligent being, belonging to the category of animals, which continually developed until it received human intellect, and in parallel the physiological form of man that is familiar to us – it is reasonable that this is the correct description. The proof of Darwin, and of the paleontologists, for the existence of earlier stages such as this, seems convincing. The mistake of Darwin is the overall perspective which avoids the question of how changes came about. But with recognition of the Divine will that acts in nature via the medium of angels – we have no need to deny the description of events according to how scientific investigation presents them. There are archeological finds of skeletons of bipeds with small skulls, whose brain could not have been like the brain of man that is familiar to us. The man about which it said, “Let us make man in our image” is the final stage of this staged development.

Gan Eden

“And Hashem, God, planted a garden in Eden in the east, and he placed man, that he had formed, there…” – the species of man, which was formed in the sixth period of the days of Bereishis as an androgynous intelligent and reproducing being. It is reasonable that there were many people scatted in the lengths of the world. Perhaps they had reached America. However, they were unimportant, and the Torah does not mention them at all. In one place, in Eden, that is to say, in the choice land (from the terminology ednah), God placed the choicest of the human species. Over time, He planted there pleasant and goodly trees, possessing good and beneficial characteristics (segulos).
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“And the snake was more cunning than all the beasts of the field…” – Here all the commentaries alert us to the fact of it speaking by way of allegory. Animals do not talk, and they do not engage in dialogue with people. The snake is the Satan, which is the Angel of Death, which is the evil inclination…
“And man called the name of his wife Chavah, for she was the mother of all life…” – Just as “Adam” is the name of the species, so too “Chavah” is the name of women in general, of every woman, who is the mother and source for all life that is born and continues from her. There were many men before this man, that the Torah also calls by the personal name of “Adam,” and that Chazal call by the name of Adam HaRishon. Likewise, there were many women before this woman whose personal name was “Chavah.” But they were significant, and concerning them there was a point in the Torah telling us of them…

KAYIN AND HEVEL
“And the man knew Chavah his wife”… “The man” is the name of the species, and “Chavah” is also a general name for woman, as above, but here it refers to the specific man and woman who began to live outside of the Garden of Eden, and they gave birth to Kayin and Hevel.