The Theological Implications of Reading Genesis as an Allegory for Evolution

In his essay “How Evolutionary Biology Unlocks Genesis’s Theory of Man,” Ethan Dor-Shav offers a reinterpretation of the biblical creation narratives through the lens of evolutionary biology. Drawing inspiration from Sefer Yetsirah, an early kabbalistic text, Dor-Shav proposes that the seemingly contradictory creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2–3 are in fact complementary narratives that together describe the evolutionary journey from cosmic origins to the emergence of human consciousness. His central claim is that the Garden of Eden story represents not a moral fall but the biological development of consciousness, with key biblical figures symbolizing evolutionary transitions: Adam as the first animal organism, the serpent as the reptilian brain, and Abraham as the culmination of human consciousness.

Dor-Shav’s methodology combines close textual reading with scientific frameworks, revealing patterns previously obscured. He restructures the biblical timeline, extending the second creation account beyond Eden to include Noah and Abraham, with the seven days of creation corresponding to major evolutionary transitions. Most provocatively, he reinterprets biblical concepts like “sin” and “fall” not as moral failings but as natural developments in evolutionary history.

Dor-Shav’s novel reading is textually compelling and intellectually stimulating. It harmonizes modern scientific understanding with ancient text in ways that neither diminish the scientific evidence nor trivialize the spiritual significance of the biblical narrative. Rather than imposing modern science onto the text, it reveals developmental patterns already encoded in the narrative structure. The progression from simple to complex life forms, from unconscious to conscious beings, was observable to ancient peoples even without an explicit evolutionary theory. The innovation of modern science has been to identify the mechanisms of this development, not the pattern itself.