The Perfect Law of Liberty - Parasha Bereshit

This post is the first of a weekly post on the interplay of Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and Politics (in particularly, Libertarianism). Every week, Jews of all denominations, including Messianic Jews (Jewish believers in Jesus/Yeshua) read a portion of scriptures until the Jewish year, completing the entire Torah (finishing at the last verse of Deuteronomy). The yearly cycle begins and ends in the Fall, at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles (a Biblical/Jewish holiday).

This week’s Torah portion begins with Parasha Beretshit (Genesis 1:1-6:8). So we begin turn to the Text and our analysis.

Gen 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;

The sages have asked the Question, “Why the Torah begins with the words ‘In the beginning God created’?” This question was asked because the purpose of the Torah is to give commandments for the Israelites to follow, and the first commandment to Israel is found in Exodus. There was no need to start off with the doctrine of creation so as to teach that there was a creator, as that doctrine is found in Exodus 20, giving us the reason we are to remember and keep the Sabbath by not doing any servile work. Rashi, Nachmanides, and the Midrash Rabba both tell us that the reason why the Torah starts off with the creation narrative, is so that God’s ownership over all the earth is established, and to refute the claims of the gentile nations that people of Israel would be thieves and in the wrong by dispossessing the Canaanites after their exodus from Egypt (the story of the conquests are found in the Book of Joshua).

Rashi writes: “In the beginning: Said Rabbi Isaac: It was not necessary to begin the Torah except from “This month is to you,” (Exod. 12:2) which is the first commandment that the Israelites were commanded, (for the main purpose of the Torah is its commandments, and although several commandments are found in Genesis, e.g., circumcision and the prohibition of eating the thigh sinew, they could have been included together with the other commandments). Now for what reason did He commence with “In the beginning?” Because of [the verse] “The strength of His works He related to His people, to give them the inheritance of the nations” (Ps. 111:6). For if the nations of the world should say to Israel, “You are robbers, for you conquered by force the lands of the seven nations [of Canaan],” they will reply, "The entire earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it (this we learn from the story of the Creation) and gave it to whomever He deemed proper When He wished, He gave it to them, and when He wished, He took it away from them and gave it to us.”

Nachmanides quotes Rashi’s commentary and then further wrote the following:

“And one can question it, because there is great need to begin the Torah with "In the beginning God created" for it >is the root of faith; and one who doesn't believe this and believes that the world is primordial is an apostate and >has no Torah whatsoever. And the answer, it is because the work of creation - it is a deep secret - is not intelligible >from the verses, and will not be understood by its students except through the received tradition up until Moses >our Master from the mouth of God [lit. "The Strength"], and those who know it are required to hide it. Therefore >Rabbi Isaac said that beginning of the Torah doesn't require "In the beginning God created" and the story of what >was created on the first day, and what was done on the second day and the remaining days, and the lengthy telling >of the creation of Adam and Eve, and their sin and punishment, and the story of the Garden of Eden and Adam's >exile from it, for all this cannot be understood with full understanding from the texts. And all the more so the story >of the generation of the Deluge and the Division, for there is not great need of them. And it would be sufficient for >the people of the Torah without these texts, and they would believe in the general information that was mentioned >to them in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:10): "For in six days God created the heavens and the earth, the sea >and all they contain, and He rested on the seventh day", and the knowledge would remain to the few individuals >among them, as 'a law given to Moses from Sinai" (halacha leMoshe miSinai), along with the Oral Law. And Rabbi >Isaac gave a reason for this, that the Torah began with "In the beginning God created" and the story of the whole >topic of creation until the creation of Adam, and that He made him ruler over the work of His hands and all that >was given over beneath his feet, and the Garden of Eden - which is the best of all the places created in this world - >became established for his dwelling, until his sin drove him from there. And the people of the generation of the >Deluge, by their sin were driven from the entire world, and the righteous one among them alone was spared, him >and his sons. And their descendants, their sin caused them to be scattered in places and planted in lands, and they >captured for themselves the places according to their families among their peoples, as the opportunities arose to >them. If so, it is appropriate that when a people continues to sin, it will be destroyed from its place and another >people will inherit his land, for this is the law of God in the world from always… He chased out those who rebelled >against Him, and settled in His servants, so that they would know that by serving Him they possess it - and if they >sin against Him, the land will vomit them up as it vomited up the nation before them. And in order to elucidate the >commentary that I have written [above, here] is the [Sages'] language in Bereishit Rabbah 1:3 who stated it in the >following language: "Rabbi Yehoshua of Sakhnin opened in the name of Rabbi Levi, '"The strength of his actions >He told His people" (Psalms 111:6); what is the reason that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed to Israel, what He >created on the first day and what He created on the second day? Because of the seven [Canaanite] nations, so that >they should not designate Israel and say to them, "Are you not a nation of looting?" and Israel will respond to >them, "And you, is [the land] not looted in your hands, is it not [written] (Deuteronomy 2:23), 'the Kaftorim that >came out of Kaftor destroyed them and dwelt in their place.' The world and its fullness [belong to] the Holy One, >blessed be He: when He wanted, He gave it to you; when He wanted, He took it from you and gave it to us. That is >what is written (Psalms 111:6), 'to give them the inheritance of the peoples,' [and so, it is stated in the first part of >the verse,] 'The strength of his actions He told His people.'" [This means that, in order to give them the inheritance >of the nations, He told them [about the] beginning.”

What exactly does creation have to do with ownership? The answer is obvious to everyone who is a libertarian. The Torah, as interpreted by the rabbis affirms the libertarian view of property ownership. Ayn Rand argued for ownership by creation in her book “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal” when she defended her support for Intellectual Property in the form of copyright. She wrote, “Patents and copyrights are the legal implementation of the base of all property rights: a man's right to the product of his mind. Every type of productive work involves a combination of mental and of physical effort: of thought and of physical action to translate that thought into a material form. The proportion of these two elements varies in different types of work. At the lowest end of the scale, the mental effort required to perform unskilled manual labor is minimal. At the other end, what the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect the mind's contribution in its purest form the origination of an idea. The subject of patents and copyrights is intellectual property. ... Thus the law establishes the property right of a mind to that which it has brought in existence.”

Using Ayn Rand’s formulation, God comes to own the whole world by virtue of creating the world. Kinsella points out in his book “Against intellectual Property” That creation in and of itself doesn’t grant one property in the thing created, but rather whether or not a person owns his creation is dependent upon whether he owns the raw material used to create. In other words, I only own the statute I mold because I own the marble I molded the statute out of. If Bob owned the marble, then I would not have owned the statute, I just used his property to transform it into a piece of art for him. God of course created the universe either out of nothing, or out his own underived energy (creation ex nehilo or creation ex deo). In either case, God is the originator of the material the world is created from, this making God the owner of creation.

John Locke wrote in his Second Treatise on Government that we come to unowned resources by “mixing our labor with the land’, also known as homesteading. “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”

We see God mixing his labor with the land throughout the creation narrative, In Hebrew, there are 3 words used for making something, they are “bara”, “asah”, and “yatzar”. “Bara” is defined as bringing something into being that has never existed before”, “asah” is to take something that already existed and transform it into an intended design or use, or as Nahmanides said, “The expression making (assiya) in every place is the refinement of the thing to its [proper] design.”. “yatzar’ means to fashion or mold something. Both asah and yatzar requires the existence of previous matter. According to Genesis 1, God used already existing created matter to make the sky (1:7), the heavenly luminaries (1:16), land animals (1:15), and humans (1:26, and 2:7). All of these acts of creation make God the owner of the earth and sky by virtue of the homesteading principle as expounded by Locke and Rothbard.

To summarize so far, according to the Rabbis, the reason the Torah begins with the creation narrative, Is to establish God’s ownership of the earth, which is to say that the Judaism subscribes to the homesteading principle of property ownership. Furthermore, because God owns the earth, the rabbis said, God had the right to make rules concerning the use of any land and to evict rule breakers from the earth. He also has every right to give any tract of land to whomever he will, which the Torah specifies that God has done for the Children of Israel. Furthermore, this Torah portion has two examples of God excommunication rule breakers form his land. The first is when he expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden for eating of forbidden fruit (3:24), and the second one is when he expelled Cain from his native homeland and into the desert for murdering his brother Abel (4:10-16).