Key beliefs in JudaismGod as creator

Genesis, the first book of the Torah, explains Jewish religious teaching about how the world was created. The creation story in Genesis shows how God made the world and everything in it in six days, resting on the seventh.

Genesis describes how God said, ‘There shall be light,’ (Genesis 1:3-5) and brought light into existence, before separating light and dark to make day and night.

God made men and women on the sixth day: So God created mankind in his own image … God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ (Genesis 1: 27-28). Jews take this as evidence that God gave humans dominion over his creation, meaning that humans have a special responsibility to lead creation and look after the earth. God also commanded the first humans to reproduce and fill the earth with people.

Some Orthodox Jews, called Haredi Jews, read the creation story in Genesis literally, which means that they believe that God created the world and everything exactly as the story describes. Other Jews see the account in Genesis as an allegory. This means that they do not believe that the world was created exactly as Genesis describes, but instead take important meaning from the story that God created the world and gave human beings a special role within it. Jews who believe Genesis to be an allegory are therefore able to accept scientific theories about creation such as the Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution.