The commentator par excellence is of course Rashi. His first comment on Bereshis is an enigma. "Omar Reb Yitzchok, lo hoyo tzorich l'haschil Ha Torah ela mihachodesh haze lochem- It was not necessary to start the Torah with Bereshis start at "This month (Nissan) will be called the first month".

Rashi's proposal is to do away with the entire book of Genesis from the Torah. Jews he argues are interested in the Torah providing mitzvahs (commandments). The beginning of the Mitzvah stage of the Torah is in Exodus.

The Sifsi Chachomin says that Rashi is not suggesting deleting Bereshis from our Bible. Rashi s merely suggesting that it should not be in the Torah. Bereshis could be incorporated elsewhere perhaps next to Chronicles or Proverbs.

The Ramban objects strongly to this suggestion and points out that the story of Bereshis and the events which took place then constitute a fundamental of Jewish belief. It is he argues essential to incorporate Bereshis in the Torah. The point Rashi is making says the Ramban is a different one. If a person thinks that they will understand what went on in the creation of a universe or the account of the creation of man, then they are wrong. Imagine a gallon bucket which is having the waters of the Pacific ocean pumped into it, how much can it contain! Human intellect is finite the creation is relatively infinite. The same is true for the story of the ejection of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. The Talmud states that after Adam died, the light which shone from the lowest part of his body was greater than two suns. Then what must the light from his head have been like? This would be after he was dead what must he have been like while alive. That would be after the sin of eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge, what must he have been like before? The Medrash actually states that the Angels mistook Adam for G-d. The world was different beyond our comprehension and so too were humans.

The Ramban goes further in pointing out that the same point applies to the story of Noah's flood and the Tower of Babel.

An Orthodox Rabbi was recently on some discussion programme on BBC radio. One of the contributors asked him if he believed in the Biblical account of creation. The Rabbi replied that he did. This person then stated that as the Rabbi was a "fundamentalist" then his views were irrelevant. It goes without saying that this person is a crude bigot. The Rabbi was however wrong. The narrative of the Genesis story is only the first layer of the complete tale. Orthodox Jews do not believe it to be the complete and final story.

Rabbi Dessler points out that we may be only able to access a minute fraction of what went on in Bereshis. We are nevertheless obliged to learn from these events whatever the Talmud and other sources reveal.