Question:
First off, what’s Judaism’s stance on the whole ‘humans used to be monkeys’ theory? Why did Hashem make monkeys so unfathomably similar to us? All the way down to their fingers- they look just like us! And aside from that, they think and act highly similarly to us too! Jews don’t believe in coincidence- especially when it’s on this level. So why? Why are they so similar to us?
Response:
Judaism holds that G-d created the universe and all that was, is and will be. The order and nature of creation is described in broad strokes in Parashat Bereishit. Humanity was the last act of creation because we were meant to have dominion over everything else. The table had to be set before the guest of honor arrived.
Evolution, as Darwin expounded, was not a stated part of the process but that does not mean that it was not part of the process. The Torah tells us that the world was created in six days. How long was a day back then? Was it twenty-four hours? Keep in mind, the sun and moon were not created until the fourth day. How long was a year? Our concept of time is meaningless when applied to God and His creating of the universe.
It is possible that most of the things created in that initial six ‘days’ went through various iterations before taking the forms with which we are familiar. Critics of this idea claim that God does not need to work in stages. True, but that does not mean He cannot or will not. The very fact that He took six ‘days’ instead of a split second to create the world indicates that He opted for a more gradual process. Noah was in the ark full a full year. Why not get the whole thing over with in a few minutes? Each plague in Egypt took a month. Why prolong the pain? God works at His own pace, for His own reasons.
The text states that G-d said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water…” and “Let the earth bring forth….,” and “Let the waters teem….”. Does that preclude the possibility that it developed gradually? Stages of development, dinosaurs and extinctions, and archeological finds carbon-dated to millions of years ago, need not nor do they negate the Bible’s narrative nor its underlying theology.
As for your question regarding men and monkeys, that’s much more clear cut from a Torah perspective. Judaism does not hold that man evolved from apes. The text declares that God created man. More to the point: God created man, b’tzelem Elokhim, in His image. The word Hebrew word for ape, ‘kof’, does not appear anywhere in the text. Not by coincidence, kof also means ‘imitation’ or more specifically, a really bad imitation. My take-away is that monkeys, by offering a poor, seemingly less mature, imitation of man, can be a reflection of how much farther some of us have to travel before we resemble 'man' in deeds and thought.
If you’d like to see more on this subject, you can find a Midrash and bit of Kabbalah at: https://www.inner.org/responsa/leter1/RESP21.HTM.
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