Evolution and origins: Israeli Bible education experts on teaching the intersection of science and religion

This article reports on research conducted with 28 experts in Bible education in Israel, where Hebrew Bible is a required subject in the curriculum. Fourteen of these experts work in the general education stream, which primarily serves students from secular and traditional Jewish families, and 14 of them work in the religious education stream, which primarily serves students from Orthodox Jewish families. Through information gained in in-depth interviews with 19 of these experts, and a Delphi survey administered to 17 of these experts, we report on whether experts were in favour of teaching about the interface of evolution and Genesis in Bible class. We found that religious stream Bible experts exhibited a consensus in favour of addressing the interface between evolution and Genesis in Bible classes, while general stream Bible education experts were divided on the issue of whether the topic of evolution was relevant at all to Bible teaching. Additionally, most of the religious stream Bible experts and some of the general stream Bible experts challenged the assumption of a conflict between evolution and religion, while a minority of the general stream Bible experts reinforced the assumption.