Gerald Schroeder in Genesis and the Big Bang has uncovered Jewish traditions that support the Big Bang theory of modern physics. What about something a little more modern, string theory?

Poor string theory. I think it’s been struggling since the Higgs Boson was pretty convincingly discovered in 2013. But we can find a little boost for it right in the Talmud, Tractate Chagigah, page 12a:

ואמר רב יהודה אמר רב בשעה שברא הקב”ה את העולם היה מרחיב והולך כשתי פקעיות של שתי עד שגער בו הקב”ה והעמידו

Rabbi Judah also related that Rav said, “At the time when the Holy One (whom we bless) created the world, it kept on unraveling like two balls of thread for the warp of a weaver’s loom until the Holy One (whom we bless) rebuked it and made it stop.”

This Talmudic passage wouldn’t agree with modern astronomers that the universe is continually expanding. Still, string theorists may find comfort in knowing that the metaphor they use has ancient roots.

Why two balls of thread? I presume that that Rav and his contemporaries thought that there were two substances of creation, one for the extraterrestrial region and a different one for down here. This would be in line with Aristotelian and (if I understand it right) Platonic thinking, but not (so far as I know) with modern physics.

If you look hard enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find support for any number of modern theories right in the Talmud. I doubt, however, that the Talmud tries to teach physics; there are many ways to understand the process of creation, consistent with different Rabbinic opinions and texts in Hebrew scripture, and all of them can leave us amazed at the world we experience, wondering whence it came and whither it goes.