As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting

N.Y. Times online ^ | March 9, 2002 | MICHAEL MASSING

[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

A well timed hit job on the Israelis from the ?NY times?

[anniegetyourgun]

Nah, just more perpetuation of the first lie....."hast God said?"........

[FairWitness]

Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence.

[HENRYADAMS]

Great men provide a control on the lesser lights that of necessity must follow them. Hence, it is of extreme importance to attack and belittle them and even call their existence into question. By eliminating their greatness another element of control over current "leaders" is removed.

[week 71]

This article is ridiculous and clearly typical one-side, NY times, Jew hating, religion-hating, God hating, leftist propaganda. There a so many conservative scholars who believe the Bible (Torah) is the word of God and not simply contains the word of God, it not even funny. It's similiar to the ridiculous Jesus Seminar that attracks so much attention, which only represent the view of less than 10% of scholars, yet gets the cover of Time Magazine every easter.

[alloysteel]

More deconstruction of the Bible as history. We might just as well scoff and laugh at the tales told around tribal campfires by the oral historians, who after all, listened closely as the oral tradition was taught to them. The Cherokee never were, the Goths never were, Ghengis Khan never was.

Merely saying something was not true, does not establish that it was therefore a complete myth. I really don't believe that much sound scholarship went into this "debunking" of the Biblical sources.

[eddie willers]

I'm just wondering when these guys will get together with John Dominic Crossan and the Jesus Group.

[Kaslin]

Where is the BARF Alert?

[eddie willers]

Jesus Group = Jesus Seminar.
Mea Culpa

[DugwayDuke]

If one believes Exodus never happened and one believes Moses never existed, then one can then do away with those pesky Ten Commandments. One can also do away with the concept of Israel as a nation. Aren't the "conservative" jews the ones in favor of negotiating with the Arabs?

[week 71]

One can well imagine that, had the American war of independance begun in 1776 B.C. instead of A.D. the story would have transmogrified considerably as it passed from generation to generation in a less than scientific era.

Especially with revisionist historians, like the same people who are attacking the Torah. Make no mistake, there is an agenda.

[eddie willers]

Where is the BARF Alert?

I never use Barf Alerts.
Freepers need not be told what to think. (Like it would do any good... haha)

We report...you decide.

[KJMorgan]

The real question is do we believe the Word of God that has stood the test of the Ages, or the words of puny men?

[Darth Sidious]

How do we know for sure that Martin Luther King Jr. was a real person? I never saw him. I don't know of anyone who really ever saw him outside of old footage and newspaper photos. I've seen and heard about a lot of stuff done in his name for as long as I can remember, but how do I know for sure that he even existed?

Gosh, Martin Luther King Jr. might have just been a fictional character that's been perpetuated as real for all these years!

[goldstategop]

PC took over Reform Judaism and much of Conservative Judaism as well. Basically what you have here is Conservative Jews admitting the Torah is a hoax and God is a liar who tricked the Jews into believing a made up fairy tale. The only thing I'm surprised at is they haven't stopped celebrating Jewish holidays, liturgy, keeping kashrut, and davening on Shabbat and the High Holidays. I mean if its all a lie, what's the point of being a Jew in the first place? So much for men of the cloth being able to believe in their faith and convey it to the laity. In these days of PC, to quote from the Good Book itself, "every man doeth what seems right in his own eyes."

[eddie willers]

Make no mistake, there is an agenda.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" and a co-editor of the new book.

It was this name that stopped me and convinced me to post this article. I read "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" at a low point in my life and found it comforting. Theodicy is the major reason for my agnosticism and I fail to see why questioning mystical origins is indicative of an agenda.

[week 71]

Theodicy is the major reason for my agnosticism and I fail to see why questioning mystical origins is indicative of an agenda

I disagree with your pre-supposition of mythical orgins, but the agenda is similiar to "scholars" who attack american history and call our founders avarice racist and call the stories of the revolution myths. There is to much of the agenda to address. BTW I read the book as well and it is indeed a good read.