[TheErnFormerlyKnownAsBig]

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

[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.

[Kaslin]

Where is the BARF Alert?

[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?

[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!

[pabianice]

"Whenever you have two Jews, you have at least three opinions."

-- Joseph Myerson, 1873 - 1956

[ChocChipCookie]

The Bible is accurate enough for the Smithsonian Institute to use as an historical reference.

[kezekiel]

We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. - 2 Peter 1:16

Good thing for Peter the "scholars" weren't around to set him straight.

[kezekiel]

To the editors who worked on the book, it represents one of the boldest efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the Bible as a human rather than divine document.

Talk about faith in vain. Why worship, why go to synagogue, why follow Jewish law if you believe it's all simply Hebrew mythology? I want to puke every time I hear "my faith tradition" (ala AlGore). Traditions don't save, and it's foolishness to profess faith in something you don't believe.

[kezekiel]

As for the mounting archaeological evidence suggesting the contrary, Rabbi Grossman said: "There's no evidence that it didn't happen. Most of the `evidence' is evidence from silence."

At one time, Pontius Pilate and King David were considered by "scholars" as mythological figures. Then, a war memorial was discovered that celebrated one of Israel's enemies' defeat of "the sons of David." Then, a cornerstone was found that contained an inscription dedicating the structure to Ceasar - signed, Pontius Pilate.

As has been noted, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[Sneer]

Archeological facts??? Never have they found in their "digs" any evidence of a partial evolution of even one species to another let alone to a human...nothing anywhere in the world yet they continue to accept "on faith"

[RobbyS]

Inn a project of such complexity, there were inevitably many points of disagreement. But Rabbi Kushner says the only one that eluded resolution concerned Leviticus 18:22: "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence." "We couldn't come to a formulation that we could all be comfortable with," the rabbi said. "Some people felt that homosexuality is wrong. We weren't prepared to embrace that as the Conservative position. But at the same time we couldn't say this is a mentality that has been disproved by contemporary biology, for not everyone was prepared to go along with that." Ultimately, the editors settled on an anodyne compromise, noting that the Torah's prohibitions on homosexual relations "have engendered considerable debate" and that Conservative synagogues should "welcome gay and lesbian congregants in all congregational activities."

Except that modern biology has done no such thing. These Jews wish to be politically correct so strongly that they accept every shed of gay propoganda as truth. There is no gay gene, and the cause of homosexuality remains a mystery, especially as so many of them are bisexual.

[Eternal_Bear]

Time to grow up. People should not live by myths. Let's be practical and real and work hard. It does more wonders than any religion.

[Sci Fi Guy]

It's so easy to tell when Easter/Passover season arrives by the hit pieces run in the "mainstream" media. Another year where that fact that the majority of scholars are conservative escapes our investigative media.

[MarkL]

Terrific example of what liberalism has done to a religion. Orthodox Jews, meaning those who believe in their religion, that the bible is the Word of G-d, have been taking hits from the other "branches" of Judism for years, not unlike Christian conservatives.

Leave it to these "other" Rabbis to come up with the idea that the religion that they practice and preach is a fraud... This is sort of like the episode of South Park, where there was a council of jews, including the "anti-semetic" branch!

Mark

[razorback-bert]

Excavations showing that Jericho was unwalled and uninhabited

What an odd statement, if Jericho was uninhabited, how was it a city at all?

Plus, I have seen pictures of the rubble of the wall, they are often shown on the history channel.

[ml/nj]

I read this article in the printed NYT this morning.

I was wondering why apparently none of the 45 essays reflected a more traditional view. They say there is no Egyptian evidence for the Exodus, and I would say that there is only no Egyptian evidence for the Exodus if one ignores the evidence that does exist. In Ages in Chaos Immanual Velikovsky discusses this evidence which includes an Egypian papyrus (in a museum in Leyden, I think) that essentially describes the same plagues as the Biblical version does.

They also say there is no or little archeological evidence for the Bible, and imply that there is contradictory evidence. It's too bad they don't explain this at all. I have a book on my shelf entitled Understanding the Bible through History and Archeology that I thought mostly confirmed Biblical accounts. Maybe I didn't read it closely enough?

"Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence." "We couldn't come to a formulation that we could all be comfortable with," the rabbi said. Translation: We are here reinventing the Bible in our own image. We could flim-flam our way through almost everything but it would be so obvious that we were frauds if we condoned homosexuality.

It's "uncomfortable" for a thief not to steal. The Bible is not about what is comfortable. If doing what we each felt was comfortable we wouldn't need any Laws at all.

ML/NJ