Excerpt #83 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Years ago, a New York Times article reported that the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which represents 1.5 million Conservative Jews in the U.S., had just issued a new Torah and commentary, the first for Conservatives in more than 60 years.
It offers an interpretation that incorporates the latest findings from archeology, philology (the study of the authenticity of written texts), anthropology, and the study of ancient cultures. “It represents one of the boldest efforts ever to introduce into the religious mainstream a view of the Bible as a human rather than a divine document.”
It concludes that Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. Nor did Moses. The entire Exodus story as recounted in the Bible probably never occurred. The same is true of the tumbling of the walls of Jericho.
The story of Noah was probably ‘borrowed’ (no such thing as plagiarism at that time) from the Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh which contained one of numerous flood myths, and on and on.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, and co-editor of the new Torah said, “When I grew up in Brooklyn, congregants were not sophisticated about anything.
Today, they are very sophisticated and well read about psychology, literature, and history, but they are locked in a childish version of the Bible.”
The notion that the Bible is not literally true “is more or less settled and understood among most Conservative rabbis,” observed David Wolpe, a rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a contributor to the new Torah.
But some congregants, he said, “may not like the stark airing of it.”
Last Passover, in a sermon to 2,200 congregants at his synagogue, Rabbi Wolpe frankly said that “virtually every modern archaeologist” agrees “that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way that it happened, if it happened at all.”
The rabbi offered what he called a “litany of disillusion” about the narrative, including contradictions, improbabilities, chronological lapses and the absence of corroborating evidence. In fact, he said, archaeologists digging in the Sinai have “found no trace of the tribes of Israel – not one shard of pottery.” (Excerpted from “As Rabbis Face Facts, Bible Tales Are Wilting” by Michael Massing, New York Times.)
When the movie Jurassic Park was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago, when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashanah and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old. – Carl Sagan
The authors of Genesis lived in a pre-scientific era.
They adopted creation legends from surrounding Pagan societies.
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. – Mark Twain