LUIS ALBERTO ROJAS - Méjico (México)
Last Saturday March 9, The New York Times disclosed how the archaeologists that work in excavations of Israel for already 25 years, they have not found any physical evidence that sustains the hypothesis that the Old Testament didn't exist neither relates historical facts.
Abraham, the Jewish patriarch, probably never existed. The whole history of the Exodus, according to the bill the Bible, probably never happened and David, far from being the audacious king that Jerusalem built creating a great and powerful capital, serious probably a local cacique whose reputation was magnified later on.
These new theories have won a wide acceptance among non orthodox rabbis that have tried not to give to know this information to their congregations until this moment.
The Unit Sinagogal of the Conservative Judaism that represents to the 1,5 million conservative Jews in the U.S, a new Torah, the first one has just published in more than 60 years. Denominated "Etz Hayim" ("Tree of the Life", in Hebrew) and compiled by David Lieber of the Jewish University of The Ángel, speaks of the last archaeological results, of philology, of anthropology and of the studies of old cultures, in an effort of introducing a point of view of the Bible, more than like document, as a cultural legacy.
"Etz Hayim" it contains the standard Hebrew text, a parallel English translation (corrected by Chaim Potok, good known as the author of the "The Elect") and an explanation page for page of the text, together with comments and 41 rehearsals of rabbis and of prominent erudites in historical matters.
These rehearsals will surprise many readers. For example, Roberto's rehearsal Wexler, president of the University of the Judaism in The Ángel, counts that it is quite unlikely that the history of the Genesis originates in Palestine, and that it is more probable than you gives in Mesopotamia.
In the rehearsal "Biblical Archaeology", of I. Levine, professor in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, finds few evidences to corroborate the conquest and the establishment of Canaan, the old name of the area including Israel.
Excavations that demonstrate that Jericho was uninhabited are contradicted clearly with the violent and complete conquest depicted in the Old Testament. Also, there is an almost total absence of the archaeological evidence that sustains the magnificent descriptions of the Bible of the Jerusalem of David and of Solomon.
In 1981, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the official arm of the Reformist Judaism, published a comment of Torah corrected by Rabbi Gunther Plaut that spoke of the archaeological evidence that the histories of the Genesis were a myth mixture, legend, distant memory and search of the origins of the Jewish town.
The weight of these arguments has ended up being so big that most of erudites affirm that the Old Testament is a legend. However, the orthodox Jews continue looking at the Torah like the literal word of God.
