  The teleparallel gravity theory, treated physically as a gauge theory of
translations, naturally represents a particular case of the most general
gauge-theoretic model based on the general affine group of spacetime. On the
other hand, geometrically, the Weitzenboeck spacetime of distant parallelism is
a particular case of the general metric-affine spacetime manifold. These
physical and geometrical facts offer a new approach to the teleparallelism. We
present a systematic treatment of the teleparallel gravity within the framework
of the metric-affine theory. The symmetries, conservation laws and the field
equations are consistently derived, and the physical consequences are discussed
in detail. We demonstrate that the so-called teleparallel GR-equivalent model
has a number of attractive features which distinguishes it among the general
teleparallel theories, although it has a consistency problem when dealing with
spinning matter sources.
