University of Divinity
The Sin of Adam and the Sin of All: Revisiting Rom 5:12–21 in the Context of the Wider Jewish ‘Adam’ Myth
Evidence from a considerable number of post-biblical Jewish documents roughly contemporary with Paul suggest that he drew upon and deepened a tradition drawn from Genesis 2–3 of Adam as the instigator of a universal legacy of death to the human race. This talk focuses principally on Rom 5:12–14, reviving a suggestion made fifty years ago by F. W. Danker to the effect that the controversial connective eph’hō contains an implicit reference to the Mosaic Law, rendering the now widely accepted causal translation of the phrase both unnecessary and problematic. The final part of the paper discusses the relevance of this understanding for the traditional doctrine of Original Sin, a doctrine sorely in need of reformulation in the context of accepted scientific understanding of human origins and contemporary moral sensibility.