Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of "sin" arose in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations. Through close philological examination of the words for "sin," in particular the Hebrew hata' and the Greek hamartia, he traces their uses over the centuries in four chapters, and concludes that the common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions, but acquired a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued book, David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman texts, as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian writings, and argues that the fundamental idea of "sin" arose in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, although this original meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations. Through close philological examination of the words for "sin," in particular the Hebrew hata' and the Greek hamartia, he traces their uses over the centuries in four chapters, and concludes that the common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions, but acquired a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
Preface and Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The Greco-Roman World: The Unwritten Laws of the
Gods
Chapter 2: The Hebrew Bible: Chasing after Foreign Gods
Chapter 3: The New Testament: Jesus’ Sense of Sin
Chapter 4: The Church Fathers and the Rabbis: The Transformation of
Sin
A Final Word
By tracing the vocabulary around 'sin' in classical and biblical texts, Konstan argues for a new definition that was superseded by the later Christian traditions.
David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University, USA. Among his books are Friendship in the Classical World (1997), Pity Transformed (2001), The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks (2006), Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (2010) and In the Orbit of Love: Affection in Ancient Greece and Rome (2018). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
[A] book that should be read by anyone who is interested in Judaism
and, above all, in ancient Christianity ... [An] essential book for
the history of religions.
*Myrtia (Bloomsbury translation)*
In The Origin of Sin, the classicist David Konstan offers an
enlightening comparison between the concepts of sin in the
literature of Greece and Rome on the one hand, and Judaism and
Christianity on the other … [H]is argument carries much conviction
and sheds interesting light on the distinctiveness of the founding
ethos of both Judaism and Christianity within their cultural
milieux.
*The Expository Times*
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