The Concept of Adam and Eve and the Original Sin in Christianity and Judaism - Research Paper Example

?Compare the concept of Adam and Eve and the "original sin" in Christianity and Judaism The early chapters of Genesis, including the story of the creation and of Adam and Eve, were written to give an account of primeval history, and are usually considered as mythological explanation of Jewish belief. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, ( 2010, page 87) states that “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language but affirms a primeval event.’ The ‘Penny Catechism ‘ of the Roman Catholic church , still in use within living memory , taught that :- Original sin is that guilt and stain of sin which we inherit from Adam, who was the origin and head of all mankind. ( Penny Catechism, Article15, undated) The same document went on to say that:- All mankind has contracted the guilt and stain of original sin, except the Blessed Virgin and her Divine Son, through whose foreseen merits she was conceived without the least guilt or stain of original sin.( Penny Catechism , Article 117, undated) ) . There are two accounts of creation recorded in Genesis. These represent two strands of a very old story based upon long standing oral traditions. These have become the creations myths of both Christianity and the Judaism in which they had their founding. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are described in Judaism as the Pentateuch, and these five books are traditionally said to be the work of Moses. His is death is however actually recorded in Deuteronomy 33, and it is generally considered that a number of different strands wrote theses books in the form we now have them in the 6th or 7th century B.C.E., round about the time of King Solomon . In Genesis Chapter One man is created and in Genesis Chapter Two the creation of Adam is described in more detail. He is made from the earth or clay. The word for ‘formed’ is one which would be used to describe how a potter creates a pot form clay ( Genesis 2 v 7, commentary, Bible New International Version, 2008). The word Adam is linked to the Hebrew word ‘Adamah’ which mean red and it is suggested that this means he was created from red clay ( Mandel 2013) . The story describes how God bought each animal to Adam, who gave then their names. He could not find a suitable helper among them. In Genesis 2 v 18 God says :- It is not good for man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. Genesis 2 v 21, 22 describe the creation of Adam. She is made form part of Adam. Eve is called in Hebrew ‘Haya’ which means ‘live ‘ or ‘to live (Meaning and etymology of the name Eve, undated) . In Genesis 3 v 20 it states :- Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. In one version the two appear to be created simultaneously, but in the second version she come later. By the time both stories were written down each would have carried its own authority and could not be discarded. Living in the Garden of Eden with her husband, Eve is approached and then tempted by the serpent. She yields to the temptation offered and eats the forbidden fruit, as well as some to her husband. After this it as if they have woken up, as become aware of their nakedness and make themselves clothes. Later ( Genesis 3 v 12) Adam puts the blame on Eve. As a result God tells Eve that she will have pain in childbirth and will become subject to her husband ( Genesis 3 v 16. It is often interpreted that only Eve who is admonished, but in Genesis 3 v 17ff Adam, too is told what will happen to him as the result of his disobedience. According to Jewish teaching Eve was not created at the same time as Adam because God knew that she would become a reason for complaint ( Eve, Jewish Encyclopedia ,1906). These is also a tradition of another help meet being created before Eve , Lilith , but she goes her own way and refuses to be the wife of Adam ( Hampshire County Council, undated) . According to another Jewish rabbinic tradition Eve was tempted first, as women were more likely to give in than men. Despite Eve’s sin, according to Kolatch , (1989) ” the doctrine of original sin is totally unacceptable to Jews” that is the idea that because one person sinned all humanity are under the punishment because of inherited sin ( Ferguson et al 1989, page 642) Jews believe that man enters the world free of sin,. There have been some Jewish teachers who taught that death was a punishment brought upon the world because of Adam's sin, the majority view by was that man is imperfect and so he sins being, rather than, as taught by Christianity, because of his he is inherent sinfulness. This idea of original sin, that is sin brought into the world because of one person’s sin, was first introduced into Christian theology by Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century C.E. ( Ferguson et al, 1989, page 641). Augustine taught that sin was a privation of the good, the opposite of goodness. He seems to have understood it as a sort of perversion of self-love , which does fit in with the primal pair wanting their own ways, wanting to satisfy their own desires, rather than obeying God. He saw this as the opposite of love of God and taught that it was transmitted from generation to generation biologically. Later Anselm, an eleventh century archbishop of Canterbury thought of it in other terms , that is original to each person, yet at the same time believed this sinful nature was passed on father to son ( Ferguson et al , 1989, page 642). These early scriptures would have been written by men, and in church history it has most often been men who have interpreted them. The fact of Eve’s sin has often been used as an excuse to put down women for instance, while the fact of Adam’s sin is too often ignored. According to the ‘Women Can Be Priests’ web site ( 2013) The biblical creation stories were interpreted as having put women in a permanent state of submission to men, by way of punishment. The Latin Fathers of the Church held women responsible for bringing original sin into the world, and for being a continuing source of seduction. Women continued to be condemned by the theologians of the Middle Ages. The same passage goes on to state that no modern theologian would consider that women are any more sinful than men, and sees the earlier ideas to be a ‘lopsided’ interpretation of the scriptures. In Genesis 1 v 26, 27 the scriptures record God as saying :- Let us make God in our image, in our likeness…so God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; make and female he created them. The chapter goes on to say ( Genesis 1 v 31) ‘God saw all that he made and it was very good.’ Other versions of the Bible use the word ‘perfect’. This brings in the problem of ‘Where did sin come from?’ It is of course connected to free will. God did not create clones or robots. He created people and every person who has ever been born would acknowledge that they have free will to choose between right and wrong, and that at some point they have chosen what they know to be wrong. Paul knew it and wrote in Romans 3 v 23 ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ ( Bible ,N.I.V., 1980). If then all have sinned, not just women, or not just Adam and Eve, why has so often have sin the Garden of Eden , and in particular the sin of Eve, been used against women to keep them in submission, as second rate humans? Earlier than Augustine, the early Christian writer Tertullian had a very negative image of women. He said : Every woman should be .... walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve,-the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin, and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition……The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too….You are the devil's gateway! You are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree! You are the first deserter of the divine law! You are she who persuaded him (Adam) whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack! You destroyed so easily God's image, man! ( Tertullian , De Culta Feminarum , 2 or 3rd century C.E.). Rabbi Singer describes the concept of original sin in Christianity ( Singer 2011) as , according to Christian teaching “there were catastrophic spiritual consequences for the human race.” This he says is the antithesis of the rabbinic teachings, stating that according to Christian teaching :- As a consequence of this first iniquity, man is hopelessly lost in a state of sin in which he has been held captive since this fall. As a result, he is powerless to follow the path of obedience and righteousness by his own free will. He claims that the early Christians taught this because without this doctrine there would be nothing to offer to their congregations. In Judaism the belief is that every child is born innocent, but that over time they tend to develop bad traits. This is removed from the Christian teaching of ‘total depravity’, or total inability, as propagated by Calvin and his followers who taught that, despite being created by God, humans are not naturally inclined to love God wholeheartedly, but instead everyone is more are inclined to look after their own interests, and so to reject the idea of the rule of God. According to Ferguson et al ( 1989, page 122) the term ‘total depravity’ refers not to the immensity of a person’s sin, but rather to the fact that every part of his being is affected by it. This however is not always how the doctrine is taught. There is, in some parts of the church at least, an emphasis upon how totally wicked all people are, when it is obvious that there are degrees of evil in mankind. In the 1859 century Darwin published his famous book ‘On the origin of species’. Up to this point in time the early stories in Genesis were accepted by many as being factual, and there are those who would still hold to this view. The stories are today often dismissed as not being true, because they do not fit into ideas about evolution. But the Bible was never meant to be a scientific text book. The stories, written down much later than any of the events in Genesis, do in fact fit into a scientific chronology of life coming out of chaos, but they are meant to describe what their Jewish writers saw as a description of the relationship between God and his creation, and how this was disrupted by sin. As such they reflect redacted Jewish ideas in the 6th century B.C.E. Whether or not one believes them as fact, they have something to teach about the way in which God was believed to be the instigator of all that was created and how he was believed to want to be in a positive relationship with the men and women he had created. The rest of scriptures could be said to be a development of that theme, not just in the Jewish scriptures, but on through the New Testament. The stories have been interpreted in many ways, and in Christianity often in negative ways which were used against women, but that should not be allowed to detract from their majesty, as those men , so long ago, sought to describe a God of great power and love. In his letter to the Romans Paul said :- Just as sin entered the world through one man , and in this way death came to all men because all sinned ( Bible , N.I.V.) Whether or not one takes the Jewish view that children are born innocent and then becomes sinful, or Augustine’s view that man is innately sinful, it is clear that man often does go his own way, and, according to religious teaching, therefore turned his back on God. Can eating an apple have caused all that? References Bible, ( 2008) New International Version, London, Hodder and Stoughton, Darwin, C. (1859) On the Origin of Species, Eve, Jewish Encyclopedia ,1906, Retrieved from http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5916-eve Ferguson, S., Wright, D., Packer ,J. ( editors) ( 1989) New Dictionary of Theology, Leicester, Inter-varsity Press, Hampshire County Council, undated, Religion, Jewish Creation Story, Retrieved from http://www.innovationslearning.co.uk/subjects/re/information/creation/jewish_creatio n.htm Kalatch, A., (1989) The Jewish Book of Why/ The Second Jewish Book of Why, New York, Jonathon David Publications , quoted by Jewish Virtual Library, ( undated) Judaism’s Rejection of Original Sin, Retrieved from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Original_Sin.html Mandel, D., Adam and Eve: The first humans are banished by God, My Jewish Learning .Retrieved from http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Torah/Genesis/Adam_and_Eve.shtml Meaning and etymology of the name Eve, ( undated) Retrieved from http://www.abarim- publications.com/Meaning/Eve.html#.UWGFtL5wbcs Singer,T., Does Judaism believe in original sin? 2011 http://www.outreachjudaism.org/articles/original-sin.html Tertullian , (2nd century C.E.), De Culta Feminarum , quoted by Women can be priests, 2013, Retrieved from http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/tertul.asp#curse The Catechism of the Catholic Church, (2010), New York, Burns and Oates, The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, The Penny Catechism, undated , Retrieved from http://www.proecclesia.com/penny%20catechism/ Women can be priests, Women were considered to be in a state of punishment for sin, 2013 Retrieved from http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/sinful.asp Read More