ABSTRACT

But let us return to Adam. This much we know for certain, if cause precedes effect: whoever or whatever he is taken to be, the Adam of the Fall was not responsible for introducing physical suffering and death into the order of nature. Nor, as shown above, can poor Adam be blamed for all the forms of mayhem that we humans inflict on each other; those were well established among evolving organisms long before his and our advent. Thus far has Genesis (as it has been viewed through the lens of Romans 5:12-19) been decisively falsified by science. (In fairness to the authors of Genesis, it needs to be emphasized that the doctrine of original sin and a “Fall” of all humanity caused by one individual’s sin is not to be found in Genesis 2-3, or elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.2 “Indeed, in Scripture in its entirety, the event of Genesis 3 is mentioned only in Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15, and 1 Timothy. The idea that a fall occurs in Genesis 3 dates to the late first century [CE].”3)

Nonetheless, important aspects of what became the Christian concept of original sin find their parallels, and possibly their roots, in Jewish sources. Rabbinical tradition has long acknowledged a conflict within us of two opposing inclinations or impulses (yetzer ha-tov and yetzer ha-ra), respectively good and evil – or perhaps not so much evil as just self-aggrandizing, and even necessary for survival, though needing restraint. The yetzer ha-ra has even been described as “essential to life in that it provides life with its driving power.”4 Also prominent in Jewish tradition is the concept of galut (exile) – not just physical exile from the Promised Land, but the spiritual alienation that “limits the human ability to be in free contact with God,”5 which has clear affinities with the notion of original sin. These ideas are obviously congruent with what I am describing here (for example, the selfish impulse as the driving force of evolution). The figure of Adam (especially in the hands of St. Paul) put a face on such currents of thought as these; but Adam was a

symbol, whereas the psychological and theological insights formed the enduring substance.