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The Evolution of Sin

Old Testament professor Gary Anderson explains how sin came to be seen as a debt rather than a weight—and how that shaped Christianity.

Sin: A History
Sin: A History
Anderson, Gary A.
Yale University Press
September 29, 2009
272 pp., $26.46

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In the version of the Lord's Prayer that appears in the Gospel of Matthew, we're instructed to pray, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." What follows from the metaphor of sin as debt? How does it differ from the Old Testament's governing metaphor for sin? How is the logic of sin as debt related to the strong emphasis on almsgiving in the early church, and what light does it shed on Reformation debates over meritorious good works? How does it bear on the meaning of the Atonement? These are some of the questions Gary Anderson explores in his thought-provoking book Sin: A History (Yale University Press).

Anderson is professor of Old Testament and Hebrew Bible in the department of theology at the University of Notre Dame. He spoke with Books & Culture editor John Wilson about changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness in the Old and New Testaments, and the consequences of those changes.

You recount a time many years ago when you were reading one of the texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and you were struck by a metaphor that surprised you—a discovery that became the genesis of this project.

I was reading a Qumran text called the Damascus Covenant, and I noticed several instances in which the scroll described forgiveness of sins using a Hebrew verb that in the Hebrew Bible never has that meaning. The scroll used the verb 'azab, which generally means "to forsake." It struck me as quite odd.

As I pondered it, I realized that the Aramaic verb for "forgiven" means exactly that. It means "forsake" in the literal sense, because in Aramaic to forgive a sin is to remit what you have coming to you in the sense of a debt. You're forsaking an obligation. Someone who holds a debt over someone else technically can collect that debt whenever he wishes. And if by dint of merciful circumstance he decides not to collect, he forsakes or abandons that right.

For me this was an epiphany. What we're witnessing in that little Qumran text is a new way of thinking about sin and forgiveness. It's not found anywhere in the Old Testament, but, strikingly enough, it becomes quite common in the New.

I was well aware of the long discussion of the variance of the Lord's Prayer in the New Testament. Matthew uses a Greek idiom that corresponds with the Aramaic—that is, to remit a debt-—whereas it's changed in Luke to "forgive our sins," so that the Lord's Prayer will sound more intelligible to a Greek audience. And there you really have the same thing. The modern reader of the Bible in translation doesn't have any feeling for this, but in first-century Greek, sins were not thought of as debts, nor was forgiveness thought of as a remission or non-collection of a debt. When the New Testament has Jesus speak that way [of sins as debts], it's telegraphing to the intelligent reader that Greek is not this guy's native tongue. His native tongue is Hebrew or Aramaic.

So that was the spark. I thought, There's a major change going on here. Is there a story that can be told about that change?

There's a refrain in your book: Sin has a history. And that's a way of encapsulating the story that was suggested to you by this experience. Could you briefly sketch that history?

In conversation about the book, friends will often ask, "Isn't it the case in the Bible that we have all kinds of metaphors that are in circulation about sin? Why have you settled on just two of them?" And it is true that there are many metaphors in the Bible with respect to sin. But it's also true—and this is what I think most readers didn't realize—that certain metaphors clearly take pride of place.


From Issue:
March 2010, Vol. 54, No. 3
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Comments

Displaying 1–3 of 11 comments

John Hamilton

March 25, 2010  6:08pm

Matthew 11:30 - Jesus yoke isn't being compared in weight with the yoke of sin. More likely to the yoke of the law as taught by the scribes, Pharisees, and lawyers: Matthew 23:4, Luke 11:46, Acts 15:10, Galatians 5:1. The donkey-millstone in Matthew 18:6 isn't itself a direct metaphor for sin, but for the preferability of any other horrible fate to sin, or rather, to the particular sin of causing an innocent to stumble. That said, it's true that the ideas of sin and burden are clearly closely associated in Jesus' teaching, even though he used the common metaphor of his day rather than the Old Testament one.

Jason Schrock

March 23, 2010  10:56am

Not the most well-thought out exegesis. Nothing actually heretical, but I must take issue with the implication that Jesus "changed" an established Biblical understanding. If anything, he appropriately added to it by his teaching and use of metaphor, but he didn't change anything. In short, the problem with the author's view can be seen here: "He [Jesus] never talks about sinful individuals bearing enormous weights on their shoulders..." That is a mistake. See: Matthew 18:6 (cf. Mark 9:42); and also see Matthew 11:30 as two distinct examples where Jesus compares Sin to a Weight.

Gerald Reynolds

March 18, 2010  11:54am

For me, and I find a number of Scriptural statements in support of the metaphor of Sin, the condition of which is an incurable disease such as leprocy in Biblical times. Of sin, the outward manifestation of the inward condition, like the clincal symptoms of a disease, being the distrust in God resulting in creaturely disobedience of God's instructions on how to live (Mathew 11: 28 et seq.) I find in my Bible that Sin did not originate with Adam and Eve, but with that former Covering Cherub at the left side of the very throne of Rightness, who had earlier at his creation been given the name of Lucifer or Light bearer, who by his freedom to choose, chose to begin to tell lies instead of truth about God. This metaphor runs throughout the Gospels as revealing in the Incarante God, Jesus the Anointed One, healing more tha preaching, revealing the character of God (John 17: 3 to 6), both in life and in death. Fabulus metaphor.

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