I'm sure this is a very unoriginal question but still I am curious. And I very possibly don't have my facts straight. But I am under the impression that Christians believe that Jesus died partly because of Adam's original sin. Or something like that. But that sin was part of the Old Testament that I thought Christians and Jews interpreted in approximately the same way. But Jews don't believe in "original sin" do they? So why would people come along to dispute their interpretation thousands of years later?

Its one thing to disagree about the resurrection story. But this seems entirely different.

I think this quote from Wikipedia accurately sums it up

Because believing in original sin is incredibly -ev

As is believing in general?

Throughout the OT, there is a progressive and increasing revelation of theology by God to the Jewish people. But we Christians of course don't believe that the fullness of revealed truth is in the OT. This is the answer to your question, i.e. that there was more revelation after the OT, and which general revelation only ceased with the death of the last apostle.

The doctrine of original sin is expounded by St. Paul in the NT. But there was a precursor statement in the OT:

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
--Psalm 51:5 (RSV-CE)

Sklansky, is it a daily thing with you? Do you look in the mirror every morning and say something like "mirror, mirror on the wall who is the smartest of them all?" Then does Mason, a history sensitive Jewish person, call you up and say"Why you are oh Master(mind). Please occaisionally ask a dumb question so that your followers will know that you are human and will buy your books.

"why would people come along..." you ask. Well, why is there air? And blowing up basketballs is not the answer.

leaponthis

I have no idea what Jews believe.

I do know that Christians are not of one mind on this issue. Most orthodox sects, such as Roman Catholic believe that we are sinners at birth. That is why they baptize babies. MAny protestant sects such as Baptists do not believe this and they do not baptize until one is old enough to have made their own sins.

No, they don't. There's your answer. They read the same book but come to vastly differing conclusions about what it tells us. They find different parts of that book more interesting than others, they find different parts more binding than others, and they differently handle the normative challenge of the book.

I don't think such nonsense should be placed in the trash can. It should be re-cycled somehow.

I do not know the answer to your question, but this might be worth adding for informational purposes: I believe there is a significant distinction between the Catholic church and the Orthodox church regarding the concept of original sin. I'm not sure your impression of the Christian "original sin concept" would fit well with the doctrine of the Orthodox church. And by the way, the Orthodox Church is a very large branch of Christianity, although it is more popular in Eastern Europe, Russia and Greece than in the West. Also, the doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ differs significantly between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. However, I am not qualified to elaborate much on these matters.

I think the really important question about religion is not how to understand it, but how to get rid of it.

David,
I would think questions such as this would be better answerd from experts in this field.
A Rabbi, A Priest and such.
Only answers given here from laymen -----

You don't really believe that there is such an easy answer to a Sklansky question now do you? People look at things differently? How absurd!

leaponthis

How is that an important question? You can't get rid of it the end.

This thread reminds me of the part in Life Of Brian by Monty Python where they are all standing on the hill waiting for the end of the world. It doesn't happen, so have to come down and hope it will be tomorrow.

Regardless of personal beliefs or doctrines the days tick over and what you do with them is up to you.

My 2c is interpretation is an ongoing thing, much like life itself and changes day to day.

My answer is you chaps need to do some hard physical labour as I guess you are all a little more than overweight and excercise the brain more than the vessel, so off those fat hinies...

Hmmm....I wonder if an "Amen" is an appropriate reply here? Well, sorry, but at the moment, I just can't think of anything better.

Amen!

leaponethis

My understanding is that the traditional, orthodox Jewish belief is they do believe in original sin. And that the basic difference between a fundamentalist Christian and the orthodox Jewish belief is that the Christian believes that Jesus is the Messiah that is promised in the old testament and the orthodox Jew doesn't believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

There is an old saying: Ask 3 rabbi's a question and you will get 4 opinions.

I'm not a rabbi but this is my understanding of the whole sin thing. Jews don't even look at sin in the same way as christians. Judaism is based on a covenant with god. It's an agreement......you follow my laws and I will watch over you. You don't go to hell for disobeying (look at Adam an Eve). And you don't go to heaven for following them. You follow them because it's the right thing to do and you will be judged by those around you to be a righteous person.

A secular aphorism that I think captures the concept is "Living well is it's own reward". That is if you take the phrase "Living well" to mean leading a life of integrity and in some way adding to the positive existence of the world as a whole. Even if it's in a small way.

Leading a productive life adds to the whole of society as well as your own life, so that would be part of it.

How does one lead a productive life? Well thats where the old testament comes in. It's refered to as the Torah....but it's also refered to as "The Law". On a very basic level its a book of civil law.....Leviticus enumerates the laws....and the rest is used to interpret how to follow the laws. Of course there is a LOT of interpretation.

Leviticus enumerates over 600 laws that include the ten comandments. There is a little bit of debate of the exact number of laws since the is some concatenation and some statements that might be interpreted as laws. The exact number is irrelevant to the point I am making, though.

The commandments aren't looked at as just laws.....they are looked at as obligations. To follow the law is to fullfill your obligations as part of the covenant or agreement with god. All the interpretations can be looked at as analysis of that contract with god about just exactly what those obligations are.

Now back to Adam and Eve......they had one and only one obligation.....to not eat from the tree of knowledge. They didn't fulfill that obligation and God threw them out of the house, so to speak. Like an angry parent he told them "Go.....go on....just go and see how easy it is out there without me to take care of you!" (imagine an angry jewish mother speaking in dialect).

So what does it mean when you don't fullfill your obligations?.....You've broken the contract....you get punished.....either directly or by the path in life you chose. Since mainstream judaism doesn't have a concept of hell you don't get punished in the next life...you get punished in this one.

As far as that first commandment to not eat from the tree of knowledge......it's an obsolete commandment since it doesn't exist anymore....or if it does, no one knows about it. There is no original sin since the obligation doesn't exist anymore.....it's not part of the contract.

This is just my interpretation of things....you might want to ask a rabbinic scholar what he thinks.....I think it catches the jist of it though.

SacredC,

I don’t know how accurate your reply is, but you sound like you know what you are talking about. I just wanted to remark that you (and only a few others) replied to the actual question. Good job.

Since you are new to 2+2 (16 posts) I wanted to welcome you to the forums. Stop by the SMP (science, math, philosophy) forum. We get some good discussions from time to time.

RJT

From Wiki:

"Judaism rejects the concept of the original sin altogether and stresses free will and men's responsibility of their actions rather than religious obedience or faith. Why, they ask, would God, who is, by dogma, universal unconditional Love, create sentient and sapient beings, then intentionally let them become corrupt - and then punish them from generation to generation with eternal torture for simply just being born in the world and for nothing else - and judge people not on their actions but by their faith or its lack - and then by whim save the beings from nothing else but from his very own wrath."

The answer appears to be that Jews believe in God as "universal unconditional love" and therefore refuse to believe in God deliberating causing difficulty and hardship as punishment for mankind.

Adam and Eve appear to be looked on by Christianity as sinners who corrupted mankind's holy nature forever. Jesus died to absolve mankind of it's sins. Mankind's sinful nature is thought to be a permanent condition passed down from Adam and Eve. While Jesus did not die specifically for Adam's sin, without Adam's sin mankind would have retained its' holy nature.

From this I deduce that Jewish belief in original sin would lead to a mainstream Christian view on religion. If one believes that mankind is inherently sinful, then belief in a redeemer for sin (Jesus) is necessary.

Jewish belief is that Adam and Eve was given freewill as a man and comitted sin with that freewill, rather than being sinful in nature. Thus one has the capacity to commit sin, but is not inherently sinful and in need of a redeemer from birth.

Actually I go to a Baptist church and it's my understanding based on the teachings of the pastors I've heard throughout my life, that Baptists believe in original sin. I'm not sure why Baptists wait to do the baptism when your older. I think it has something to do with the fact that you have actually chosen to follow God and want him to wash you clean of your sins.

I believe that the idea is that we are not born to have automatically chosen God. That we are born with sin as a part of us due to Adam and Eve, and we must come to the realization in some point during our lives that we need to follow God and his holy ways layed out for us in the bible, and that baptism is one of the steps in announcing this.

Thankyou. As I said it was my take on it. Didn't go consult with anyone on the matter or reference any text.

One of the problems with a question like this is that I don't think that there is much philosophical discourse in any religion as to why they don't believe such and such.

It's mostly why they do believe a particular thing.

If someone asks why you do believe in something you can usually give them a simple answer and refer them to a few books or someone to find out more about it.

If someone asks you why you don't believe in something you have to go through an education process of what you do believe in and how it diverges from the point of the question. And there isn't anything you can refer them to. I don't think I've ever seen a book of "This is what I don't believe in and why" by anyone about their own religion.

Hm.