F.R. Tennant, writing in 1903, offered the following commentary about the doctrine of Original Sin, or, more properly, the lack thereof, in the theology of the Old Testament:
The narrative of the Fall does not, of course, teach the imputation of Adam’s guilt any more than the corruption through his transgression, of the nature derived from him by his posterity. It merely implies that the physical evils which he brought upon himself as punishments were also visited upon his descendants. In this respect the story represents a more advanced stage of ethical reflection than many other passages in the earlier portions of the Old Testament. Not that these definitely teach imputation of guilt, which as a formulated belief is of comparatively modern origin; they simply fall short of an adequate conception of guilt, due to deficient moral feeling with regard to sin . . . The following are the passages of the Old Testament which most strongly emphasise the universality of sin: “Shall mortal man be just before God? Shall a man be pure before his Maker?”; “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one”; “How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?” Job iv. 17 (R.V. margin), xiv. 4, xxv. 4. “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?” Prov. xx.9. “For there is no man that sinneth not,” 1 Kings viii. 46, 2 Chron. vi. 36. “For there is not a righteous man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not,” Eccl. vii. 20. “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?”; “For in thy sight shall no man living be justified,” Pss. cxxx. 3, cxliii. 2.
Allusions to sin as inherent in man from birth occur in the following passages, in addition to some of the verses just cited: “what is man that he should be clean? And he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he putteth no trust in his holy ones; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight,” Job xv. 14, 15. “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” Ps. li. 5. Without assuming that the writer of the passage last quoted taught that the mode of origin of his existence was evil, it is evidently implied that man inherits a tainted nature. The idea of sinfulness as an ingrained state, though not necessarily as inherent from birth, occurs also in Jer. xvii. 9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick: who can know it?” (Ps. lviii. 3 is poetic hyperbole, and not an instance to be added here. Nor is Isai. xlviii. 8: “transgressor from the womb” probably refers to Gen. xxv. 26; cf. Hos. xii. 3).
Such passages supply abundant evidence that, before the later Old Testament books were written, there was a deep sense among the Hebrews of sin as both absolutely universal in the race and all-pervading in the individual’s human nature. But this inherent sinfulness, often spoken of in terms which are inapplicable to acquired sinful habit, is nowhere definitely traced to its cause or source. (Frederick R. Tennant, The Sources of the Doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin [New York Shocken Books, 1968], 100, 101-2, emphasis added)
Instead, consistent with Latter-day Saint theology, while mankind is born in a fallen state (both morally and epistemologically), there is no imputation and/or infusion of Adam's transgression, as later theologies would teach (e.g., Second Council of Orange in AD 529).
