Was that first
transgression an event, or should we interpret it in a more timeless
fashion—say, as the simpler observation that humans are sinful or that all
humans recapitulate Adam’s sin in their own lives? Genesis certainly portrays
the fall as an event (or complex of events) that changed the human condition
from its initial blessedness. The Second Temple Jewish book of Wisdom of
Solomon draws on this (2:23-24):
for God created
mankind for incorruption,
and made him in the image of his own character,
but through the devil’s envy death came into the world,
and those who belong to his party experience it.
Interestingly, the
Greek of “death came into the world” (θανατος εισηλθεν εις τον κοσμον) is quite close to
the Pauline “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin”
(Rom 5:12, η αμαρτια εις τον κοσμον εισηλθεν και δια της αμαρτιας ο θανατος). In the context of Romans 5, of course, the words denote an event,
since the argument as a whole is a narrative, that is, someone did something
(one man trespassed, v. 15) and as a result something happened (sin, death, and
condemnation came into the world of human experience), and then Jesus came to
deal with the consequences of it all (by his obedience to make the many
righteous). The argument gains its coherence from its sequence of events; it is
drastically inadequate to say, as some do, that Paul is merely making a
comparison here, nor does it account for the corporate solidarity that
underlines the Hebrew Bible. (C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well:
Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11 [Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2018], 229)
