Saturday, April 17, 2021

C. John Collins on Romans 5:12 being Dependent upon Wisdom of Solomon 2:23-24

 

 

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)