The evil inclination
(yetzer ha-ra’). Judaism entertains no doctrine of original sin. Only death
came with Adam’s sin, not the necessity to sin: “You laid upon him one commandment
of yours; but he transgressed it, and immediately you appointed death for him
and for his descendants” (4 Ezra 3:7). Urbach asserts that no Tanna among the
disciples of Akiba (martyred 132 CE) attributed the existence of sin to Adam’s
transgression. Kugel asserts, though, that the idea of hereditary sin occurs in
Jewish texts of the first century CE. For example, in the Life of Adam and
Eve Adam says to Eve, “What have you done? You have brought upon us a great
wound, transgression and sin in all our generations.” Ben Sira 25:24 says, “With
a woman sin had a beginning, and because of her we all die.” Fourth Ezra
3:21-23 (ca. 100 CE) clearly traces sin from Adam; “For the first Adam,
burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all
who were descended from him. Thus the disease became permanent.” The author later
cried, “O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall
was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants” (7.118). However,
the contemporary 2 Bar 54:15, 19 countered that each one born of Adam “has
prepared for himself the coming torment. And further, each of them has chosen
for himself the coming glory. . . . Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except
for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam.” (James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis
1-11: A Narrative-Theological Commentary [2d ed.; Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade
Books, 2025], 91)
Tanna derives from Aramaic “to
teach” and is a name given to Jewish rabbis mentioned in the Mishnah (200 CE)
and the Baraita. (Ibid., 91 n. 124)
