Sin and human accountability in second temple Judaism

Abstract

i Sanders (1977:114) contends that “[s]in comes only when man actually disobeys; if he were not to disobey he would not be a sinner.” This thesis was thus motivated to critique Sanders’s contention in relation to sin and human accountability in Second Temple Judaism. Before delving into various understandings of sin and human accountability of Second Temple Judaism, in Chapter 2, I deal with the Weltanschauung of Second Temple Judaism. It was observed that Israel’s covenantal history is far from discontinuous with creation at a time of severe theological, sociological, and political plights in spite of the presence of sin and evil. In Chapters 3, I deal with how the authors of 1 Enoch and Jubilees understood the presence of sin and evil. Even though the Watcher story in these Enochic traditions serves to attribute the origin of sin to the fallen angels, it was observed the Watcher story cannot quench Second Temple Jews’ uneasiness in relation to the presence of sin and evil. In Chapter 4, I deal with Qumran literature. By focusing on the term yetzer ra both in pre-Qumran and in Qumran writings, it is worth noting that Qumran literature shows a tendency to realize the severity of the sinfulness of humanity in a complicated and radicalized manner. When looking at first century Jewish (4 Ezra and 2 Baruch) and early Christian (Romans and James) literature in Chapter 5, it was observed that the authors of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch came to develop further pessimistic anthropologies distinct from their predecessors in the Second Temple period. However, for them, a possibility is open for the few righteous remnants to obey divine commandments. It can be said that their understandings of sin and human accountability appear to be synergistic. For Paul and James, however, the paradigm of the relationship between divine agency and human agency is shifted from synergism to monergism in terms of the Jesus Christ event.