Friday, January 23, 2015

Anxious Adam

PHILIP JENKINS AT THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Enter Adam.
In the mid-first century AD, St. Paul wrote some hugely influential words about Adam, the Fall, and original sin. As I have argued, these ideas seem at variance with earlier Biblical traditions and Jewish thought, in which Adam’s story made little impact. Around Paul’s time, though, that saga was attracting increasing interest. Paul, oddly, was riding a fashionable wave.

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Professor Jenkins continues his segue from Satan to the Fall and Adam. By the way, I am very skeptical about there ever having been Jewish originals of either The Life of Adam and Eve or The Apocalypse of Adam. I think they were both probably Christian compositions.