Origin of Sin

Where did the idea of sin arise from? In this meticulously argued book David Konstan takes a close look at classical Greek and Roman texts as well as the Bible and early Judaic and Christian writings and argues that the fundamental idea of sin arose in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament although this original meaning was obscured in later Jewish and Christian interpretations. <br/><br/>Through close philological examination of the words for sin in particular the Hebrew <i>hata'</i> and the Greek <i>hamartia</i> he traces their uses over the centuries in four chapters and concludes that the common modern definition of sin as a violation of divine law indeed has antecedents in classical Greco-Roman conceptions but acquired a wholly different sense in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.