Biblical Views: Who Sinned First—Adam or Cain?

Home > Magazines > BAR > July/August 2017

Who is responsible for sin and death? According to the Apostle Paul, it was Adam. In his letter to the Romans, Paul names Adam as the first sinner and the reason death entered the world (Romans 5:12, Romans 5:14). While most modern readers of the Bible are familiar with the conclusion, not everyone in antiquity agreed. Although they were all reading the same Bible, some blamed Cain rather than Adam. In Genesis, Adam and Eve disobey God, but their actions are never described as sin. Although God warned them that “in the day that you eat of it, you […]

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Endnotes

The tradition that Cain and his descendants were killed in the flood was popular among Jewish and Christian interpreters; see John Byron, Cain and Abel in Text and Tradition: Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the First Sibling Rivalry, Themes in Biblical Narrative 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 133–134.

J.A.F. Gregg, The Wisdom of Solomon (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1922), p. 23; K. Nielsen, “שטן,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, vol. 14 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), pp. 73–78.

3. ‘

Job 1:6, Job 1:12; Job 2:1; 1 Chronicles 21:1; Zechariah 3:1, Zechariah 3:2.

David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon, The Anchor Bible Commentary Series 43 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979), p. 121; Katrina M. Hogan, “The Exegetical Background of the ‘Ambiguity of Death’ in the Wisdom of Solomon,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 30 (1999), p. 21.

John R. Levison, Portraits of Adam in Early Judaism: From Sirach to 2 Baruch, Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988), pp. 51–52.