The Nature of Sin.

reply to post by jmdewey60

Because the definition of a sin is, "a bad thing".

According to etymological records, sin is a contextual concept directly influenced by cultural standard. This can be clearly observed between the religions of different countries. Which leads me to surmise that sin isn't an absolute thing, so much as an adjective ascribed to a broad classification of behavior that opposes societal standard.

In other words, I would argue that sin is a stereotype.

You need to come up with another term if you want to talk about something that is not bad.

Or you could expand your horizons a little.

You should read Isaiah 53, the "Suffering Servant" passage, to see what sin means, it means being left out when the benefits are being handed out.

Which means sin means "misfortune". See how context affects the meaning of sin?

You have the subject of the story being a decent person who for some reason of injustice is counted as being among the sinners, so being deprived of the rewards of the righteous.

See my above responses.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Here is what The Bible says sin is:

"Whosoever commits sin transgresses also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." - 1 John 3:4

Based on the context of when this verse was written, "The Law" - means The "Eternal" Rules given to Moses by God. It is the first 5 books of the old testament (Torah / Pentateuch).

If sin is a transgression of "The Law" then not following anything in The Old Testament is "sin".

(By the way, The New Testament with Jesus is not called "The Law" - it's called "The God News (Gospels)".)

reply to post by arpgme

"Whosoever commits sin transgresses also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." - 1 John 3:4

Whose law? God's law? But since this isn't a theocracy, doesn't that make it a second set of laws? And which has greater priority, the current law or God's law? If the current law says it's okay for two men to bed together, and God's law says it isn't, then which is the truth?

My point here is that sin is relevant to an archaic code, a cultural protocol. It is not a fact in and of itself.

reply to post by arpgme

If sin is a transgression of "The Law" then not following anything in The Old Testament is "sin".

John doesn't say anything about a law, much less a specific law.
You are reading a translation that words it that way for whatever reason.
The word, "law" is not even in that verse in the Greek.
John is talking about a certain type of reckless behavior.

reply to post by jmdewey60


Maybe this is a better translation?

Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. NIV

What is the "Law of God"? Well it's not about how to trim ones beard, or prepare a baby goat, or about not eating shellfish, that's for sure!

reply to post by windword

Maybe this is a better translation?

It's just an interpretation and it seems to me that they interpret it a certain way to support church doctrine.
The Greek does not support the idea that John is referring to a specific law.
He is talking about a condition of lawlessness.
This is why you need to read Greek if you want to understand what the Bible really says.
And that includes the Old Testament, since evidence shows it was written first in Greek, and then translated into what is called Hebrew.

Sin does mean to "miss the mark".

Each time we miss the mark we have sinned. We do this every day. There is not a one person on this Earth who doesn't sin on a daily basis.

Even when you are doing "good" by your definition another may think differently and believe you wronged them in traffic by not living up to the golden rule and letting them over.

Just because we miss the mark does not mean eternal damnation in my opinion.

Each time we come to Earth our soul is on a journey of learning. We have markers and each time we miss one... we sin. Once on the right track again the sin becomes less and less until we venture off the path chosen. That's my thoughts on sin, anyway.

reply to post by jmdewey60

jmdewey60
reply to post by windword
This is why you need to read Greek if you want to understand what the Bible really says.
And that includes the Old Testament, since evidence shows it was written first in Greek, and then translated into what is called Hebrew.

How can that be so? Why would the Jews be keeping Hebrew as their language if The Old Testament wasn't written in Hebrew? Moses doesn't have a meaning in "Greek" but it does in Hebrew (something about being drawn from water). The Bible quotes Jesus as speaking Aramaic and going to synagogues (a language closer to Hebrew than Greek).

This may seem a little off topic, but the reason why I ask this question is because there needs to be some reason to prefer the Greek version of "sin" over The Hebrew version of "sin" so we can know what the original concept was.

reply to post by arpgme

This may seem a little off topic, but the reason why I ask this question is because there needs to be some reason to prefer the Greek version of "sin" over The Hebrew version of "sin" so we can know what the original concept was.

There isn't any difference, that's my point.
You don't have Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew as somehow separate languages. They have different roots but over so many hundreds of years being spoken within the same community, they had straight crossover between the meanings of the words, even if they sounded different in the different dialects.

reply to post by jmdewey60


But The Old Testament was written way before The New Testament (Christianity) when Greek and Aramaic was more popular.

reply to post by arpgme

But The Old Testament was written way before The New Testament (Christianity) when Greek and Aramaic was more popular.

What do you consider "way before", like 300 years?
If so, then yes, if you think 1500 years, then no, even if it supposedly describes events of that time.
Hebrew would have been just a dialect of old Canaanite that was probably used and preserved by the priesthood as a sort of sacred language.
For example, when the Book of Acts says someone was speaking "Hebrew", it meant that they were speaking a dialect of Aramaic used in Judea.
Back to "sin", the word has the same meaning in Greek as it does in the Hebrew.
Hebrew was a dead language when the Old Testament was written, and is only decipherable by reading the Greek version, my point being that reading the Bible in Greek is preferable to only reading what turns out to be very interpretive English translations.

reply to post by jmdewey60


What evidence is there that the OT was written in Greek first? The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest copies of the OT and the majority of the collection is written in Hebrew, including the oldest manuscripts in the collection.

Have you heard of the Septuagint? It's the earliest known Greek copies of the OT, and they were translated from the Hebrew version.

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

What evidence is there that the OT was written in Greek first?

There is no evidence that there was an Old Testament before the appearance of the Septuagint.
The stories in Genesis and Exodus were copies of stories in Egyptian history that was written in Greek.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest copies of the OT and the majority of the collection is written in Hebrew, including the oldest manuscripts in the collection.

They would have been a group of radical xenophobes, who liked to copy texts in an archaic looking form in order to feel separate from the "evil" gentiles.

Have you heard of the Septuagint? It's the earliest known Greek copies of the OT, and they were translated from the Hebrew version.

That is a theory without an example of what would have been the text supposedly translated.

reply to post by jmdewey60


The oldest manuscript from the DSS dates to before the Septuagint though. I don't understand why you'd think Romans would have invented people like Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Noah, David, Solomon, etc. from scratch yet they couldn't have done the same with Jesus.

What makes you so confident that Jesus was a real person if you don't think the OT characters were? If they can invent a thousand year history from nothing, what makes you think they couldn't have done the same with the first century?

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

The oldest manuscript from the DSS dates to before the Septuagint though.

Here is some information from the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition web site.

How old are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The Dead Sea Scrolls date back as early as 250 B.C., but most of them date to about A.D. 50–100.
seethescrolls.com...

The Septuagint dates to before that.

I don't understand why you'd think Romans would have invented people like Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Noah, David, Solomon, etc. from scratch yet they couldn't have done the same with Jesus.

I'm not talking about "Romans".
I mean Jewish scholars who knew something about the religion but were asked to come up with an explanation for where it came from.

What makes you so confident that Jesus was a real person if you don't think the OT characters were? If they can invent a thousand year history from nothing, what makes you think they couldn't have done the same with the first century?

No one was around writing history when the world came into existence.
The earliest New Testament books were written within living memory of the events.

reply to post by jmdewey60


The oldest manuscript dates to 408 BCE according to tests, 50-100 years before the Septuagint.

Ever read John 1? It talks about the beginning just like Genesis does, only a different version. Moses lived long before John did also, so he was closer to the beginning than John, just saying. Either way, the first few chapters of Genesis are metaphorical and shouldn't be taken literally anyways, just like John.

You still haven't answered why you think a thousand years of history could be fabricated but a hundred years couldn't have been.

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

The oldest manuscript dates to 408 BCE according to tests, 50-100 years before the Septuagint.

What is your source for this claim?

Since then two large series of tests have been performed on the scrolls themselves. The results were summarized by VanderKam and Flint, who said the tests give "strong reason for thinking that most of the Qumran manuscripts belong to the last two centuries BCE and the first century CE."
en.wikipedia.org...

I think that your "408 BC" comes from the furthest extent of variability.

Ever read John 1? It talks about the beginning just like Genesis does, only a different version.

That is overly understated.

Moses lived long before John did also, so he was closer to the beginning than John, just saying. Either way, the first few chapters of Genesis are metaphorical and shouldn't be taken literally anyways, just like John.

There is no evidence that there was an actual person, Moses, and much less that he ever wrote the Torah.

You still haven't answered why you think a thousand years of history could be fabricated but a hundred years couldn't have been.

Because thousands of years of "history" would have to be fabricated.
A couple of decades worth of history could be had from living witnesses.

reply to post by jmdewey60


Wikipedia is my source. Let me guess, Wikipedia isn't a legitimate source? Other sites say 385 BCE, which still dates them before the Septuagint.

What's overly understated? John claims to know the beginning just like Moses did.

And where is the evidence of John outside of church tradition? Where is Jesus'? Or Paul's? Or Peter's? Or the other apostles? There is no historical evidence that any of them existed during their lifetime.

Why would a thousand years of history have to be fabricated? Your conclusion is based off the assumption that the history was fabricated. That's not logical. Here's an idea, what if the OT is based on history, even if loosely, and was written at the time it was said to be written? I know, crazy right?

What makes you think the first century didn't have to be fabricated as well?

reply to post by 3NL1GHT3N3D1

Wikipedia is my source. Let me guess, Wikipedia isn't a legitimate source?

I just edited my earlier post to include a quote found in Wikipedia.
I don't trust Wikipedia unless it can quote another reliable source.

Other sites say 385 BCE, which still dates them before the Septuagint.

Like I edited into my last post, that is a broad range where the actual date might fall within.

What's overly understated? John claims to know the beginning just like Moses did.

"In the beginning was God" is a long ways from Genesis 1 & 2.

And where is the evidence of John outside of church tradition? Where is Jesus'? Or Paul's? Or Peter's? Or the other apostles? There is no historical evidence that any of them existed during their lifetime.

Because the authentic New Testament books are writings that literary experts can look at and tell that it was written by a particular person.
The Torah and other Old Testament books can be determined to have been written by multiple different persons.

Why would a thousand years of history have to be fabricated?

Because there are no writings that date back to those most ancient times in Genesis, for one. And there were no earlier ancient Hebrew writings that could have been the sources for the OT stories.

Your conclusion is based off the assumption that the history was fabricated. That's not logical. Here's an idea, what if the OT is based on history, even if loosely, and was written at the time it was said to be written? I know, crazy right?

It's based on what I already mentioned, that the bases of the Genesis and Exodus stories are based off of Greek writings.

What makes you think the first century didn't have to be fabricated as well?

Because the witnesses of that history were still alive.

reply to post by jmdewey60


It says most, not all. That still leaves some of them as being earlier.

Care to address any of my other points?