Texts in Conversation
In Romans, Paul describes how sin and death began with Adam, describing humans universally connected by mortality. 4 Ezra also explains the persistence of evil by linking it to Adam’s sin, describing it as an unavoidable condition affecting everyone.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Romans 5:12
New Testament
12 So then, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned— 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed. 15 But the gracious gift is not like the transgression. For if the many died through the transgression of the one man, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ multiply to the many! 16 And the gift is not like the one who sinned. For judgment, resulting from the one transgression, led to condemnation, but the gracious gift from the many failures led to justification. 17 For if, by the transgression of the one man, death reigned through the one, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ!
Date: 55–58 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
4 Ezra 4:30
2 Esdras
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
28 For the evil about which you asked me has been sown, but its harvest hasn’t yet come. 29 If therefore that which is sown isn’t reaped, and if the place where the evil is sown doesn’t pass away, the field where the good is sown won’t come. 30 For a grain of evil seed was sown in the heart of Adam from the beginning, and how much wickedness it has produced to this time! How much more it will yet produce until the time of threshing comes! 31 Ponder now by yourself, how much fruit of wickedness a grain of evil seed has produced. 32 When the grains which are without number are sown, how great a threshing floor they will fill!” 33 Then I answered and said, “How long? When will these things come to pass? Why are our years few and evil?” 34 He answered me, and said, “Don’t hurry faster than the Most High; for your haste is for your own self, but he who is above hurries on behalf of many.
Date: 70–132 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The apocalyptic book 4 Ezra, often called 2 Esdras, or the Apocalypse of Ezra, is a writing of Jewish origin stemming from the period after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The book is designed as a profound aid for Jews to cope with the reality of Roman emperors persecuting the pious. In that context, the history of Israel is retold, especially stressing human inability to fathom the ways of God. This inability is then connected with the concept of evil. Sin is not seen as an act of a freely operating human, but as the inevitable outcome of the sowing of the bad seed. Later in the Book of 4 Ezra a desperate question is raised ... It is remarkable to see that Eve is never mentioned in 4 Ezra. The ideas of the author of IV Ezra are not remote to those of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans ... The rest of the Epistle to the Romans makes clear that Paul construes human wrongdoing as original or inherited sin. Here, and elsewhere, Adam is seen by Paul as responsible for the sinful condition of mankind ..."
Bob Becking, “Signs from the Garden: Some Remarks on the Relationship between Eve and Adam in Genesis 2–3,” in Enigmas and Images: Studies in Honor of Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, ed. Göran Eidevall and Blaženka Scheuer, ConBOT 58 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 22–36.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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