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Jubilees repeatedly warns of a mortal sin that brings severe judgment. The epistle of 1 John follows this tradition, distinguishing between sins not resulting in death from a sin resulting in death.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Jubilees 21:22
Pseudepigrapha
21 ‘I see, my son, that all the actions of mankind consist of sin and wickedness and all their deeds of impurity, worthlessness, and contamination. With them there is nothing that is right.’ 22 ‘Be careful not to walk in their ways or to tread in their paths so that you may not commit a mortal sin before the most high God. Then he will hide his face from you and will hand you over to the power of your offenses. He will uproot you from the earth and your descendants from beneath heaven. Your name and descendants will be destroyed from the entire earth.’ 23 ‘Depart from all their actions and from all their impurity. Keep the obligations of the most high God and do his will. Then you will act properly in every regard.’
1 John 5:16
New Testament
15 And if we know that he hears us in regard to whatever we ask, then we know that we have the requests that we have asked from him. 16 If anyone sees his fellow Christian committing a sin not resulting in death, he should ask, and God will grant life to the person who commits a sin not resulting in death. There is a sin resulting in death. I do not say that he should ask about that. 17 All unrighteousness is sin, but there is sin not resulting in death.
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Notes and References
“... the expression ‘sin unto death’ (hamartia eis thanaton [Testament of Issachar 7:1]) is very similar to an expression found in 1 John 5:16 (hamartia pros thanaton), but the formulation may again have been developed independently from the frequent correlation of ‘sin’ with ‘death’ in Jewish texts, as, for example, the ‘death-bearing sin’ of Numbers 18:22 or, more strikingly, the ‘sin unto death’ of Jubilees 26:34 (see also Jubilees 21:22; 33:18). The Testaments’ knowledge of Jubilees has already been established on other grounds. ...
DeSilva, David A.
The Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude: What Earliest Christianity Learned from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
(p. 298) Oxford University Press, 2012
* 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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