1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910817080303321

Autore

Anderson Gary A. <1955->

Titolo

Sin : a history / / Gary A. Anderson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, CT, : Yale University Press, 2009

ISBN

1-282-41595-6

9786612415951

0-300-15487-9

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (288 p.)

Classificazione

11.01

Disciplina

241/.309

Soggetti

Sin

Theological anthropology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- ABBREVIATIONS -- CHAPTER 1. What Is a Sin? -- CHAPTER 2. A Burden to Be Borne -- CHAPTER 3. A Debt to Be Repaid -- CHAPTER 4. Redemption and the Satisfaction of Debts -- CHAPTER 5. Ancient Creditors, Bound Laborers, and the Sanctity of the Land -- CHAPTER 6. Lengthening the Term of Debt -- CHAPTER 7. Loans and the Rabbinic Sages -- CHAPTER 8. Early Christian Thinking on the Atonement -- CHAPTER 9. Redeem Your Sins with Alms -- CHAPTER 10. Salvation by Works? -- CHAPTER 11. A Treasury in Heaven -- CHAPTER 12. Why God Became Man -- NOTES -- GENERAL INDEX -- INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES

Sommario/riassunto

What is sin? Is it simply wrongdoing? Why do its effects linger over time? In this sensitive, imaginative, and original work, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin and forgiveness lay at the very heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning nearly two thousand years, the book brilliantly demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, sin becomes a debt that must be repaid in order to be redeemed in God's eyes.Anderson shows how this ancient Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus and eventually led to the development of various penitential



disciplines, deeds of charity, and even papal indulgences. In so doing it reveals how these changing notions of sin provided a spur for the Protestant Reformation.Broad in scope while still exceptionally attentive to detail, this ambitious and profound book unveils one of the most seismic shifts that occurred in religious belief and practice, deepening our understanding of one of the most fundamental aspects of human experience.