628
ἀνθρώπους ὁ θάνατος διῆλθεν, ἐφ ᾧ
ΠΡΟΣ ΡΩΜΑΙΟΥΣ | Vv.
πάντες ἥμαρτον.
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13. ἄχρι
k Philem γὰρ νόµου ἁμαρτία ἦν ἐν κόσμῳ: ἁμαρτία δὲ οὐκ " ἐλλογεῖται, μὴ | Ψν. 17,21; ὄντος νόµου: 14. GAN |] ἐβασίλευσεν ὁ θάνατος ἀπὸ “Addy µέχρι
Ch. vi
1a. 3 3 ~ ς lol Μωσέως καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς μὴ ἁμαρτήσαντας] ἐπὶ τῷ ὁμοιώματι τῆς
1 τους µη αµαρτησαντας, SO ΝΑΒΟΡΑ2Κ 3; the µη was wanting in some MSS. known to Origen and in ‘most Latin MSS.” known to Augustine: see W. and Η., Appendix. However the omission may have originated, µη is undoubtedly the true
text.
creeds, and in great part the idea of baptismal regeneration, which is an irrational unethical miracle, invented by men to get over a puzzle of their own making.
Ver. 13 f. These two verses are rather obscure, but must be intended (yap) to prove what has been asserted in ver. 12. ἄχρι yap νόµον -- ἀπὸ “Adan µέχρι Μωνσέως, ver. 14, the law meant being the Mosaic. The sin which was in the world before the law is not the guilt of Adam’s fall imputed to the race as fallen in him, but the actual sin which indi- viduals had committed. Now if law has no existence, sin is not imputed. Cf. iv. 15. The natural inference would seem to be that the sins committed during this period could not be punished. But what was the case? The very opposite of this. Death reigned all through this period. This unrestrained tyranny of death (observe the emphatic position of ἐβασίλευσεν) over petsons whose sins cannot be imputed to them, seems at variance with the explana- tion just adopted of πάντες ἥμαρτον. Indeed Meyer and others use it to refute that explanation. The reign of death, apart from imputable individual sin, implies, they argue, a corresponding objective reign of sin, apart from in- dividual acts: in other words, justifies the interpretation of ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον according to which all men sinned in Adam’s sin, and so (and only so) became subject to death. But the empirical meaning of ἥμαρτον is decidedly to be preferred, and we must rather fill out the argument thus: ‘‘all sinned. For there was sin in the world before Moses; and though sin is not imputed where there is no law, and though therefore no par- ticular penalty—death or another—could be expected for the sins here in question, yet all that time death reigned, for in the act of Adam sin and death had been inseparabiy and for ever conjoined.” καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς μὴ ἁμαρτήσαντας ἐπὶ τῷ ὁμοιώματι κ.τ.λ.--εΕνεηπ over those who
did not sin after the likeness of Adam’s transgression. For ἐπὶ, cf. Winer, p. 492. This describes not some, but all of those who lived during the period from Adam to Moses. None of them had like Adam violated an express prohibition sanctioned by the death penalty. Yet they all died, for they all sinned, and in their first father sin and death had been indis- solubly united. And this Adam is τύπος τοῦ μέλλοντος sc. Αδάμ. In the coming Adam and his relations to the race there will be something on the same pattern as this. 1 Cor. x. 6, 11, Heb. ΙΧ. 1% 1 Cor. xv. 22, 45, 49. Parallels of this sort between Adam and the Messiah are common in Rabbinical writings: ¢.g., Schéttgen quotes Neve Schalom, f. 160- z. ‘*Quemadmodum homo primus fuit unus in peccato, sic Messias erit pos- tremus, ad auferendum peccatum peni- tus;’’ and g, 9 has ‘‘ Adamus postremus est Messias’’. Cf. Delitzsch: Brief an die Romer, p. 82 f. The extent to which the thoughts of this passage on sin and death, and on the consequences of Adam’s sin to his descendants, can be traced in Jewish writers, is not quite clear. As a rule (see above on ver. 12) they admit the dependence of death on sin, though Schéttgen quotes a Rabbi Samuel ben David as saying, '' Etiamsi Adamus primus non peccasset, tamen mors fuisset”. On the unity and soli- darity of the race in sin and its conse- quences, they are not perfectly explicit. Weber (Die Lehren des Talmud, p. 217) gives the following summary: “ There is an inherited guilt, but not an inherited sin; the fall of Adam has brought death upon the whole race, not however sinful- ness in the sense of a necessity to com- mit sin; sin is the result of each in- dividual’s decision; it is, as far as ex- perience goes, universal, yet in itself even after the Fall not absolutely neces- sary”. This seems to agree very closely with the Apostle’s teaching as interpreted above. It is the appeal to experience in Paul (πάντες ἥμαρτον),