open, xxxvii. 3: “O evil tendency (y7 ὍΝ), why wast thou made to fill the earth with thy deceit?” It is, at all events, not directly ascribed to God; these pathetic words remind one of those of St. Paul in Rom. vii. 24. The same hesitation to assert that God created evil is observable in a curious passage from the pseudepi- graph called The Life of Adam and Eve (Apocalpyse of Moses), $19;1 this describes the origin of evil, and tells of how in the garden of Eden Satan took the form of an angel, but spoke “through the mouth of the Serpent,” and aroused within Eve the desire to eat of the fruit of the tree that stood in the middle of the garden; first of all, however, we are told that he made her swear that she - would give of the fruit to Adam as well; then the text goes on: ‘“When he (i.¢., the Serpent) had, then, made me swear, he came and ascended up into it (z.e., the tree). But in the fruit which he gave me to eat he placed the poison of his malice, namely, of his lust ; for lust is the beginning of all sin. And he [other authorities read “1 bent down the bough to the earth, then I took of the fruit and ate.” Here the origin of evil 7x man is satisfactorily accounted for; its existence in Satan is taken for granted, and no attempt is made to follow it up further back. Noticeable here, too, is the way in which lust is brought into connection with the origin of sin; this is an idea which seems to have been widely prevalent in Jewish circles, the lust of Satan towards Eve being describcd as the beginning of sin in the world (See Sanhedrin, 59 b ; Sotah,9b; F$ebamoth, 103 ὃ ; Abodah Zara, 22 b; Bereshith Rabba, c. 18, 19); so that it is very interesting to read in our Epistle, after i., 13,14 (which will be referred to presently), in which the impulse to sin in man is dealt with, the words: “ ... when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death”. This thought of a relationship between sin and death is graphically illustrated in the Ferusalem Targum to Gen. iii. 6, where it is said that at the moment in which Eve succumbed to temptation she caught sight of Sammael, the angel of death. Other theories as to the origin of sin were that it was brought into existence by man, e¢.g., Enoch xcviii. 4, “Sin has not been sent upon the earth, but man himself has created it,” this is the teaching, appar- ently, in Jas. 1. 14; in ch. Ixxxv. of the same book it is taught that fallen angels were the originators of sin (cf. Bereshith Rabba, c. 24; Yalkut Shim. Beresh., 42). None of these theories was,
1 The two works run paraliel to a large extent.