What is the historical cause between the discrepancy of evangelical approaches to original sin and Jewish ones?

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Judaism has never agreed with the concept of original sin, which is essentially a Western Christian notion, with which the Orthodox Churches also do not agree. According to the Catholic Church, there is an obligation on all Catholics to believe in original sin. Most Protestant denominations follow the Catholic lead in also teaching of original sin, although it is not as central as in the Catholic faith.

In Romans 5:12-13, Paul says that sin entered the world through the sin of one man, but does not say that all future humans share that man's guilt. Prior to Augustine, there was no formalised concept of original sin, but early Church fathers made allusions to a doctrine of an 'original sin'. Tertullian taught when a parent sinned, this physical taint of the soul was passed on to children. Tertullian's concept could eventually be interpreted as allowing Adam's great sin to be passed on from generation to generation, down to the present day. Martin Palmer says, in The Jesus Sutras, pages 175-176, that original sin was unknown as a central theme of Christian thought before the early fifth century. He says The Orthodox Church broke away from the West just in time to avoid the magnificence and the curse of St. Augustine of Hippo, who took the basic notion of original sin and built it into the destructive force it was to become. Even in the West, Pelagius argued against original sin, saying that human nature was basically good but had been corrupted and misguided by human weakness, but of course the theology of Augustine triumphed in the West.

The absence of Jewish support for the concept of original sin does not stem from some contemporary strain of Jewish thought or other influences within Judaism, but has existed from pre-Christian times. It is Christianity that has moved forward with new ideas, at least in the West.

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