Is there Biblical support for the concept of "Original Sin"?

Please see Message 81, which might be a partial answer. But I'm not quite sure what you are trying to ask?

Yes, in one particular aspect. Good questions. But rather than answering such questions a priori and forcing the text into an interpretation that fits your preconceived answers, I would recommend going to the text and letting it speak for itself.E.g. does the text communicate what I claimed in Message 81?:

Oh, really? It certainly doesn't appear that way. So we have a fundamental disagreement about what the text is trying to communicate. In order to answer this we need to address two questions:
1) What does the Genesis text say?
2) What did the author (or redactor) mean? (i.e. what did they intend to communicate to their original audience?)
And then a third question:
3) How did Paul understand the Genesis text?I suspect we have fairly good agreement on the first question, as it is quite objective. I suspect that our main disagreement regards the second question.But let's first clarify what the text says:
It should be quite obvious from the text that God gave man a prohibition, but man directly disobeyed God by violating this prohibition.The serpent tempted/enticed Eve to disobey God. Eve misquoted God's prohibition (adding "you must not touch it"). The serpent called God a liar. Eve was convinced; she desired the forbidden fruit and took it. Adam shared in this. The immediate result was embarrassment at their nakedness.Do we agree this far on what the text says?

If not for the grammar, you argument from the context would be plausible. But the grammar seems to be much stronger than merely a suggestion.
1) The command itself is in the form of a general, permanent prohibition. It is the Hebrew particle "lo" followed by the infinitive. This is the identical construction as in the "thou shalt not's" of the Ten Commandments.
2) The consequence is stated very strongly with an intensive construction, "you shall surely die," literally, "dying you shall die." The description of the serpent as "crafty" or "shrewd" in 3:1 implies that he has non-transparent intentions. The fact that he directly contradicts God and tells Eve to disobey God supports this. Thus the verbs "tempt" or "entice" seem to be suggested by the text. I agree; I think the text implies this. 1) "in the day" is a Hebrew idiom for "when." Look at the NET translation that I posted; it renders this "when."
2) Are you sure that they didn't "die" immediately? Are you sure that you are understanding the word "die" in the same way as the author of the text, his audience, or the context of the Pentateuch and the OT? (Many argue that this is referring to "spiritual death.")
3) Yes, God did confirm that this had made Adam and Eve like Him in some way.If we still disagree on what the text says, I am happy to provide quotations from leading textual scholars. The main biblical support is Rom 5. You and others (including the OP) raised questions as to whether or not Paul had correctly understood Genesis. This is what we are trying to address.

You claim the consequence to be untrue. As I pointed out, you may be misunderstanding the text. I agree that the word ‘ārm doesn't necessarily imply dishonesty or any other negative connotation. It is translated as "crafty" (NASB, NIV, Darby, ESV, NRSV), "shrewd" (NET, JPS. NLT), "clever" (Message), "cunning" (NKJV). Some translations agree with your rendering of "subtle" (KJV, ASV), but I believe this is too weak. You have made it quite clear that this is your interpretation of what the text means. But I am trying to first focus on what the text says before we jump ahead to what it means. Absolutely. The concept of "spiritual death" arose long before I was born. It was expressed by Jesus and Paul in the NT; it apparently was present in NT Judaism. Yes, the topic is about biblical support. Specifically, what did Paul mean in his discussion of "original sin" in Rom 5, what did the writer/redactor of Genesis 2-3 mean, and did Paul understand/interpret him correctly. If we really want to try to answer these questions, we need to consider all pertinent evidence. Genesis and Romans were written in specific historical and cultural contexts, in specific languages. We can't ignore the historical, cultural, and grammatical setting and hope to correctly understand what the original author intended to communicate. If you think you can ignore all such "extra-biblical" evidence and still interpret the Bible accurately, you are deluded.I would think that what the text says should be fairly objective. But you claim that we disagree on what the text says even before considering what it means. We can each produce our own textual arguments for what the text says, but how do we resolve an impasse? We could engage in a personal contest of academic/scholarly credentials, but this doesn't really answer the question, since neither of us are world-renowned experts on the biblical text. I suggest that we refer to professional scholars who have spent their lives studying the text. Or are you afraid of a scholarly discussion on the text? That's nice, but not very relevant. You or I can't change the content of Hosea or Colossians.

Sorry for any confusion. I am suggesting that there are potentially a number of possible meanings, and we shouldn't let our preconceived ideas as to meaning influence our understanding of what the text says. We must not take the approach, "If it says x then it must mean y; since I know that y is false the text cannot be saying x." This is "letting the tail wag the dog." The text of Genesis was written in Hebrew, and Romans was written in Greek. What the text says needs to be translated into a language that we can understand (e.g. English), and this requires "extra-biblical" consideration of the original languages, history, and culture.

No, I don't think so. I am trying to allow the original grammar, culture, and history to tell me what the text says. What is important is the "plain reading" of the text to the original audience, not to a modern audience. I don't think I've admitted that, have I? I have agreed that Rom 5 is our main teaching of the doctrine. Trying to understand the meaning of the original author to the original audience is not "looking for deep meaning." Rather, it is looking for the intended meaning of the passage. Trying to yank the passage out of its historical-cultural-grammatical context and read it simplistically and naively is simply irresponsible.

Others here have claimed that God lied in the story, based on a modern understanding of the text. It has not been shown that the original author and his audience understood it this way.In fact, if they did understand this story to be teaching that God lies, the author/redactor of the Pentateuch would not have included this story in the biblical text, as it contradicts the teaching of the rest of the Pentateuch, e.g.:

The original audience was Jewish, long before the time of Christ. I believe you are correct that modern Jews don't have a doctrine of original sin. But what about ancient Judaism, or first-century Judaism? Perhaps they did not have the concept of original sin, and Paul was the first to suggest it. But it is also possible that this view was extant in the first century, perhaps as a minority position, and that Paul heard it from his rabbis. Do you have any references that would help to address this question? Perhaps when we are done discussing Rom 5 and with Gen 2-3 we can explore this question. Does it really? Can you please provide support from some leading Jewish textual scholars (e.g. Nahum Sarna or someone of his caliber)?

And if you (or anyone else here) have references to the effect that the concept of original sin was completely absent from Judaism, feel free to present them as well. The source of Paul's interpretation is a very interesting question, central to the questions in the OP, but I don't have easy access to Jewish reference works. Where did I say that we were at an impasse? I don't think we have yet resolved what Genesis 2 and 3 really say and mean (i.e. what they were trying to communicate to the original audience in the original historical and cultural context). Do you believe we are at an impasse on this? I have asked questions about the Jewish reading and interpretation of Gen 2-3, and about the ancient Jewish understanding of original sin. I have not made any claims as to the view of Jewish scholarship regarding original sin, so I bear no onus to show anything in this regard.You, on the other hand, have made an unsupported claim that your reading of Gen 2-3 agrees better with the Jewish reading than mine. You may well be correct; I am simply asking you to support this assertion, per EvC forum guideline #4:

duplicateEdited by kbertsche, : duplicate message; can't delete?

Sorry for the confusion; ringo and I were discussing the original audience of the Garden of Eden story in Gen 2-3.

I'd characterize the topic somewhat more generally, as "exploring whether or not there is biblical support for original sin." But what you and some others really mean by this is, "Is there biblical support for original sin in addition to Romans 5?" I haven't seen anyone here try to deny that Rom 5 teaches original sin or that Rom 5 is part of the Bible. Unless you make the positive assertion that there is no support, in which case you should be prepared to back up your assertion with reason or evidence. We seem to agree in principle. We both agree that what the text says should be a fairly objective question. We both agree that the "meaning" should be what was understood by the original audience.I don't mind "cutting to the chase" and investigating what the original audience thought of it; in fact, I have argued for this. But who was the original audience of Gen 2-3? It was Old Testament Jews, not modern Jews. How do we determine what OT Judaism though of Gen 2-3? Modern Judaism and modern Christianity both descended from ancient Judaism, but neither necessarily has the same perspective as the ancients did. You apparently don't like my suggestion of deferring to textual scholars. So what is your suggestion? Wrong. If your argument rests on the claim that modern Judaism has the same view of Gen 2-3 as did OT Judaism, then you certainly do bear the obligation to support this claim. There is a tremendous difference in time and culture between the OT and today. We would expect that a first century Jewish scholar would be closer in time and culture to the original audience of Gen 2-3, so why not trust a highly trained first century Jewish scholar on the matter? Why do you think modern Judaism has a more accurate perspective than the Apostle Paul?

Sorry, but simply asserting a "default position" does not constitute logical support or reasoned argumentation for your view. Continuity of the Old and New Testaments is the "default position" of Christianity. Why is the modern Jewish "default position" any better than the Christian one?Asserting a "default position" strikes me as an attempt to avoid the hard work of actually interacting with the original text, history, and culture. Paul was trained by the leading rabbis, still saw himself as a Jew, and still attended the Synagogues. In his day Christianity was a sect of Judaism. Yes, I'm still a bit unsure of the thrust of the OP; its wording is a bit difficult to parse. If the teaching of Rom 5 is clear regarding original sin, then original sin is a biblical doctrine by definition, no matter where Paul got it from or how he supported it. The questions of why Paul interpreted Gen 2-3 the way he did, and whether or not it was viewed this way by the original audience, are good questions which I am interested to engage. But ultimately these questions have no effect on the question of whether or not original sin is a biblical doctrine.

Yes, I think we all agree that Paul supports his argument from Gen 2-3. I have already pointed out that there are hints of the concept of original sin in Gen 2ff (e.g. the wording of Cain's sin explicitly ties back to the curse on Eve). But the text of Genesis does not develop it nearly as far as Paul did.If we really want to answer your question, we need to try to determine two things:
1) how the original audience (OT Jews, not modern Jews) understood Gen 2-3
2) how Paul (first century Judaism) understood Gen 2-3.
So far, I see no evidence that anyone here is willing to engage these questions in a scholarly way. All I see is anachronistic, lazy appeals to the absence of the doctrine of original sin in modern Judaism. I thought we agreed on this, but perhaps not. I have already given my explanation of Paul's logical progression in Rom 5. If you disagree, please present an alternative explanation for what he is saying.