70 THE APOSTLE PAUL of the Fall and corruption, which is foreign to the canonical Old Testament, is current throughout the Pharisaic theology, and plays an important part in the Apocalypses of Esdras and Baruch; but to the further question as to the cause of the Fall, different answers are given.’ Sometimes the original sin seems to have been the free act of Adam, where- by he brought judgment upon himself and his posterity ; but another version runs thus: “ One little grain of bad seed was sown from the beginning of the creation in Adam’s heart, and what fruit of sin that has borne already and will yet bear until the harvest is finished!” According to that, Adam’s sin was not the first and free cause of evil, but only the first appearance of that which lay already in his nature, con-created with him, the evil impulse of sensual lust. Finally a legend which is very old (for it is alluded to in 2 Cor. xi. 8) derives the corruption of mankind from Eve’s having been seduced by the devil in the form of a serpent, the nature of her whole posterity being thus physically infected with the demonic poison of sin and death. However the case may stand in regard to this last- named cause of sin, there is at all events general agreement among the Jewish theologians of the period that the sin of our First Parents was fateful for the whole of mankind, nay, for the whole world : when Adam sinned the world was judged and sentence of death was passed upon his posterity (cf: Rom. v. 12). Moreover, the evil consequences extended also to the spirit-world, for some of the angels came down 1 Gf. @ Esdras iii. 21, iv. 80, vii. 11,48; Apoc. Baruch xxiii. 4. See Weber, altsyn. Theol., p. 211 ff.