The Evil Inclination in Early Judaism and Christianity

James Aitken is Reader in Hebrew and Early Jewish Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge. Publications include No Stone Unturned: Greek Inscriptions and Septuagint Vocabulary (2014) and The T&T Clark Companion to the Septuagint (2015). Hector Michael Patmore is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the KU Leuven. His research focuses on the development of Jewish beliefs and the translation and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Antiquity. Ishay Rosen-Zvi is Professor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel-Aviv University. A scholar of rabbinic literature, he was elected to the Israel Young Academy of Sciences in 2013. He is author of several books, most recently, Goy: Israel's Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile (2015).

1. Introduction James Aitken, Hector Patmore and Ishay Rosen-Zvi; 2. Reconsidering the semantics of the 'inclination' (yéṣɛr) in classical Biblical Hebrew Noam Mizrahi; 3. The 'inclination' (yēṣer) as rendered in the Septuagint James Aitken; 4. 'Fleshly spirit' and 'vessel of flesh' in 4Qinstruction and the thanksgiving hymns Benjamin Wold; 5. Theological anthropology in the enochic tradition Loren Stuckenbruck; 6. The perils of philosophical persuasion: Philo on the origin of moral evils Sharon Weisser; 7. The evil inclination (yeṣer ha-ra') in tannaitic literature: demonic desires and beyond Ishay Rosen-Zvi; 8. Conflicting intrapersonal powers in Paul's letters Daniel Schumann; 9. The 'two inclinations' and the double-minded human condition in the letter of James George van Kooten; 10. An evil inclination in early targums to the Pentateuch and Prophets? Hector Patmore; 11. Gnostic theologies of evil Timothy Pettipiece; 12. The rabbinic 'inclination' (yeṣer) and the Christian apocrypha Monika Pesthy-Simon; 13. Origen on the origin of sin Riemer Roukema; 14. Augustine on the diabolical suggestion of sin Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe; 15. Jerome and the 'inclination' (yeṣer): the evidence of the vulgate C. T. R. Hayward; 16. Rabbinic inclinations and monastic thoughts: Evagrius Ponticus' doctrine of reasoning (logismoi) and its antecedents Augustine Casiday; 17. 'Inclination' (yaṣrā) in the Syriac tradition David G. K. Taylor; 18. Evil, sin and inclination (Yeṣer) in Jewish and Christian poetic disputes between the body and soul Ophir Münz-Manor; 19. The wizard of az and the evil inclination: the Babylonian rabbinic inclination (yeṣer) in its Zoroastrian and Manichaean context Yishai Kiel; 20. The evil inclination in the targums to the writing Leeor Gottlieb.