Against such perversion of the simple Paradise story the sound common sense of the Jewish people rebelled. While the early Talmudists occasionally mention the poisoning of the human race by the serpent, they find an antidote for the Jewish people in the covenant with Abraham or that of Sinai.(667) One cannot, however, discern the least indication of belief in original sin, either as inherent in the human race or inherited by them. Nor does the liturgy express any such idea, especially for the Day of Penitence, when it would certainly be mentioned if the conception found any place in Jewish doctrine. On the contrary, the prevailing thought of Judaism is that of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel,(668) that “Each man dies by his own sin,” that every soul must bear only the consequences of his own deeds. The rabbis even state that no man dies unless he has brought it upon himself by his own sin, and mention especially certain exceptions to this rule, such as the four saintly men who died without sin,(669) or certain children whose death was due to the sin of their parents.(670) They could never admit that the whole human race was so corrupted by the sin of the first man that it is still in a state of sinfulness. 6. Of course, the rabbinical schools took literally the Biblical story of the fall of man and laid the chief blame upon woman, who fell a prey to the wiles of the serpent. This is done even by Ben Sira, who says: “With woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all must die.”(671) So the Talmud says that due to woman, man, the crown, light, and life of creation, lost his purity, his luster, and his immortality.(672) The Biblical verse, “They did eat, and the eyes of them both were opened,” is interpreted by Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Akiba as “They saw the dire consequences of their sin upon all coming generations.”(673) The fall of man is treated most elaborately in the same spirit in the two apocalyptic books written after the destruction of the Second Temple, the Apocalypse of Baruch and the IV Book of Esdras.(674) The incompatibility of divine love with the sufferings of man and of the Jewish people on account of the sin of the first man is solved by an appeal to the final Day of Judgment, and the striking remark is added that, after all, “each is his own Adam and is held responsible for his own sin.” We cannot deny that these two books contain much that is near the Paulinian view of original sin. It seems, however, that the Jewish teachers were put on their guard by the emphasis of this pessimistic dogma by the nascent Church, and did their best to give a different aspect to the story of the first sin. Thus they say: “If Adam had but shown repentance, and done penance after he committed his sin, he would have been spared the death penalty.”(675) Moreover, they actually represent Adam and Eve as patterns of repentant sinners, who underwent severe penance and thus obtained the