What is sin? What's the punishment for it? And who gets to decide? Historian of religion Paula Fredriksen studied some of the earliest writings of Judaism and Christianity to find out. And her new book, Sin: The Early History of an Idea, explores the first 400 years of sin as a concept of Western religion.
On February 18, in advance of her appearance at the David Dungan Memorial Lecture at the University of Tennessee, Fredriksen talked to WUOT All Things Considered host Brandon Hollingsworth about the concept of sin, its origins and its evolution.