Romans 5:12, Once Again: Is It a Grammatical Comparison?

Abstract

Commentators have long noted and discussed the several difficulties of Rom 5:12. Among them is that, while the verse appears to open with a comparison (Διὰ τοῦτο ὥσπερ δι᾿ ἑνὸς ἀνθρώπου ἡ ἁμαρτία εἰς τὸν κόσμον εἰσῆλθεν “Therefore, just as through one man sin came into the world …”), the second part of that comparison is never clearly formulated. Instead, the verse seems to trail off with no obvious conclusion to the comparison (καὶ οὕτως εἰς πάντας ἀνθρώπους ὁ θάνατος διῆλθεν “and so death came to all men …”). Many have suggested that Paul simply lost track of his thought, and modern translations and commentaries typically accept the incoherence, translating “and so” and often concluding the sentence with a dash. However, this is not the only syntactic possibility. This article aims to supplement John Kirby’s discussion of the adverbial meaning of καὶ οὕτως (“even so”) in Rom 5:12, a translation that understands the verse to be a complete and cogent comparison. I will survey a broader range of linguistic evidence, taking note of the textual history of Rom 5:12 and will reconsider the contextual objections to this translation. I will show that syntactically and conceptually “even so” or “in the same way” is the best translation of καὶ οὕτως in Rom 5:12.