


The long and eventful interpretatio christiana of the Greek sources has charged the ideas and the images linked to Greek conceptions of punishment through generations with the doctrines of another religious tradition. 3 The mention of “inherited guilt” activates an entire web of Christian concepts and references, implicit theological programs and Biblical correspondents. This has long been recognized by classicists. 2 Not only does the term “inherited guilt” correspond to no ancient emic category, however, but it imposes, more significantly, a deep range of Christian associations upon the Greek material. 1 Although it translates no ancient equivalent, this term, together with similar coinages such as “Erbschuld” and “péché héréditaire,” has been used to interpret material from most genres of Greek literature and all periods of Greek history since the early modern period. Rondet (1966) Dubarle (1999) Minois (2002), p. 43-80.ġThe concept of “inherited guilt” has played a key role in the modern scholarship of ancient Greece.
The sins of the father meaning professional#
The present paper proposes to revisit the seminal discussions of the two contemporary scholars who pioneered the modern professional study of Greek religion: C.A. A thorough engagement with the religiously charged tradition of scholarship is one of the keys to a fruitful redefinition of Greek ancestral fault. Rather than abandoning “inherited guilt” altogether, or simply deconstructing it away, as some scholars have suggested in recent years, a new perspective grounded in a detailed understanding of its tradition is needed to make sense of the abundant and complex material at hand. Shaped by centuries of ideological involvement with the Greek material, and by the apparently equivalent Judeo-Christian notions of corporate responsibility and original sin, the term “inherited guilt” imposes a heavy baggage of assumptions and resonances on the material it is meant to describe and translate. Although it corresponds to no clearly circumscribed ancient concept, it has acquired something of a self-evident value in philological research. The notion of “inherited guilt,” or ancestral fault, has played a prominent role in scholarship on ancient Greek religion and literature.
