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 sin was an act, not a state, an abuse of the freedom of the will, and that each man was responsible and liable to punishment only for his own acts. This extreme individualism he qualified only in two respects, he admitted a principle of imitation, the influence of bad example, habit and customs, may be inherited and communicated. Divine grace is not necessary for human virtue. It is granted only according to act, and merits as the law in enlightening, warning or promising reward. To this Augustine opposed the view that Adam's sin is, as its penalty, transmitted to all his descendants, both as guilt and as weakness. The transmission is not by imitation, but by propagation. The essence and mode of operation of original sin is concupiscence, which, as of the devil, subjects man in his natural state to the devil's dominion. Even infants are involved in Adam's condemnation. Sin is a necessity in each individual, and there is a total corruption of man's nature, physically as well as morally. Into the details of the controversy it is not necessary to go any further. While the authority of Augustine received lip-homage, the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church became more Pelagian, and in the Tridentine decrees and still more in the ethics of the Jesuits, in spite of the opposition of Jansenism, Pelagianism at last triumphed.

The Reformation restored the teaching of Augustine; in Calvinism especially the sovereignty of the divine and the impotence of the human will were emphasized; and against this exaggeration Arminianism was a protest. Of the five articles of the Remonstrance of 1610 only two now concern us: the possibility of resisting the grace which is indispensable to salvation, and the possibility of falling away from grace even after conversion. The Arminian system was an attempt to modify the Calvinistic theory in a moral interest, so as to maintain human responsibility, good and ill desert; but to this moral interest the system sacrificed the religious interest in the sufficiency and the sovereignty of divine grace. Its adherents necessarily laid emphasis on human freedom. As regards original sin they taught that the inclinations to evil inherited from Adam are not themselves blameworthy, and only consent to them involves real guilt. It is not just, however, to Arminianism to identify it with Pelagianism, as it does strive to make clear man's need of divine grace to overcome sin and reach holiness. In the Evangelical Revival of the 18th century Arminianism was represented by Wesley, and Calvinism by Whitefield.  SIN, the name of the moon-god in Babylonia and Assyria, also known as Nannar, the “illuminer.” The two chief seats of his worship were Ur in the S., and Harran considerably to the N., but the cult at an early period spread to other centres, and temples to the moon-god are found in all the large cities of Babylonia and Assyria. He is commonly designated as En-zu, i.e. “lord of wisdom,” and this attribute clings to him throughout all periods. During the period (c. 2600-2400 ) that Ur exercised a large measure of supremacy over the Euphrates valley, Sin was naturally regarded as the head of the pantheon. It is to this period that we must trace such designations of the god as “father of the gods,” “chief of the gods,” “creator of all things,” and the like. We are justified in supposing that the cult of the moon-god was brought into Babylonia by the Semitic nomads from Arabia. The moon-god is par excellence the god of nomadic peoples, their guide and protector at night when, during a great part of the year, they undertake their wanderings, just as the sun-god is the chief god of an agricultural people. The cult once introduced would tend to persevere, and the development of astrological science culminating in a calendar and in a system of interpretation of the movements and occurrences in the starry heavens would be an important factor in maintaining the position of Sin in the pantheon. The name of Sin's chief sanctuary at Ur was E-gish-shir-gal, “house of the great light”; that at Harran was known as E-khul-khul, “house of joys.” On seal-cylinders he is represented as an old man with flowing beard, with the crescent as his symbol. In the astral-theological system he is represented by the number 30, and the planet Venus as his daughter by the number 15. The number 30 stands obviously in connexion with the thirty days as the average extent of his course until he stands again in conjunction with the sun.

The “wisdom” personified by the moon-god is likewise an expression of the science of astrology in which the observation of the moon's phases is so important a factor. The tendency to centralize the powers of the universe leads to the establishment of the doctrine of a triad consisting of Sin, Shamash and (q.v.), personifying the moon, sun and the earth as the life-force. (Author:Morris Jastrow)  SINAI. 1. The Biblical Mount Sinai. In judging of the points of controversy connected with Sinai we are brought face to face with the question of the historicity of the Hebrew records involved. Though new attempts to fix the stations of the wilderness wandering appear every year, critics have long agreed that the number of forty for the years of wandering and for the stations are round numbers, and that the details are not based on historical tradition of the Mosaic age. This does not exclude the possibility that the names of some or all of the stations belong to real places and are based on more or less careful research on the part of the writers who record them. As regards the Mountain of the Law in particular, if the record of Exod. xix. seq. is strictly historical, we must seek a locality where 600,000 fighting men, or some two million souls in all, could encamp and remain for some time, finding pasture and drink for their cattle, and where there was a mountain (with a wilderness at its foot) rising so sharply that its base could be fenced in, while yet it was easily ascended, and its summit could be seen by a great multitude below. In the valley there must have been a flowing stream. The peninsula of Sinai does not furnish any locality where so great a host could meet under the conditions specified, and accordingly many investigators give up the statistics of the number of Hebrews and seek a place that fulfils the other conditions. But when we consider that the various records embodied in the Pentateuch were composed long after the time of Moses, and that the authors in all probability never saw Sinai, and had no exact topographical tradition to fall back on, but could picture to themselves the scene of the events they recorded only by the aid of imagination, the topographical method of identifying the Mountain of the Law becomes very questionable. The Pentateuchal writers are not at one even about the name of the mountain. It used to be thought that Horeb was the name of the mountain mass as a whole, or of its southern part, while Sinai was the Mountain of the Law proper, but it has been shown by Dillmann that the Elohist and Deuteronomy always use the name Horeb for the same mountain which the Jahvist and the Priestly Code call Sinai. The Elohist belonged to Northern Israel, but Judges v. 5 shows that even in Northern Israel the other name Sinai was not unknown. And it might be shown, though that cannot be done here, that the several accounts vary not only as regards the name but in topographical details. Thus all that can be taken as historically fixed is that after leaving Goshen the Hebrews abode for some time near a mountain called Sinai or Horeb, and that this mountain or range was held to be holy as a seat of the Deity (Exod. ii. 1; 1 Kings xix.).

Where, then, was this mountain? The Midianites, of whom according to one source Jethro was priest, probably always lived E. of the Gulf of ‘Aḳaba; yet we can hardly follow Beke in seeking Sinai beyond that gulf, but must rather think of some point in the so-called peninsula of Sinai, which lies between the Gulfs of ‘Aḳaba and Suez, bounded on the N. by the Wilderness el-Tīh, which slopes gently towards the Mediterranean. To the south of this wilderness rises the Jebel el-Tīh, a mass composed mainly of Nubian sandstone and cretaceous limestone, which attains in fantastic forms an altitude of some 3000 ft.; its ridges converge towards the S. and are cut off by great valleys from the mass now known as Mount Sinai. The latter is composed of primitive rocks—granite, porphyry, diorite, gneiss, &c. The sandstones of Jebel el-Tīh are rich in minerals; inscriptions of Amenophis III. and Thothmes III. found on the spot show that the ancient Egyptians got turquoise at Serablt al-Khādem; and at Maghara, where inscriptions occur bearing the names of kings from Semerkhet and Khufu down to Rameses II. These mines were worked by criminals and prisoners of war, and the