The Genesis of Sin

Origins

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The word, Sin, is ubiquitously known as “wrong-doing”, or, something of “evil nature.” But sin has quite the intriguing origin. No, it did not emerge with Christianity or the bible. It has far more earlier roots: Sin is actually an ancient Mesopotamian moon god dating back to before 2600 BCE (also known as Nanna in Sumerian). Symbology wise, Sîn was associated with the crescent moon (Nanna was connected either to the full or the new moon).

Interestingly enough, Abraham (the original patriarch of Judaism according to the Tanakh) was well acquainted with Sin/Nanna given he was born and raised in Ur and frequented Harran. Though Israelites (descendants of Abraham) would go on to reject every god except theirs (Yawheh), they still celebrated the Mesopotamian new moon festivals. “At your times of rejoicing—your appointed feasts and New Moon festivals —you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God.”—Numbers 10:10. It’s worth mentioning that some scholars propose a connection between Sîn and the Muslim god Allah; asserting that before converting to Islam, Muhammad worshiped many gods including the moon god, which influenced Islam’s adoption of Sin’s crescent in its symbol.