life and the way of death."(709)

3. From these passages and many similar ones the sages derived their
oft-repeated idea that man stands ever at the parting of the ways, to
choose either the good or the evil path.(710) Thus the words spoken by God
to the angels when Adam and Eve were to be expelled from Paradise:
"Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil," are
interpreted by R. Akiba: "He was given the choice to go the way of life or
the way of death, but he chose the way of death by eating of the forbidden
fruit."(711) R. Akiba emphasizes the principle of the freedom of the will
again in the terse saying: "All things are foreseen (by God), but free
will is granted (to man)."(712)

4. At the first encounter of Judaism with those philosophical schools of
Hellas which denied the freedom of the human will, the Jewish teachers
insisted strongly on this principle. The first reference is found in Ben
Sira, who refutes the arguments of the Determinists that God could make
man sin, and then goes on: "God created man at the beginning, endowing him
with the power of self-determination, saying to him: If thou but willest,
thou canst observe My commandments; to practice faithfulness is a matter
of free will.... As when fire and water are put before thee, so that thou
mayest reach forth thy hand to that which thou desirest, so are life and
death placed before man, and whatever he chooses of his own desire will be
given to him."(713) The Book of Enoch voices this truth also in the
forceful sentences: "Sin has not been sent upon the earth (from above),
but men have produced it out of themselves; therefore they who commit sin
are condemned."(714) We read similar sentiments in the Psalms of Solomon,
a Pharisean work of the first pre-Christian century:(715) "Our actions are
the outcome of the free choice and power of our own soul; to practice
justice or injustice lies in the work of our own hands."

The Apocalypse of Ezra is especially instructive in the great stress which
it lays on freedom, in connection with its chief theme, the sinfulness of
the children of Adam. "This is the condition of the contest which man who
is born on earth must wage, that, if he be conquered by the evil
inclination, he must suffer that of which thou hast spoken (the tortures
of hell), but if he be victorious, he shall receive (the reward) which I
(the angel) have mentioned. For this is the way whereof Moses spoke when
he lived, saying un