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I have heard (but never confirmed for myself) that the term translated as sin into English from the Torah has more of the sense to miss the mark in the original Hebrew.

It appears from this summary this atheist has replaced traditional Western religious-based morality with the very same moral system, sans God.

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The hebrew word for sin is חטא ("het"), which shares a root with להחטיא ("to miss the mark"). Hebrew forms start with a 3-letter base[1], which gets put into various templates for conjugations of time, person, active/passive and other nuances. So it seems that you're right there.

[1] modern hebrew also has 4-letter bases and supposedly even a couple of 5-letter ones -- rumour has it that the 5 letter ones never found their way out of a dictionary though.

The word you are looking for is the Greek "hamartia" (αμαρτία) [1]. This does make the biblical association you're trying to set up significantly less tenable.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia

Well, the hebrew word: Torah, means "instruction" (תּוֹרָה). So I guess that means if you forget the instruction, you are certainly missing the mark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah

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