Interestingly, in the first century C.E. the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing in Greek, pointed out that Adam’s reluctance to reply to God was evidence of his “evil conscience.” For the word “conscience” Josephus used the Greek term syneiʹdesis, which means literally “having knowledge of something with oneself” or “co-knowledge.”

Bringing conscience into the picture, historian Josephus later wrote of Joseph’s urging Potiphar’s wife to shun a lust that would bring remorse and suffering, but to be faithful to her husband and enjoy “a good conscience.”