committing a crime and sinning

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  mog86uk February 10, 2014 at 2:22am

  I believe the noun 犯罪【はんざい】 is more specific for meaning crime than just 罪【つみ】 on its own, but I don't really know. For example, 犯罪学 = criminology. I think 犯 is used more for words dealing with perpetrating crimes, whereas 罪 is often used in terms dealing with sin and guilt.
  
  The perfect/past tense form of 犯す【おか.す】 would be 犯した, not '犯った'.
  
  Anyway, yep, both 罪を犯した and 犯罪を犯した seem to be equally fine for saying 'committed a crime', from what I can tell.
  
  I actually own a Bible written in Japanese (although I've only managed to struggle through reading a few pages so far... still over 2000 pages to go!). The words used to mean sinning look pretty much the same as those used to mean committing a crime.
  
  Here is a verse that shows sin used first as a noun, and then used again as a verb...
  
  ~ 1 Corinthians 6:18 (English version - KJV):
  'Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.'
  
  ~ 1 コリント 6. 18 (Japanese version - NJB):
  不品行を避けなさい。人が犯す罪はすべて、からだの外のものです。しかし、不品行を行う者は、自分のからだに対して罪を犯すのです。
  
  As you can see, the noun phrase is written as 犯す罪【おかすつみ】and the verb phrase is written as 罪を犯す【つみをおかす】.
  
  Just found this also! Matthew 18:21 actually uses 罪を犯した to mean 'sinned'. I think 犯罪を犯した wouldn't be able to be used here to mean 'sinned' as it seems too specifically about committing a crime?
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  mog86uk February 10, 2014 at 7:10am

  Ah! Somehow I didn't notice you actually wrote 罪を怒った for the second phrase instead of what I put...
  
  A simple check on Google is enough to find out that phrase isn't correct. Just search for "罪を怒った" (with the quotes--to make it search the exact phrase) and you will only find '1 result', which is this very page! You are probably the only person on the internet that has typed that phrase! (and now me too...)
  
  This is a very good method for checking how commonly used a phrase is.
  
  "罪を怒った" = 1 result
  "罪を犯した" = ~823,000 results
  "犯罪を犯した" = ~8,600,000 results
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  iwanaide February 11, 2014 at 6:50am

  Thanks, so probably as you said hanzai suits better for an actual crime instead of just 罪 and yeah the grammatical mistake was on my behalf, sorry for the trouble :)