The connotations that the English “soul” commonly carries in the minds of most persons are not in agreement with the meaning of the Hebrew and
Greek words as used by the inspired Bible writers. This fact has steadily gained wider acknowledgment. Back in 1897, in the
Journal of Biblical
Literature (Vol. XVI, p. 30), Professor C. A. Briggs, as a result of detailed analysis of the use of
neʹphesh, observed: “Soul in
English usage at the present time conveys usually a very different meaning from נפש [neʹphesh] in Hebrew, and it is easy for the incautious reader
to misinterpret.”
More recently, when The Jewish Publication Society of America issued a new translation of the Torah, or first five books of the Bible, the
editor-in-chief, H. M. Orlinsky of Hebrew Union College, stated that the word “soul” had been virtually eliminated from this translation because,
“the Hebrew word in question here is ‘Nefesh.’” He added: “Other translators have interpreted it to mean ‘soul,’ which is completely
inaccurate. The Bible does not say we have a soul. ‘Nefesh’ is the person himself, his need for food, the very blood in his veins, his
being.”—
The New York Times, October 12, 1962.
What is the origin of the teaching that the human soul is invisible and immortal?
The difficulty lies in the fact that the meanings popularly attached to the English word “soul” stem primarily, not from the Hebrew or Christian
Greek Scriptures, but from ancient Greek philosophy, actually pagan religious thought. Greek philosopher Plato, for example, quotes Socrates as
saying: “The soul, . . . if it departs pure, dragging with it nothing of the body, . . . goes away into that which is like itself, into the
invisible, divine, immortal, and wise, and when it arrives there it is happy, freed from error and folly and fear . . . and all the other human ills,
and . . . lives in truth through all after time with the gods.”—
Phaedo, 80, D, E; 81, A.
originally posted by: whereislogic
In direct contrast with the Greek teaching of the psy·kheʹ (soul) as being immaterial, intangible, invisible, and immortal, the Scriptures
show that both psy·kheʹ and neʹphesh, as used with reference to earthly creatures, refer to that which is material, tangible,
visible, and mortal.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia says: “Nepes [neʹphesh] is a term of far greater extension than our ‘soul,’ signifying life (Ex 21.23; Dt
19.21) and its various vital manifestations: breathing (Gn 35.18; Jb 41.13[21]), blood [Gn 9.4; Dt 12.23; Ps 140(141).8], desire (2 Sm 3.21; Prv
23.2). The soul in the O[ld] T[estament] means not a part of man, but the whole man—man as a living being. Similarly, in the N[ew] T[estament] it
signifies human life: the life of an individual, conscious subject (Mt 2.20; 6.25; Lk 12.22-23; 14.26; Jn 10.11, 15, 17; 13.37).”—1967, Vol. XIII,
p. 467.
The Roman Catholic translation,
The New American Bible, in its “Glossary of Biblical Theology Terms” (pp. 27, 28), says: “In the New
Testament, to ‘save one’s soul’ (Mk 8:35) does not mean to save some ‘spiritual’ part of man, as opposed to his ‘body’ (in the Platonic
sense) but the whole person with emphasis on the fact that the person is living, desiring, loving and willing, etc., in addition to being concrete and
physical.”—Edition published by P. J. Kenedy & Sons, New York, 1970.
Neʹphesh evidently comes from a root meaning “breathe” and in a literal sense
neʹphesh could be rendered as “a breather.”
Koehler and Baumgartner’s
Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros (Leiden, 1958, p. 627) defines it as: “the breathing substance, making man
a[nd] animal living beings Gn 1, 20, the soul (strictly distinct from the greek notion of soul) the seat of which is the blood Gn 9, 4f Lv 17, 11 Dt
12, 23: (249 X) . . . soul = living being, individual, person.”
As for the Greek word
psy·kheʹ, Greek-English lexicons give such definitions as “life,” and “the conscious self or personality as
centre of emotions, desires, and affections,” “a living being,” and they show that even in non-Biblical Greek works the term was used “of
animals.”
Of course, such sources, treating as they do primarily of classical Greek writings, include all the meanings that the pagan Greek
philosophers gave to the word, including that of “departed spirit,” “the immaterial and immortal soul,” “the spirit of the universe,” and
“the immaterial principle of movement and life.” Evidently because some of the pagan philosophers taught that the soul emerged from the body
at death, the term
psy·kheʹ was also applied to the “butterfly or moth,” which creatures go through a metamorphosis, changing from
caterpillar to winged creature.—
Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, revised by H. Jones, 1968, pp. 2026, 2027;
Donnegan’s New
Greek and English Lexicon, 1836, p. 1404.
The ancient Greek writers applied psy·kheʹ in various ways and were not consistent, their personal and religious philosophies influencing
their use of the term. Of Plato, to whose philosophy the common ideas about the English “soul” may be attributed (as is generally
acknowledged), it is stated: “While he sometimes speaks of one of [the alleged] three parts of the soul, the ‘intelligible,’ as necessarily
immortal, while the other two parts are mortal, he also speaks as if there were two souls in one body, one immortal and divine, the other
mortal.”—
The Evangelical Quarterly, London, 1931, Vol. III, p. 121, “Thoughts on the Tripartite Theory of Human Nature,” by A.
McCaig.
In view of such inconsistency in non-Biblical writings, it is essential for those willing to consider getting their information about this subject
from the Bible (as expressed in the OP that an attempt was made in that regards) to let the Scriptures speak for themselves, showing what the inspired
writers meant by their use of the term
psy·kheʹ, as well as by
neʹphesh.
Neʹphesh occurs 754 times in the Masoretic text of
the Hebrew Scriptures, while
psy·kheʹ appears by itself 102 times in the Westcott and Hort text of the Christian Greek Scriptures, giving a
total of 856 occurrences. (See
NW appendix, p. 1573.) This frequency of occurrence makes possible a clear concept of the sense that these terms
conveyed to the minds of the inspired Bible writers and the sense their writings should convey to those willing to consider getting their information
about this subject from the Bible. An examination shows that, while the sense of these terms is broad, with different shades of meaning, among the
Bible writers there was no inconsistency, confusion, or disharmony as to man’s nature, as existed among the Grecian philosophers of the so-called
Classical Period.
The Genesis account shows that a living soul results from the combination of the earthly body with the breath of life. The expression “breath of the
force of life [literally, breath of the spirit, or active force (
ruʹach), of life]” (Ge 7:22) indicates that it is by breathing air (with
its oxygen) that the life-force, or “spirit,” in all creatures, man and animals, is sustained. This life-force is found in every cell of the
creature’s body.
Since the term neʹphesh refers to the creature itself, we should expect to find the normal physical functions or characteristics of fleshly creatures
attributed to it. [to be continued]