The concept of an immaterial and immortal soul—distinct from the corporeal body—did not appear in Judaism before the Babylonian exile, instead developing as a result of interaction with Persian and Hellenistic philosophies. Accordingly, the Hebrew word (nephesh)—though translated as "soul" in some older English-language Bibles—actually has a meaning closer to "living being". Nephesh was translated into Greek in the Septuagint as (psūchê), using the Greek word for "soul". The New Testament also uses the word .
The textual evidence indicates a multiplicity of perspectives on souls, including probable changes during the centuries in which the biblical corpus developed.
Relation to Greek "psyche" The only Hebrew word traditionally translated "soul" (nephesh) in English-language Bibles refers to a living, breathing conscious body, rather than to an immortal soul."Even as we are conscious of the broad and very common biblical usage of the term "soul," we must be clear that scripture does not present even a rudimentarily developed theology of the soul. The creation narrative is clear that all life originates with God. Yet the Hebrew scripture offers no specific understanding of the origin of individual souls, of when and how they become attached to specific bodies, or of their potential existence, apart from the body, after death. The reason for this is that, as we noted at the beginning, the Hebrew Bible does not present a theory of the soul developed much beyond the simple concept of a force associated with respiration, hence, a life-force.", Avery-Peck, "Soul", in Neusner, et al. (eds.), "The Encyclopedia of Judaism", p. 1343 (2000) In the New Testament, the Greek word traditionally translated "soul" () "psyche", has substantially the same meaning as the Hebrew, without reference to an immortal soul. In the Greek Septuagent psyche is used to translate each instance of nephesh.
Number of times Nephesh and Psūchê are translated into certain English words.Numbers come from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and Zondervan’s Exhaustive NIV Concordance.Translated asNepheshPsūchêNIVKJVNIVKJVSoul1104752558Life1651173740Person2529Spirit5Mind31533Heart211541Yourselves196Himself188Any113Creature109Themselves103Number of miscellaneous words & phrasesappearing >10 to 1 times30153251Not Translated47082TOTALS754753102105
Number of times Hebrew and Greek words are translated into certain English words.Translated as:ruahneshamalebKilyah’obelohimpneumaautossympsychosNIVKJVNIVKJVNIVKJVNIVKJVNIVKJVNIVKJVNIVKJVNIVKJVNIVKJVSpirit1822322 2 1 1 1 1 325 317 1 1 Spirits (angels, evil spirits)4 16 34 42 Soul 1 Breath312718 17 3 Wind9492 2 Mind65 28 12 4 1 Heart4 384 517 6 1 Number of miscellaneous words & phrasesappearing >4 to 1 times692222 4187 64 20 31 1517 2601God 2606 13 21 5592pronouns 5785
Genesis 2:7 According to God did not make a body and put a soul into it like a letter into an envelope of dust; rather he formed man's body from the dust, then, by breathing divine breath into it, he made the body of dust live, i.e. the dust did not embody a soul, but it became a soul – a whole creature.
Rabbinic understanding of Genesis 2:7 as found in the Targum
And the Lord God created man in two formations; and took dust from the place of the house of the sanctuary, and from the four winds of the world, and mixed from all the waters of the world, and created him red, black, and white; and breathed into his nostrils the inspiration of life, and there was in the body of Adam the inspiration of a speaking spirit, unto the illumination of the eyes and the hearing of the ears. –Targum Pseudo-Jonathan And the Lord God created Adam from dust of the ground, and breathed upon his face the breath of lives, and it became in Adam a Discoursing Spirit. –Targum Onkelos
Man as nephesh
Here and "all through Scripture" a "living soul" denotes a "living person".James Hastings, A Dictionary of the Bible: Vol IV: Part I: Pleroma-Shimon (Scribner's sons, 1902), s. v. "Psychology," 166–167. This is because, as Brevard Childs writes, in the biblical view, a person "does not have a soul, but is a soul".Brevard S. Childs, Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context (Fortress, 1985), 199.
Animals as nephesh
In 1 Corinthians 15:45 (KJV), soul [psūchê] is defined based on an interpretation of Old Testament text; “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul[psūchê]; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”()
New Testament The New Testament counterpart to the Old Testament word for soul, nephesh, is psyche. The two words carry a similar range of meanings. Both can designate the person or the person’s life as a whole.Walter A. Elwell, ed, Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology (Baker Books, 1966), s. v. “Soul”. For all uses and meanings of psyche/ψυχἠ, see Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.
Death of the soul
According to some writers, nephesh and psūchê are not naturally immortal. They dieSee Ezekiel 18:4, 20, "The soul that sins it shall die."see "Matthew 10:28 and dualism | Is the soul Immortal ?", Jefferson Vann. and are uncomprehending"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their memory is gone. Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun." Ecc 9:5-6 during the time between death and Judgment Day resurrection, also known as the intermediate state.
John Goldingay writes, "The life of a human being came more directly from God, and it is also evident that when someone dies, the breath (rûaḥ, e.g., Ps 104:29) or the life (nepeš, e.g., Gen 35:18) disappears and returns to the God who is rûaḥ."Goldingay, "Old Testament Theology", volume 2, p. 640 (2006)
Immortality
The concept of an immaterial soul separate from and surviving the body is common today but according to modern scholars, it was not found in ancient Hebrew beliefs.Tabor, James, What the Bible says about Death, Afterlife, and the Future. "The ancient Hebrews had no idea of an immortal soul living a full and vital life beyond death, nor of any resurrection or return from death. Human beings, like the beasts of the field, are made of "dust of the earth," and at death they return to that dust (Gen. 2:7; 3:19). The Hebrew word nephesh, traditionally translated "living soul" but more properly understood as "living creature," is the same word used for all breathing creatures and refers to nothing immortal." The word nephesh never means an immortal soulBaker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology. or an incorporeal part of the human beingDictionary of Biblical Theology, Father Xavier Leon Dufour, 1985. that can survive death of the body as the spirit of the dead.New International Dictionary.
Traditional Christianity In Patristic thought, towards the end of the 2nd century, psūchê had begun to be understood in a more Greek than a Hebrew way, contrasted with the body. By the 3rd century, with the influence of Origen, the traditions of the inherent immortality of the soul and its divine nature were established.The early Hebrews apparently had a concept of the soul but did not separate it from the body, although later Jewish writers developed the idea of the soul further. Old Testament references to the soul are related to the concept of breath and establish no distinction between the ethereal soul and the corporeal body. Christian concepts of a body-soul dichotomy originated with the ancient Greeks and were introduced into Christian theology at an early date by St. Gregory of Nyssa and by St. Augustine.—Britannica, 2004 As the new Encyclopædia Britannica points out: “The early Christian philosophers adopted the Greek concept of the soul’s immortality and thought of the soul as being created by God and infused into the body at conception.”The New Encyclopædia Britannica (1988), Volume 11, page 25 Inherent immortality of the soul was accepted among western and eastern theologians throughout the Middle Ages, and after the Reformation, as evidenced by the Westminster Confession.
Modern scholarship
The scholarly consensus of the 20th century held that the canonical teaching of the Old Testament made no reference to an immortal soul independent of the body in at least its earlier periods."Twentieth century biblical scholarship largely agrees that the ancient Jews had little explicit notion of a personal afterlife until very late in the Old Testament period. Immortality of the soul was a typically Greek philosophical notion quite foreign to the thought of ancient Semitic peoples. Only the latest stratum of the Old Testament asserts even the resurrection of the body, a view more congenial to Semites." - Donelley, "Calvinism and Scholasticism in Vermigli's doctrine of man and grace", p. 99 (1976)"Modern scholarship has underscored the fact that Hebrew and Greek concepts of soul were not synonymous. While the Hebrew thought world distinguished soul from body (as material basis of life), there was no question of two separate, independent entities. A person did not have a body but was an animated body, a unit of life manifesting itself in fleshly form—a psychophysical organism (Buttrick, 1962). Although Greek concepts of the soul varied widely according to the particular era and philosophical school, Greek thought often presented a view of the soul as a separate entity from body. Until recent decades Christian theology of the soul has been more reflective of Greek (compartmentalized) than Hebrew (unitive) ideas.", Moon, "Soul", in Benner & Hill (eds.), "Baker encyclopedia of psychology & counseling, p. 1148 (2nd ed. 1999)"A broad consensus emerged among biblical and theological scholars that soul-body dualism is a Platonic, Hellenistic idea that is not found anywhere in the Bible. The Bible, from cover to cover, promotes what they call the "Hebrew concept of the whole person." G. C. Berkouwer writes that the biblical view is always holistic, that in the Bible the soul is never ascribed any special religious significance. Werner Jaeger writes that soul-body dualism is a bizarre idea that has been read into the Bible by misguided church fathers such as Augustine. Rudolf Bultmann writes that Paul uses the word soma (body) to refer to the whole person, the self, so that there is not a soul and body, but rather the body is the whole thing. This interpretation of Pauline anthropology has been a theme in much subsequent Pauline scholarship.", McMinn & Phillips, "Care for the soul: exploring the intersection of psychology & theology", pp. 107-108 (2001)."The general consensus is that the Old Testament rejected any natural or innate immortality.", McNamara, "Beauty and the Priest: Finding God in the New Age", p. 64 (1997).