by Aleggs Sander

Created on: December 12, 2009

The term “immortal soul” is nowhere found in the Judeo-Christian writing called “ The Holy Bible.” There may be other literature within the tradition of Judaism, or Christianity, which use that phrase, but it is not a Biblical phrase. It is a phrase used by many churches, and its use by these churches, coupled with its use on television, fools many people into believing it is Biblical. I would be a rich man if I were to challenge anyone with a thousand dollar wager to find that phrase in any Greco-Hebraic manuscript of the Christian Bible.

If there is no such phrase in any manuscript, from whence came the concept? And indeed, what is the soul? Both questions need to be answered, and answered in a way that can stand the Biblical investigation, without anyone twisting scriptures, or reading their culture into the Bible. First off, what is the soul? The soul is not the spirit, the soul is not the mind, the soul is not some ethereal entity that remains after the physical body has passed away. The soul is the physical body. In the story of creation, the J source writes that God “breathed into man’s nostril and man became a living soul. Without that breath in the nostrils that lump of clay would have remained a lump of clay. The Hebrew word used for soul is nephesh. The text can be translated “and man became a living being;” “and man became a living creature.” Nephesh has been translated “soul,” “life,” “person,” “body,” and even “mind.” Nephesh has been used as “me,” “beast,” “fish” and even as a plural pronoun! Nephesh does not have the connotation of immortality or of something that can exist without an animating force in it.

The Greek use of the word in the Bible carries the same idea. In Greek, the word for soul is psuche from which we derive our word psyche (the basis for psychology-the study of life). Like its Hebrew counterpart, psuche has a variety of meanings. It can mean life, its basic meaning. It has been translated “soul,” “mind,” “heart” and even “emotions.” It too lacks any inherent concept of an original life force that continues on beyond the grave. A word that has often been mistakenly used to mean the soul is spirit, a word that has its own meaning.

The Hebrew for spirit is ruach, which means “wind,” or “spirit,” or “breath,”

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