Part 3: What is the soul? (i) Nephesh

“The spiritual, rational, and immortal part in man; that part of man which enables him to think, and which renders him a subject of moral government; -- sometimes, in distinction from the higher nature, or spirit, of man, the so-called animal soul, that is, the seat of life, the sensitive affections and fantasy, exclusive of the voluntary and rational powers; -- sometimes, in distinction from the mind, the moral and emotional part of man's nature, the seat of feeling, in distinction from intellect; -- sometimes, the intellect only; the understanding; the seat of knowledge, as distinguished from feeling. In a more general sense, an animating, separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of individual personal existence.” (Noah Webster Dictionary definition of ‘soul’ [my underlining])

“The belief that the soul continues in existence after the dissolution of the body is . . . speculation . . . nowhere expressly taught in Holy Scripture . . . The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended” (Jewish Encyclopaedia, 1941, Vol. VI, ‘Immortality of the Soul,’ pp. 564, 566).

Of these two views, I have moved from embracing the former to accepting the latter (though I do not have any particular view on how the doctrine came to influence students of Scripture). I hope I will be able to adequately explain my reasoning because I find teaching of the soul to be quite confusing, even when presented by good communicators. As I presently understand this subject, I do not believe that we have an immaterial and immortal soul, nor do I believe man to be a bipartite or tripartite being. 

I used to think that the soul was the seat of my character, my emotions, and that somehow it would continue to exist separate from my body once it expired, essentially making my body a shell. The spirit was that component which was aware of the Creator, the soul also needing to embrace this knowledge. Without the spirit no communication with Him was possible. 

I tentatively held a view (probably a very inconsistent one given my lack of study of the subject) that, when Adam and Eve sinned, the spirit of man was corrupted – perhaps it even ‘collapsed’ into the soul – making knowledge of God impossible without the intervention of the Holy Spirit.

If this sounds like an incoherent explanation of my prior views, it should. Others are more articulate in explaining and defending such beliefs, though ironically the best explanations come from those who stop short of being dogmatic. They recognise a lack of explicit theology on the bipartite/tripartite nature of man. 

But however well presented some of these views are, and however much study has been put into deciphering how many ‘parts’ a man has (and how they interrelate), I am beginning to think that the lack of clarity suggests we should never have been viewing the nature of man this way in the first place. The theology that has arisen from this topic, I feel, has taken us away from a simple question: what is a soul? That said, though the question is simple to understand I personally have found it difficult to answer. I have strong convictions as to what it is not, but providing a succinct definition of what it is can be very challenging. 

The sheer number of verses in the Bible that deal with ‘soul’ and variations of its Hebrew and Greek roots would justify a book in itself to deal with it all. As the reader will discover, I began trying to show the texts in which the Bible uses the word, but couldn’t even get halfway through the Old Testament because of the space it was taking up. The potential translations of the Hebrew word נפש (NEPHESH) are numerous, and using an English concordance was therefore not as simple as referencing each use of the word ‘soul’. 

For example, the NKJV’s first use of the word ‘soul’ is in Genesis 19:20.

See now this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one; please let me escape there (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live’.

The KJV has three prior occurrences of the word – the first being the following:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul [the NKJV translates it as ‘being’]. (Genesis 2:7)

But the Hebrew word NEPHESH has another four prior occurrences in the Bible:

Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures [NEPHESH], and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” So God created great sea creatures and every living thing [NEPHESH] that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good… Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature [NEPHESH] according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so... “Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life [NEPHESH], I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so. (Genesis 1:20-21,24,30)

This illustrates the lack of straightforwardness in understanding the meaning of ‘soul’. The exact same Hebrew word is used to translate ‘thing’, ‘creature’ and ‘life’. Can the type of word that is used for ‘cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth’ also illuminate the Bible reader to an immaterial and immortal component of mankind? 

Even aside from these various meanings of NEPHESH, the English translation of Genesis 2:7 ought to cause us to question such a doctrine: ‘Man became a living soul’. This does not express the idea of possession. The verse does not say that man was ‘given’ or ‘had’ a living soul. He became ( היה; hayah – to fall out; come to pass; become; be) that soul. Adam was that soul! The verse itself carries no sense of possession of an immaterial component that would live on after Adam’s death. In fact, no translation of NEPHESH carries this meaning:

(5315) NEPHESH: a soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion (NASB Exhaustive Concordance)

(5315) NEPHESH: any, thyself, them your-selves, slay, soul, tablet, they, thing (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance)

NEPHESH: soul, self, life, creature, person, appetite, mind, living being, desire, emotion, passion (Brown, Driver, Briggs. Hebrew Lexicon)

Though NEPHESH is translated into various English words, thus making it difficult to summarise, none of the above translations suggest an immaterial and immortal ingredient of humanity. 

As seen, it is used to describe the whole creature, but NEPHESH also seems capable of describing things that pertain to the life of the creature – the word can refer to its desires (i.e. who the creature is as well as what it is). Perhaps this venture away from physicality is what has led many to believe that we have an immaterial soul. There is clearly a figurative use of the word as well as a literal one, as I hope to demonstrate. 

However, the Bible’s linguistic use of NEPHESH strikes me as no different to how we often use the word ‘heart’. We know that ‘wholehearted’ is a word that uses the tangible (a physical organ) to express something intangible. We would never presume to have an immaterial heart. We accept the figurative use of the word without any sense of confusion. Why can’t ‘soul’ be accepted similarly? If one organ (heart) can be used to personify the non-physical, why can’t the whole being (soul)? 

Were Scripture to tell us that man did have an ethereal component where his true self resided then perhaps the usage of NEPHESH could have stretched this far. But where is that Scripture? I find the concept when reading about Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, Greek Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism, but not in the Bible. 

I feel that we assume such a component exists and then interpret the Bible accordingly, naturally leading us to the doctrine of ‘going to Heaven when we die’ (after all, an immortal soul has to go somewhere). But the onus really ought to be on Bible teachers to defend and explain why the soul is a distinct constituent part of man, not defend and explain how the soul relates to and interacts with body and spirit. 

My opinion is that ‘soul’, as much as NEPHESH, is a word that requires translation. It is as if we have translated one foreign word into another. When we hear ‘soul’ do we think of this one purported component of humanity or the entire person (e.g. ‘that poor soul’, ‘more than one hundred souls perished at sea’)? Even in English it has an ambiguity, so we cannot be sure what the primary meaning of NEPHESH is if we only use the English word ‘soul’. 

I would, however, venture a guess that every occurrence of the word in Hebrew Scripture has a valid translation among the definitions provided by the Lexicons, quoted above. The apparent semantic relationship with the verb נפש (NAPHASH – a homonym of NEPHESH) would suggest that ‘air-breathing’ is associated with the NEPHESH, and so the same ought to be considered for our biblical understanding of ‘soul’. We should derive our primary understanding of NEPHESH from the physical qualities that pertain to being an air-breathing being. Mobility must also be considered a key attribute of that which is NEPHESH (locomotion being something which plants do not have, explaining why they are not considered as ‘souls’ in Scripture).   

#5314 NAPHASH - A primitive root; to breathe; passively, to be breathed upon, i.e. (figuratively) refreshed (as if by a current of air) -- (be) refresh selves (-ed). (Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance)

Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed (NAPHASH). (Exodus 23:12)  

It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed (NAPHASH). (Exodus 31:17)

Now the king and all the people who were with him became weary; so they refreshed (NAPHASH) themselves there. (2^nd Samuel 16:14)

In short, I do not hold to the view that we possess a soul – an immortal immaterial true self. If the English word were to be properly understood then I would say that the soul is me: the complete person, body and mind. It is not ethereal. Every part of it has its origin in the dust from which Adam was miraculously formed. It will return there until the day that the ‘last Adam’, who alone has risen from it, comes back to resurrect it.