If you take notice, in the passages you posted here the word soul could be translated life and the passages would still mean the same thing.
It would not mean the same thing. Soul is specific. Life could mean anything.
It makes no sense to say words are translated wrong or we will never arrive at the truth. We have the Bible, translated. Read the RSV.
This is one of the problems in the English translations, many times they interpret that same Greek and Hebrew words with different English words. By doing this they are actually injecting their own theology into the text. Instead of translating the words "Nephesh" or "Psuche" as soul everywhere they appear, they translate them using different words and the reader doesn't see that it is the same word. In some passages such as those you posted the translate "Nephesh" as soul and it appears that the "soul" is something that can be cast away, yet when the same word is tied directly to the body they translate is as "life" as in the case where Scripture says the "soul" is in the blood.
Cast down. Not cast away.
There's no problem with the English translations. You're assuming the antecedent, that the English translators have a theology that comes from something else. Where would their theology come from if not from the Bible?
From the preface to the RSV -
The King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying. It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts. The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus.
We now possess many more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, and are far better equipped to seek to recover the original wording of the Greek text. The evidence for the text of the books of the New Testament is better than for any other ancient book, both in the number of extant manuscripts and in the nearness of the date of some of these manuscripts to the date when the book was originally written.
The revisers in the 1870’s had most of the evidence that we now have for the Greek text, though the most ancient of all extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament were not discovered until 1931. But they lacked the resources which discoveries within the past eighty years have afforded for understanding the vocabulary, grammar, and idioms of the Greek New Testament. An amazing body of Greek papyri has been unearthed in Egypt since the 1870’s—private letters, official reports, wills, business accounts, petitions, and other such trivial, everyday recordings of the activities of human beings. In 1895 appeared the first of
Adolf Deissmann’s studies of these ordinary materials. He proved that many words which had hitherto been assumed to belong to what was called “
Biblical Greek” were current in the spoken vernacular of the first century A.D. The New Testament was written in the
Koiné, the common Greek which was spoken and understood practically everywhere throughout the Roman Empire in the early centuries of the Christian era. This development in the study of New Testament Greek has come since the work on the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version was done, and at many points sheds new light upon the meaning of the Greek text.
8 And thou shalt say unto them, Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice,
9 And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer it unto the LORD; even that man shall be cut off from among his people.
10 And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people.
11
For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls:
for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
12 Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood. (
Lev 17:8-12 KJV)
The word life in verse 11 is Nephesh, soul. This passage is important because it uses the word soul in different ways. Notice firstly that the soul is in the blood, this passage is speaking of the animal sacrifices, so the passage is saying the soul, of the animal is in the blood. What does that mean the soul is in the blood? It's translated life in the English translations and it's pretty clear that when the blood of the animal pours out the animal dies, thus the soul (life) of the animal is in the blood, without the blood the animal dies. This passage also says that the blood was giving to make atonement for their souls. The animal dies for their sins, thus a soul was given for the atonement of their souls. Can you see how this is one life given for the atonement of another? This is still true under the new covenant, Jesus gave His soul as an atonement for our soul, yet we know from Scripture that it was His life that He laid down on the cross for our sins.
12 Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because
he hath poured out his soul unto death: and
he was numbered with the transgressors; and
he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.(
Isa 53:12-1 KJV)
This passage shows that Christ gave His soul for the sins of many. That was His life, it wasn't some immaterial part of Him that doesn't die.
You're using the KJV to correct the KJV? So you know he gave his life, so 'soul' doesn't mean 'soul', it means 'life'. Then you say he gave his soul, which is incorrect.
He poured out his soul unto death means he suffered on the cross and he gave up his spirit as John 19:30 says, 'When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and
gave up his
spirit'. RSV
So the passage doesn't say Christ gave his soul for the sins of many.
Even Isaiah refers to 'the travail of his soul' Isa. 53:11 referring to the things he had to go through.
Jesus referred to his soul.
Then he said to them, “
My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” Mt. 26:38
Is Jesus saying his life is sorrowful or his body is sorrowful? No. He says his soul is sorrowful.
What's important is what Jesus said - they can not kill the soul. Jesus gave his life for our sins. His soul did not die.
I didn't say the soul was the body, I said the body is part of the soul. According to
Gen 2:7 a soul consists of a body and the breath/spirit of life. That's a clear statement from Scripture, so whatever we claim a soul is, it must also incorporate what
Gen 2:7 states or we are misunderstanding the word.
So sometimes the word means life and other times it means the body and life.
You would do better seeing Gen. 2:7 in the light of
Matthew 10:28 'they cannot
kill the soul', RSV, rather than the other way around.