God did not say Adam HAD a soul! He said Adam WAS a "soul." The word merely meant a living "creature," and had nothing to do with anything immortal.
The very same word is translated "creature" many times throughout the Old Testament, and in Genesis. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature [nephesh] after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so."
Look up the word in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance. It is number 5315, and is rendered: "Nephesh; a breathing creature, i.e., animal or (abstr.) vitality: used very widely in a literal, accommodated or figurative sense (bodily or mental); appetite, beast, body, breath, creature, dead, desire, contented, fish, ghost, greedy, he, heart, (jeopardy of life; in jeopardy), lust, man, me, mind, mortally, one, own, person, pleasure, (her, him, my, thy) self, them (your) selves, slay, soul, tablet, they, thing, will, would have it."
Notice the many references to life, and the life principle in all living creatures. The true understanding of nephesh can only be gained by looking at all its many usages in connection with animals and man. Notice an outstanding example: "He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days" (Numbers 19:11).
The word "body" is from the Hebrew nephesh! Notice also these many identical examples: Numbers 6:6; 9:6, 7, 10; 19:11, 13, 16, and Haggai 2:13, which says, "Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body [Hebrew: nephesh] touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean."
Obviously, the translators would never deign to render these, and dozens of other examples throughout the Bible, as "soul!" Otherwise, they would be rendering it, "unclean by a dead soul," and this would demolish their cherished, false, and completely pagan doctrine of the "immortality of the soul."
http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/pubs/HeavenOnEarth.htm