For many, there is confusion of the Scriptural meanings of soul and spirit, with the churches having been guilty of distorting the Bible for centuries, teaching that the soul is immortal. It is necessary to understand what the Bible really teaches about the soul and spirit rather than what the churches say it teaches. Too, because of inconsistent rendering of certain Hebrew and Greek words concerning soul and spirit in many Bibles, there is confusion as to their meanings.
For example, the word "spirit" comes from the Hebrew word ru´ach and the Greek pneu´ma, which comes from pne´o, meaning “breathe or blow". These have basic meaning of “breath†but have extended meanings beyond that basic sense. They can also mean wind, as at John 3:8 and Genesis 8:1; the vital force in living creatures, as at Genesis 6:17; one’s spirit as at Genesis 41:8 concerning Pharaoh and 45:27 concerning Jacob; spirit persons , including God and his angelic creatures as at 2 Chronicles 18:20; and God’s active force, or holy spirit as at Genesis 1:2. All these meanings have something in common: They all refer to that which is invisible to human sight and which gives evidence of force in motion. Such invisible force is capable of producing visible effects.
On the other hand, the soul is us a person, with all our life, and is sometimes translated as "life" by some Bibles, such as at Matthew 16:25, in which the King James Bible renders it as: "For whosoever will save his life (Greek psy·khe´ ) shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life (Greek psy·khe´ ) for my sake shall find it." Yet at verse 26, it renders the Greek word psy·khe´ as "soul", saying: "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ?" Thus, there is an inconsistency here regarding the rendering of the Greek word psy·khe´. The Greek word for "life" is zoe, as at Matthew 7:14 and 18:8.
At Ezekiel 18:4, it says that "all souls (Hebrew ne´phesh) are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die."(King James Bible) Thus, the soul ' dies ' and is not immortal. We can be a "dead soul", as shown at Leviticus 21:11, which says: "And he should not come to any dead soul."(Literally, “souls of one dead.†Hebrew, naph·shoth´, plural, followed by meth, “deadâ€Â)
When The Jewish Publication Society of America issued a new translation of the Torah, or first five books of the Bible, the editor-in-chief, H. M. Orlinsky of Hebrew Union College, stated that the word “soul†had been virtually eliminated from this translation because, “the Hebrew word in question here is ‘Nefesh.’†He added: “ The Bible does not say we have a soul. ‘Nefesh’ is the person himself, his need for food, the very blood in his veins, his being.â€Â-The New York Times, October 12, 1962.
The difficulty lies in the fact that the meanings popularly attached to the English word “soul†stem primarily, not from the Hebrew or Christian Greek Scriptures, commonly called the Old and New Testament, but from ancient Greek philosophy, actually pagan religious thought. Greek philosopher Plato, for example, quotes Socrates as saying: “The soul, . . . if it departs pure, dragging with it nothing of the body, . . . goes away into that which is like itself, into the invisible, divine, immortal, and wise, and when it arrives there it is happy, freed from error and folly and fear . . . and all the other human ills, and . . . lives in truth through all after time with the gods.â€Â-Phaedo, 80, D, E; 81, A.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia says: “Nepes [ne´phesh] is a term of far greater extension than our ‘soul,’ signifying life (Ex 21.23; Dt 19.21) and its various vital manifestations: breathing (Gn 35.18; Jb 41.13[21]), blood [Gn 9.4; Dt 12.23; Ps 140(141).8], desire (2 Sm 3.21; Prv 23.2). The soul in the O[ld] T[estament] means not a part of man, but the whole man-man as a living being. Similarly, in the N[ew] T[estament] it signifies human life: the life of an individual, conscious subject (Mt 2.20; 6.25; Lk 12.22-23; 14.26; Jn 10.11, 15, 17; 13.37).â€Â-1967, Vol. XIII, p. 467. Thus, the "soul" is anyone as a person, with all their desires, not having immortality, for Jeremiah 2:34 speaks of the "blood marks of the souls of the poor innocents". Hence, the soul has blood flowing through it.
Closely connected, the "spirit" of a person can be his life force, the very principal of life. The account of the creation of man states that God formed man from the dust of the ground and proceeded to “blow [form of na·phach´] into his nostrils the breath [form of nesha·mah´] of life, and the man came to be a living soul [ne´phesh].†(Ge 2:7) Ne´phesh may be translated literally as “a breather,†that is, “a breathing creature,†either human or animal. Nesha·mah´ is, in fact, used to mean “breathing thing [or creature]†and as such is used as a virtual synonym of ne´phesh, “soul", such as at Deuteronomy 20:16 and Joshua 11:11.
The record at Genesis 2:7 uses nesha·mah´ in describing God’s causing Adam’s body to have life so that the man "came to be a living soul.†Other texts, however, show that more was involved than simple breathing of air, that is, more than the mere introduction of air into the lungs and its expulsion therefrom. Thus, at Genesis 7:22, in describing the destruction of human and animal life outside the ark at the time of the Flood, we read: “Everything in which the breath [form of nesha·mah´] of the force [or, “spirit†(ru´ach)] of life was active in its nostrils, namely, all that were on the dry ground, died.†Nesha·mah´, “breath,†is thus directly associated or linked with ru´ach, which here describes the spirit, or life-force, that is active in all living creatures-human and animal souls, just as electricity is the life-force of objects such as fans, refrigerators, etc.
Because breathing is so inseparably connected with life, nesha·mah´ and ru´ach are used in clear parallel in various texts. Job voiced his determination to avoid unrighteousness “while my breath [form of nesha·mah´] is yet whole within me, and the spirit [weru´ach] of God is in my nostrils.†(Job 27:3) Elihu said: “If that one’s spirit [form of ru´ach] and breath [form of nesha·mah´] he [God] gathers to himself, all flesh will expire [that is, “breathe outâ€Â] together, and earthling man himself will return to the very dust.†(Job 34:14, 15)
Similarly, Psalm 104:29 says of earth’s creatures, human and animal: “If you [God] take away their spirit (Hebrew formf ru´ach), they expire, and back to their dust they go.†At Isaiah 42:5, our Creator, Jehovah God is spoken of as “the One laying out the earth and its produce, the One giving breath [form of nesha·mah´] to the people on it, and spirit [weru´ach] to those walking in it.†The breath (nesha·mah´) sustains their existence; the spirit (ru´ach) energizes and is the life-force that enables man to be an animated creature, to move, walk, be actively alive, just as electricity is an invisible life-force for any electrical appliance.
