What is a soul?


Let us examine the Biblical facts. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, gives us the account of the origin of everything, including the soul. The authenticity of the Genesis account cannot be doubted or questioned by those who claim to be Christians, for Christ Himself accepted the story of the creation of man as a historical truth. (See Matthew 19:4.) To the Christian this is reason enough to believe that Genesis is neither a parable nor a mythical tradition, but a genuine historical narrative of the origin of man.

This story of creation is a simple recording of divine power: "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" (Genesis 2:7).

The Mighty One took the dust of the ground and formed it into a particular shape, breathing into it His life-giving power, and there lay man the living soul. The divine formula of soul that emerges from the story of Genesis is this:

Body + the breath of life = living soul.

Thus we see that in the act of creation, God did not put an independent entity called "soul" into the body of man. Man is the soul. Therefore when the Bible speaks about soul, it speaks not of an independent entity apart from the body of man but the total man himself.

This is further borne out by the meaning of the Hebrew word nephesh which is translated as "soul" in our English Bible. The literal meaning of the word is "that which breathes." The word is also translated in the King James Version as "person," "mind," "creature," "heart," "will," "life," and in several other ways. (See Genesis 14:21; Deuteronomy 18:6; Leviticus 11:46; Proverbs 23:7; Ezekiel 16:27; 1 Kings 19:4.) These varied translations signify that soul is not a separate entity but that it represents a living being.

For example: Exodus 1:5 talks about "seventy souls" "that came out of the loins of Jacob." Surely, it cannot mean seventy bodiless, immaterial substances. It simply means seventy persons. Or when Genesis 14:21 records the request of the king of Sodom to Abraham, "Give me the souls {margin}, and take the goods to thyself," does this mean that the king was interested in something within the persons and not the persons themselves?

Scores of other passages may be cited, but suffice it to say that nowhere does the Bible speak about soul as an enitity independent of man. The soul does not exist by itself. The soul is man. Man is the soul.


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