Dr. Anthony Raimondo

Many people seem to think when they die there soul goes somewhere but this is a big mistake since the word soul is miss understood. The English translation of Hebrew is misleading when it comes to the word ‘soul.’ When I pointed this out to some friends at a Bible Study they nearly freaked out. Now during the reformation, the Catholic  Church forbids individuals from translating the Bible. Here would be an example of why.  The Hebrew word for soul is נֶ֫פֶשׁ, nephesh, although translated as “soul” in some older English Bibles, actually has a meaning closer to “living being”. Nephesh was rendered in the Septuagint as ψυχή (psūchê), the Greek word for soul. It is not a spirit. So when you die the “living being” is now dead.

Ecclesiastes 3:18-20 New International Version (NIV)

^{18 “}I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. ¹⁹ Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. ²⁰ All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.”

Nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ nép̄eš) is a Biblical Hebrew word which occurs in the Hebrew Bible. The word refers to the aspects of sentience, and human beings and other animals are both described as having nephesh. Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively.^[1] Eighteenth-century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think (reason) from the ability to feel (sentience). In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as “qualia“). In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that require respect and care.

Plants, as an example of live organisms, are not referred to in the Bible as having nephesh. The term נפש is literally “soul”, although it is commonly rendered as “life” in English translations. One view is that nephesh relates to sentient beings without the idea of life and that, rather than having a nephesh, a sentient creation of God is a nephesh. InGenesis 2:7 the text is that Adam was not given a nephesh but “became a living nephesh.” Nephesh then is better understood as a person, seeing that Leviticus 21:11 and Numbers 6:6 speak of a “dead body”, which in Hebrew is a nép̄eš mêṯ, a dead nephesh. Nephesh, when put with another word, can detail aspects related to the concept of nephesh; with רוּחַ rûach (“spirit”) it describes a part of mankind that is immaterial, like one’s mind, emotions, will, intellect, personality, and conscience, as in Job 7:11. As you can see it has nothing to do with the misconception of an immortal spirit. Only Jesus can give you eternal life.