What Is a Soul?

Originally posted on September 11, 2002 – by Andre Piet

Man has a soul and an animal does not. At least, this is the common idea in Christendom. It betrays a double error in thinking. Already on the very first pages of Scripture this comes to light. Unfortunately, the translators of the Dutch NBG translation have obscured this by translating away the ordinary Hebrew word for “soul” (nephesh).

And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created the great sea monsters, and every living soul that moveth, wherewith the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind: and God saw that it was good.
—Genesis 1:20–21

The very first time the Bible speaks of souls it is about… animals! Animals are souls. Note well: animals do not have a soul, they are souls. Of these souls here it is said that they swarm and teem. In this the fauna distinguishes itself from the flora. Plants, trees, etc. are rooted in one place and do not move about. They do not swarm and teem. Nowhere are plants in the Bible called “souls.” After the creation of the animals follows on the sixth day the creation of man:

“…And Jehovah God formeth the man — dust from the ground, and breatheth into his nostrils breath of life, and the man becometh a living soul.”
Genesis 2:7 (YLT)

Here too, unfortunately, the NBG translation has translated away the word for “soul.” And thereby the Bible reader is deprived of the truth of what a human soul actually is. Man did not receive a soul, but he became a soul. Here the soul is the result of the combination of formed dust from the ground and the breath of life.

Soul & Blood

That the soul is the combination of body and breath of life, we see portrayed in the type of the soul par excellence: the blood.

“For the soul of the flesh is in the blood…”
Leviticus 17:11 (see also 17:14 and Genesis 9:4)

Just as the soul is a combination of dust from the ground and breath of life, so we also find this thought reflected in the blood as a type of the soul. Blood too is nourished both from the ground (food) and from the breath of life (air). Remarkable in this connection is that the Hebrew word for “blood” (dam) is directly related to “red” (edom), but also to “ground” (adamah), as well as to “man” (adam). Man comes forth from “mother earth.”

Delen: