🎧 01:10 - 01:35 (00:25)

The word we're working on now is the Hebrew word nephash, which in our English translations of the Bible gets translated as

soul. But it is actually hardly ever the meaning of a soul

in the Bible. How do biblical authors use this word nephash? What are they imagining? And what does it mean for us

as humans to be a soul?

🎧 04:30 - 07:27 (02:56)

reason. And then there's a whole movement that says, no, actually, even what we can experience as not being a part of our bodies, like our thoughts are actually products of synapses firing and chemicals mixing in our brain. Yeah. It's material. And then I think for many people that creates maybe some sort of crisis or at least a tension in the worldview, wait, I thought humans were both material, but also something non-material. Yeah. And how does that work? How does that work?

I think most people would say, yeah, we're material and non-material, but then if you really try to drill down and get a handle on what that non-material part is, it's a complete mystery.

And people often assume that the idea of a eternal non-physical existence that humans living on after death apart from their bodies as souls, disembodied souls forever and ever. Many people assume that that's a really important idea in the Bible or a main teaching of the Bible. And I certainly thought that until I actually started to read the Bible. I remember even before I knew anything about Greek or Hebrew and I became aware that the word soul was being used in the Bible, not the way I used it in English. And then as I learned more, I realized what most people mean by the word soul, that disembodied living on forever and ever part of you is actually hardly ever the meaning of soul in the Bible. If at all, I realized it was a whole point of debate. You can count on one hand the key passages that seem to describe that. So yes, it's both, I think both it leads to misunderstandings about the human person. And also that idea has led us to misunderstand much of what the Bible has said. And I start to sound like a broken record at some point. You're sort of like there's a cultural gap between us and the Bible and its authors and how they used words and led their language and culture. And so it goes both ways. We impose our concepts of whatever onto these texts and make them say what we, you know, they might mean in English. So we're both distorting what they say that happens very often. And also we miss out on what they were trying to say in the first place. So

it's like a double. Double whammy. The double

whammy. We distort, we distort what they're actually saying and we miss what they wanted to say. So I have found that kind of have to do both a demolition job and a rebuilding job when it comes to the word soul in the Bible.

🎧 07:39 - 09:08 (01:28)

Sowal.

Eight

century

old English word. Yeah. It's actually first, I tested in Beowulf. This is from the Oxford English dictionary. This is the first time that word shows up because in Beowulf. Yeah, according to Oxford English dictionary, it's first literary usage in a text. So we can date to the eighth century. So what that means is that people were using it long before that. Right. Got into literature. It can be tracked here. And so that's

very clearly referring to some non-physical essence

of a living being. Correct. So that was a category in the eighth century. Yep. English. Yeah.

On the etymology dictionary online, it says that it also might be a proto-Germanic word and it may even come potentially from a German word that means see.

Did you see that? I did. Yeah. And there were other routes that people think are even older. Okay. This is just it's the first appearance in English. In English. Yeah.

Yeah.

So the word has existed in European languages referring to a concept of a non-physical disembodied you, the essence of you that is not physical and therefore can survive death.

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That's interesting. So like, yeah, you've got this sense of where you're looking from and hearing from. It's all up here in your head, which is connected to your body with your nephash, which is then connected to this really central part of you, your chest where you're breathing. Yeah. Where the heart is. And your heart is. You get stabbed anywhere in this region, head down to here. Yeah. You're in trouble. It's over. It's game over. Yes. So this is like the most central part of you in that way. Yeah.

So yeah, it wouldn't make any sense to have a word that means my physical existence. You wouldn't develop a meaning out of Bicep. But throat, there's something essential about the throat, the essence. Yeah. And so that's in...

So does it mean the essence of me then? We have to

keep going. It does mean the essence of a person, but it doesn't mean non-physical. Actually nephash primarily refers to me as a physical organism, a living physical organism. It's one of the great ironies of Bible translations is that the English word soul primarily means non-physical essence. Whereas the biblical word nephash primarily means your physical essence, the opposite. Which is why when you start tracking with these appearances of the word soul in the Old Testament, you'd be like, oh, that doesn't mean that a non-physical part. My soul pants after you. So, okay.

🎧 42:32 - 43:47 (01:14)

So, because a body part then can come to symbolize your life, as a physical being, seems this is how the nephish can refer to me as a whole physical embodied being. So for example, one of the most common phrases for somebody trying to kill you is, they seek my nephish. When David is being hunted by Saul in the wilderness, he gets reports, Saul is seeking your nephish. And in English, you'll know you're at this phrase, whenever anybody is seeking someone's life. This is why life is one of the most common translations, seeking your life. To murder somebody is to strike their nephish. This is what, oh, when Joseph, he gets kidnapped by his brothers, and what they want to do is kill him, but where they end up throwing him in a pit instead. And it's because his brother, Ruben, said, what, don't strike his nephish. So that's a good example, to strike my nephish, doesn't mean to, it's a very opposite of saying don't strike the non-physical part of it.

🎧 43:53 - 45:42 (01:49)

I mean, like, so you know how in planes the flight attendants will say there's 300 souls on board. Oh, oh, yes. Yep. Yes. Now, you could say they're referring to the non-physical part of you to be like, hey, these people are really important. But what they're really referring to is that there's 300 people. People. That's

right.

Yes. And that's something, the essence of them, communicate that. Why couldn't Joseph's brother be doing the same thing? Like I'm going to use the word that represents the most important part of him, the permanent part of him, his nephish. Yes. If he did mean soul in the sense that we

understand it. Well, part of it is actually that they're in the, because of the King James translation, the King James translation rendered many of these occurrences of nephish as soul. And they clearly mean the physical embodied person.

In King James. In King James. And then the King James. Because that's what it meant back then. It had that double meaning in the

sense. Oh, well, this is where I actually think the King James influenced the history of the English language. In other words, through the King James, the Hebrew meaning of nephish ended up entering the English usage for a time. And it survives in, I

see, it survives like in pilot talk in like

whenever a leader of a, some kind of vessel. Yeah. Describe how many humans are on board. They'll say

there were 200 souls. So the Hebrew meaning of

soul

influenced, influenced history of the English language.

🎧 52:46 - 54:43 (01:56)

Yeah.

And if one of those categories is this non-physical part of me that lives on forever

that represents the real essence of the real me. Yeah. And

it's kind of infused into this body, but can also be separated from the body. If I begin to identify with that thing, and that's the thing that I feel like is the deepest, most meaningful part of me when I use the word soul, I mean like my deepest. Yes. The deepest me. Yeah. And now you're telling me, no, you don't have that. Well,

or just the thing that is that is your body is deeply connected to your physical embodied existence. It's not separable from your embodied

existence. It's inseparable. It's inseparable.

That's right. This is why the ultimate hope for humans in the Bible is not living a disembodied existence. It's resurrection. It's embodied existence, which is having an Ephish. Having an Ephish. Right? At the end of the biblical story is Nefishes. Right? Embodied humans inhabiting an embodied physical world. So anyway, let's take a head of ourselves for the moment. And the conversation's not over. Yeah. Let's, but for the moment, you're right. What is the reorientation that has to take place is that humans do not have a soul, according to, at least in the Old Testament, humans are a Nefish. They are a soul. A soul is our English word translating Hebrew words that describes me as a whole living, breathing physical organism. Or your neck. Or your neck.

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