LIFE
IN CHRIST
- - - - - - -
- - - -
RESURRECTION
OR
IMMORTALITY
Subtitled
The Resurrection, Our Only Hope Of Life After Death
William Robert
West
Author of The
Rapture And Israel
"The Wages Of Sin Is Death"
OR IS
"The
Wages Of Sin Is Eternal
Life
With Torment In Hell"
An Immortal Soul
And The Doctrine Of Hell
Is There A Soul
In You That Will Live After You Are Dead?
Updated 10/15/19
Over 1,502,800 download
LIFE IN CHRIST
RESURRECTION OR
IMMORTALITY
The Resurrection,
Our Only Hope Of Life After Death
William Robert
West
Table of Contents
INDEX and CHAPTER ONE, The nature of man–what is
man?
Is at http://www.robertwr.com/index.html
CHAPTER TWO, Life or Death
Is at http://www.robertwr.com/life.html
CHAPTER THREE, The great doctrines of the Bible
Is at http://www.robertwr.com/immortal.html
CHAPTERS FOUR, FIVE, SIX, AND SEVEN
Are at http://www.robertwr.com/hell.html
Chapter four, From where
came Hell, from man or God?
1. Unquenchable fire, weeping,
gnashing of teeth
2. Old Testament history of Gehanna
3. Gehenna used by Christ on four
occasions
4. The vanishing Hell
5. Twenty-nine plus version of Hell
Three Catholic versions of Hell
Seventeen plus Protestant versions of Hell
Nine other versions of Hell
Chapter five, Sheol, Hades,
and Tartarus
Chapter six, The thirty-one
Hell passages
Chapter seven, A strange and
unexplainable silence of the Old Testament on punishment and life after death,
life, death, torment, destruction, destroy, perish, die, and end
CHAPTERS EIGHT, NINE, TEN, ELEVEN AND TWELVE
Are at http://www.robertwr.com/heaven.html
Chapter eight, Figurative
language, metaphors, and symbolical passage
Part one, The rich man
Part two, The symbolic pictures in Revelation
Part three, The forever and ever of the King James Version
Chapter nine, Universalist,
The "age lasting" Hell
Chapter ten, The results of
attributing evil Pagan teachings to God
Chapter eleven, Historical proof of the
changing of the teaching of the Bible
Chapter twelve, ISRAEL'S DESTRUCTION, scripture about
the destruction of Israel that are misapplied to Hell
1. Israels weeping, gnashing of teeth
2. Outer darkness
3. Matthew 24
4. Preterits Eschatology
5. Realized Eschatology
6. A D 70 Doctrine
7. The day of the Lord
8. 2 Peter 3
Appendix one
ALL TWELVE CHAPTERS ON ONE WEB SITE ARE AT http://robertwr.com/resurrection.htm
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FOREWORD
What do you believe about souls?
There are many very different doctrines taught in the world today concerning
souls that are believed to be in all humans. By most a soul is believed to be
something that is wholly apart from the person that a soul is in; that a soul
is something that is believed to be complete in its self without the person;
most believe that a soul will exist forever without the person; it will never
be dead, therefore, a soul cannot be resurrected from the dead; that it will
live either in Heaven or Hell even if there is no resurrection. A soul leaving
a person at the death of the person makes it impossible for Christ to have give
His life to save that soul from death; if a soul had immortality it would
already have life and could never not have life; all Christ could do is give it
a reward or punish it.
MANY BELIEVE
(1). At the death of a saved person,
a bodiless deathless soul that had been in a person will fly immediately to
Heaven to the very presents of Jesus and God, and souls that are now in Heaven
are now looking down on loved ones of the dead persons the souls had been in.
(2). Many believe at the death
of a lost person, a soul that was in that person will immediately be carried to
Hell where it will forever be alive, suffering and screaming, while it is being
eternally tormented by God because of the sins of the person it was in with no
hope that God will ever stop tormenting it.
(3). Catholic believe that at
death most souls that were in them goes immediately to Purgatory where souls
will suffer unto souls have suffered enough to pay for the sins of the persons
they were in, then these souls will be saved by their own suffering, or saved
by money given by others.
(4). In the Abrahams bosom
version souls that had been in the saved will go immediately at death to be
rewarded in Abrahams bosom, the good side of hades, unto the coming of Christ
while souls that were in the lost are tormented in the bad side of hades unto
the coming of Christ; after the judgment souls that had been in the lost
persons that were being tormented in hades will then be endlessly tormented by
God in an endless burning Hell.
(5). A view of a soul now believed
by some Protestants, called Rephaim, is that after the death of the person, a
soul leaves the person and it is a shadowy something that has no substance,
that a soul is nothing more than mental thoughts without any kind of substance
or body.
(6). Spiritualism, After the
death of the person, the spirit becomes a ghost that sometimes haunts the house
of the person it had been in, it is a ghostly spook that can sometimes be seen
at night among the graves and tombstones in a cemetery. According to Spiritualism,
some people can and do call them back, but usually only after they are paid to
do the calling; Spiritualist say these ghosts or spooks roam the earth and are
seen by people, and even live in the house with people; that the ghost that
have left the persons they were dwelling in can come back, and these ghost can
do both good and evil to living persons that still have ghosts (souls) dwelling
in them. Many who do not think of themselves as being a Spiritualist and even
deny that they are a Spiritualist believe much of the Spiritualist belief; most
funerals that I have attended the preacher has a soul that had been dwelling in
the dead person dwelling in Heaven, and that soul was looking down on the
funeral of the dead person it had been freed from; have you ever been to a
funeral where the preacher said a soul that had been in the dead person was
alive in Hell and looking up from Hell at the person it had been in.
(7). The teaching of souls going to
Heaven or Hell at death without a resurrection is from Greek philosophy, that
immortal, deathless souls are imprisoned in a person and freed at the death of
the person; in no way can it be call Christian; it is a complete denial of
Christianly. If this Dark Age Pagan Roman Catholic teaching were true, the
second coming of Christ, the Resurrection of the dead, and the Judgment would
all be useless and meaningless. The whole person, not a soul that
had been in a person, sleeps from death unto the resurrection, the whole person
is resurrected and judged, the person is given endless life, or endless death.
(8). There are many other
beliefs about what a soul is and what a soul can and cannot do, far too many to
list here.
Two of the views that are commonly
believed about what will happen to souls that leave mankind after death are the
subject of this book.
VIEW ONE. The belief that
the you (the person you now are)
will put on immortality at the resurrection, and it is you (not just some immaterial something that had been in you) that
will live forever in Heaven; we, not
immaterial souls, are now in the image of Adam; we, not an immaterial soul, will have the image of Christ after the
resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:49). The wages of sin is death, and after the
resurrection and judgment lost persons, not souls, will die the second death;
the lost do not now have immortality and never will be immortal; those who do
not belong to Christ will forever be destroyed after their judgment. Only saved persons will be changed from
mortal persons to immortal persons at the resurrection (1 Corinthians
15:42-46); it will be you, the
person, that will be immortal and live in the place Christ has gone to prepare
for you, not a place for whatever
anyone believes a soul to be.
VIEW TWO is the
belief that there is a deathless soul in all persons. W. E. Vine says a soul has no substance (Vines
Complete Expository Dictionary Of Old And New Testament Words, page 588), and
Robert A. Morey says, that after the
death of the body a soul will be nothing but
mental thoughts (Death And
The Afterlife, page 79). According to John Calvin the dualistic view that is believed by many Protestants, The soul is an incorporeal substanceset in
the body it dwells there as in a house (Institutes 1, xv, 2, 6). According
to those that believe as Vine, Calvin, Morey, many Protestants, and most Roman
Catholics, an immaterial something that had been in a person that is nothing
but mental thoughts is all that will be in Heaven or Hell; the person (you)
will be gone and there will be nothing but a soul that had been in you that is
nothing but thoughts, then all of the you that you now know anything about
will be forever be gone. Most that believe all persons are born with an
immortal soul that is dwelling in them have only a vague unclear
understanding, or even no idea of what they believe this unknown immaterial
something they believe to be in them really is, but it (not themselves) is
what they believe must be saved, and only it will be in Heaven if they save
it, or in Hell if they do not save it. The belief that everyone has an
immaterial something in them and this something, whatever this nothing but
mental thoughts could be, it
will live forever and it cannot die makes it not possible for death to
be the wages of sin; if a person has something in them that is deathless; this
something would not be subject to death, which is the wages of sin, and this
deathless nothing could never be destroyed; this, whatever it is would be, has eternal life from the birth of the
person, and it would not die when the person it is in dies, it could never die;
therefore, it could not be resurrected from the dead.
VIEW TWO HAS MAJOR
DIVISIONS. (1). That
there is a "soul" in each person that cannot ever die or be
destroyed, but most of these immaterial nothing but mental thoughts beings will
forever be tormented by God after the death of the person. I know of no one
that believes there is a soul that is in a person that knows what a soul is.
They tell me what a soul is not, but not what they believe a soul to be. In the
many books I have read, the nearest anyone has came is to say that after a soul
departs from the person it was in is Vines definitions that a soul is nothing
but thoughts without any kind of substance or body.
(2). Universalism, believe that in all mankind there is a
"soul" in them that cannot ever die or be destroyed; everyone has
this something in them that will live forever. If it (a immaterial bodiless
beings) is not saved by the person it is in during the lifetime of the person,
then that soul will be saved after the death of the person it had been in.
(3). Protestant Premillennialists. Many Protestant Premillennialists believe the lost will be totally
destroyed, but there are three, probably more, Premillennial views that are
common in Protestant churches on how or where the lost will be destroyed.
1.
A common Protestant Premillennialists belief is that the complete
destruction of the lost will be on this earth and the saved will forever live
on this earth; no person will ever be in Heaven. Many Premillennialists that
are mixed in many Protestant churches believe the Valley of Gehenna will be
restored and the lost will literally be burn to ashes in it.
2.
Some Protestant Premillennialists believe that the saved will be
with Christ in Heaven, not on earth after the thousand years, the second death
will be the end of the lost, but their death will not be by literally being
burned to ashes on this earth in the restored Valley of Gehenna.
3.
Some Protestant Premillennialists believe the wages of sin is
eternal life with torment for souls that cannot die, which puts them in the
camp of those that believe that souls now have endless life and will be tormented
by God because these souls had been in unsaved persons, they do not believe
death is the wages of sin.
If
there is a soul in us that is now immortal and it can never die or be dead, how
could there be a resurrection of the dead? Do you believe in the resurrection
of the dead? If yes, what do you believe will be resurrected; will you be
raised from the dead, or do you believe as many that only a soul that can never
be dead, but this deathless soul is the only thing that will be raised from the
dead? When I first begin this study I was surprised and made to tremble at how
few really believed in the resurrection, and how many there are that do not
really know what they believe about it. Many believe some deathless something
that they believe to be in themselves will instantly be translated from this
world to Heaven or Hell at their death, (1) without a resurrection, (2) before
the resurrection, (3) before the Judgment Day, (4) and before the second coming
of Christ, but when they are asked what
is the reason for the resurrection, many not only do not know, but most have
never really thought about it. Death is looked at as being a doorway to
life in another form, that death is not really death, and there is nowhere in
their thoughts or in their faith for a resurrection for their theology says no
soul is really dead. The resurrection has been removed from the faith of many
by today's theology that says it is only some immortal something that is
believed to be in a person will go to Heaven at the moment of death. But is there any life after death before
the second coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead? Paul said
life after death will be only at the resurrection when, "This mortal must put on immortality" (1 Corinthians
15:53), but if there is a soul that is now immortal in us, then what is it that
is now mortal that will put on immortality at the resurrection? It is the mortal person (you), not a soul
that will be raised from the dead; the mortal person (you) will put on
immortality at the resurrection; it will be YOU. The mortal you changed to
immortal that will be in Heaven.
WHAT DOES THE
BIBLE SAY
ABOUT AN IMMORTAL
SOUL AND/OR SPIRIT?
Together soul and spirit are used
about 1,600 times in the Bible, but not one time is immortal ever used in the
same verse with soul or spirit; immortal soul, or an immortal spirit,
deathless or never dying soul or a never dying spirit is not in the Bible,
not even in the King James Version. Neither immortal nor immortality are not in
the Old Testament; the promise of immortality is given to no one. In the New
Testament, immortal is used only one time, immortality is used five times, all
six by Paul. What does he say?
1. "Now unto
the King eternal, immortal" (1 Timothy 1:17).
2. Only God has
immortality (1 Timothy 6:16).
3. Christ "abolished
death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2
Timothy 1:10).
4. "To
them (Christians persons, not souls) that...seek for glory and
honor and immortality" (Romans 2:7).
5. "This MORTAL must put on immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:53) at the
resurrection; this mortal person, not this already immortal soul will put on
immortality.
6. "This MORTAL shall have put on
immortality" (1 Corinthians
15:54) after the resurrection. This mortal person must put on immortality
at the resurrection, not this soul that is already immortal must put on
immortality.
Why are we to "seek for immortality" if
we are born immortal? Why will we "put on immortality" if
the only the something that is in us that will ever be immortal has been
immortal from our birth (or as some believe–before our birth)? The
fact that a person must "seek for...immortality," (Romans 2:7, Incorruption
American Standard version) and immortality must be "put
on" (1 Corinthians 15:53) at the resurrection is
conclusive proof that a person does not now have immortality, nor does a person
have some immaterial, immortal something in them that is now immortal and this
immortal it cannot die. If Romans 2:7 and 1 Corinthians 15:53
teaches nothing more, they teaches that no part of a person now possess
immortality. Not one passage in the Bible says anyone is now immortal. The
immortal soul theology is from pagan philosophy and was brought into the church
by Roman Catholicism in the Dark Age. If all have a deathless soul, and we are
told that this deathless soul is the only thing that will ever be immortal, and
it is already immortal, the resurrection is made to be useless. The question
is, resurrection or immortality? Will YOU be saved from death, or is there a
deathless soul in you that cannot be dead, and it cannot be resurrected from
the dead, and only that soul, not you, will live in Heaven; or will it be YOU
that will be in Heaven?
==============================================
CHAPTER ONE
What Is Man?
What is a man? Are all persons born
with immortal souls in them, or do only the saved put on immortality at the
resurrection? Is a person a three part being, an animal body with both a soul
and a spirit that one or both will live after the body is dead? This is one of
the most important questions of all time. It has more influence on our
conception of our nature, our view of life in this world, and our view of life
after death than any other question.
Soul in the Old
Testament is translated from nehphesh
Strongs Hebrew
word #5315–a breathing creature. A study of the way it is translated in
the King James Version, and how other translations differ greatly from the King
James reveals facts that show there are many differences in the belief about
what a soul is; facts that many will find upsetting. The Hebrew word nehphesh
is used in the Old Testament about 870 times and is translated soul only about
473 times in the King James Version, but in the New International
Version (2010-2011 updated version) nehphesh is translated soul only
72 out of about 870 times.
Of the 870 times Nehphesh is in the
Bible, in the New International Version.
Nehphesh is translated soul only 72 times; it is translated
something other that soul 798 times.
Of the 473 times nehphesh is translated soul in the King James
Version, soul was taken out of the New International Version 401 times.
Nehphesh is translated in the King
James Version into about 40 words; this one Hebrew word is translated (or
mistranslated) changed into nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs,
etc. Of 870 times nehphesh is used in the Hebrew this one word was
changed into many words by the translators of many versions, changed as they
chose to, and all choosing many times to translate the same word difference,
even when this word is used two or more times in the same passage the same
Hebrew word is translated into two English words in the same passage that the two
words are definitely are nothing alike. By todays meaning of soul and
life, the two words means two completely difference things, soul and life
are not synonymous, they are not even close to being the same thing, but they
are repeatedly translated from the same Hebrew word.
IN THE KING JAMES
VERSION NEHPHESH IS TRANSLATED
(1). NOUNS, soul about 473
times; Life about 122 times; Person about 26
times; Mind about 15 times; Heart about 15
times.
(2). PERSONAL PRONOUNS, changed
into many 44 plus different pronouns,–yourselves, themselves, her, me,
he, his, himself, and many other pronouns.
(3). ALL OTHERS, about 200 times
(changed to verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.) man, creature, living being, own,
any, living thing, living creatures, lives, the dead, dead body, kills,
slays, slay him, mortally, discontented, ghost, breath, will, appetite, hearty
desire, desire, pleasure, lust, and deadly, all translated from the same Hebrew
word.
Can one word have this many totally
difference meaning; can one word be a noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb,
etc.? If it did could anyone know which one was being used; it is evidence that
the translators of many translations changed nehphesh into whatever they
wanted to and that they did not agree with each other.
In all 870 times that nehphesh is
used it is always associated with the activity of a living being including
dying (both persons and animals), and it
never implies anything about life after the death of the living being. In none of the
870 times, nehphesh is not an immortal, immaterial, deathless inter something
in a person that has no substance (W. E. Vine, Expository Dictionary Of
Old And New Testament Words, page 588); souls (nehpheshs) are the living beings
(persons, animals, or any living thing) that can die, be killed, or is already
dead; although its use is often hid from the English readers by the
way it was translated or mistranslated.
SOUL (NEHPHESH)
AS IT IS TRANSLATED
AND MISTRANSLATED
IN THE BIBLE
(1). Genesis 1:20, "THE
MOVING CREATURE THAT HAS LIFE (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to animals, Strongs Hebrew word
#5315–a breathing creature). American Standard Version–"Let
the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures (nehpheshs–all
mortal beings that breathes, including all animals and mankind).
If soul were an
immortal "immaterial, invisible part of man" (W. E.
Vine, Expository Dictionary Of Old And New Testament Words), why is this Hebrew
word that is translated soul also translated "living creature when
it is speaking of animals in Genesis 1:21; 1:24; 2:19; 9:10; 9:12; 9:15; 9:16
when the same Hebrew word (nehphesh) is changed to "living
soul" in Genesis 2:7 when it is speaking of a person? According to those that believe there is an
immortal soul in a person, a living creature and a living
soul are two completely difference beings. If this Hebrew word
(nehphesh) were an immaterial, immortal living something that is in a person,
it would also be the same immaterial, immortal living something that is in
animals.
(2). Genesis 1:21, "LIVING
CREATURE" (nehpheshs–mortal living beings, used
referring to all life in the water), "And God
created the great sea-monsters, and every living creature (nehpheshs–mortal
living beings) that moves wherewith the water swarmed.
(3). Genesis 1:24, "LIVING
CREATURE" (nehpheshs–mortal living beings), used
referring to animals, all life on the land), "And
God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures (nehphesh–soul) after
their kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth." In
Genesis 1:21-24 every living thing on earth, whether in the water or on land,
every thing that has life is a nehphesh, a living being.
All sea life are
nehpheshs, are living beings (not souls).
All land life are
nehpheshs, are living beings (not souls).
And mankind are
nehpheshs, are living beings (not souls).
None of the three are inherent
indestructible immortality beings; none have an immortal deathless soul
dwelling in them.
(4). Genesis 1:30, "LIFE" (nehpheshs–mortal
living beings, used referring to animals), "And to every
beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that
creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life" (nehpheshs–mortal
living beings); all animals, all sea life, all birds are "living
souls."
All four times that soul (nehphesh) is
used in chapter one of Genesis it is used referring to animals Strongs
Hebrew word #5315 a breathing creature, i.e., animal; not to a
person. Animals were souls, living beings, before any man existed; why did the
translators deliberately hide the fact that it is the same word that they
sometimes translated soul?
1. They translated
it living creatures when it is speaking of animals.
2. They changed it
to souls when the same word is speaking of people.
3. How could the
translators possibly know when the same word is speaking of mortal beings, and
when it is speaking of immortal souls that are in mortal persons? Just as up
cannot mean down, Mortal cannot mean Immortal.
4. Although it is
clear that the translators attempted to hide this from their readers, every breathing
creature are souls (a living being–nehphesh) the same as persons.
"Then God said, 'Let the waters
teem with swarms of living souls (nehpheshs–mortal living beings), and
let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.' And God
created the great sea monsters, and every living soul (nehphesh–mortal
living beings) that moves, with which the waters swarmed after
their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
And God blessed them, saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in
the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.' And there was evening and there
was morning, a fifth day. Then God said, 'Let the earth bring forth living
souls (nehpheshs–mortal living beings) after their
kind: cattle and creeping thing and beasts of the earth after their kind'; and
it was so...and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and
to everything that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is life (nehpheshs mortal living beings) I have given
every green herb for meat (Genesis 1:20-30). Living
creatures" (nehpheshs–mortal living beings) is
used to describe all living things on earth, people, animals, birds,
and fish; not some, immortal, immaterial, invisible living something that is in
a person that is now eternal. If a person being a soul
(nehphesh–a living being) makes that person be either immortal or in the
image of God, then it makes animals, birds, and fish have an immortal soul in
them.
HENRY
CONSTABLE, A. M., The Hebrew scholars knows that when Moses, in Genesis I. 20,
29, speaks of the nature of the lower order of animals, and when in Genesis ii,
7, he speaks of the nature of man, the inspired writer used the very
same Hebrew terms of both one and the other. Each fish, and fowl, and
creeping thing, and beast is called in the Hebrew a nephesh chajah as
much as man who was given the rule over them. But this was in its
apparent bearing wholly inconsistent with the philosophical ideas of the
translators. They considered it dangerous that the similarity of
description should appear in the English version, which Moses did not consider
it dangerous to exhibit in the Hebrew original. Hence they must guard Gods
Word from its supposed dangerous language by translating nephesh chajah very
differently in the first chapter of Genesis, where it is applied to the lower
creatures, from what they translated it in the second chapter, where it is
applied to manA gross, through unintentional fraud has been committed against
the English reader. He is mislead in his searching of the Scriptures He is put
on a false scentOur English translators have supplied us with a commentary of
their own instead of a translation, a comment we will here add, utterly alien
to truth. But the result of this mistranslation is to lead astray
the English reader who trusts in it. This is not the only instance, which
occurs of the thing in reference to this question. The same Hebrew word is
throughout the Old Testament translated according as the Platonic notions of
the translator led him to think it ought to be translated. Plato had a
considerable hand in the translation of King James Bible. The Hebrew
word nephesh is translated creature, soul life &c., just
as squared with the notions of men who carried Platos philosophy into their
noble work of the translation of Scripture. We affirm that a grave injury has
been done to the English reader, and a gross wrong to Gods word. Hades
or The Intermediate State of Man, page 31–32, 1873.
(5). Genesis 2:7, "Man BECAME A LIVING SOUL" (nehphesh–a
living being, used referring to a person, Strongs Hebrew word #5315–a
breathing creature) The first time the King James Version translated
nehphesh into "soul," most other translations did not
agree with it, not even the New King James Version. "Man became a living being," Genesis
2:7, New King James Version; man became cannot be changed to
man had another living being put in him. Adam was not GIVEN a soul, Adam BECAME a soul – became a living
being (nehphesh).
Living creatures" (nehpheshs–mortal living beings) Genesis
1:20.
Living things" (nehpheshs–mortal living beings) Genesis 1:21.
Living creature" (nehpheshs–a mortal living being) Genesis
1:24.
In which there is life" (nehpheshs–mortal
living beings) Genesis 1:30.
"Man became a living being" (nehphesh–a mortal living
being) Genesis 2:7.
It
was the man that became a living being, not
the man that had a never dying living being put into him.
Nothing is said about the creation of two being, a living man, and then the
creation of another immortal living soul that was put in the first mortal
living being.
It is obvious that the translators
of the King James Version translated according to their preconceived opinion in
an attempt make persons have an immortal soul dwelling in them, but keeps
animals from also having souls that are dwelling in them; they made a
distinction in animals and men, a distinction that dose not exist in the Hebrew
Bible, but they changed Gods word to make it say what they believed, what they
wanted it to say.
Genesis 2:7, Man
became,
A living soul" (a
nehphesh) (1) King James
Version.
"A living being" (a nehphesh) (1) New King James
Version, (2) American Standard Version, (3) New American Standard Version, (4)
Revised Standard Version, (5) New Revised Standard Version, (6) New
International Version, (7) Amplified Version, (8) The New American Bible.
"A living creature" (a nehphesh) (1) The Revised English
Bible, (2) Young's Literal Translation.
"A living person" (a nehphesh) (1) New Century Version,
(2) The Living Bible, (3) New Living Translation.
"Life" (nehphesh)
(1) Contemporary English Version.
Of these many
translations, none would go along with the mistranslation of the King James
Version, not even the New King James Version.
According to chapter one to three of
Genesis man was created a mortal living being just as the animals were. Behold, the
MANlest HE stretch
out HIS hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat,
and live forever, therefore the Lord sent HIM out from the
garden of Eden (Genesis 3:22-23) is speaking of the physical person eating
of the tree of life and living forever physically, it says nothing about an
immortal something that was dwelling in a mortal person, nothing about a soul
that was already deathless, already immortal eating of the tree of life to
living forever. It was the physical person (Adam) that would have eaten from a
physical tree, and the physical person (Adam) that would have physically lived
forever. Without the tree of life Adam was not immortal, without the tree of
life Adam died. What reason would there have been to keep Adam from eating
of the tree of life if Adam was already immortal?
1. THREE THINGS
ABOUT MAN IN GENESIS 2:7
1. The body. God
formed MAN out of the dust of the earth.
2. God breathed
into HIS nostrils the breath of life (nehphesh). God breathing
into the nostrils of the lifeless body give the body life; breathing into the
nostrils of the lifeless body did not put an immortal soul into the lifeless
body, it was the breath of life breathed into Adam that gives life to the body,
not an immortal soul being put into it.
3. MAN became
a living being (nehphesh).
MAN AND ANIMALS ARE
BOTH MADE OF THE DUST OF THE EARTH. Both man and animals are a
nehphesh, both are a living being; both man and animals have the breath of
life. Neither one became a living being with another living being
living in them. There is absolutely nothing about Platos immortal soul in this
passage, not one word.
Job
said, The breath of the Almighty gives ME life, (Job
33:4); he did not say, The breath of the Almighty put a soul in me and that
soul give my body life.
Paul quoted Genesis 2:7 showing that
the natural body of Genesis 2:7 that was given to Adam and
all mankind is not the spiritual body that will be given
only to the saved by Christ at the resurrection. So also it is written, the
first man Adam became a living soul (nehphesh – soul). The last Adam became a
life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural; THEN that which is spiritual. The first man
is of the earth, earthy, the second
man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as
is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. As WE have born the
image of the earthly, WE shall also bear the image of the heavenly (1
Corinthians 15:45-49).
In the day that YOU eat from it YOU shall surely die (Genesis 2:17); for Adam to
be told HE would die is very
different from Adam being told that there was something in him that could not
die, but it would live forever in torment. In Genesis 3:19 there is a
clear statement on what dies, By the sweat of YOUR face YOU shall eat
bread, till YOU return to the ground, because from it YOU were taken; for YOU
are dust, and to dust YOU shall return, (Also
Genesis 18:27; Psalms 103:14; Job 10:9).
1. It is appointed
for MEN to die once and after this
comes judgment (Hebrews 9:27).
2. It is the PERSON
that will die.
3. It is the PERSON
that returns to dust.
4. It is the PERSON,
not a soul that will be resurrected from the dead.
5. It is the PERSON,
not a soul that will come into judgment.
6. It is the PERSON,
not a soul that will put on immortality.
7. Not a soul that
cannot die; therefore, it could not be resurrected from the dead.
If, as some teach, Adam was not one
being, but two being, an earthly mortal being and an immortal being living in
the earthly mortal being, which of the two being was addressed in the singular
pronoun YOU shall surely
die? We are repeatedly told that an immortal soul is deathless and
cannot die.
1. It was Adam, not a soul that was made from the dust.
2. It was Adam, not a soul that ate.
3. It was Adam, not a soul that was told, dying YOU shall
die.
4. It was Adam, not a soul that was put out and kept out of the
garden away from the tree of life.
5. It was Adam, not a soul that died and returned to dust.
Not
one word is said about a soul. If there were an immortal soul living in
Adam, it suffered nothing from what Adam did. To make this be spiritual
death, not real death is to change, In the day that you eat from it
YOU shall surely die to be saying, In the day you eat you will be an
immortal sinner that cannot die. Surely die is used many times and it always
means a real death of a real person, Genesis 20:7; 1 Samuel 14:44; 22:16; 1
Kings 2:37; 2:42; Jeremiah 26:8; Ezekiel 3:18; 33:8; 33:14; Numbers 26:65; and many
more.
DR.
BERT THOMPSON, PH. D. says Genesis 2:7 is teaching that Adam was given physical
life. Then he said it is not teaching that Adam had instilled in
him an immortal nature. The Origin, Nature, and Destiny of
the Soul, page 19, Apologetics Press, Inc. 2001.
MIKE
WILLIS said expositors have generally appealed to Genesis 2:7 to prove that all
men are born with and now have immortal spirits. However, in 1 Corinthians
15:45, Paul has clearly expounded the meaning of the Hebrew words nehphesh,
chayyah. "The living soul" of Genesis 2:7 is the natural
body of this passage. He said this corresponds with the book of Genesis itself
because the same construction is used in Genesis 1:24 to describe animals. When
Moses recorded that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and he
became a living soul, what the writer of Genesis was saying was that the dust
of the earth began to have animal life and does not prove that a person has an
immortal spirit (soul); rather it states that a person has animal life. All men
possess animal life through Adam. A Commentary On Paul's First Epistle To the
Corinthians, page 578, 1979. Dose one who knows the Bible as he does, and
believes a person now has an immortal soul, yet says, the living soul of
Genesis 2:7 is the natural body, prove beyond doubt that a living soul is not
an immortal something that is in a person? The first man Adam became a
living soulthe first man is of the earth, earthy (1 Corinthians
15:45-49).
GUY
N. WOODS said the first time the word soul is used in Genesis 1:20 it is from
the Hebrew nehphesh where it is assigned to fish, birds, and creeping things.
He said, It is clear that the soul in these passages does not refer to
anything peculiar to the constitution of man, but it signifies, as its usage
denotes, and the lexicons affirm, any creature that breathes. "What Is
The Soul Of Man," Gospel Advocate, 1985, Number 21.
JOHN
T. WILLIS, The last two lines of verse 7 affirm that mans life is God Given.
God enables man to breathe, and thus to be alive, as he does all other
creatures (see Gen. 7:22). Some have tried to justify a threefold division of
man into flesh (or body), soul, and spirit from Genesis 2:7. They equate dust with
flesh or body, breath with spirit, and insist that the last
phrase of the verse must be translated as a living soul. However, this
understanding reads much more into the biblical text than it really says. (1)
The Hebrew words for flesh or body and spirit do not occur in this
passage. (2) The Hebrew expression nephesh chayyah, which some
insist on translating a living soul, is used of fish and marine life in
Genesis 1:20, 21; land animals in 1:24; beasts, birds, and reptiles in 1:30;
and beasts and birds in 2:19. If soul means the eternal part of man
or the sum total of mans body and spirit in Genesis 2:7, it must mean the
eternal part of a fish or the sum total of a fishs body and spirit in
Genesis 1:20, 21; etc. (3) The flow of the context in Genesis 2:7 indicates
that the word translated being in the RSV (nephesh) means
the whole person. The authors emphasis is on the gift of life. The Living
Word Commentary, Genesis, page 103–104, 1979, Sweet Publishing Company.
ADAM
CLARKE, "Nephesh chayyah; a general term to express all
creatures endued with animal life, in any of its infinitely varied gradations,
from the half reasoning elephant down to the stupid potto, or lower still, to
the polype, which seems equally to share the vegetable and animal life."
2. BOTH MAN AND
ANIMALS
HAD THE SAME
BREATH OF LIFE (NSHAHMAH)
BREATHED INTO
THEM
1.
Then the Lord
God formed a man from the dust of he
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life (nshahmah), and the man
became a living being (Genesis 2:7). LIFE WAS THE ONLY THING ADDED TO THE MAN TO MAKE THE MAN BECOME A LIVING BEING. It could not be said any clearer
that man is a living being; it does not say that man had another living being,
a soul put into him. The breath of life
from God made Adam become a living being, as lone as that breath of life from
God was in him he had life, when the life returned to God Adam had no life, and
he will not have life unto life comes from God at the resurrection.
2. And the breath (nshahmah) of
the Almighty GIVES ME LIFE(Job
33:4).
3. And all flesh
that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every
swarming that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the
dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life (nshahmah) died.
Both man and animals have the same breath of life (nshahmah)
both died (Genesis 7:21-22).
4. Saved alive
nothing that breaths (nshahmah–breath of life)
both men and animals (Deuteronomy 20:16). Breath of life and breaths are
the same in the Hebrew, both are translated from nshahmah, but
who knows why the translators choose to make them different in the English
Bible.
5. Utterly
destroyed all that breaths (nshahmah–breath of life)
both men and animals (Joshua 10:40).
6. There was not any
left to breaths (nshahmah–breath of life)
not a man or a animal left to breath (Joshua 11:11).
7. Neither left
they any to breaths (nshahmah–breath of life)
both men and animals (Joshua 11:14).
Does an immortal immaterial deathless soul or a spirit breathe, or dose
a soul die when it stops breathing? It is the breath (nshahmah) of life
that God puts into the bodies of both man and animals that gives life (Genesis
2:7), nshahmah–breath is not an immortal deathless soul that has an
endless life of its own. If the breath of life (nshahmah) gives immortality to
a person, then the same breath of life (nshahmah) would give immortality to all
living being, all are given the same nshahmah, the same breath of life. The
breath of life is as much the possession of all living creatures
as it is the possession of man. The breath of life does not
make any living creature immortal, not animals, not fish, or not persons. All
living being depend on this breath from God for life and all die when the breath
of life from God returns to God, and if there were no resurrection no
person would ever again have life.
Question, What effect did the breath
of life (nshahmah) in the nostrils of animals have on them? Most all
would answer that it made them a living being, not that it put another living
being, not an immortal deathless soul in them that will live after the death of
the living being was put in. Then what effect did the same breath of
life (nshahmah) have on mankind? It made them a living being just as it
did animals; the breath of life (nshahmah) did not put an
immortal deathless soul in mankind that the same breath of life (nshahmah)
did not put in animals.
JAMES
HERMAN WHITMORE, What is more evident than anything else is that the Lord did
not address an unconscious body, but a conscious and
intelligent man. Whoever or whatever was addressed, the
same died. According to the popular notion, the soul is the only part of
man that possesses intelligence. The conclusion then is unavoidable,
that it was the soul that was addressed as thou, and sentenced to return to
dust. Hence, the soul must not only be mortal, but material.
It is further evident that whatever or
whoever sinned, the same died. The Doctrine Of Immortality, page 118,
Kellaway and Co.
THE BREATH OF LIFE. Many have now
switched from a soul being an immortal living being in a person to a spirit
being the immortal living being that is in a person; a living being that
animals do not have in them; spirit is now the same thing that soul has
been for hundreds of years. Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the
ground, and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living being. The phrase breath of life that
was breathed into man in Genesis 2:7 is the same Hebrew breath of
life in Genesis 7:21-22 that is in the nostrils of birds, cattle, men
and beasts; the breath of life in animals is the same breath
of life that is in persons. The breath of life (1) is
not an immortal spirit, (2) is not an immortal soul that man now have in them that animals do not
have it in them; the Bible does not say that the breath of life God
breathed into Adam was an immortal deathless spirit or soul that God breathed
into him, and the Bible does not say all persons now have a deathless being
living in them; the breathless body that God made from the earth is what became
a living breathing being when the breath of life was
breathed into the breathless body. God did not tell Adam he had a body that was
made from the earth, but the real Adam was made of something not from the
earth.
3. BOTH MAN AND
ANIMALS BECAME
A LIVING BEING.
The body of dust
plus the breath of life = a living breathing being, a breathing soul.
Nehphesh–a living being, Genesis 2:7
The body. The Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground.
1. The life of the
body. And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.
2. The result. And
man became a living being. The lifeless earthly body became alive;
the body became a living breathing being.
Both man and animals became a living being, when they
received the breath of life from God; neither man nor
animals had another living being put into them.
You
take away their breath, they die (Psalms
104:29). The breath of life gives life to the person; it does not put a soul in
the person that has its own life. The breath of life that God breathed into
the body gives life to the body, whither it is a person or animal; it makes the
person or animal both be a living being. There is life
in the body only as long as there is breath in the body.
It was the lifeless body that God made from the earth that became a
living being, a living person. Most believe as Plato did, that a living
deathless soul is imprisoned in the body unto the living soul is able to escape
the body, and then the lifeless body goes back to the earth.
Although this passage is repeatedly
used to prove that an immortal, deathless soul that was put in a person that
was not put in animals, most translations, other than the King James, apply it
to the living breathing being or person, not to an invisible, deathless,
immaterial something that does not have breath. Adam being spoken of as a "living
being" (nehphesh Strongs Hebrew word #5315–a breathing
creature) proves he was mortal, not immortal, just as all "living
beings (nehphesh) fish, birds, animals, are mortal, not immortal. How can
this be one of the most used proof texts used to prove Adam had an immortal
soul put in him? If it proves Adam had an immortal soul, then it proves that
fish have an immortal soul that cannot die.
The body without the spirit is
dead James 2:36. Just as the body when God made the body it had
no life unto God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the
man became a living being (Genesis 2:7), when The dust will
return to the earth as it was, and the spirit (ruach) will return to God who gave it (Ecclesiastes
12:7), after death there is no living being and will not be a living being unto
the resurrection when life will again come from God; soul with the meaning it
has today (an immortal being that is in a person) is a total mistranslation. If
the breath of life that returns
to God is a conscious living being that returns to God in Heaven at the death
of the person, that soul could not return
to God in Heaven if it had not previously existed with God; it is life (the breath of life) that came from God
that makes all mankind alive, and the life that was breathed into all mankind
and breathed into all living beings that returns to God. His breath (ruach) goes forth, he returns to his earth (Psalms 146:4).
Both a living being and breath
of life are used by most that call themselves orthodox to prove
mankind has an immortal soul in them that no animal has. Both mankind and all
animals are a living being and both have the breath of
life, both can and do die. Having the breath of life does
not make mankind or animals immortal.
It is importance to understand that
it is being said by Moses that both animals and mankind ARE A SOUL (both are a
living being, both have the same breath of life that came from God), not that
animals or mankind HAVE A SOUL in them; they do not have something in them that
is now immortal, invisible; there is not a no substitute something in them that
cannot die; there is a world of different in a person or animal being a soul,
and having another living immortal soul being that was put into the person or
the animal. Many assume, with much help from the translators and theology that
Genesis is saying only mankind have souls, but animals do not. Because of what
most have been taught, without realizing it they read into this that only
mankind had souls put in them that are immortal, invisible, no substitutes
something that cannot die. This causes them to believe that
only this immortal something that is in them, whatever they think this
something is, will be saved (more on this near the end of this chapter). A
soul is not a second being, an unearthly being that exist within the earthly
person any more than a soul is a second entity existing in beast. Both man
and animals are souls, both are living beings. We are a soul, a living being;
we do not have a soul that is living in us. If we have a soul that is
a living being in us, then we are one living being with another, a second
living being living in us. According to the doctrine that we have a soul living
in us, one living being is living in another living being, and it is only this
immortal deathless being that is us that will be saved or tormented forever is
the foundation of many of the errors that have divided the churches. That we
are a soul (we are a living being), not we have a soul (not
have a living being living in us) is one of the most fundamental and most
misunderstood teaching in the Bible.
(6).
Genesis 2:19, "LIVING CREATURE" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to animals), "Every
beast...every bird...whatsoever the man called every living
creature (nehpheshs–mortal beings), that was the name
thereof."
(7).
Genesis 9:4, "LIFE" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to animals).
(8).
Genesis 9:5, "LIVES" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to man).
(9).
Genesis 9:5, "LIFE" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to man).
(10).
Genesis 9:10, "LIVING CREATURE" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to animals).
(11).
Genesis 9:12,"LIVING CREATURE" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to animals).
(12).
Genesis 9:15, "LIVING CREATURE" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to both man and animals).
(13).
Genesis 9:16, "LIVING CREATURE" (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to both man and animals).
In Genesis 9:4-16 the same word
is used for both man and animals seven times in the same passage; To animals
five times, to man four times, none of the seven was translated soul not even
in the King James Version.
1. Three times to animals alone, translated (1)
life, (2) creature, (3) and creature.
2. Two times to man alone, translated (1)
lives, (2) and life.
3. Two times to animals and man
together, translated (1) creature, (2) and creature.
"But flesh with the (1) LIFE (Nehphesh used
referring to animals) thereof, which is the blood thereof,
shall you not eat. And surely your blood, the blood of your (2)
LIVES (nehphesh, used
referring to man), will I require; at the hand of every beast will I
require it, and at the hand of men, even at the hand of every man's brother,
will I require the (3) LIFE (nehphesh,
used referring to man) of man. Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall
his blood be shed, for in the image of God made He-men. And you, be you
fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply
therein. And God spoke unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, and I,
behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your seed after you; and
every (4) LIVING CREATURE (nehphesh, used
referring to animals) that is
with you, of the fowl, and the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with
you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will
establish my covenant with you; neither shall the waters of a flood cut off all
flesh be any more; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the
earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me
and you and every (5) LIVING CREATIRE (nehphesh, used referring
to animals) that is with you, for perpetual generation, I
do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a token of a covenant between me
and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which
is between me and you and ever (6) LIVING CREATURE (nehphesh, used
referring to man and animals) of all flesh; and the waters shall
no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud;
and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between
God and every (7) LIVING CREATURE (nehphesh, used
referring to man and animals) of all flesh that is upon the
earth."
———————————————————————
All four times that soul
(nehphesh) is used in Genesis 1; it is referring to animals, not to a person.
IN TEN OF THE FIRST THIRTEEN TIMES NEHPHESH (soul) IS USED IT IS USED REFERRING
TO ANIMALS, but the King James Version delicately hid this by using different
words, and most who read the King James Version never know what was delicately
hid from them. Mankind is the same soul (life–nehphesh) as the
other "living creatures." He does not differ from
other living creatures (soul–nehphesh) by having a soul (nehphesh) living
in him that cannot die. His dominion over other living creatures (other
nehpheshs–souls) is not his nehphesh. In the first nine chapters
of Genesis soul (nehphesh–Strongs Hebrew word #5315–a
breathing creature) is used more often with reference to animals than
it is with reference to persons; it is the animal life, which both a
person and animals have in common. How did the translators know when
it changed to an invisible immortal something that is in a person, which
animals do not have?
This is an example of men attempting
to cover up the truth when it is contradictory to their pagan theology. It takes
a lot of preconceived theology to make nehphesh be an immaterial invisible no
substance soul that is now immortal existing in a man that dose not exist in
animals when it is not deliberately hid as it is in the King James Version.
Moses applies nehphesh four times to lower creatures before he applied it to
man, then immediately after he has applied it to man he again applied the same
word to animals a fifth and sixth time with no hint that he uses the same word
with a different meaning. When the translators give it a different meaning in
only one of the six times it is used in the first two chapters of Genesis it is
nothing more than a deliberate change to add Platos immortal soul to God word.
———————————————————————
A birds eye view of the translation of nehphesh in the first nine
chapters, King James Version.
1. Moving creature that has life" (nehphesh) Genesis 1:20
– animals
2. A living creature" (nehphesh) Genesis 1:21
– animals
3. A living creature" (nehphesh) Genesis 1:24
– animals
4. Wherein there
is life" (nehphesh) Genesis 1:30
– animals
5. A living soul" (nehphesh) Genesis 2:7
– man
6. A living creature" (nehphesh) Genesis 2:19
– animals
7. Life" (nehphesh) Genesis 9:4 – animals
8. Lives (nehphesh) Genesis 9:5 – man
9. Life" (nehphesh) Genesis 9:5 – man
10. Living creature" (nehphesh) Genesis 9:10 – animals
11. Living creature" (nehphesh) Genesis 9:12 – animals
12. Living creature" (nehphesh) Genesis 9:15 – man and animals
13. Living creature" (nehphesh) Genesis 9:16 – man and animals.
Nehphesh is
translated "soul" only one time of the first
thirteen times it is used in the King James Version, but it is not
translated "soul" in any of the first thirteen times
it is used in the New King James Version, New American Standard Version, New
Revised Standard Version, New International Version, or most other
translations.
———————————————————————
(14). Genesis 12:5, "And the PEOPLE (nehpheshs–"living
beings") whom they had acquired" New King James
Version ("soul" in King James Version.) Why did the New
King James change this from souls to people; was it that the translators
did not believe invisible souls could be bought, but people could be bought, and
that as it is translated in the King James Version it did not say anything
close to todays theology?
(15). Genesis 12:13, "That I (nehphesh–a "living
being") may live because of you" New King James
Version ("soul" in King James Version.) Do you
wonder why, That a soul may live was changed to That I may live when in todays theology I
and soul are not even close to being the same thing?
(16). Genesis
14:21, "Give me the PERSONS (nehphesh–"living
beings) and take the
goods" King James Version. Can anyone give immortal souls
to another person? Is there anyone that cannot see why the translators did not
changed nehphesh to soul in this passage?
(17).
Genesis 17:14, "That PERSON (nehphesh–a "living
being") shall be cut off" New King James
Version.
(18).
Genesis 19:17, Escape for your LIFE (nehphesh–a "living
being") King James Version.
(19).
Genesis 19:19, Saving my LIFE (nehphesh–a "living
being") King James Version.
In the first nineteen times nehphesh is used it is
translated soul.
Only three times in the King James Version.
None in the New King James Version.
None in the New American Standard
Version.
None in the New Revised Standard
Version.
None in the New International
Version.
(20).
Genesis 19:20, "That my LIFE (nehphesh–a "living
being") may be saved" New American Standard
Version (Translated soul for the fourth time in the King James Version, but
only for the first time in the New King James Version). Do you wonder why the
translators of the New King James Version did not think this word means soul
in the nineteen times it was used before this, but changed their minds this
time? But the New American Standard translators said both King James Versions
translators are wrong.
(21).
Genesis 23:8, If it be your MIND (nehphesh–a "living
being") King James Version.
(22).
Genesis 27:4, "So that I (nehphesh–a "living
being") may bless you before I die"
1. "That my soul (nehphesh–a "living being") may
bless thee before I die" King James Version. How would Isaac's
son know if he were blessed by an "immaterial invisible" no
substance something that he could not see? By this time, hundreds of years
after Genesis 1:1, the King James translators must have been desperate to be
able to put "soul" into the Bible.
2. "So that I (nehphesh–a "living being") may
bless you before I die" Revised Standard Version, New Revised
Standard Version.
3. "So that I (nehphesh–a "living being") may
give you my blessing before I die" New International Version.
4. "So that I (nehphesh–a "living being") may
give you my blessing before I die" Revised English Bible.
5. "To give you my (nehphesh–a "living being") blessing
before I die" Amplified Bible.
6. "That I (nehphesh–a "living being") may
give you my special blessing before I die New American Bible.
7. "Then I (nehphesh–a "living being") will
bless you before I die" New Century Version.
8. "Then I (nehphesh–a "living being") will
pronounce the blessing that belongs to you, my firstborn son, before I
die" New Living Translation.
9. "I (nehphesh–a "living being") want
to eat it once more and give you my blessing before I die" Contemporary
English Version.
10. "That I (nehphesh–a "living being") may
eat of it, (preparatory) to giving you (as my first–born) my
blessing before I die" Amplified Bible.
Up to Genesis 27:4 for hundreds of years nehphesh is translated soul
Only four times out of twenty-two
in the King James Version.
Only one time out of twenty-two in
the New King James Version.
None in The New International
Version and many other translations.
Nehphesh has been used 22 times
before the New King James Version translated it "soul" for the first
time, but even then the translators of many versions have chosen not to change
the way they were translating nehphesh from a breathing being to a
non-breathing "soul." In Genesis "nehphesh" is not
an immortal "immaterial, invisible part of man, but it is the
life, living creature, living being, any living breathing thing whether
animals, fish, or man, all mortal breathing beings are a nehphesh. If the
translators had continued to translate nehphesh as life, living creature,
living being, or person, as they did in most of the first twenty-two times it
is used, there may not be the divisions there are today. Why did they not
translate nehphesh into soul in the first part of the Bible that covers hundreds
of years? Maybe because they thought it would have made animals have souls, and
they did not believe animals could have souls. I find it difficult to
see how anyone could not call their honesty into question for it is undeniable
that they put their belief over the word of God, and they deliberately hid the
truth from their readers; they deliberately hid the truth from you.
(23).
Genesis 32:30, "My LIFE (nehphesh–"living
beings") is preserved King James Version. Most
translations use "life" in this passage for the translators believed
an immortal soul could not perish and would not need to be preserved.
(24).
Genesis 34:3, "His soul (nehphesh) clave unto Dinah" King
James Version. With the meaning soul now has, if this translation is not saying
an immaterial immortal soul clave unto a material mortal being, then what is it
saying?
1. "His HEART (nehphesh) was drawn to Dinah" New
International Version.
2. "He was deeply attracted (nehphesh) to Dinah" New
American Standard Version.
(25). Genesis 34:8 "The soul (nehphesh) of
my son Shechem longeth for your daughter" King James Version. How
did the translators think the father could know what an invisible, immaterial
something that was in his son was longing for? Did they think an immortal no substance
soul was in love with a mortal person?
1. "My son Shechem has his HEART (nehphesh) on your daughter" New
International Version.
2. "My son Shechem is in love (nehphesh) with this girl" Revised
English Bible.
3. "The heart (nehphesh) of my son Shechem longs for
your daughter" New Revised Standard Version.
(26). Genesis 35:18, "As her SOUL (nehphesh) was departing (for she died)" King
James Version.
1. "As she breathed (nehphesh) her last–for she was
dying" New International Version.
2. "Then with her last breath, (nehphesh) as she was dying" Revised
English Bible.
3. With Rachels last breath (nehphesh) (for she died) The
Living Bible.
4. With her last breath (nehphesh) for she was at the point of death
New American Bible.
5. Rachel was about to die, but with her last breath (nehphesh) New Living Bible.
(27).
Genesis 36:6, "All the PERSONS (nehpheshs–mortal
beings) of his house" King James Version.
(28).
Genesis 37:21, "Let us not kill HIM (nehphesh–a
mortal being)" King James Version. It was obvious to the translators that
they could not translate this nehphesh into soul, after all an immortal soul
could not be killed, but a person (him) could be killed.
(29).
Exodus 12:16, Except what must be eaten by every PERSON (nehpheshs–mortal beings). A soul as was believed
in by the translators could not eat, therefore; they would not change this
nehphesh into a soul.
(30).
Job 12:10, "In whose hand is the SOUL (nehpheshs–mortal
being, used referring to animals) of every living thing,
and the breath of all mankind." Is it not strange that the King
James Version gives animals souls, but other translations took their souls away
from them?
The life of
every living thing," New American Standard Bible.
(31). Job 41:21, His breath (nehphesh–a
mortal being, used referring to an animal, possibly a
crocodile).
(32).
Isaiah 19:10, "All that make sluices and ponds for FISH (nehpheshs–mortal
beings, used referring to fish)" King James Version. Although
nehphesh is in the Hebrew, many translations seems not to know what to do with
it, and just took it out, or completely changed it for they did not want a soul
to be in a pond.
(33). Jeremiah
2:24, "A wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffed up the wind
in HER (nehphesh–a mortal being, used referring to
an animal) desire."
(34).
-- (35). Proverbs 27:7, The full SOUL (nehphesh–a
mortal being) loathes an honeycomb; but to the hungry SOUL (nehphesh–a
mortal being) ever bitter thing is sweet. How could the
translators think an immaterial something could be full, or that a soul could
be hungry for honey?
1. A
sated MAN (nehphesh) loathes honey, but to a famished MAN (nehphesh) any bitter
thing is sweet New American Standard Bible.
2. HE (nehphesh) who is full
loathes honey, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet New
International Version. Nehphesh is in the Hebrew two times, but one of
the two times nehphesh was left out in the New International Version.
(36).
Numbers 31:28, "And levy a tribute unto the Lord of the men of war
which went out to battle: one SOUL (nehphesh–mortal
being–used referring to both persons and animals) of
five hundred, both of the persons, and of the beeves, and of the asses and of
the sheep." Of about 870 times nehphesh is in the Old Testament
Numbers 31:28 and Job 12:10 are the only two passages where the King James
translators translated nehphesh as soul when it has reference to animals,
and it maybe that the only reason they did this these two times is that it has
equal reference to people as it does to animals and they had no choice. Their
usual substitutes failed to work; living creatures or person would
not work for them in these two passages as nehphesh has reference to both man
and animals.
DAVID
J. HEINIZMAN, "So carefully has the translation of nehphesh been guarded
in relation to animals as 'souls,' that we can't help but wonder if it were not
done intentionally to conceal the fact that animals are souls as well as
men." "Man Became A Living Soul."
(37).
Proverbs 12:10: A righteous man has regard for the LIFE (nehphesh) of his beast.
The translators made this one word (nehphesh) to be,
1. Any earthly
being.
a. Any earthly being
before God breathed the breath of life into the body of a person or a beast.
b. Any earthly being
while they had the breath of life.
c. And any dead body
after the breath of life of the person or beast was gone.
2. The life in any
earthly being only while they have the breath of life in them.
3. The pagan immaterial,
invisible, no substance, deathless being that many believe lives after the
person it was in is dead, but this deathless being is not believed to be in any
beast.
Do you wonder, as I do, how they
came up with these meaning of this one word, meaning are nothing alike, (1) how
they knew when this word was a mortal living being that could not keep from
dying, (2) and when the same word was a immortal living being that could not
die?
(38 to 870) It would be to long to quote all the 870 times the
Hebrew word nehphesh is in the Old Testament with just over one-half being
translated "soul," about 473 times in King James
Version. Nehphesh in the New International Version Old Testament is
translated soul only 72 times out of the 870 times it is used, according to the
this translation 798 times nehphesh was not a soul, and it is a soul only
72 times. Not once dose any of the
870 imply anything about any life beyond the grave, or about there being a
immortal soul that is living in a mortal person.
A nehphesh could
be
1. Saved (Genesis 19:19; 1 Samuel 19:11; 2 Samuel 19:5)
2. Killed (Numbers 35:11; 35:15; 35:30)
3. Ransomed (Exodus 21:30)
4. Destroyed (Leviticus 23:30; Joshua 11:11)
5. Delivered (Joshua 2:13)
6. Sought to be killed (Judges 18:25)
7. Taken (Deuteronomy 19:21)
8. Forfeited (Joshua 2:14)
9. Risked (Judges 12:3; 1 Samuel 28:21)
10. Lost (Judges 1:25)
11. Jeopardized (Judges 5:18; 1 Samuel 19:50)
All 870 times have one thing in common, all of the ways nehphesh
is translated are all associated with the activity of living beings including
dying, and nehphesh never implies anything about any life after the death of
living beings, all the 870 are all speaking of living beings of both persons
and animals that will die, or that are already dead. None of the 870
times are an immortal deathless being that is in a person; they are all
speaking of mortal living beings that can die, be killed, or be dead, whether
the living being is a person, animal, bird, or fish. Nehphesh never
implies anything about any life beyond the grave. IT IS NEVER TRANSLATED
"SPIRIT" Although nehphesh–Strongs Hebrew
word #5315–a breathing creature is translated into about forty
words, thirty-nine of the forty all have reference only to mortal beings that
will die; it was changed in only one of the forty words (souls) to beings that
does not have breath, and that will not die. Is it because this is the only
word that they could use to put the Pagan immortal soul into the Bible by
mistranslating, but were not able to mistranslate it into an immortal invisible
deathless something most of the times it was used?
Can one word be rightly translated
this way? No one reading some of the English translations of the Bible
would not have any way of knowing that all the forty words which nehphesh is
translated into are translations (or mistranslations) of only one word. Did
the translators do so because they wanted to make a person be an "immortal
being," and more than a "living creatures?" In almost one half
of the times nehphesh is used in the Old Testament, even the King James
translators could not translate it "soul." When the all-knowing God
used just one word, why did the translators used forty words and change it as
they wished to, changed it from a noun to many pronouns, changed from a
noun to many verbs, changed from a noun to many adjectives, changed from a noun
to many adverbs, etc.? Did they think that for all the years from Adam unto
Christ God people could understand the one word God used, which was always a
noun, but now many words that are not always a noun are needed to translate
that one word? If one word were all that was needed from Adam unto the
translation of the King James Version in 1611, why would God's one word not be
enough today? Do the translators think they have improved the Hebrew Old
Testament by changing the one word that God used into forty words, and changing
this noun into about all parts of speech? The use of many words came when the
Roman Catholic Church brought in unconditional immortality, and they had to get
it into the Bible. The Hebrew manuscripts still have just one
word–nehphesh, which was the one word God inspired.
Nehphesh is translated soul far
fewer times in the New American Standard Version, and in most other
translations, including the New King James Version, than it is in the King
James Version. Were they going as far as they dared to in correcting the King
James Version?
The way soul is
understood and used today in English (an undying living something that is in a
person) makes putting the word soul in a translation for the
English people today be a false and deliberately misleading translation, for it
makes it where today's English reader cannot know what God said, and
will understand only what the prejudiced outlook the translators wanted their
readers to understand when they knew that most that read it would understand
the word soul only as it is used in todays English. Without much study of
Bible words, which most Bible reader will never do, they cannot know what God said
to them when they read the word soul, and they will think that
the somewhat prejudice outlook of the translator is the word of God. God's word has been deliberately replaced
with the teaching of man (Matthew 15:9) in a way that will have more influence
on our conception of what our nature is and the nature of all living beings
than any other question.
THE SOUL AND EATING
OF BLOOD
Is the
immortal "soul" (nehphesh) in the blood? Is a part
of a person that many say it lives after the death of the body, that a
deathless soul is in the blood of both men and animals? In Leviticus 17:10-15,
in only six verses nehphesh is used ten times but the translators concealed
this from their readers by translating nehphesh as both life and soul, always
life the four times it was speaking of animals, and soul the six times it was
speaking of a person; does this not show their reluctance to let us see what
God said to us?
The vanishing use
of soul in Leviticus 17:10-15
1. In the King James Version nehphesh is translated
"soul" six of the ten times it is used.
2. The New King James Version used
"soul" only two of the ten times.
3. "Soul" is not used in
the (1) New Revised Standard Version, (2) New International Version, (3) The
New American Bible, (4) and many others.
Leviticus
17:10-15 King James Version
1. Used referring
to animals four times–nehphesh translated life four times.
2. Used referring
to man six times–nehphesh translated soul six times.
"I will even set
my face against that SOUL (person–nehphesh, used referring to man) that
eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the LIFE (soul–nehphesh,
used referring to animals that are being eat) of the flesh is in
the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for
your SOULS, (nehphesh, used referring to man) for
it is the blood that makes an atonement for a SOUL (nehphesh,
used referring to man). Therefore I said unto the children of Israel,
no SOUL (nehphesh, used referring to man) of you shall
eat blood...For it is the LIFE (soul–nehphesh,
used referring to animals) of all flesh; the blood of it is for
the LIFE (soul–nehphesh, used referring to
animals) thereof; therefore I said unto the children of Israel, no SOUL (nehphesh, used referring to
man) shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the LIFE (soul-nehphesh, used
referring to animals) of all flesh is the blood thereof; whosoever
eats it shall be cut off. And every SOUL (nehphesh, used
referring to man) that eats that which died of itself...he shall wash
his clothes, and bath himself in water." In this passage, the King James Version translated the same word
"soul" all six times when it used referring to man, TO A MORTAL
LIVING PERSON, and "life" all four times when the same word is used
referring to animals. Can anyone not see how the translators
picked when they wanted "nehphesh" to be an immortal
"soul," and when they wanted "nehphesh" to be only mortal
"life"? They could not let an immortal soul be in the blood, nor
could they let animals have an immortal soul in them. Their theology said a man
had to have a soul in him, but an animal could not have one, and they were not
willing that their reader see that the word "nehphesh" is used
referring to both, and that both man or animals do not have a soul, that both are
a soul.
Leviticus
17:10-15 New Revised Standard Version
1. Used referring to mortal animals five times–nehphesh
translated life five times.
2. Used referring
to living mortal man five times–nehphesh translated lives one time,
translated person four times. A soul could not eat blood; therefore, none of
the five are mistranslated soul. No soul
in this translation.
"If
anyone of the house of Israel or of the aliens who reside among them eats any
blood, I will set my face against that PERSON (nehphesh) who
eats blood, and will cut that PERSON (nehphesh) off
from the people. For the LIFE (nehphesh-animals) of
the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for
your LIVES (nehphesh-persons) on
the altar, for, as LIFE, (nehphesh-animals) it
is the blood that makes atonement. Therefore I have said to the people of
Israel, No PERSON (nehphesh) among
you shall eat blood...For the LIFE (nehphesh-animals) of
every creature–its blood is its LIFE; (nehphesh-animals)
therefore I have said to the people of Israel, You shall not eat the
blood of any creature, for the LIFE (nehphesh-animals) of
every creature is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off. ALL PERSONS, (nehphesh) citizens
or aliens, who eat what dies of itself...shall wash their clothes, and bathe
themselves in water."
Leviticus
17:10-15 New International Version
1. Used referring to animals three times–nehphesh translated
life three times.
2. Used referring
to man six times–nehphesh translated person, him, yourselves, life, you,
and anyone. No soul in this translation.
"Any
Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood–I will
set my face against that PERSON (nehphesh) who
eats blood and will cut HIM (nehphesh person) off from
his people. For the LIFE (nehphesh-animals) of
a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement
for YOURSELVES (nehphesh-persons) on the altar; it
is the blood that makes atonements for one's LIFE (nehphesh-person).
Therefore I say to the Israelites, 'None of YOU (nehphesh-persons) may
eat blood, nor may an alien living among you eat blood'...because the Life (nehphesh-animals) of
every creature is its blood. That is why I have said to the Israelites, You
must not eat the blood of any creature, because the LIFE (nehphesh-animals) of
every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off. ANYONE (nehphesh-persons),
whether native-born or alien, who eats anything found dead or torn by
wild animals must wash his clothes and bathe with water.
1. "No soul (nehphesh) shall
eat blood" Leviticus 17:12. No person shall eat blood–can
an immortal, immaterial soul eat material blood?
2. "The life (nehphesh) of all flesh is the
blood" Leviticus 17:11. They would not translate it to say, The
soul of all flesh is in the blood.
3. "No dead body (nehphesh)" A dead immortal soul? The same word that is
translated soul and life is translated dead
body (Numbers 6:6, also Numbers 5:2; 6:11; 9:6; 9:10). These passages would
make no sense if nehphesh were a no substance, immortal something in a person
that cannot be dead. It would also make animals have the same no substance,
immortal, deathless something in them. It is the life of a parson or animal
that is in the blood, not an immortal, immaterial, invisible soul in the blood
as the word "soul" is used today. Nehphesh is translated dead body
thirteen times in the King James Version, not as a dead soul.
THE DYING USE OF
"SOUL" IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
In translations that were made by
those who believe a person has an immortal soul, why is the use of the word
"soul" becoming used less? The dying use of soul in the newer
translations and the growing use of
life "person," "heart," or pronouns that are
related to a person in the place of soul is strongly objected to by many
that believe there is an immortal soul that will live on after the person is
dead; that believe Satans lie, You surely shall not dieyou will be
like God (Genesis 3:5), but only after they change the you to a
soul that is in you surely shall not die, and made a soul be as immortal God.
Nehphesh is used
in the Old Testament 870 times
NEHPHESH TRANSLATED
SOUL
443 times out of 870 times–King James Version in 1611.
289 times out of 870 times–New King James Version in
1982. Soul is used 154 times less in the Old Testament than it is in
the King James Version.
111 times out of 870 times–Amplified Bible in
1954.
142 times out of 870 times–The Message in 1993.
111 times out of 870 times–New American Standard
Bible in 1960.
188 times out of 870 times–Revised Standard
Version in 1946.
144 times out of 870 times–New Revised Standard
Version in1989.
115 times out of 870 times–New International
Version in 1973.
95 times out of 870 times–New International
Version in 2011 update.
96 times out of 870 times–New International
Reader's Version in 1996.
44 times out of 870 times–New Living Translation
in 1996.
0 times out of 870 times–New Century Version in
2005.
5 times out of 878 times–Common English Bible in
2011.
When nehphesh was not translated
"soul" it was translated "life," "person,"
"heart," or the noun was changed to many pronouns (he, him, she, her,
etc.) that is related to a person, and has no reference to an immortal being
that is in a person.
THE DYING USE OF
"SOUL" IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Greek word translated soul
(psukee) is used 106 times.
PSUKEE IS TRANSLATED SOUL ONLY,
55 times out of 106 times in the King James
Version in 1611.
52 times out of 106 times in the New King James Version
in 1982.
41 times out of 106 times–Revised Standard
Version in 1946.
31 times out of 106 times–New Revised Standard
Version in1989.
41 times out of 106 times–New International
Version in 1971.
23 times out of 106 times–New International
Version in 2011 update.
29 times out of 106 times–New Living Translation
in 1996.
21 times out of 106 times–New International
Reader's Version in 1996.
25 times out of 106 times–New Century Version in
2005.
3 times out of 106 times–Common English Bible in
2011.
0 times out of 106 times–Christian Bible in 1991.
THE DYING USE OF
"SOUL" IN BOTH
THE OLD AND NEW
TESTAMENT
The Hebrew word nehphesh, some of
the time translated soul is used over 870 times in the Old Treatment, and the
Greek word psukee, sometimes translated soul is used 106 times, both together
about 976 times. TOGETHER BOTH NEHPHESH AND PSUKEE ARE TRANSLATED SOUL
ONLY,
498 times out of 976 times–King James Version in
1611.
341 times out of 976 times–New King James Version in
1982. Soul is used 157 times less in the New King James Version than it
is in the King James Version.
111 times out of 976 times–Amplified Bible in
1954.
190 times out of 976 times–New American Standard
Bible in 1960.
229 times out of 976 times–Revised Standard
Version in 1946.
175 times out of 976 times–New Revised Standard
Version in 1989.
229 times out of 976 times–New International
Version in 1971.
136 times out of 976 times–New International Version in
1984.
118 times out of 976 times–New International
Version in 2011 update.
41 times out of 976 times–New International
Reader's Version in 1996.
177 times out of 976 times–The Message in 1993.
73 times out of 976 times–New Living Translation
in 1996.
35 times out of 870 times–New
Century Version in 2005.
8 times out of 976 times–Common English Bible in
2011.
0 times out of 106 times–Christian Bible in 1991.
Most, if not all these translators
believe in an immortal soul, but have been reducing the times this Hebrew word
nehphesh, and the Greek word psukee are translated "soul" and
replacing then with "life," "person," "heart," or
changed them to pronouns that are related to a person. The way soul has been
mostly removed in most translations, and replaced with life or person, the
translators are saying soul is not a true translation of neither the
Hebrew, nor the Greek.
WHY THE USE OF
SOUL IS DYING?
In many passages the psukee does
thing that only this earthly body can do, things that an immortal soul that has
no substance could not do. And He told them a parable,
saying, "The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began
reasoning to himself, saying, 'What shall I do, since I have no place to store
my crops?' Then he said, 'this is what I will do, I will tear down my
barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my
goods. And I will say to my soul
(psukee), soul (psukee), you
have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and
be merry. But God said to him, You fool! This very night your soul (psukee-life) is
required of you'" Luke 12:19-21. That which the rich man
laid up for his soul(psukee) in verse 19 is said to be laid up
for himself in verse 21 making both psukee and himself be the
same thing. The New International Version removed soul. And I'll say
to myself (Greek psukee–life), you (Greek
psukee–life) have plenty of good things laid up for
many years. Take life easy; eat drink and be merry. But, God said to him,
You fool! This very night your life (Greek–psukee) will
be demanded from you; in this passage the same word, psukee is
translated myself, you, and life. It is obvious that an
immaterial, invisible, no substance soul would have no use for the things the
rich man stored in his barns, a soul would not be able to eat and drink the
thing stored in barns, that this was not speaking of an immaterial soul
without any substance, but was speaking of an earthly person that can eat
and drink of the things he had stored, but could not use them after he was
dead; it was life that would be required of the earthly person, not life of an
immortal soul that can not die; when a persons life was required who would use
the things he had stored?
It is those who are members of
churches that believe a person has an immortal soul that are little by little
taking the word "soul" out of the Bible in their translations. Why
is soul being used less in the newer translations? These translators knew soul
is not a translation of nehphesh or psukee as they were used at the time the Old or New Testament was
written, neither nehphesh nor psukee had the meaning that the English word
soul has today.
A
few of the many examples that show why the numbers above are difficult in
difficult translations.
Numbers 29:7
"Ye shall afflict your souls (nehphesh)" King James Version.
"You shall humble yourselves (nehphesh)" New American Standard.
Joshua 11:11
"They smote all the souls (nehphesh)" King James Version.
"Not sparing anything that breathed (nehphesh)" New International
Version.
Judges 16:16
"His soul (nehphesh) was vexed unto
death" King James Version.
"Unto he (nehphesh) was tired to
death" New International Version.
Numbers 30:2
"To bind his soul (nehphesh) with a bond" King James Version.
"To bind himself (nehphesh) with a binding obligation" New
American Standard.
Numbers 15:30
"That soul (nehphesh) shall be cut off" King
James Version.
"That person (nehphesh) shall be cut off" New American
Standard Version.
Acts 15:24-26 is an example of how
the translation of psukee was changed even in the same passage by the
translators when it would not fit in with their belief about an immortal
soul. Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no
instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls (psukee), it
seemed good to us, having become of one mind, to select men to send to you with
our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives (psukee) for
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. The psukee–life they risked
was their earthly life, not a deathless soul, it was persons that was
disturbed, not souls.
1. Certain persons
who have gone out from us, though with no instruction from us, have said things
to disturb you and have unsettled your minds (psukee)who has
risked their lives (psukee) New Revised Standard
Version.
2. And disturbed
you, troubling your minds (psukee) by what they
saidmen who have risked their lives (psukee) for the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ New International Version.
3. We have heard
that some of our group have come to you and said things that trouble and
upset you (psukee)people who
have given their lives (psukee) to serve our Lord New Century Version.
AARON
ELLIS, It is plain from history, that our first transcribers and translators
were Romanish priests, who were interested in sustaining the profitable
corruptions of the separate existence of the soul in purgatory, and the endless
misery of the wicked. Every English translation made prior to the 18th century,
has but too clearly copied from the Vulgate, and the translators were not able,
as McKnight has fully prove, to translate the whole Bible from the original
tongues, and the various editions only profess to be compared with the
original. King James, who died a Papist, gave strict orders to translators of
our common version, not to deviate widely from the Bishops Bible, to be
followed, and as little altered as the original will permit. Bible Vs.
Tradition, page 6, 1853.
The Hebrew noun,
nehphesh, has been changed by the translators into many different pronouns, but
all the pronouns they changed it to have a reference to an earthly being, none
to Platos no substance soul. Nehphesh did not mean an immaterial
invisible something in a person that was not the person in the Old Testament;
how could the translators think it was right to change one noun into many
pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.?
The Hebrew people in the Old
Testament that were reading their Scriptures would have had no way to make a
distinction in the life (soul–nehphesh) of animals or men for Moses made
no distinction. Even today in the Hebrew Old Testament there is no distinction
between a person, or an animal being a living creature, but translators have
changed this. Only in the English translations, not in the Hebrew, is there a
distinction, and this distinction is because man has changed God's
word. God used the same word to describe both persons and animals. If
this one word proves anyone now has an immortal soul in them, it would prove
both man and animals now have an immortal soul in them. Man says
animals do not have a soul that lives in them unto their
death, but there is a soul that is living in people. God says both people
and animals are a soul.
In many passages nehphesh is rightly
translated persons, not souls. Soul as it is used today is a completely
difference thing than person, but the translators in trying to put soul
into the Bible translated both from the same Hebrew word just as they
translated the same word into life and many other words in many passages where the translators did not
think they could change nehphesh a mortal being into an immortal soul.
1. Give me the persons (nehphesh)
(Genesis 17:14)
2.All the persons (nehphesh)
(Genesis 37:31)
3. The persons (nehphesh) shall
be for the Lord (Leviticus 26:29)
4. And that person (nehphesh) be
guilty (Numbers 5:2)
5. Body of any man (nehphesh) (Numbers
19:11)
6. The dead body of any man (nehphesh)
(Numbers 19:13)
7. The person (nehphesh) that
was there (Numbers 19:18)
8. Killed any person (nehphesh) (Numbers
31:19)
9. Two thousand persons (nehphesh)
(Numbers 31:35)
10. And sixteen thousands persons (nehphesh)
(Numbers 31:46)
11. Which killed any person (nehphesh)
(Numbers 35:11)
12. That killed any person (nehphesh)
(Numbers 35:30)
13. An innocent person (nehphesh)
(Deuteronomy 27:25)
14. That killeth any person (nehphesh)
(Joshua 20:3)
15. God respect any person (nehphesh) (2
Samuel 14:14)
16. They had decreed for themselves (nehphesh) (Esther
9:31)
17. He teareth himself (nehphesh) (Job 18:4)
18. He justified himself (nehphesh) (Job
32:2)
19. I have behaved and
quieted myself (nehphesh) (Psalms 132:2)
20. The blood of any person (nehphesh)
(Proverbs 28:17)
21. Has enlarged herself (nehphesh)
(Isaiah 5:14)
22. Shall not deliver themselves (nehphesh)
(Isaiah 47:14)
23. Whom any man (nehphesh) despiseth (Isaiah
49:7)
24. Has justified herself (nehphesh)
(Jeremiah 3:11)
25. Take heed to yourselves (nehphesh) (Jeremiah
17:21)
26. Deceive not yourselves (nehphesh)
(Jeremiah 37:9)
27. Every person (nehphesh)
(Jeremiah 43:6)
28. Sworn by himself (nehphesh)
(Jeremiah 51:14)
29. Two persons (nehphesh)
(Jeremiah 52:29)
30. And five persons (nehphesh)
(Jeremiah 52:30)
31. The loathing of thy person (nehphesh) (Ezekiel
16:5)
32. Cut off many persons (nehphesh)
(Ezekiel 17:17)
33. They traded the persons (nehphesh) of
man (Ezekiel 27:13)
34. Take any person (nehphesh)
(Ezekiel 33:6)
35. The mighty deliver himself (nehphesh)
(Amos 2:14)
36. Deliver himself (nehphesh) (Amos
2:15)
37. God hath sworn by himself (nehphesh) (Amos
6:8)
38. A dead body (nehphesh)
(Haggai 2:13)
39. If any one (nehphesh)
(Leviticus 4:27)
40. Any living thing (nehphesh)
(Leviticus 11:10)
41. And slayeth him (nehphesh)
(Deuteronomy 22:26)
42. Setteth his (nehphesh) heart (Deuteronomy
24:15)
43. At thine (nehphesh)
own pleasure (Deuteronomy
23:24)
44. Whosoever killeth any person (nehphesh) (Joshua
20:9)
45. All the persons (nehphesh) (I
Samuel 23:22)
46. All that thine (nehphesh) heart (2
Samuel 3:21)
47. Every man (nehphesh) (2 Kings 12:4)
48. They (nehphesh) die in youth (Job
36:14)
49. Of
his (nehphesh) hearts desire (Psalms
10:3)
50. My deadly (nehphesh) enemies (Psalms
17:9)
51. Unto to the will (nehphesh) of (Psalms
27:12)
52. So would we (nehphesh) have
it (Psalms 35:25)
53. Unto to the will (nehphesh) of
his enemies (Psalms 35:41)
54. Why are you (nehphesh) cast
down (Psalms 42:5, 42:11, 45:5)
55. Asking meat for their (nehphesh) lust (Psalms
78:18)
56. He (nehphesh) was laid in
iron (Psalms105:18)
57. I have behaved and quieted myself (nehphesh)
(Psalms 131:2)
58. Knows his (nehphesh) own
bitterness (Proverbs 14:10)
59. As he thinketh in his (nehphesh) heart (Proverbs
23:7)
60. At her (nehphesh) pleasure
(Jeremiah 2:24)
61. At their (nehphesh) pleasure
(Jeremiah 34:16)
62. Should he slay you (nehphesh)
(Jeremiah 40:15)
63. With a despiteful heart (nehphesh)
(Ezekiel 25:15)
64. With a bitterness of heart (nehphesh)
(Ezekiel 27:31)
Nehphesh is translated mind 15 times. Nehphesh is translated life
and lives many times referring to living and dead mortal
being, both persons and animals.
Summary. About one-third of the words translated soul from
nehphesh in the Old Testament, and from psukee in the New Testament,
are both associated with the destruction and death of a soul (nehphesh).
This is an insoluble problem for those that believe today's theology, which
says a soul cannot die.
Since the word soul has a meaning
in todays English that is not in the Hebrew word nehphesh, or the Greek word
psuche the question is, Is soul a true translation, or was it the
translators changed the Bible by putting their Platonic and Hellenized
philosophy into the Bible? The doctrine of an immortal soul did not exist when
the Old Testament was written, and nehphesh would not have been understood to
be a soul, not unto the Greek doctrine was brought into the church by some of
the so called church fathers, and by the Dark Age Catholic Church; they were
not called church fathers in their day, but were called this by the Catholic
Church, probably to justify the use of father the way Catholics use it, and
to make the writing of the church fathers have more authority. The
translators of the King James Version still believed this pagan doctrine and
they changed the word of God in many places, but think goodness most
translations have now partly corrected many of the changes.
NEW
KING JAMES VERSION STUDY EDITION 1990, page 935. The Hebrew word for soul
has many meanings and seldom (some would say never) equals what
English-speaking Christians man mean by the term. Most Christians
under stand soul to be an immaterial, deathless something in a person that
will forever fly away from the person it was in at their death.
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPEDIA, "Not, however, to dwell on the fact that
many peoples have no clear conception of an immaterial 'soul' in the modern
sense (the Egyptians, e. g. distinguished several parts, the Ka, the
Ba, etc., which survived death; often the surviving self is simply a ghostly
resemblance of the earthly self, nourished with food, offerings, etc.),
there is the more serious consideration that the state into which the surviving
part is supposed to enter at death is anything but a state which can be
described as 'life,' or worthy to be dignified with the name 'immortality.' It
is a state peculiar to 'death;' in most cases, shadowy, inert, feeble,
dependent, joyless; a state to be dreaded and shrunk from, not one to be hoped
for. If, on the other hand, as in the hope of immortality among the nobler
heathen, it is conceived of, as for some, a state of happiness–the clog
of the body being shaken off–this yields the idea, which has passed
into so much of our modern thinking, of an 'immortality of the soul,' of an
imperishableness of the spiritual part, sometimes supposed to extend
backward as well as forward; an inherent indestructibility." From the
article "Immortal; Immortality." Also from the International Standard
Bible Encyclopedia, "We are influenced always more or less by the
Greek, Platonic idea that the body dies, yet the soul is immortal. Such an idea
is utterly contrary to the Israelite consciousness and is nowhere found in the
Old Testament." From the article "Death," page 812.
"Soul, like spirit, has various shades of meaning in the O.T., which may
be summarized as follows, 'Soul,' 'living being,' 'life,' 'self,' 'person,'
'desire,' 'appetite,' 'emotion' and 'passion'... NEHPHESH OR SOUL CAN ONLY
DENOTE THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE WITH A MATERIAL ORGANIZATION OR BODY." Page
2837. "For the Hebrews a person was a unity, not to be divided
into body, soul, and spirit as the Greeks did." Page 592.
JEWISH
ENCYCLOPEDIA, "The belief that the soul continues its existence
after the dissolution of the body is a matter of philosophical or theological
speculation rather than of simple faith, AND IS ACCORDINGLY, NOWHERE TAUGHT IN
THE HOLY SCRIPTURE...The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews
from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato,
its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Dleusinian mysteries
in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended." Article-"Immortality
of the Soul," 1925.
The
concept of punishment after death is not in the Old Testament. The Law given
through Moses deals only with punishment in this life and has no provisions for
punishment after death. From their contact with pagan philosophy, the pagan
immortal soul teaching had made some inroads with some Jews by the time of
Christ. Paul warned about this Philosophy (Colossians 2:8).
C.
R. GRESHAM commenting on 1 Corinthians 15:51-52. "Paul is pointing
out that the resurrection truth which he is revealing was partially, if not
wholly, hidden to past generations. We must take this seriously and not read
New Testament revelation back into the Old Testament accountsIt is generally
conceived that there is little about resurrection or after-life in what the
Jews called the Torah...and the Former Prophets...Death is seen as the end, the
destruction of human existence," page 25. "Man's soul is
primarily his vitality, his life, not some separate part of a person that has
independent existence and an immortal nature, God's spirit (His breath, His
power) creates and sustains all living things (Ps 33:6; 104:29-30), even the
human spirit (Zech 12:1), but never is man's soul or spirit seen as an
immortal part of man surviving death. Page 40. "The widespread
misunderstanding that the New Testament teaches the immortality of the
soul...If one recognizes that death and eternal life in the New Testament are
always bound up the Christ-event, then it becomes clear that for the first
Christians the soul is not intrinsically immortal, but rather became so only
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." "What The Bible Says About
Resurrection," page 275, The College Press, 1983, (Christian Church).
INTERPRETERS
DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, No biblical text authorizes the statement that the
soul is separated from the body at the moment of death. Volume 1, Article
Death, page 802, 1960. The word soul in Englishcoming from philosophical
Greek (Platonism)In the OT it never means the immortal soul, but it is
essentially the life principle, or the living being, or the self as the
subject of appetite, and emotion. Volume 4, Article Soul, 1960.
The belief of Socrates and Plato was
that when a soul is freed from the person it was in, that freed soul would live
forever without the person that it had been imprisoned in. If, as Plato taught,
a soul is a separate being from the person it is in, then it would
make it unjust for a soul to be tormented for what the person did. It would be
like making Bill be judged and punished for what John did.
This Greek philosophy, that a soul
was imprisoned in the body of a person unto the death of the person, was what
some of the church fathers had been taught and believed, the background from
which they came. Tertullian, one of the first of the church fathers to teach
this philosophy was truthful about from where he had learned it. He said,
"For some things are known even by nature, the immortality of the soul,
for instance, is held by many...I may use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato, when
he declares, 'Every soul is immortal.'" Ante–Nicene Fathers, Volume
3, page 1916. By the time of the translation of the King James Version this
heathen doctrine was believed by the Roman Catholic Church and by most
Protestants, but had been changed from Platos belief that all souls are freed
and go on to a much better place to only a few souls go to a better place, but
most souls, after being freed from the persons they were in by the death of the
persons, will go to eternal torment in Hell; the Hell part had to be added by
the Catholic Church to what was taught by Plato, it was changed from what was
believed by Plato that after the death of the persons all souls that was
trapped in then would be in the same place; Hell had not been invented by the
Catholic Church in his time.
Neither nehphesh nor psuche are
used with the qualifying words aionios, immoral, undying, endless, or
everlasting, but in todays preaching these words are continually added to
soul.
The Egyptians might have been the
first to believe in the dual nature of a person. They believed that death was a
door to a new form of life for a soul, which may be higher or lower life,
depending on how good or bad a person was that a soul had been in. They
believed the body was evil and a prison to a soul. They built the pyramids and
other tombs and put the things in them they thought would be needed by a soul
after the death of the person. Death was a friend to them that freed a soul
from the evil body it was in; but it was the Greeks (Pythagoras, Socrates,
Plato) who adopted this Egyptian belief of the dual nature of a person and
father developed the philosophy of the immortal soul. Some of the church
fathers were schooled in and believed in this Greek philosophy, and were only
partly converted. They, after greatly expanding on the teaching of Plato,
brought the Greek philosophy into the church, which led to the apostasy in the
Dark Age. Unconditional immortality is the foundation of the doctrine of Hell.
If a person had an unseen immortal soul in them that would not die when the
person died, there had to be a place to put the deathless evil souls after they
were freed from the persons they had been imprisoned in; therefore, the
doctrine of a soul going to Heaven or Hell immediately after the person died
came into being without a resurrection or a judgment, and the New Testament
teaching of the resurrection of the dead became unneeded and of little or no
importance.
In the Greek philosophy a soul never
dies; only the body dies, freeing a deathless soul from the person to live a
higher life. Christ taught the resurrection of man, not the Greek "immaterial,
invisible part of man" (W. E. Vine) that never dies. The Greeks did
not believe in or need a resurrection, or a savior, or a redeemer; these would
not fit into their belief. They believed in an immortal soul; therefore, there
could be no death for any soul. The Greek philosophy of an immortal soul is
opposed and opposite to the teaching of Christ on the resurrection. The immortal soul doctrine was
believed by most pagan religions in the time of Paul, and when he was before
Agrippa, he asked, "Why
is it considered incredible among you people if God does raise the dead?" (Acts
26:8). To Plato and Agrippa, the resurrection of the dead would have been a
step backward. It would put a soul that was freed from its imprisonment in a
person back into the prison it had been freed from.
1. The Greek and
heathen belief that the immortal soul is indestructible, demands that a soul
cannot die, but must be alive forever somewhere.
2. The
resurrection as taught by Christ demands that a person be dead, if not, there
cannot be a resurrection.
The resurrection is a calling back
to life of the whole person God created, not a calling back to life of a
deathless something that is a difference being than the person that it had been
imprisoned in. If the Greek doctrine of an immortal soul that cannot die, which
is believed by many today were true, then the resurrection of Christ and our
resurrection would be pointless even if it were possible to raise a dead soul
that is not dead.
SOCRATES
and PLATO -- versus - CHRIST
Immortality ---------
versus - A resurrection to life
Death a friend ------
versus - Death is "the last enemy"
Plato, A soul is immortal| If there is no
resurrection
therefore only
it | death is the end of all
is alive after
death | life 1 Corinthians 15:14-23
Plato, Only the body dies| "Then
they also that are
freeing a soul to higher | fallen
asleep in Christ
life without a body | have
perished" 1 Cor. 15:18
Only some inter something| A person who in
Christ
that is in person
is | will put on immortality,
immortal, not the person |
not something in a person
Souls that were in all | Christ
is "the first
the dead are now alive | born from the dead"
Souls cannot
perish | Souls (psukee) will perish
Souls cannot be destroyed|
in Gehenna Matthew 10:28
Plato's immortal soul and
Christ's resurrection are not compatible, both cannot be. One can be true, but
not both; they are alien and complete opposite to each other. The immortal soul
doctrine of Plato is a total rejection of the teaching of Christ on the
resurrection of a person to life at the second coming of Christ. To believe
Plato is to reject Christ.
1. Plato argued
for an immortal, immaterial soul that was better off after the death of the
person it had been imprisoned in.
2. Paul taught
the resurrection of the dead person.
The two are completely incompatible;
it is difficult to understand why many say they believe the Bible when they
choose Platos pagan philosophy over the Bible.
Paul and Plato used the same Greek
words, but not in the same way. Immortal, immortality, indestructible, never
dying was used by Plato, and are used by many today to describe a soul that
exist after the death of the person it once was in, but in the Old or New
Testament these words are never used referring to any lost person, or to
anything that had been in a person. The expression "immortal soul" is
very common in the writing of the pagan philosophers and by today's preachers,
but is not found in the Bible.
PAUL USED |PLATO
AND MANY TODAY SAY
Die |an
immortal soul cannot die
Death |no
death for a immortal soul
Destroyed |an
immortal soul cannot be destroyed
Corruption |all souls are
now incorruptible
Mortal |all
souls are now immortal
Perish |a soul cannot perish
What Plato and the Greeks thought
about there being a soul in a person, and that soul would exist with some kind
of life when the person it was in died is not the word of God; to those that
believe the Bible, the Greek immortal soul that has some kind of life after the
death of the person it had been in is not any part of the Christian faith.
HENRY
CONSTABLE, "In the very terms in which the punishment of the wicked is
asserted in the New Testament. (1) Where the latter says a soul shall die,
Plato says it shall not die. (2) Where the latter says it shall be
destroyed, Plato says it shall not be destroyed. (3) Where the latter says
it shall perish and suffer corruption, Plato says it shall not perish and is
incorruptibleBut the discussion of the question was not confined to the school
of Plato or to his times. Every school of philosophy took it up, whether to
confirm Plato's view, or to deny it, or to heap ridicule upon it. All the
phrases we have been discussing from the New Testament had been explained,
turned over and over, handled with all the power of the masters of language,
presented in every phase, so that of their sense there could be no doubt, nor
could there be any one ignorant of their sense before Jesus spoke, or an
Evangelist or Apostle wrote. The subject had not died out before the days of
Christ. It never could and never will die out. In every city of the Roman world
were schools of Grecian taught in the days of the Apostles. In every school the
question before us was discussed in the phrases and language of the New
Testament. "Duration and Nature of Future Punishment," 1871.
CATHOLIC
ENCYCLOPEDIA, "Plato established the basic Western tradition on this
topic by defining the soul as the spiritual part of the human that survived
death." 1991.
OSCR CULLMANN, He
(Christ) must indeed be the very one who in His death conquers death itself. He
cannot obtain this victory by simply living on as an immortal soul, thus
fundamentally not dying. He can conquer death only by actually dying, by
betaking Himself to the sphere of death, the destroyer of lifeWhoever wants to
conquer death must die, he must really cease to live–not simply live on
as an immortal soulFor Socrates and Platothe body is indeed bad and should
not live on. And that part, which is to live on, the soul, does not die at all
therefore it is deathwhich must be conquered by the resurrection the
whole thinking of the New Testament is governed by the belief in the
resurrection. Belief in the immortality of the soul is not belief in a
revolutionary event. Immortality, in fact, is only a negative assertion, the
soul does not die, but simply lives on. Resurrection is a positive assertion,
the whole man, who has really died, is recalled to lifeThe Greek doctrine of
immortality and the Christian hope in the resurrection differ so radically
because Greek thought has such and entirely different interpretation of creation.
Immortality Of The Soul Or Resurrection Of The Dead? 1958.
Many believe that in the afterlife
there will be nothing more than a collection of disembodied spirits or souls
that will be just as alive and just the same from the day of birth of the
persons these soul were in as these souls will be after they leave the person
after the persons death. Death and the resurrection are out of step with the
belief of Plato.
That there is something in a person
and that something being deathless is a philosophy of man that Paul warned
about (Colossians 2:8). An immortal soul was copied from heathen philosophy and
superstition. Those who believe we now have "an immortal soul" get
their belief from Greek philosophy, but are inconstant and self-contradicting;
they say a soul cannot die, but it needs a Savior anyway. If we were born with
an immortal soul, it would have no need for Christ to save it from the death it
cannot die. Christianity did not destroy the pagan doctrine of Egypt and
Greece; in the Dark Age it adopted it and made it the teaching of the Roman
Church.
IF THERE IS NO
RESURRECTION
1. If a soul is
immortal (deathless) then Christ has not been raised, 1 Cor. 15:13-15.
2. If a soul is
immortal (deathless) we are false witnesses, the dead have not be raised, 1
Corinthians 15:15.
3. If a soul is
immortal (deathless) our faith is vain and we are yet in our sins, 1
Corinthians 15:17.
4. If a soul is immortal (deathless) and it will live
without the person, no Christians will be raised from the dead, dead persons
are dead forever, 1 Corinthians 15:18-19.
Death is the enemy (1 Corinthians
15:26). It is the destruction of the life given by God. It is not the liberator
of an immortal soul, as Plato believed it to be. It is death, which must be
conquered by the resurrection. When we understand that death is really
death, not another kind of life for an immortal living something that has no
substance that is in a person, the resurrection is all-important. Without a
resurrection we can do anything that we want to do for this life is all there
is (1 Corinthians 15:32). Our only hope is the resurrection, and without it
there will be no life of any kind for us after death. Plato's immortal,
deathless soul needs no resurrection; A DEATHLESS SOUL CANNOT BE RESURECTED FROM
THE DEAD.
ED DYE,
Is man born with an immortal soul, or do the saved put on immortality at the
resurrection? Answer: Both! Born with an immortal soul and a mortal body. Then at the resurrection of the body IT puts on
immortality, 12 Cor. 15. Does he think the mortal body we now have is
going to put on immortal, and both the mortal body we now have, and a soul that
is already immortal, therefore it cannot put on immortal, that both of the two
beings will exist together forever in Heaven? Further Study Of The Soul of
Man.
1. "Set your
hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of
Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:12). It is at the resurrection that we "shall
receive the crown of glory that fades not away" (1 Peter 5:4).
2. "Be patient;
therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord (James 4:7-8). As
the farmer is patient unto the harvest to receive his reward, the believers are
to be patient unto the coming of Christ to receive their reward.
3. "It is sown
a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body" (1
Corinthians 15:43); it is not the natural body that will be raised. "We (persons,
not souls) shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trump, for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible. Dead persons will be raised from the dead with a
completely new spiritual body, not already living souls that have no bodies
raised from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:52).
4. "Beloved,
now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest
what we shall be. We know
that, when he shall be manifested, we shall be like him;
for we shall see him even as he is" (1 John
3:2). Every one knows what kind of body we now have, but no one knows what we
shall be after the resurrection; it is we (persons) that do
not know what we shall be after we
are resurrected; if there were a soul now in a person, that soul would be the
same while the person was alive, the same after the person was dead, the same
after the coming of Christ; how could a soul not know what it shall be?
The wrath of God will be "in
the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God" (Romans
2:5), not wrath at death before the Judgment Day, and not eternal wrath after
the Judgment Day is over. On that day, it will be rendered "to them that
by patience in well doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption, eternal
life (Romans 2:8), not to souls that now have eternal life that are
believed to be in all that will be given eternal life. The judgment will be
"in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men" (Romans
2:16), not at death. It is the Judgment Day when "we (not
souls) shall all stand before the judgment-seat of God (Romans
14:10). It is the day that the Lord will judge all. "Wherefore
judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes who will both bring to
light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the
hearts" (1 Corinthians 4:5, also, Ephesians 4:30).
1. "And to wait
for his Son from heaven" (1 Thessalonians 1:10). Death
will not take anyone to Heaven without waiting for the second coming of Jesus.
2. When the Lord
shall descend from Heaven, them that have fallen asleep in Jesus, "the
dead in Christ shall rise first; then we that are alive,
that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with
the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Our hope is to be raised from
our sleep at the coming of Christ, not come back from living in Heaven or
Abraham's bosom.
3. Paul says he will
receive a "crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that
have loved his appearing." (2 Timothy 4:8).
The Bible speaks of us, we, and
you that shall be with the Lord after the Judgment Day, the person will be
resurrected, not a soul that once was in a person that has already gone on to
be with the Lord, both without the person, and without the resurrection.
The Bible teaching, "The
wages of sin is death" leaves no lost person or souls alive after
the judgment and second death to be put anywhere. The teaching of Christ,
that life (everlasting life or immortality) will be given only to those who
obey Him, makes Hell impossible. Unless Christ gives eternal life (immortality)
to the lost, they cannot live forever anywhere. The Greek teaching of an
immortal soul must be made to stand, and the teaching of Christ that He will
give life only to those who come to Him must be removed from the Bible, or
there cannot be a Hell.
Socrates drinks hemlock and died
with a smile on his face because he thought he was freeing a soul to leave his
body and live with the gods, for a soul that was in him to live free of being
in him. Christ "sweats as it was great drops of blood" (Luke
22:44). Death is the enemy of man; it destroys him, and only the resurrection
will free us from death, and gives us back the life death takes. In death there
is no life in Heaven, or no life in any other place for anyone before the
resurrection. The resurrection is not deathless souls coming back from Heaven or
Hell to be judged and then going back to Heaven or Hell, it is our only hope of
life after our death. Without the resurrection "then they also that are
fallen asleep in Christ have perished" (1 Corinthians 15:18). The
Greek philosophy that found its way into the Church in the Dark Age says souls
that have left the persons they were in have not perished, but that souls have
some kind of life without the need of a resurrection; if there were an immortal
soul that cannot perish then those who are fallen asleep in Christ have
forever perished, but many believe there are souls in them cannot perish; how
could Paul have been so wrong?
For since by MAN came death, by
a MAN also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also
in Christ all shall be made alive (1 Corinthians 15:21-22); from Adam to
the second coming of Christ all persons die, the same all will be resurrected
at the coming of Christ. If, as we are told, a soul is the only thing that will
ever be immortal, and that a soul is already immortal and cannot die, it cannot
be made alive. The pagan deathless soul doctrine makes this
passage be total nonsense.
1. By man came deathin Adam all
die (1
Corinthians 15:21-22).
2. By man came the resurrection of the deadin Christ all shall be
made alive (1 Corinthians 15:21-22).
By Adam death came to all
persons, all literally die. By Christ the same all that are dead will be
made alive by the resurrection of the dead; neither persons or souls that are
not dead could not be resurrected; the undead cannot be resurrected from the
dead.
As the results of the pagan immortal
soul doctrine there came into existent many other false doctrines, Hellfire,
Purgatory, worship of Mary and saints, etc. The Protestant Reformation was largely
a reaction to medieval superstitious beliefs, and to Purgatory that is an
intermediate state of temporal punishment where souls that were not good enough
to go to Heaven, and not bad enough to go to Hell; in the Church in the Dark
Age this was believed to be almost all souls that had left the dead persons
that they had been in. The priests would have the loved ones pay for souls to
shorten the time souls that had been in the dead persons were in Purgatory.
Selling indulgences and paying to reduce the time deathless souls that had left
the dead loved ones would spend in Purgatory was rejected by the Reformation,
as was many other beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church; but both the Greek dual
nature of a person and the doctrine of Hell that were brought in by the
Catholic Church were both retained. Calvin believed a soul did not sleep, and
that a soul went to Heaven or Hell as soon as it left the person; therefore, a
soul that is not dead could not be resurrection from the dead.
The Westminster Confession says,
"Souls of the righteous...are received unto the highest heavens...soul of
the wicked are cast into Hell."
Different characteristics of a person, not different
parts of a person that one part can live without any other part; a person looked
at from different points of view.
1. BODY, Flesh and blood.
2. SOUL, A person is a living being, the
body plus the breath of life is a soul, a living being.
3. MIND, If the intellectual part of a
person is his mind, does a soul as it is used in today's theology have its
own mind? Does a soul have any thoughts that our mind does not have? If not,
according to today's theology, the only thing that will be in Heaven will have
no thoughts.
4.
HEART, The most
commonly used characteristic of a person. (Genesis 6:5; Judges; 16:15, 17, 18,
20; Matthew 5:8; Luke 12:34; Romans 10:10; Hebrews 3:10). The heart is used in
the place of the mind for the thing that the mind does, the seat of intellect,
affection, understanding, and will; not the part of the body that pumps blood.
(Matthew 13:15; 15:19; Mark 7:19; Luke 6:45; 9:47; Acts 8:21; 8:37; 28:27;
Romans 10:9; 10:10; 1 Corinthians 2:9; 7:37; Hebrews 3:10; 4:12; 1 John
3:20-21). Has not the things said about the heart been transferred to a soul by
those who believe a soul is an immaterial, immortal being that has no
substance?
The whole person dies, the whole
person is buried, the whole person is resurrected for judgment, and the whole
resurrected person that is in Christ will live with Christ.
(1).
The whole person dies and the whole person is buried.
1. Aaron died and there he was buried (Deuteronomy
10:6).
2. There they buried Abraham and his wife Sarah, there they buried
Isaac (Genesis 49:31).
3. David that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us
to this day (Acts 2:29).
David himself, not a part of David.
(2).
It is because the whole person is asleep, because the whole person is actually
dead that the whole person must be resurrected and judged, not just an undead,
immaterial, deathless something that had been in a person unto the death of the
person.
1. Stephen fell asleep (Acts 7:59).
2. David slept with his fathers and
was buried (1 Kings
2:10).
(3).
The whole person will be raised and live with Christ, not Platos pagan soul that
will never be dead, that will never be in the tombs or graves (plural graves),
or will never be raised from the dead.
1. ALL that are in
the TOMBS shall hear his voice, and shall come forth (John
6:28-29). Graves (plural, many graves) in King James
Version, but we are told by those that believe in souls that souls are never
in graves.
2. And I will raise HIM up at
the last day (John 6:54), not will raise it.
ASHLEY S. JOHNSON, founder and president of the Johnson
Bible College, Generally the word soul in the ordinary version should be
life. The Resurrection And The Future Life, page 336, Knoxville,
Lithographing Company, 1913.
"MAN BECAME A LIVING
BEING" Genesis 1:26. "Then God said, 'Let Us
make MAN in Our image,'" not, "Let Us make
a soul in Our Image and put this soul in MAN unto the death of
the MAN it is in;" it is MAN that is in the image of God, nothing is said about the image of
a soul. Genesis 2:7 "Then the Lord formed MAN of
dust from the ground and breathed into HIS nostrils the breath
of life; (not breathed into the body an immortal undying no substance
soul, but breathed into man the
breath of life, which both men and animals have), and MAN became
a living being. Not a body plus an immortal soul, but "a
living being," not two living beings, a body being (a person)
with an invisible soul living being that is living in the person. How can the
breath of life in your nose (breathing) be an immortal something that dose
not breathe? The same man that was created in
the image of God is the same man that breathes. It
is not an immaterial something in man that does not breathe that is in
the image of God.
The body of dust plus the breath of
life = a living soul (a living being–nehphesh), Genesis 2:7. The breath of
life without the body would not be a person or animal; it would not be an
immortal living being, not a nehphesh. ALL living
creatures, whether they are animals or sea-dwelling creatures are souls
(nehpheshs–living beings). All life comes from God and all life returns
to God. The body plus the breath of life makes a living being (a nehpheshs),
makes a living person or animal.
DEATH OF
MANKIND–CREATION IN REVERSE
Creation–body made of dust–breath of life from God = a living
person (a nehpheshs) (Genesis 2:7).
Death–breath of life returns to God–body returns to dust =
a dead person (a nehpheshs) (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
Genesis 2:7
1. Body formed of
the dust from the ground.
2. Breathed into
the nostrils of the body the breath of life.
Psalm 104:29
1. God takes away
their breath.
2. They return to
the earth.
Psalm
146:29
1. God takes away
the breath.
2. He returns to
the earth.
God formed MAN, not merely the body of
man; it was MAN that was formed from the dust of the ground.
It is MAN, not an invisible something that was put in
the MAN that is not the MAN, not something that has no
substance that is in the image of God. After Adam was put out of the garden he
was still in the image of God, mankind is still in the image of God. If Adam
was created innate immortal, then what was the purpose of the tree of life? If
there was an immortal soul that was in Adam and that soul was created not
subject to death, then the tree of life could have had no purpose; an immortal
soul that cannot die would live forever with or without the tree of life, if it
did eat, or did not eat of the tree of life; it was Adam that could and did die
for eating of the forbidden fruit, not a deathless soul that could not die; an
immaterial soul could not eat of the forbidden fruit, or die for eating of the
forbidden fruit, which if there were an immaterial soul could not eat material
fruit.
Summary - The Bible says, Man BECAME a living soul is
changed to, Man had a soul put in him. There is a world of difference in (1)
a person being a BEING a
soul, (2) and a person HAVING a
soul put in them; it is two difference gospels. Both man and animals ARE a living soul; neither
persons nor animals HAVE a
soul that is living in them. If the breath of life in his nostrils in Genesis
2:7 makes a person have something that is immortal (soul) living in him or her
that cannot die, then "all in whose nostrils was the breath of the
spirit of life" in Genesis 7:22 would also prove all beasts,
birds, and fish have the same immortal something in them that cannot die, but
both persons (nehphesh) and beasts (nehphesh) died in the flood.
GOD IS A LIVING
BEING
Not God has a soul living in Him
Moreover, I will
make My dwelling among you, and My soul (nehphesh) will not reject you (Leviticus 26:11).
I then will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and
heap your remains on the remains of your idols; for My soul (nehphesh) shall abhor you (Leviticus
26:30).
I know of no one that believes God
has an invisible, no substance something in Him that can exist apart from
Him. His soul (nehphesh) is His person, His being–life,
not an immortal soul living in the immortal God, just as a soul of a person or
animal is the life (the living being) of the person or animal, not an immortal
being in them.
ANIMALS ARE "SOULS"
Nehphesh–a living
creature–animals are a living being, not animals HAVE souls. They
do not HAVE an immaterial, invisible, or a no substance, deathless something
living in them; they ARE a living being. In Genesis 1:20; 1:21;
1:24; 1:30, most translations try to hide this. WHY? Why is the same word
translated "living creature" when used referring to
animals, and the same word is changed and translated "soul" when
used referring to a person? There is no excuse or defense for it; it is a
deliberate attempt by the translators, who did not believe God's word as it is,
to mislead their readers; all Bible teachers should point this out to all they
teach (James 3:1). If "the living soul" (nehphesh)
is an immortal living something that is in a person, then bugs, all sea
creatures, all birds, and all animals have an immortal soul. In Genesis "Living
soul" is used much more of these living beings than it is of man.
Passages in which soul
(nehphesh) is speaking of animals being souls, but it is deliberately hid from the English readers that the word
nehphesh–the word that they mistranslated souls is used.
1. Genesis
1:20, Then God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of living souls (nehpheshs, used referring
to animals)
2. Genesis
1:21, And God created the great sea-monsters, and every living soul (nehphesh, used referring
to animals) that moved wherewith the waters swarmed.
3. Genesis 1:24, And
God said, Let the earth bring forth living souls
(nehpheshs, used referring to animals) after their
kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after their kind.
4. Genesis 2:19, And
out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird
of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and
whatever the man called a living creature (nehpheshs, used
referring to animals), that was its name.
5. Genesis 1:30, And
to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing
that moves on the earth which has life (nehphesh, used
referring to animals).
6. Genesis
9:10, "And with ever living creature (nehpheshs,
used referring to animals) that
is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with
you."
7. Genesis
9:12, This is the covenant which I am making between Me and
you and ever living creature (nehpheshs, used referring to
animals) that is with you.
8. Genesis 9:15, And
I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and
ever living creature (nehpheshs, used referring to
both man and animals) of all flesh.
9. Genesis 9:16, When
the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting
covenant between God and ever living creature (nehpheshs,
used referring to both man and animals) of all flesh that
is on the earth.
10. Leviticus 11:10, But
whatever is in the seas and in the rivers, that do not have fins and scales
among all the teeming life of the water, and among all the living
creatures (nehpheshs, referring to animals) that
are in the water, they are detestable things to you.
11. (Leviticus 11:46, This
is the law regarding the animal, and the bird, and every living thing (nehpheshs,
used referring to animals) that swarms on the earth.
12. Leviticus 17:11, For
the life (nehphesh, used referring to an animal) of the flesh is in the
blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls (lives–nehpheshs, used
referring to men); for it is the blood by reason of the life
(nehphesh, used referring to animals) that makes
atonement. The exact same word in the same sentence in the Hebrew
(nehphesh) is translated life two times when referring to
animals and is translated soul only when it is
referring to mankind!
13. Leviticus
22:11, But if the priest buy any souls (nehpheshs,
used referring to animals that are to be used as food) with
his money, he shall eat of it, and he that is born in his house, they shall eat
of his meat King James Version.
14. Leviticus 24:18, And
the one who takes the life (nehphesh, used referring to animals) of
an animal shall make it good, life (nehphesh, used
referring to animals) for life (soul–nehphesh,
used referring to animals). And he that killest a beast
(nehphesh) shall make it good, beast (soul–nehphesh) for beast (soul–nehphesh),
King James Version.
15. Numbers
31:28, "One soul (nehphesh life, used
referring to both man and animals) of five hundred, of the
persons and of the beeves, and of the asses, and of the sheep."
16. Job 41:1, Leviathan, (nehphesh,
used referring to an animal) is used six times in the Bible,
probably a crocodile (Job 41:21). From over 870 times nehphesh is used, this is
the only time nehphesh is translated breath in the Kings James
Version. After all, they could not have a crocodile, a sea monster, or whatever
this nehphesh was having an "immortal soul" for then they would have
to put its soul in Heaven or Hell for a soul in an immortal crocodile could
never die, and, according to the theology of many, if there were a soul in a
crocodile it would have to be somewhere for all eternity.
17. Ezekiel
47:9, And it will come about that every living creature (nehpheshs,
used referring to animals) which swarms in every place
where the river goes.
18. Leviticus 17:14,
Genesis 9:4 "For the life (nehphesh, used
referring to man and to animals) of every creature is the blood
of it."
19. Deuteronomy
12:23, Only be sure not to eat the blood, for the blood is
the life (nehphesh, used
referring to animals), and you shall not eat the life (soul–nehphesh,
used referring to animals) with the flesh.
20. Job 12:10, "In
whose hand is the life (nehphesh, used referring to man
and to animals) of every living thing, and the breath of all
mankind?"
21. Proverbs
12:10, "A righteous man has regard for the life (nehphesh,
used referring to animals) of his beast."
22. And many more,
but if this does not convict anyone that all living being are a soul nothing
will. Notices how the translators tried to hide this from their readers.
Many believe, "The
living soul" in Genesis 2:7 is the one distinctive thing that
makes a person different from an animal, but if this makes a person have an
immortal soul in them, there is no way around all living things having immortal
souls in them. In the above twenty-one passages bugs, birds, fish,
persons, are all nehpheshs, all are "living beings," not a deathless,
immaterial something.
ERDMANN
DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, "Far from referring simply to one aspect of a
person, 'soul' refers to the whole person." Page 1245.
HOLMAN
BIBLE DICTIONARY, "A human being is a totality of being, not a combination
of various parts and impulses. According to the Old Testament
understanding, a person is not a body, which happens to possess a soul. Instead,
a person is a living soul...Because of Gods breath of life; the man became
'a living being' (Gen. 2:7). A person thus is a complete totality, made up of
human flesh, spirit (best understood as "the life-force'), and nephesh
(best understood as "the total self' but often translated as
'soul')." Page 61.
INTERNATIONAL
STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPEDIA, "There is not dualism in the sense of
separation, as though there could be full man either as body alone or as soul
alone...together they make up the one man." Volume 1, page 134.
HASTINGS
BIBLE DICTIONARY, Soul is throughout the great part of the Bible simply the
equivalent of life embodied in living creature.
PARKHURSTS
LEXICON, As a noun nephesh has been supposed to signify the spiritual part of
man, or what we commonly call his soul. I must for myself confess that I can
find no passages where it has undoubtedly this meaning. Parkhurst was a highly
regarded person that believed in an immortal soul, but confessed that he was
unable to find his belief in the Old Testament.
T.
PIERCE BROWN, "A consideration of EVERY passage in which these terms are
used leads us to the consideration that the term 'soul' is a term that
was applied in the Bible to every being that normally has sensory capacities
(life), whether or not they have that capacity when the term is used
referring to them. For example, one might see a body of a dead person and say,
'That poor soul is dead.' The Bible uses the term that way, even as we do, and
it has nothing at all to do with the immorality or mortality of a soul. It
simply means that the PERSON (the one who HAD life–soul–sensory
capacity) is dead." Soul and Spirit" Gospel Advocate, June 14, 1979.
(1). Nehphesh (soul), When
nehphesh is used referring only to animals,
it is translated nine different ways in the King James Version.
1).
Creature (nehphesh)
Genesis 1:21; 1:24; 2:19; 9:10; 2:12; Leviticus 11:46.
2). Thing (nehphesh) Leviticus 11:10. Ezekiel
47:9.
3). Life (nehphesh) Genesis 1:20; 1:30;
Leviticus 17:10-14—2 times.
4). The
life (nehphesh)
Genesis 9:4; Deuteronomy 12:23; Proverbs 12:10.
5). Beast (nehphesh) Leviticus 24:18.
6). Soul (nehphesh) Job 12:10.
7). Breath (nehphesh) Job 41:21.
8). A fish (nehphesh) Isaiah 19:10.
9). Her (nehphesh) Jeremiah 2:24.
(2). Nehphesh (soul), When
it is used referring to BOTH to animals
and to man, it is translated in three different ways.
1). Creature (nehphesh) Genesis 9:15;
9:16.
2). Life (nehphesh) Leviticus 17:11;
17:14.
3). Soul (nehphesh) Numbers 31:28.
(3). Nehphesh (soul),
When it has the animal appetites and desires of Man, when the
material nature of a person is being referred to, nehphesh is translated in
five different ways.
1). Pleasure (nehphesh)
Deuteronomy 23:24.
2). Lust (nehphesh)
Psalm 78:18.
3). Appetite (nehphesh)
Proverbs 23:2; Ecclesiastes 6:7.
4). Greedy (nehphesh)
Isaiah 56:11.
5). Soul (Nehphesh).
Fifteen material–physical things a
"soul–person–nehphesh" does.
1). A
soul (nehphesh) dried away Numbers 11:6.
2). A
soul (nehphesh) can be utterly destroyed Joshua 10:28.
3). A
soul (nehphesh) can be saved from physical danger by fleeing (running
away from danger) Jeremiah 51:6.
4). A
soul (nehphesh) can be kept back from the pit–grave (for
a short time) Job 33:18.
5). A
soul (nehphesh) can be deliver from death Psalm 33:10.
6). A
soul (nehphesh) can longs to eat flesh Deuteronomy
12:20; a soul can be hunger Proverbs 19:15; Proverbs
6:30; a soul can eat Leviticus 7:25.
7). A
soul (nehphesh) can lusts Deuteronomy 12:15;
12:21; 14:26. Lusts after Deuteronomy 12:20.
8). A
soul (nehphesh) can desires Deuteronomy 14:26; 1 Samuel
2:16. Can desired figs Micah 7:1.
9). A
soul (nehphesh) can loathes Deuteronomy 21:5; Proverbs 27:7.
10). A
soul (nehphesh) can abhorred Job 33:20; Psalm 107:18.
12). A
soul (nehphesh) can breaths 1 Kings 20:32.
13). A
soul (nehphesh) can be bought and sold with money Leviticus
22:11; Ezekiel 27:13.
14). A
soul (nehphesh) can touch unclean things and be unclean, can touch
bodies of dead persons, dead beast, creeping thing, Leviticus 5:2.
15). A
soul (nehphesh) can refused to touch Job 6:7.
16). A
soul (nehphesh) can be dead, a dead soul can be touched by living
persons Numbers 19:11.
A SOUL
(PERSON–NEHPHESH) CAN BE HUNGRY
CAN HAVE AN
APPETITE, BE THIRSTY, EAT MEAT
"Men do not
despise a thief if he steals to satisfy himself (nehphesh–living
being) when he is hungry" (Proverbs 6:30). An example of
how well the translators hid the fact that this is the same word that they
translated soul in other places when they did not want you to see it.
"I will set my face against
that soul (nehphesh–living being) that eats blood,
and will cut him off from among his people"(Leviticus 17:10).
"And you shall say, I will eat
flesh, because your soul (nehphesh–living
being) desires to eat flesh; you may eat flesh, after all the desire of
your soul (nehphesh–living
being)" (Deuteronomy 12:20). An immaterial something eating material
flesh!
"And it shall be as when a
hungry man dreams and, behold, he eats; but he awakes, and his soul (nehphesh–living
being) is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreams, and behold, he
drinks; but he awakes, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul (nehphesh–living
being) has appetite" (Isaiah 29:8).
SOUL IS THE LIFE,
NOT AN IMMORTAL SOMETHING
You shall not eat flesh with its life (nehphesh–living
being) (Genesis 9:4).
For the life (nehphesh–living
being) of the flesh (Leviticus 17:11; 17:14).
Those who seek my life (nehphesh–soul-living
being) (Psalm 38:12).
For those who sought the Childs life (psukee) are
dead (Matthew 2:20).
There are many more passages that
show that both nehphesh and psukee are the life of the person or animal, that
it is not an immortal something that has its own life and lives after the
person is dead.
SOULS CAN DIE,
SOULS CAN BE DEAD
SOULS CAN BE
KILLED, SOULS CAN BE MURDERED
If a soul can die then it cannot
be immortal, although this is often hid in many translations, the Bible says
over 320 times that a nehphesh (soul). (1) Souls can die. (2) Souls can be killed
by man. (3) Or that souls
are already dead.
If a soul can die, then whatever
"nehphesh" is translated into something that can die. If the
many words that "nehphesh" is translated into is something that can
die, then a soul cannot be immortal, and a soul can die. To say that
"nehphesh" is a soul that is immortal and it cannot die makes the
Bible be wrong repeatedly. If a nehphesh is something that is immortal and
cannot die, the writers of the Bible did not know it.
An immortal soul can
die or be utterly destroy. NOT ONLY DOES THE BIBLE NOT SAY A SOUL IS
IMMORTAL, IT DENIES IT BY SAYING OFTEN THAT A SOUL CAN DIE, CAN BE KILLED, OR A
SOUL IS ALREADY DEAD.
1. Souls (nehpheshs) can
die Numbers 23:10, Ezekiel 18:4, 20, Joshua 11:11.
a. They smote (killed) all
the souls (nehphesh) King James Version.
b. And they struck
every person (nehpheshs) who was in it
with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there was no one left who
breathed New American Standard Bible.
2. Souls (nehpheshs) can
be murdered. Deuteronomy 12:23; Numbers 35:11-15.
3. Souls (nehpheshs) can
be killed Leviticus 24:17. An immortal soul can be killed? "Kills
any person" (soul-nehphesh) Numbers 35:11; 35:15; 35:30-31.
4. Souls (nehpheshs) can
be smote with the sword and utterly destroyed Joshua 11:11. Can
a immortal soul be killed by the sword?
5. Souls (nehpheshs) can
be slain. Can an immortal soul be slain? Deuteronomy 27:25.
6. Souls (nehpheshs) can
be destroyed. Can an immortal soul be destroyed Leviticus 23:30?
7. (nehpheshs) can
be taken away 1 Kings 19:4.
8. Souls (nehpheshs) can
be sought to be killed Jeremiah 44:30.
9. Souls (nehpheshs) cannot
be kept alive. An immortal soul that cannot die, but it cannot be kept
alive? Psalm 22:29.
10. Souls (nehpheshs) have
blood and can bleed. "The blood of the souls (nehpheshes) of the poor" Jeremiah
2:34.
A FEW OF THE MANY
PASSAGES
IN THE KING JAMES
VERSION
THAT HID THE FACT
THAT A SOUL CAN AND DOES DIE
(1). Let us
not kill him (soul–nehphesh). Let us not
take his life (soul–nehphesh) New American
Standard, Genesis 37:21.
(2). "Life (soul–nehphesh) for life (soul–nehphesh).
Immortal soul for immortal soul?" Exodus 21:23.
(3). "Any dead body (soul–nehphesh)"
Leviticus 21:11. Any dead soul? Nehphesh is translated dead
body thirteen times in the King James Version.
(4). And he
that killeth a beast shall make it good beast (soul-nephesh) for beast (soul–nehphesh) Leviticus
24:17 King James Version, Life (soul–nehphesh) for life (soul–nehphesh)
(soul for soul?)"
(5). Whosoever
is defiled by the dead (soul–nehphesh)"
Numbers 5:2. Defiled by a dead soul?
(6). He
shall come at no dead body (soul–nehphesh)"
Numbers 6:6 King James Version. "He shall not go near to
a dead person (soul-nehphesh).
(7). And
he that killeth any man (soul–nehphesh) shall
surely be put to death. And he that killeth a beast shall make it good beast
(soul–nehphesh) for beast (soul–nehphesh) (soul
for soul?) Leviticus 24:17-18 King James Version. "And if a
man takes the life (soul–nehphesh) of
any human being." Does anyone believe a person can take the life
of an immortal, immaterial, deathless soul?
(8). "Because
of a dead person (soul–nehphesh)"
Numbers 6:11.
(9). "Defiled
by the dead body of a man (soul–nehphesh)"
Numbers 9:6- 7.
(10). "Unclean
by reason of a dead body (soul–nehphesh)"
Numbers 9:10.
(11). "He
that toucheth the dead body of any man (soul–nehphesh)
Numbers 19:11. Whoever touches a human corpse
(soul–nehphesh)" (New International Version).
(12). Whosoever
toucheth the dead body (soul–nehphesh) of
any man that is dead Numbers 19:13 King James Version. "Anyone
who touches a corpse, the body (soul–nehphesh) of
a man who has died. How could anyone touch the corpse of something
that has no substance and cannot die? By todays definition of soul this says
an immaterial deathless something is dead, and this immaterial something is
touched by a living mortal man. Why did they not translate this soul? If they
had it would have destroyed their pagan belief.
(13). "Whosoever
has killed any person (soul–nehphesh)"
Numbers 31:19.
(14). Which
killeth any person (soul–nehphesh)" Numbers
35:11.
(15). "Everyone
that kills any person (soul–nehphesh) " Numbers
35:15.
(16). "Whoso
kills any person (soul–nehphesh)" Numbers
35:30.
(17). And
slay him (soul–nehphesh) Deuteronomy 19:6.
KJV. "And take his life (soul–nehphesh)."
(18). "And
strikes him so that he (soul–nehphesh) dies" Deuteronomy
19:11.
(19). "Life (soul–nehphesh) for life (soul–nehphesh), eye
for eye, tooth for tooth Deuteronomy 19:21.
(20). "A
man rises against his neighbor and murders him (soul–nehphesh)"
Deuteronomy 22:26.
(21). "Cursed
be he who takes a bride to slay an innocent person (soul–nehphesh)"
Deuteronomy 27:25.
(22). "And deliver our lives (souls–nehpheshs) from
death" Joshua 2:13. Not, Save our immortal, deathless
souls from death.
(23). "Who kills any person (soul–nehphesh)"
Joshua 20:9. Not, Who kills any immortal soul that cannot be killed.
(24). "That kills any person (soul–nehphesh)"
Joshua 20:3.
(25). "Let me (soul–nehphesh) die" Judges
16:30. Not "Let my soul that cannot die, die anyway?"
(26). "And
you lose your life (soul–nehphesh), with
the lives (souls–nehpheshs) of your
household" Judges 18:25.
(27). "If
you do not save your life (soul–nehphesh) tonight" 1
Samuel 19:11.
(28). "The death
of all the persons (souls–nehpheshs) of
your father's house" 1 Samuel 22:22.
(29). "He
that seeks my life (soul–nehphesh) seeks
your life (soul–nehphesh)" 1 Samuel 22:23.
(30). "He
is seeking my life (soul–nehphesh)"
1 Samuel 20:1.
(31). "David
saw that Saul was come out to seek his life (soul–nehphesh)"
1 Samuel 23:15.
(32). "Deliver
him that smote his brother, that we may kill him for the life (soul–nehphesh) of
his brother whom he slew" 2 Samuel 14:7.
(33). "Who
today have saved your life (soul–nehphesh) and
the lives (souls–nehpheshs of your sons and
daughter, the lives (souls–nehpheshs) of your
wives, and the lives (souls–nehpheshs) of
your concubines" 2 Samuel 19:5.
(34). "Have
you asked for the life (soul–nehphesh) of
your enemies" 1 Kings 3:11.
(35). "Prolong
my life (soul–nehphesh)" Job 6:11. Not Prolong
the life of an immortal, deathless soul?
(36). "For
himself that he might die, and said, It is enough; now, O
Lord, take my life (soul–nehphesh)" 1 Kings 19:4.
(37). "A
man that dose violence to the blood of any person (soul–nehphesh) shall
flee unto the pit; let no man stay him" Proverbs 28:17. A person
has blood; if there were an immaterial soul it would have no blood.
(38). "Ammon
has sent Ishmael the son of Nethaniah to take your life (soul–nehphesh)...wherefore
should he take your life (soul–nehphesh)"
Jeremiah 40:14-15.
(39). "By
shedding blood and destroying lives (nehpheshs–living
beings)" Ezekiel 22:27.
PASSAGES IN THE
KING JAMES VERSION THAT CLEARLY
SAYS A SOUL CAN
DIE, OR THAT A SOUL ALREADY DEAD
The same word (nehphesh) that many
times was translated life or person that will die, or is already dead is also
translated into an immortal, deathless soul (nehphesh) that many
believe is in a person (nehphesh) unto the persons (nehphesh) death and they say it (nehphesh) is not the person (nehphesh); nevertheless,
according to the King James Version, that deathless, immortal soul (nehphesh)
will die just as the mortal person
(nehphesh) that it (nehphesh) is in
will die, or that it (nehphesh) is
already dead.
(1). Whatsoever soul (life–nehphesh) it
be that doest any work in the same day, the same soul (life–nehphesh) will
I destroy" Leviticus 23:30 King James Version. That person (nehphesh) will
I destroy."
(2). "And
they smote all the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that
were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there
were none left that breathed" Joshua 11:11.
(3). "He utterly
destroyed them and all the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that
were therein; he left none remaining" Joshua 10:28.
(4). ",
and he smote it with the edge of the sword, and all the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that were therein; he
left none remaining in it" Joshua 10:30.
(5). "
And smote it with he edge of the sword, and all the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that
were therein" Joshua 10:32.
(6). "And
all the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that were
therein he utterly destroyed that day" Joshua
10:35.
(7). "But
he utterly destroyed it, and all the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that
were therein Joshua 10:37.
(8). "And
he captured it and its king and all its cities, and they smote them with the
edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that
were therein Joshua 10:39. Can immortal souls be utterly destroyed
with the sword?
(9). "That
his soul (person–nehphesh) was vexed
to death" Judges 16:16. "Annoyed to
death" New American Standard Version. We say, "He
worried me to dead."
(10). Yet
thou huntest my soul (life–nehphesh) 1
Samuel 24:11 KJV. "You are lying in wait for my soul (life–nehphesh) to
take it" New KJV, American Standard Version.
(11). "To
pursue you and to seek your soul (life–nehphesh)
1 Samuel 25:29. Sometimes nehphesh was translated seek your soul, and
sometimes the same word was translated seek your life. See
12-21 below. Did they think the Hebrew word nehphesh (1) is a mortal person
that both can and will die, (2) or an immortal soul that cannot die?
1. Which sought your life
(nehphesh) 2
Samuel 4:8.
2. Seeking my life (nehphesh) 2 Samuel
16:11.
3. Take away my life (nehphesh) 1. Kings
19:10.
4. They seek my life, (nehphesh) to take it away 1
Kings19:14.
5. Seek after my soul (nehphesh) Psalm 35:4.
6. Seek after my life (nehphesh)
Psalm 38:12.
7. Seek after my soul (nehphesh) Psalm 40:14.
8. Let all those that seek thee
(nehphesh) Psalm
40:16.
9. To slay thee (nehphesh) Jeremiah
40:14.
(12). "The blood
of the souls (persons–nehpheshs) of the
innocent poor" Jeremiah 2:34. Dose an immaterial, invisible soul
that is in a person have no substance, but it has blood!
(13). "To
slay the souls (persons–nehpheshs) that
should not die and to save the souls
(persons–nehpheshs) alive that should not live" Ezekiel
13:19. If a soul were something that is immortal and cannot die, this passage
is completely nonsense.
(14). He
spared not their soul (nehphesh–life) from
death (Psalms 78:50).
(15). "Like
a roaring lion ravening the prey, they have devoured souls (nehpheshs–living
beings)" Ezekiel 22:25.
(16) The soul (nehphesh–life) of
every living thing King James Version (Job 12:10). In
whose hand is the life (nehphesh) of every living
thing."
(17). "He
did not spare their soul (nehphesh–living
being) from death, but gave over their life to the plague, and smote all
the firstborn in Egypt" (Psalm 78:50).
(18). "The soul (person–nehphesh) who
sins will die" Ezekiel 18:4.
(19). Ezekiel
18:20
1.
"The SOUL (person–nehphesh) that
sins, IT SHALL DIE" King James Version.
2.
"The PERSON (nehphesh) who
sins SHALL DIE" New Revised Standard Version.
3.
"The PERSON (nehphesh) who
sins WILL DIE" New American Standard Version, and New
Revised English Bible.
4.
It is the PERSON (nehphesh) who sins
that WILL DIE The Revised English Bible.
5.
"The PERSON (nehphesh) who sins
is the one who WILL DIE" New Century
Version, Holman, and Christian Standard Bible.
6.
It is for a MANS (nehphesh) own sins that
he WILL DIE The Living Bible.
7.
The PERSON (nehphesh) who sins will be
the one who DIES New Living Translation.
8.
Only THOSE (persons–nehphesh) who
sin will be PUT TO DEATH Contemporary English Version.
9.
Only THE ONE (person–nehphesh) who
sins SHALL DIE The New American Bible, and Today's
New International Version.
10.
The PERSON (nehphesh) who sins WILL
DIE God Word Translation.
11. PEOPLE (nehphesh) WILL DIE because of their own sins New
International Reader's Version.
Ezekiel 18:20 is a person dying
(being put to death) for a sin under the Old Testament Law, but by those who
believe there is a soul that will not die when the person it was in dies this
passage is almost always changed to be referring to something that cannot
die. When this is misapply as it often is, to some immaterial something
that is believed to be in a person, this is an undeniable statement that the
immortal something that they say cannot die will die, that if there were a soul
it would not have everlasting life with torment. This is definitely
not what they wanted, but what they made in their attempt to make there be a soul
that is immortal. If "soul" means "an immortal
something that cannot die," then James said, "Shall save from death
an immortal something that cannot die" James 5:20. This theology makes
nonsense of the Bible.
The divine sentence, "The
soul that sins, it shall die" has been revised to say, "The
soul that sins, it shall live eternally in torment." Not only must "die"
be changed to "eternal life" but after making the change then
torment, which is not in Ezekiel 18:20 must be added to it; changed to a soul
that sins, it shall live forever being eternally torment by God. To make it
teach what many want it to teach, first, God's word must be changed, and then
added to.
Shall die in Ezekiel
18:4 is in contrast to shall surely live in Ezekiel 18:9. It
is life or death of a living person under the Law that is being spoken of, not
two kinds of life after death; if death is only a separation of soul and body
as many teach, what is the death of a soul; how can a soul that is alive but
separated from God be dead?
(20). IN OVER 320, over one-third of the about 870 times that
nehphesh, the Hebrew word that is translated or mistranslated soul, it is used
of souls,
1. Of souls
(nehphesh) that are already dead.
2. Of souls
(nehphesh) that can die, and can be killed.
3. Of souls
(nehphesh) that can be buried.
4. Of souls
(nehphesh) that can be sought to be killed.
5. Of souls
(nehphesh) that can be murdered.
6. Of souls
(nehphesh) that can be delivered from death.
7. Of souls
(nehphesh) that can be smote (killed).
8. Of souls (nehphesh)
that can be affected.
9. Of souls
(nehphesh) that can be cut off.
In most of these passages the
translators of the King James and other translations have hidden from the
readers that the very thing they believe to be immortal and cannot die, that it
can and does die. By picking when they translated nehphesh into soul and
picking when to translate "nehphesh" into "life,"
"person" and many other words. Can such hiding have been anything
more then a deliberate deceiving because they wanted to teach Platos Greek
philosophy of a deathless souls in place of the resurrection of dead persons? But
even in the King James Version there are many passages which says that souls
(nehpheshs) can and do die, or that souls are already dead.
Nehphesh (often mistranslated into the pagan Greek deathless, no
substance soul) is a physical person or animal, whether they are living or
dead.
SOULS CAN BE
KILLED BY OTHERS
1. "We feared
greatly for our soul (nehphesh–life, living
being) because of you (Joshua 9:24). They feared
for their life, not for a deathless being that was in them.
2. "All the men
who were seeking your soul (nehphesh–life) are
dead (Exodus 4:19).
3. Saul had come out to seek his life (nehphesh–life,
living being) while David was in the wilderness (1 Samuel
23:15).
4. They had to flee
to save their souls (nehpheshs–lives, living beings) (2
King 7:7), their lives (nehphesh–living being) would be
utterly destroyed "with the edge of the sword" or
other weapons (Joshua 10:27; 10:30; 10:32; 10:35, 10:37; 10:39).
5. And deliver
our lives (nehpheshs–living beings) from death (Joshua
2:13).
SOULS CAN DIE FOR
LACK OF FOOD
Not only could souls
(nehpheshs–living beings) be killed by their enemies, but souls
(nehpheshs–living beings) could also die for lack of food (Lamentations
1:11; Numbers 11:6).
SOULS CAN EAT
FOOD
Leviticus 7:18; 7:20; 7:25; 7:27;
also, Genesis 9:4; 9:5; 12:13; 17:14; 19:17; 19:19; 19:20; 32:30; 32:31; 35:18;
37:21; Exodus 21:23; 30:12; 30:15; 31:14; Leviticus 7:21; 17:11; 17:12; 17:14;
19:8; 21:1; 21:11; 22:3; 24:17; 24:18; Numbers 5:2; 6:6; 9:6; 9:7; 9:10; 9:18;
19:11; 19:13; 19:20; 23:10; 31:19; 35:11; 35:15; 35:30; 35:31; Deuteronomy
12:23; Joshua 11:11; 20:3; 20:9; Judges 5:28; 12:3; 16:16; 18:25; Ruth 4:15; 1
Samuel 1:19; 1:20; 1:23; 23:15; 23:20; 25:29; 28:9; 28:21; 2 Samuel 4:8; 14:7;
16:11; 19:5; 19:6; 1 Kings 1:12; 1:29; 3:11; 17:21; 17:22; 19:10; 19:14; 20:32;
2 Kings 1:13; 19:24; 1 Chronicles 11:19; 2 Chronicles 11:11; Esther 7:7; Job
13:14; 30:16; 33:18; 33:22; 36:14; Psalm 7:2; 17:13; 22:20; 22:21; 22:29;
22:30; 31:13; 33:19; 35:4; 35:17; 38:12; 38:13; 70:2; 70:3; 71:10; Proverbs
1:19; 7:23; 12:10; 13:3; 23:14; Isaiah 10:18; 43:4; Jeremiah 2:34; 4:30;
34:20-21; 38:2; 38:16; 39:18; 40:15; 44:30; 45:5; 49:37; Ezekiel 17:17; 18:4;
18:20; 18:27; 22:25; 22:27; Jonah 4:3; 4:6.
Summary - The "nehphesh
(soul)" of the Old Testament is an earthly being, man, animal, or sea
creature; souls (nehpheshs) can be either living souls or dead souls (dead
persons or animals). The "nehphesh (soul)" can die, it can be dead,
souls can be killed, souls can be sought to kill, souls can be smote, souls can
die from a lack of food or water, souls can be cut off, souls can be murdered,
souls can be delivered from death, souls can be born, souls can live, souls can
sorrow, souls can eat, souls can drink water, souls can desire, souls can be
discontented, souls can be grieved, souls can be bound with a bond, souls can
be affected, souls loathes, souls can lust, souls can have anguish, etc. Not
one of the about 870 times that nehphesh is used it does not have reference to
an invisible, immaterial something in a person that has no substance and cannot
die. Nehphesh in the Old Testament and psukee in the New Testament
are together used about 967 times with over one-third being associated with the
death of a soul (person). Some (nehpheshs–souls) are dead. Some
souls are dying. Some souls are in fear of death. Some souls have those who are
trying to kill them. Some souls are saved from death, etc. On the other
hand, in the 976 times soul is used, not one time is a soul (nehphesh) said to
be deathless or immortal.
In about thirty-two passages souls (nehpheshs) are
spoken of as being killed by man And he that kills any man (nehphesh) shall
surely be put to death. And he that kills a beast (nehphesh) shall
make it good; beast (nehphesh) for beast (nehphesh) Leviticus
24:17-18. In this passage hehphesh is used four times in the Hebrew, but
because of the bias of the translators not one time is it translated soul in
the King James Version. They tranlsated nehphesh into both man and beast to
deliberately hide from their readers that animals are souls (nehpheshs) just
the same as men, that both are living beings that can and do die, (see
Joshua 10:28; 10:30; 10:32; 10:35; 10:37; 10:39; Deuteronomy 27:25; Leviticus
24:17-18).
THE WAY THE FOUR
TIMES NEHPHESH
IS TRANSLATED IN
LEVITICUS 24:17-18
As it is in the
Hebrew
And he that
kills any NEHPHESH shall surely be put to death. And he that
kills a NEHPHESH shall make it good; NEHPHESH for NEHPHESH.
As it is in the
King James Version
And he that
kills any MAN shall
surely be put to death. And he that kills a BEAST shall make
it good; BEAST for BEAST.
As it is in the
New American Standard Bible
And if a man
takes the LIFE of any human being, he shall surely be put to
death. And the one who takes the LIFE of an animal shall make
it good, LIFE for LIFE.
In about thirteen passages
souls (nehpheshs) of men are said to be actually dead (see
Numbers 6:6; Leviticus 21:11). In many of these passages, the King James
Version and others translated nehphesh as life or body; and the English reader
cannot see that animals are souls (are living beings), and
that man kills souls of both men and animals, and sometimes souls are
actually dead. Under the Law anyone that touched a dead body (a dead nehphesh) was
unclean. Dead body (nehphesh) Leviticus 21:11 Dead
body (nehphesh) Numbers
6:6. Corpses are dead souls, and anyone (any living souls-persons) who came in
contact with a dead soul (corpses, dead body) was unclean.
This clearly shows that the meaning
of the Hebrew word nehphesh is something that is not immortal, and that it can
die, or that it can be already dead, and that it can be touched when it is
dead. There is no other word in the
Bible that could be translated into Plato's immortal soul; therefore, the
translators had to use this word and hide, the best they could, the fact that a
nehphesh can and does die.
Of the hundreds of times Nehphesh is
used in the Old Testament only five are used in the same passage as sheol.
Of these five in the Kings James Version sheol is translated Hell
three times (Psalm 16:10; 86:13; Proverbs 23:14). The other two they had to
translate it grave (Psalm 30:3; 89:48).
In most translations nehphesh is
sometimes translated to be immortal, sometime as mortal, often in the same
passages. How could it be known when the same word even it is in the same
passage when it is something that is mortal and when it is something that is
immortal? The only answer is that the translators were trying to put Platos
immortal soul in the Bible by mistranslating when they could, but many times
found nehphesh would not make sense if translated into something immortal and
deathless.
==================================================
The Companion Bible, Appendix 13 says nehphesh (life–soul)
is used
1. Of the lower
animals (nehpheshs–souls) in 22 passages.
2. Of the lower
animals and man (nehpheshs–souls) in 7 passages.
3. Of man
(nehphesh–soul) as an individual person in 53 passages.
4. Of man (nehphesh–soul)
as exercising certain powers or performing certain acts in 96 passages.
5. Of man
(nehphesh–soul) as possessing animal appetites and desires in 92
passages.
6. Of man
(nehphesh–soul) as exercising mental faculties and manifesting certain
feelings, affection and passions in 231 passages.
7. Of man
(nehphesh–soul) being cut off by God and as being killed or slain by man
in 54 passages.
8. Of man
(nehphesh–soul) as being mortal, subject to death of various kinds, from
which it can be saved and delivered and life prolonged in 243 passages.
9. Of man
(nehphesh–soul) as actually dead in 13 passages.
====================================================
Just one of the many examples of the
absurdity of the translations of nehphesh in the King James Version with the meaning
of "soul" as it is used today, an invisible, no substance something
that is in a person that no one has ever seen, that no one can see this
immortal something that cannot be seen. "For mine enemies speak
against me; and they that lay wait for my soul (nehphesh) take
counsel together" (Psalm 71:10). How could anyone lay in wait
(ambush) for an undying invisible something that is now in a person that no one
can see; how could anyone kill something that cannot die even if they could see
it?
"Deliver my soul" (nehphesh)
Psalm 17:13 in today's English it would be "Save my life" (nehphesh).
1. "They also that seek after my life" (soul–nehphesh) Psalm 38:12. "That seeks
after my soul" (nehphesh) Psalm 40:14. Both soul and life are
from the same word (nehphesh). Why were the translators so inconsistent; life
and soul, according to the theology they believed, are two completely different
things, yet they translated both from the same Hebrew word many times.
2. "They smote all the souls (nehpheshs)" Joshua 11:11 in today's
English it would be, "They killed all the people." "Whosoever
kills any person" (soul–nehphesh) Joshua 20:9.
Again, both soul and person are translated from the same Hebrew word; they
could smite (kill) all the persons, but to smite (kill) all the deathless souls
would be completely impossible, but the King James Version says they did the
impossible.
3. "They that lay wait for my soul" (nehphesh) in today's English it would be,
"They that are waiting in ambush for my life" Psalm
70:10.
Many more times "soul" (nehphesh)
would only make sense if translated "life." To apply
today's meaning, "An undying invisible something that is now in a
person" makes many passages be total nonsense. Today's meaning of "soul" is
very different from the meaning of nehphesh in Biblical times, which
makes "soul" be a mistranslation every time they
changed nehphesh to soul. When anyone reads the Bible, and reads "soul," and
knows only what the word "soul" means today, they
cannot understand what God said. Many English translations use "soul" and "person" interchangeable.
The Revised Standard used "person" frequently where the
King James used "soul." The problem is that most English
readers would not know that when the translators said a "person" died,
that the translators are hiding the fact that in many places person (nehphesh) that cannot keep from
dying is the same word that they translated soul, something that they believed cannot die. Why did some
translators do this? Was it because they believed an immortal "soul" cannot
die, but a person can die? If a soul (nehphesh) dies, it would not be
immortal; therefore, they were forced to use person or "life" in
many places to hide the fact from you that a nehphesh can die. The truth is
that they were trying to put "soul" with today's meaning in the Bible
despite the fact that it is not there. If they had been consistent in
translating, they would not have been able to add the doctrine of an undying
soul in the Bible.
"The Lord of hosts has sworn by Himself (soul–nehphesh)"
(Jeremiah 51:14). By His own being or person. God "could swear by
no one greater, He swore by Himself (psukee–soul)" (Hebrews
6:13). Not even the King James translators wanted God to have an invisible
something in Him that would live after He was dead. God's nehphesh and man's
nehphesh are their being, person, not an invisible something that is not in a
person or in God.
All the Old Testament words, which
are translated life, spirit, breath, or soul, are all used referring to both persons
and animals. Every word that is used to prove a person has an immortal soul or
an immortal spirit would also prove all breathing creatures have an immortal
soul or an immortal spirit if they proved a person does.
(1)
NEHPHESH, SOUL–LIFE–LIVING BEING is used to
describe all living beings.
1. Animal, birds, reptiles, and insects have this same nehphesh (soul–life) that a person
has. Sea creatures, birds (Genesis 1:20), every living creature that moves in
water or on land are living souls (Genesis 1:21). Every beast, bird, and insect
is a nehphesh, are living beings.
2. "Man became a living being" Genesis 2:7. See Genesis 2:19; 9:4; 9:10; 9:12; 9:15-16.