Genesis in detail

I think this subject is very broad, and we're really not discussing the transliteration, but the translation. I am re-posting what I put in the other thread, minus what I said about starting a new thread. I suggest we start with the word nefesh and go from there after you've made an attempt at showing it does imply an immortal soul etc using the Torah itself to prove it and no outside source, exegisis, or translation as the primary basis of your argument. That doesn't mean you can't use a translation, but you have to show that untranslated the word nefesh would still clearly mean soul. Just because someone translated it that way doesn't make it correct. If it means what you say it does, show how the text makes it obvious.

What I said before:

If I want to know what the Hebrew word is, I look at the [masoretic] text. The reason your translation fails is because it is a translation from a semitic language into English based on your worldview. I would suggest not doing what you are doing and instead working closely with a lexicon to check the context of the many places each word appears. I will submit my problems with your translation as they relate to our discussion... If you want a better idea of how I would understand the text to have originally been meant, see if you can find a copy of Everett Fox' translation of the Torah at a library. On to only my issues as they relate to the issue of the mentiion of a soul:

You translate nefesh as soul. Why? How do you know that nefesh means soul? Pull out a lexicon. Look up every place you can find it in the Torah (Nothing later than the Torah as we are only discussing Torah) and ignore how the word is translated. Just use nefesh instead of the translation and based on the context see what makes the most sense. If you don't know a word that fits best, make up a compound word, but make no assumptions. Go only by context. Don't assume anything about the meaning.

I don't see anything else that relates as there is nothing else that you have translated in a way that would indicate a soul.

And now for a couple specific examples from me where the context clearly does not suggest soul:

"When Re'uven heard it he tried to rescue him from their hand, he said:
Let us not take his nefesh!"

Gen 37:21

"But if harm should occur,
then you are to give nefesh in place of nefesh"

Ex 21:23 speaking of the punishment for two men in a scuffle bumping into a pregnant woman and killing her.

"When a man is found to have stolen a nefesh from his brother,
from the Children of Israel,
and he deals-treacherously with him and sells him;
die that thief shall;
so shall you burn out the evil from your midst!"

Deut. 24: 7

The translation of nefesh as soul is not adequate, nor is it warranted by the text, nor does the text ever say the nefesh continues after the person dies. If you disagree, please back it up with quotes from Torah that are fairly easy to see without explanation.

Dauer

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And one thing I would ask is how your sources translate nefesh in these places and how you understand the differences in their translation.

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If the nephesh is not the soul then why were animals sacrificed in the OT? The body of the animal was to atone for the physical health and healing of the people and the soul was to atone for their sin...

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RexRed wrote:

If the nephesh is not the soul then why were animals sacrificed in the OT? The body of the animal was to atone for the physical health and healing of the people and the soul was to atone for their sin...

You've just said a bunch of stuff that you didn't back up in any way. This is what I mean by later sources. Where does it say that the body of the animal was to atone for the physical health and healing of the people and that the soul was to atone for their sin? And where do you get the idea that the main purpose of the qorban was to atone for sin? Do you know what root the word qorban is derived from? In English qorban is translated as sacrifice but in Hebrew it means the opposite. It means coming close/drawing near. Do you know why qorbanot usually happened?

When you can answer my questions about the evidence for your claims then I'll be able to answer yours. Please only use Torah. You haven't shown me anything yet and I took the time to find some sources for you. Thank you.

Dauer

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I forgot to mention something (please read Leviticus) but oftentimes much of the body was actually eaten. It seems like you're making many assumptions about the text without having much familiarity with the text itself.

Dauer

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I don't think I can always remain in the rigid frame of the pentateuch because the books that come after provoke, and thoughts crystallize and further the meaning of the Torah (especially when it comes to Jesus Christ and my Christian understanding). But... I will try to reason with you in the posts to come and see if the concept of keeping the Torah's meaning "pure" has any profit.

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I want to get the transliterated words together with the english ones on this website I am making because I have a few things to say about them. If you know of a website that has this done already then please leave a link here.

I will give you a hint... notice how the Hebrew words rhyme in the verses? Not rhyming as we rhyme but a whole different take on it...

In the second verse of Genesis notice the words

without form [Tohuw], and void [Bohuw];

yielding [Zara`] seed [Zera`],

bring forth abundantly [Sharats] the moving creature [Sherets]

Let us make [`asah] man ['adam] in our image

this is like a chant!

do you see what I am getting at?

and ['eth] the earth ['erets].

If you can all pull some more of these out of this text I would be interested. There are tons of them.

Why are these rhymes of significance?

I think because they flow smoothly from one state to another...

No one just writing unconsciously would put this many of this type of rhyme in two little chapters.

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RexRed wrote:

I don't think I can always remain in the rigid frame of the pentateuch because the books that come after provoke, and thoughts crystallize and further the meaning of the Torah (especially when it comes to Jesus Christ and my Christian understanding). But... I will try to reason with you in the posts to come and see if the concept of keeping the Torah's meaning "pure" has any profit.

I don't believe that what the Torah says is Truth. I'm not concerned with Truth. I'm concerned with what the authors of the Torah believed. What makes this difficult is because you believe you have Truth and that this Truth incorporates later books into the same framework. What the authors of the Torah believed has no bearing on my personal beliefs. I was merely making a reference to the fact that they never make mention of an immortal soul, or any soul separate from the body, and you have yet to show me otherwise. You're just dancing around the issue.

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If you can all pull some more of these out of this text I would be interested. There are tons of them.

Why are these rhymes of significance?

It's just like any other work of literature. There are many stylistic devices, not to mention that it was originally designed to be read aloud. If you would like to see something that reconstructs the structure of the Hebrew in English and also explains some of the structure in Hebrew as it goes along, Fox' translation is great for that. I'll give you an example of what his translation looks like. This is an example of the biblical use of repetition from Gen 6:11-13.

Now the earth had gone to ruin before God; the earth was filled with
wrongdoing.
God saw the earth, and here: it had gone to ruin,
for all flesh had ruined its way upon the earth.

God said to Noah:
An end of all flesh has come before me,
for the earth is filled with wrongdoing through them;
here, I will bring ruin upon them, along with the earth.

That's something Torah does a lot. This is an example of what you call rhyming from Gen. 30:23-24

She said:
God has removed/asaf
my reproach.
And she called his name: Yosef,
saying:
May YHWH add/yosef
another son to me.

One more example:

Any widow or orphan you are not to afflict.
Oh, if you afflict them...!
For (then) they will cry, cry out to me,
and I will hearken, hearken to their cry,
my anger will flare up
and I will kill you with the sword,
so that your wives become widows, and your children,
orphans!

Ex 22:23-24

But you have not answered my questions I posed to you with sources, unless you admit that there really is no clear evidence of a soul in Torah, and rather that nefesh seems to mean something else based on the sources I have provided. If you do not have counter-sources, it must have meant something else at that time.

Dauer

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It's a truly magnificent human work but the fact that it contains literary design does not make it a divine creation. If we make it a divine creation because of that, the Iliad is also a divine creation.

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dauer wrote:

It's a truly magnificent human work but the fact that it contains literary design does not make it a divine creation. If we make it a divine creation because of that, the Iliad is also a divine creation.

I am still doing some research I want to get the main words of Genesis and decern if the three words are used... made, formed and created...

If they are used then Isaiah is right about body, soul and spirit in Genesis. Isaiah uses three words with almost similar meanings in the same verse. If they had the same meaning he would not have needed to use all three. The fact that he uses three and not just two, like made and created, but no he also uses the word formed.

Well I would venture to guess that Isaiah's understanding of the Hebrew language far surpasses either of ours. He saw a three part being and based it solely on his understanding of Genesis and his knowledge of ancient Hebrew.

I have found the words made, formed and created in in the Hebrew text of Genesis and they correspond to God forming the body from the dust of the ground. God making the soul and creating the spirit..

They are in Genesis just as Isaiah said. So what is the rub? God did not form the soul it says he made it. God did not make the spirit he created it and God did not create the body but he formed it.

I think it comes down to are you going to believe what is written over tradition? I would agree with you that these words mean the same but not when they are used in the same sentence then that to me indicates they have subtle but different meanings..

Made is not formed and formed is not made they are two entirely different acts of God.

God made man a soul...

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I told you: parallelism.

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parallelism

Literary device in which grammatical or semantic elements repeat. Parallelism is commonly classified as synonymous, antithetical, or synthetic, following the system of Robert Lowth in the 18th century. These categories are not always adequate, but they do offer a starting point. For example, Psalm 18:8 is an example of synonymous parallelism: "Smoke went up from his nostrils / and devouring fire from his mouth / glowing coals flamed forth from him" (NRSV). Note that the repeated meanings are not identical, but rather seem to build on one another. Some other types of parallelism include chiastic and staircase. Parallelism is one of the most important features of Hebrew poetry.

http://www.read-the-bible.org/glossary.html#P

And I don't see man being made, formed, and created, unless you're combining the two creation stories. In the first creation story, it uses ayin sin hei to say "Let us make" which is not making, but is declaring what will happen in the next statement. Then, it uses the root bet resh alef for create, and it repeats it. If you have been paying attention to my posts, then you know that the way the Torah emphasizes things is by repeating words and phrases. For example, within Gen 2:1-3 God, the seventh day, work, and made are mentioned three times, finished, ceased, and all are mentioned twice, and created is mentioned again, echoing its earlier mentioning.

In the second creation story, the verb from the root yod tzadi resh is used for "The LORD God formed man" And then I see no other mention of man being created.

But addressing Isaiah, Isaiah is a later author and later authors do exegesis to expand on the text. However, this is another translation:

"7. Everyone that is called by My name, and whom I created for My glory, I formed him, yea I made him."

Here the use of paralellism can more clearly be seen. It's a literary device used many, many times in biblical literature.

I think what it comes down to is understanding what the text itself means or understanding it in a religious context. I do both but for the historicity I'm not interested in what later authors had to say about it.

Dauer

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dauer wrote:

I told you: parallelism.

Quote:
parallelism

Literary device in which grammatical or semantic elements repeat. Parallelism is commonly classified as synonymous, antithetical, or synthetic, following the system of Robert Lowth in the 18th century. These categories are not always adequate, but they do offer a starting point. For example, Psalm 18:8 is an example of synonymous parallelism: "Smoke went up from his nostrils / and devouring fire from his mouth / glowing coals flamed forth from him" (NRSV). Note that the repeated meanings are not identical, but rather seem to build on one another. Some other types of parallelism include chiastic and staircase. Parallelism is one of the most important features of Hebrew poetry.

http://www.read-the-bible.org/glossary.html#P

And I don't see man being made, formed, and created, unless you're combining the two creation stories. In the first creation story, it uses ayin sin hei to say "Let us make" which is not making, but is declaring what will happen in the next statement. Then, it uses the root bet resh alef for create, and it repeats it. If you have been paying attention to my posts, then you know that the way the Torah emphasizes things is by repeating words and phrases. For example, within Gen 2:1-3 God, the seventh day, work, and made are mentioned three times, finished, ceased, and all are mentioned twice, and created is mentioned again, echoing its earlier mentioning.

In the second creation story, the verb from the root yod tzadi resh is used for "The LORD God formed man" And then I see no other mention of man being created.

But addressing Isaiah, Isaiah is a later author and later authors do exegesis to expand on the text. However, this is another translation:

"7. Everyone that is called by My name, and whom I created for My glory, I formed him, yea I made him."

Here the use of paralellism can more clearly be seen. It's a literary device used many, many times in biblical literature.

I think what it comes down to is understanding what the text itself means or understanding it in a religious context. I do both but for the historicity I'm not interested in what later authors had to say about it.

Dauer

Ok I will ask you a question then...

If you had to in light of Genesis categorize a basic human being would you classify them as having only a body or only a soul. Do all bodies have souls? If not why if so why not?

Add rusting iron with ocean foam and it will spontaneously grow into life?

Life is passes on from all living creature to it's offspring. When a body breaths it's last breath and lies still and cold. Is it still the same body it was before it expired? No it is only a physical mass. The living force that was inherited from the parents has been vacated.

Well it is interesting to note how powerful the life force is. Like when people get just struck down dead and die... doesn't happen very often... they usually die of natural causes not the soul just shutting off.

Until scientists take and create DNA completely from scratch and completely assemble the mitochondria without borrowing existing forms and see if it works... we will really not know for sure.

When we look at the building blocks of DNA it is not just DNA alone that makes a human but it is also the mitochondria the cell wall that is just as involved in the process. So within each cell is already placed dual elements. DNA versus mitochondria. Somewhere in this soup of stuff is life. All living creatures have this cellular from, both interdependently coexist but are separate pieces of human development... body and soul. There is also messenger RNA

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/biology/bio054.htm

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RexRed wrote:

Ok I will ask you a question then...

That's very bold of you, considering you don't answer my questions. But before I humor you I will point out that you are treating the text like a revealer of Truth whereas I am simply treating it as an ancient text that reveals the mentality of an ancient civilization with no more access to Truth than any other.

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If you had to in light of Genesis categorize a basic human being would you classify them as having only a body or only a soul.

Why is it only one or the other? Based on the textual evidence, that is the other quotes from the Torah which I supplied earlier, it appears that nefesh could best be translated as life, although the word is a little more ambiguous than that. God gives man life and that is all. There is no mention of an afterlife in Torah, nor is there anything to suggest the nefesh is a separate soul.

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Do all bodies have souls? If not why if so why not?

Do you mean human bodies? There is nothing to indicate that any human bodies do not have nefashot/life. Adam, after all, means man.

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Add rusting iron with ocean foam and it will spontaneously grow into life?

What on earth are you talking about?

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Life is passes on from all living creature to it's offspring. When a body breaths it's last breath and lies still and cold. Is it still the same body it was before it expired? No it is only a physical mass. The living force that was inherited from the parents has been vacated.

You mean that the nefesh/life is gone? Well duh. What's your point?

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Well it is interesting to note how powerful the life force is. Like when people get just struck down dead and die... doesn't happen very often... they usually die of natural causes not the soul just shutting off.

Why are you using the word soul in this conversation without backing up your reason for using it? People die horribly all the time. Go to Africa. And what does that have to do with what the Ancient Hebrews believed?

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Until scientists take and create DNA completely from scratch and completely assemble the mitochondria without borrowing existing forms and see if it works... we will really not know for sure.

What does that have to do with what the Ancient Hebrews believed?

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When we look at the building blocks of DNA it is not just DNA alone that makes a human but it is also the mitochondria the cell wall that is just as involved in the process. So within each cell is already placed dual elements. DNA versus mitochondria. Somewhere in this soup of stuff is life. All living creatures have this cellular from, both interdependently coexist but are separate pieces of human development... body and soul. There is also messenger RNA

How does any of that have anything to do with the soul? Let me say what you said in a different way so you can see what it looks like to me:

When we look at the building blocks of the body it is not just the brain alone that makes a human but it is also the heart and liver that are involved in the process.

What's any of that got to do with the soul? Are you saying that DNA equals the soul and mitochondria equals the physical body? That doesn't make sense to me and has nothing to do with what the Torah says.

And then you mention messenger RNA, which really refutes you. Because DNA can't be the soul. DNA can be divided too into smaller components each fulfilling a different task. And the DNA itself and be divided into the different amino acids that are used for programming, which varies in the mRNA. And none of this has anything to do with what Genesis meant when it was written. You have been unable to answer my questions and so you try to give me different answers that don't answer my questions. I have no interest in reconciling Genesis with modern science right now as this entire conversation is about historicity. If you try to justify your beliefs about the text by using science, I'm not going to be interested. I'll be interested in what the text actually says. Show me with the text itself. Show me with Torah.

Dauer

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God made the soul... all animals posess one so do humans. It is not a "person" or something that has an eternal life. It is simply the force in nature that accompanies the flesh and gives it life.

When a person dies their soul is dissipated into the air where it came from and is gone forever. Are we in disagreement? Also if you think that this breathe of life is somewhere in our cells... If this is not interesting to you then I will just take it up in another post.

I am not saying what is what in the cells because I have not really had time to study them as much as I would like to. But the design and architecture of life is divinely conceived. Does God know what cells are? God must have known what they are when he created heavens and the earth in Genesis. Are you denying that DNA exists? I mean I don't get it.

DNA must have been relevant when God planned the body/flesh... Somewhere in our DNA is the breath of life. The Bible says life is in the blood it doesn't say life is the blood. Why would the Bible need to even mention the blood? Isn't that too much detail?

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RexRed wrote:

God made the soul...

Where does it say God made the soul? You haven't shown the the soul is ever mentioned in the Torah. You keep mentioning unrelated literature. Show me with quotes from the Torah that nefesh means soul. I have shown you with quotes that nefesh means something more like life.

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all animals posess one so do humans.

We know of animals that the nefesh is in the blood, but put this side-by-side with what else we know:

"When Re'uven heard it he tried to rescue him from their hand, he said:
Let us not take his nefesh!"

Gen 37:21

"But if harm should occur,
then you are to give nefesh in place of nefesh"

Ex 21:23 speaking of the punishment for two men in a scuffle bumping into a pregnant woman and killing her.

"When a man is found to have stolen a nefesh from his brother,
from the Children of Israel,
and he deals-treacherously with him and sells him;
die that thief shall;
so shall you burn out the evil from your midst!"

Deut. 24: 7

I have shown you what the text itself says. You have offered justifications with no basis in the text. Feel free to believe what you want but remember this started when you challenged my assertion that there isn't any real evidence the people of the Torah believed in a separate soul or an immortal soul. You have not presented anything to prove me wrong.

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It is not a "person" or something that has an eternal life. It is simply the force in nature that accompanies the flesh and gives it life.

So you are redefining the soul then? Are you saying there is no immortal soul and no afterlife? What evidence do you have in the text itself (you have not once used the text itself in a straightforward manner) to show that the soul is a separate and concrete thing?

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When a person dies their soul is dissipated into the air where it came from and is gone forever. Are we in disagreement?

Theologically, yes. I don't believe the soul is physical, or in any way manifest, although I could be wrong. But as far as the text is concerned, we are in disagreement as well. Please demonstrate that this is what the text is saying using the text itself. You have not shown yet that there is a soul mentioned in the text. This next question you must answer before you can begin to say anything beyond it: "What makes you believe that nefesh meant soul based on the Torah alone and no other sources?"

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Also if you think that this breathe of life is somewhere in our cells...

I think the concept "breath of life" is quite clear. It is breathed into the nostrils. The breath of life is that breath which leaves us with death. It is breathing itself. What would suggest to you that it means otherwise? It could be suggested that the breath of life is only the first breath breathed, but that has nothing to do with the soul. I would think it is all of breath because it is called "breath of life."

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If this is not interesting to you then I will just take it up in another post.

I like to do things in an orderly fashion. You have not made a case for the interpretation of a soul in genesis using the text itself. Yet you still insist on talking about the soul as if it relates to the conversation thus far. Please deal with the first things first and the second things second.

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I am not saying what is what in the cells because I have not really had time to study them as much as I would like to. But the design and architecture of life is divinely conceived.

How do you know? That is an assumption. How did you get to that assumption? You can't start at point "D." Start at point "A" and we'll work our way along until we get to "D." How do you know that there is a design and architecture to life? Why can't life have been created due to random chance?

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Does God know what cells are? God must have known what they are when he created heavens and the earth in Genesis.

I said this before: I do not limit my beliefs to what the Torah says. I find meaning in the Torah and midrashically I will find ways to gain greater meaning out of even those things that might mean less to me, but I don't believe Torah is any more from God than anything else. Sometimes I approach it looking for spiritual meaning but this conversation has been almost solely about the historical meaning. All searches into the text are in some way spiritual for me even if they remain entirely critical but I've digressed. While I don't deny that God created the world, I don't assume that God created the world either, nor do I assume, if God created the world, what exactly that process might have entailed on the part of God, nor do I assume that God must have some sort of intellect, nor do I deny that, although typically I am working within the paradigm of God as active in every moment in every place but never interfering with the laws of physics. I don't think this is Truth more than any other model, but it's useful. I've digressed again.

This conversation is about what the authors of Torah believed, not what I think I should believe because of their beliefs, and while at other times I will freely project my beliefs backward onto the ancient text, right now I am only concerning myself with what the text itself seems to imply.

I don't believe that the text conveys a Truth beyond all truths (a capitalized T implies an eternal, universal truth while a lower-case t implies a subjective, situational truth) and am only trying to discern the actual beliefs of an ancient people. You are coming from a very different place and I don't think our views can be reconciled.

You see the text as timeless, and therefore what makes sense to you must have made sense then. And what doesn't make sense now couldn't have been intended originally. Please correct me if I've misinterpreted your views.

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The Bible says life is in the blood it doesn't say life is the blood.

That's semantics. It can mean the same thing either way.

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Why would the Bible need to even mention the blood? Isn't that too much detail?

Too much blood loss and something dies. Same with the breath of life. When the breath stops, something dies. These are the two major signs of life and death. Since the life is in the blood, the blood can be spilled and returned to the earth. This is like other cultures where the bufallo god is thanked for bringing a bufallo to be killed. By spilling the blood onto earth, covering it, and not eating it, this is symbolically not partaking in the life of the animal. It shows up all over the world where cultures devise ways to cope with the guilt of taking the lives of animals.

Dauer

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I am not redefining my position on the fly... I will tell you if I am doing so... I do not believe in the immortality of the soul and have not believed in it for over twenty years.... I believe the soul is breath life and the body is simply a physical vessel for the soul.

I have not been quoting the scriptures to you because I thought I had made the point evident.

If you choose to take three words used in the same sentence (Isaiah) and amalgamate them to mean the same thing then that is your choice. I do not believe this is exegesis as you speak but what is written and meant in Genesis. I do believe they have similar meanings but definitely not identical meanings.. I do not think God used them to mean the same thing and I believe they show what Isaiah was trying to say.
Genesis

2:7 And the LORD [Yahovah] God ['elohiym] formed [Yatsar] man ['adam] of the dust of the ground

Yatsar = formed

Genesis
1:27 So God ['elohiym] created [Bara'] man ['adam] in his own image [Tselem]

Bara' = Created

breathed into his nostrils the breath [Nashamah] of life [Chay]; and man ['adam] became a living [Chay] soul. [Nephesh]

God formed the body then where did the "breath of nephesh" come from? It is understandable that God formed the body from the earth but nephesh is air and cannot be "formed"... air is actually formless...

But the Bible does say that God made things too...

1:31 And God ['elohiym] saw every thing that ['aher] he had made [`asah], and, behold, it was very [Ma`od] good [Towb].

Made = 'asah

Isaiah 43:7
Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created [Bara'] for My glory; I have formed [Yatsar] him, yes, I have made ['asah] him."

I think I will believe Isaiah's assessment over yours.
God made the soul...

Jeremiah 38:16
So Zedekiah the king sware secretly unto Jeremiah, saying, As the LORD liveth, that made ['asah] us this soul [nephesh] , I will not put thee to death, neither will I give thee into the hand of these men that seek thy life.

You are contradicting Jeremiah too..

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RexRed wrote:

I am not redefining my position on the fly... I will tell you if I am doing so... I do not believe in the immortality of the soul and have not believed in it for over twenty years.... I believe the soul is breath life and the body is simply a physical vessel for the soul.

Well I'm glad you've said that because for a while I was thinking you were one of the kids who came from that high school.

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I have not been quoting the scriptures to you because I thought I had made the point evident.

You may have made your point evident, but you have not shown that the Torah speaks of a soul as I will now demonstrate.

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If you choose to take three words used in the same sentence (Isaiah) and amalgamate them to mean the same thing then that is your choice.

The entire Tanach, and also the Greek Testament for that matter, speaks in the languages of the cultures of its authors. This includes all of the literary effects and idiosincracies that come with a foreign text. From the glossary I quoted from before, and I've included the separate entry on synonymous parallelism:

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parallelism
Literary device in which grammatical or semantic elements repeat. Parallelism is commonly classified as synonymous, antithetical, or synthetic, following the system of Robert Lowth in the 18th century. These categories are not always adequate, but they do offer a starting point. For example, Psalm 18:8 is an example of synonymous parallelism: "Smoke went up from his nostrils / and devouring fire from his mouth / glowing coals flamed forth from him" (NRSV). Note that the repeated meanings are not identical, but rather seem to build on one another. Some other types of parallelism include chiastic and staircase. Parallelism is one of the most important features of Hebrew poetry.

synonymous parallelism
Literary device in which repeated elements have the same or similar meaning. For example, in Psalm 2:10 "Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth" (NRSV), the two clauses mean nearly the same thing. Other types of parallelism include antithetical, and synthetic.

They don't mean exactly the same thing, nor do many synonyms in English. The form of a parallelism, as you have seen, will use similar statements that don't necessarily equal one another to say the same thing.

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I do not believe this is exegesis as you speak but what is written and meant in Genesis.

You're entitled to your beliefs.

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I do not think God used them to mean the same thing and I believe they show what Isaiah was trying to say.

This is where we come to a communication difficulty. I'm not looking for what God's saying. I'm looking for what my ancient ancestors may have actually believed. I don't believe the text is in any uniquely way divine. A question though: How can this show what Isaiah was trying to say? And how do you know what Isaiah was trying to say? So far you have been unable to deliver any concrete evidence, nor have you been able to explain my examples of occurances of the word nefesh where it cannot mean soul.

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Genesis

2:7 And the LORD [Yahovah] God ['elohiym] formed [Yatsar] man ['adam] of the dust of the ground

Yatsar = formed

This is in 2:7. This is the second creation story, the one that deals specifically with man and the garden.

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Genesis
1:27 So God ['elohiym] created [Bara'] man ['adam] in his own image [Tselem]

Bara' = Created

This is 1:27, the first creation story that deals with cosmology, the seven days. Why do you fuse them?

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breathed into his nostrils the breath [Nashamah] of life [Chay]; and man ['adam] became a living [Chay] soul. [Nephesh]

Why do you continue to translate it as soul, when you have not shown that it means soul? You would be better off leaving it as nefesh and not worrying about translation. The text will make the most likely translation clear.

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God formed the body then where did the "breath of nephesh" come from?

It doesn'tt say "breath of nefesh." It says nishmat chayyim. If you're really concerned with the lack of synonymity in biblical Hebrew please don't confuse terms. The breath of life, however, I already addressed. The breath of life is the breath of the living. Before Adam was alive, he did not breathe. Picture, if you will, a man formed out of the earth by a god. To bring the man to life, the god blows through his nostrils and fills his lungs with air. The man begins breathing. One of the fun things about Torah is that it leaves out all of the details, which means there's so much room for theological interpretation. But that is not useful when trying to understand what the text originally meant.

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It is understandable that God formed the body from the earth but nephesh is air and cannot be "formed"... air is actually formless...

Right, but that has no bearing on God giving man the breath of life, the ability to breathe which is the final hammer blow to finish the creation.

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But the Bible does say that God made things too...

1:31 And God ['elohiym] saw every thing that ['aher] he had made [`asah], and, behold, it was very [Ma`od] good [Towb].

Made = 'asah

I don't think that's the reference Isaiah was making. That reinforces my position that it's synonymous because, after all, there it's being used for the same thing as bara. He may have seen that. I think he was talking about verse 1:26 which refers to man. But it's still synonymous. Stylistically however, there's something Isaiah did that I think is beautiful. He reversed the order. I don't know why he did it but I doubt that it was accidental.

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Isaiah 43:7
Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created [Bara'] for My glory; I have formed [Yatsar] him, yes, I have made ['asah] him."

I think I will believe Isaiah's assessment over yours.
God made the soul...

Where did Isaiah say that? You are reading that into Isaiah. Is not possible Isaiah is simply making a reference back to the creation story which uses this very pattern of words in reverse? Even if Isaiah was inferring a soul, he didn't live at the time the creation stories were created.

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Jeremiah 38:16
So Zedekiah the king sware secretly unto Jeremiah, saying, As the LORD liveth, that made ['asah] us this soul [nephesh] , I will not put thee to death, neither will I give thee into the hand of these men that seek thy life.

You are contradicting Jeremiah too..

No, you are mistranslating because you consistently translate nefesh as soul. Why not leave it untranslated every time it occurs? It is your translation that I violate, but the hebrew I do not violate.

Dauer

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Daur

If it is the problem you are having with the English word soul, well I might remark that that is the whole point of a translation. To attach and English word to a Hebrew word. The translators of the Bible chose to use the word soul. This does not negate in any way that people are confused about the issue to no end.

But even English speaking people are able to comprehend the life force that is in all living beings and we call that a soul. That does not mean that people do not take that word soul and pervert it's meaning till it is meaningless. But it still stands for the living aspect of all creatures i.e. fish snakes cattle birds humans.

Now "spirit" is the word that the Bible uses to indicate a thing that God created in humans only... it is aside from the soul (nephesh). I might also mention that there are not only living (chay) souls mentioned in the Bible but there are also dead (Muwth) souls.

Numbers 19:3
Whosoever toucheth the dead (Muwth) body (nephesh) of any man that is dead (Muwth), and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the LORD; and that soul (nephesh) shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him.

Comment:
Humans do need physical food for the maintenance of their physical body. But a human has more than just the physical body to care for. A human's soul needs nourishment also. The soul cannot be sustained by mashed potatoes, gravy and steak.

Matthew 4:4 declares that man shall live not only by bread "but by every word..." We need not just a word here and a word there; not one verse here and another verse there; "but every word that proeeedeth out of the mouth of God." The word of God is that food required by the soul (nephesh)...

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RexRed wrote:

Daur

If it is the problem you are having with the English word soul, well I might remark that that is the whole point of a translation. To attach and English word to a Hebrew word. The translators of the Bible chose to use the word soul. This does not negate in any way that people are confused about the issue to no end.

Just because it has at times been translated by some translators as the word soul does not make it correct. There are many words that cannot translate directly from biblical Hebrew to modern English: qorban, nefesh, tzedakah. But it's done anyway. If you want to know what a word really means, leave it untranslated in context and in some cases it is also important to check what the root means and what other words derived from the root mean.

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But even English speaking people are able to comprehend the life force that is in all living beings and we call that a soul.

Just because English speaking people may at times believe in a life force in all living things called a soul, this does not mean the people of the Torah believed the same thing. You are applying your beliefs to an ancient text.

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That does not mean that people do not take that word soul and pervert it's meaning till it is meaningless. But it still stands for the living aspect of all creatures i.e. fish snakes cattle birds humans.

What do you mean by "living aspect?"

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Now "spirit" is the word that the Bible uses to indicate a thing that God created in humans only...

Can you show that the Torah does this, using the Torah alone? You haven't attempted to show spirit is explicitly in Torah, and if you have, you have not done so in a way that I could recognize the case you were making.

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I might also mention that there are not only living (chay) souls mentioned in the Bible but there are also dead (Muwth) souls.

Numbers 19:3
Whosoever toucheth the dead (Muwth) body (nephesh) of any man that is dead (Muwth), and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the LORD; and that soul (nephesh) shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him.

As I said before, nefesh is an ambiguous word that does not translate directly. Here is a different translation. Why should yours be valued over mine?

Anyone who touches a dead-body of any human person that has died,
and does not decontaminate himself--
the Dwelling of YHWH has he made-tamei,
cut off shall that person be from Israel,
since the Waters Kept-Apart were not dashed on him,
tamei shall he be, his tum'a (stays) within him!

19:13 (the numbering is different because the translator, Fox, is Jewish. I think this traces back to differences between the Masoretic text and the Septuagint and then the even greater differences with the vulgate and also some general differences in numbering.) And here is yet another translation that disagrees with you:

Whoever touches a corpse, the body of a person who has died, and does not cleanse himself, defiles the LORD's Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel. Since the water of lustration was not dashed on him, he remains unclean; his uncleanness is still upon him.

That's from the new JPS translation. . So you really can't make the case that translators say it means soul and so it means soul. In one of my passages that I gave earlier, it is used to indicate a man, perhaps a slave or servant, in a way in which it could never mean soul.

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Comment:
Humans do need physical food for the maintenance of their physical body. But a human has more than just the physical body to care for. A human's soul needs nourishment also. The soul cannot be sustained by mashed potatoes, gravy and steak.

Matthew 4:4 declares that man shall live not only by bread "but by every word..." We need not just a word here and a word there; not one verse here and another verse there; "but every word that proeeedeth out of the mouth of God." The word of God is that food required by the soul (nephesh)...

How does any of that relate to our conversation? And why are you quoting such a late source as Matthew, especially to a Jew, knowing that I don't think it relates at all to the beliefs of the authors of the Torah? I will repeat myself again: "I'm not trying to figure out what God says. I don't believe the Torah is uniquely divine. I'm trying to get at what my ancestors actually believed themselves. That is why I stated to begin with that there is no clear evidence the authors of the Torah believed in a soul. And you have provided no clear evidence to the contrary. You challenged me. You have been unable to prove me wrong."

Dauer

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