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Some Final Thoughts on Body and Soul

Saturday, August 04th, 2012 | Author:

By now you have struggled through the implications of Matthew 10:28, Yeshua’s supposed endorsement of the “body-soul” dualism that we have been exploring for the last 4 days.  Perhaps we haven’t solved the riddle of the translation, but we have at least learned these few things:

1.  The “body-soul” or “body-mind-soul” or “body-spirit-soul” concepts found in most Christian theology are akin to those Greek philosophical systems found in Pythagoras and Plato.  They do not have readily available counterparts in Hebraic thought.

2.  Hebrew has no dualistic terms that approximate the categories found in Greek philosophy.  The Tanakh does not embrace, endorse or support the idea of the separation of Man into various parts.

3.  Since we believe Yeshua did not embrace this Greek dualism, the text in Matthew is either a) corrupt, b) an addition by someone else, c) a mangled translation of an attempt to convey a Hebrew concept in Greek language, or d) an idiomatic expression in Hebrew that was mistranslated as a word-for-word concept into Greek.

4.  We ruled out a) and b) above and determined that the most likely explanation for Matthew 10:28 is that it was spoken as a Hebrew idiom but badly translated into Greek, and subsequently forced to fit a Greek paradigm.  Since the Church had already adopted a Greek metaphysics by the time our versions of the Greek text of Matthew came into existence, it would not have caused in startled suspicion to read the text as “body and soul.”  The culture already assumed such a dualism was biblical.

With this in mind, we suggested that the appropriate idiomatic translation might be something like this: “Do not fear those who are able to inflict terrible means of death upon the body.  Rather fear the one who is capable of wasting away life.”  This idiomatic expression is also ironic (a common tactic employed by Yeshua) because the one who is able to waste away life is NOT God but rather you and I.  In other words, Yeshua is teaching us that not fulfilling God’s purposes for our lives is the equivalent of destroying life and WE ARE RESPONSIBLE.

Why is this so difficult to discern from the current Greek of Matthew 10:28 and virtually all the English translations?  Because English adopts the Greek paradigm of Man, breaking the unity of the embodied person into pieces which are subsequently treated differently.  To put is simply, English (and Greek) do NOT have the needed linguistic forms or ideas necessary to translate this Hebrew idiomatic expression.  Much like the HEbrew concept of hesed, Greek is simply inadequate to convey the Hebrew meaning.

Try talking to someone about what it means to be human but do not use any reference to body or soul.  You will see just how much our own thought patterns and language is saturated with this Greek idea.  Try explaining that the biblical text does not contain the idea of an immortal, disembodied soul and you will probably be considered a heretic.  Try explaining what it means to “sleep in the earth” until the Day of Judgment.  All of our Christian ideas about heaven and hell, reward and punishment, eternal existence, etc. come under attack.  No wonder people have such a terrible time when they try to answer the question, “What would this have meant to the audience that first heard it?”

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Losing Your Way (4)

Saturday, August 04th, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Soul – Greek dualism proposes that Man consists of at least two parts:  body (soma) and soul (psyche).  According to Greek philosophical thinking following Plato, the psyche is the superior part; eternal, pure, heavenly and intended to return to God who created it.  The body is the earthly part; corrupt, material, base, filled with mortal desires, impure and the prison house of the soul.  Death separates these two parts, allowing the soul to escape the body and achieve freedom from the material world.  Adapting this thinking to Christian theology, the early Church fathers asserted that God is interested in a man’s “soul” rather than his body.  It is the soul that is eternal and therefore must be redeemed in order to dwell eternally with the Father.  Those who do not receive the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ are bound to the eternal torment of their souls in hell.  Since the body is temporal, declarations of faith achieved through torture are justifiable because they save the soul from eternal punishment at the minor expense of the agony of the body.  What matters most is the saving of souls.  What matters least is the condition of men in this transient world.  In Christian thought, Jesus was crucified in Plato’s cave so that men might experience God’s glory.

The problem, of course, is that Yeshua wasn’t a Greek philosopher.

When we try to understand the Greek word psyche from a Hebrew perspective, we must first trace the Greek meaning back to its development following Pythagoras.[1]  Pythagoras introduced the idea of reward and punishment in the afterlife.  If there is going to be reward and punishment in another life, then there must be some essence of the person that survives death, and that essence, according to Pythagoras, is the “soul,” the psyche.  For the first time, men thought of the body as a prison of the soul.  By 500 BC, the idea of an immortal soul was part of the popular culture of ancient Greece.  From this point, Greek thinking developed the themes that the body was evil and wicked but the soul was good and pure.  In addition, the soul was the rational element that constituted what it meant to be human while the body was that part of man most connected to animal behavior.  By the time of Plato, the psyche was considered the center of thought, emotion and will – essentially all the human attributes – while the body was the weight the soul had to carry in this life until death finally released it from prison.

If this description of the soul resonates with your understanding of Christian theology, don’t be surprised.  Hellenism greatly influenced the thought of the early Church fathers.  Greek philosophy played a significant part in the formation of Christian doctrine in the first few centuries of the official Church.  The crucial idea of an afterlife of reward or punishment is now central to Christian thinking.  But it wasn’t part of the worldview of the Tanakh.  As rabbinic thought was influenced by Hellenism, the idea of reward and punishment in an afterlife became a part of Jewish thinking.  But there were significant differences.  Jewish thought never viewed the body as a prison of the soul.  After all, God created man embodied.  The body was not evil.  Embodied man made choices that determined his ultimate end, but even that end was not disembodied spirit.  As we have learned, Man is soma.  The implicit dualism between good and evil, spiritual and material, soul and body, is not part of Hebraic thinking.

This adds more difficulty to understanding Matthew 10:28.  All the Hebrew texts use the word nephesh for the Greek psyche.  But nephesh is not “soul” in opposition to “body.”  Nephesh is “person,” the whole of what it means to be an embodied human.  Only in Greek dualism is body opposed to soul.  If Yeshua used the word nephesh in this verse, then He could not be suggesting a separation of body and soul.  Nephesh is the homogenization of human being.  It is not divisible into parts.  That makes our text in Hebrew almost unintelligible as it stands.  “Do not fear those who can kill the dead body but cannot kill the entire embodied person.  Rather fear the one who can kill both the entire embodied person and the dead body in Gehenna.”  What in the world can this mean?  The point is this:  any translation of the Hebrew ideas into Greek categories of body and soul is unintelligible.

We are left with only two options if we insist on reading the text as it is written.  Either the translator of Yeshua’s Hebrew statement changed the thought into Greek categories that were not part of Yeshua’s original thinking OR Yeshua was also influenced by Hellenism and He embraced the Greek dichotomy of body and soul.  Neither of these seems acceptable.  That leaves us with two other choices.  First, the text itself is not original and was added to Matthew’s gospel by someone else who embraced Greek thinking OR, second, this entire text is some kind of idiomatic expression and is mangled in translation.  Now you get to decide.  What makes more sense given the Hebraic worldview of Yeshua?  And what does this mean for the integrity of the Greek text of our New Testament?

Topical Index:  soul, psyche, Hellenism, dualism, soma, body, Matthew 10:28


[1] It’s interesting that in the earlier Homeric age the word psyche meant “vital force” of life, much closer to the Hebrew idea of nephesh hayah than the subsequent idea of psyche found in Greek philosophy.

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Losing Your Way (3)

Friday, August 03rd, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Body – In this verse, the translator of Yeshua’s comment uses the Greek word soma.  We might expect soma to be the substitute for basar (Hebrew: flesh), but the LXX has no fixed relationship between soma and basar, probably because Hebrew has no special word for “body.”  Sometimes basar is translated by sarx.  Sometimes the Greek soma translates the Hebrew gewiyya or geshem.  Schweizer notes, “The term soma offers a concept that is not yet developed in Hebrew and hence the translators use it with some hesitation.  In the LXX it never refers to an inorganic body, nor to reality as distinct from words, nor to a macro- or microcosmic organism, nor to a city or people.  Unlike sarx, it does not have the intrinsic character of creatureliness or sin or earthliness.  It can denote the person as object . . .and it also suggests the human totality with the sense of corporeality. . .  soma does not occur in relation to sacrifice or to activity but in relation to God, to others, or to various forces.  The person does not stand aloof from the soma.  Soul and body together describe corruptible humanity over against wisdom or reason, but anthropological dualism arises only when soul or reason is set in juxtaposition to the body, e.g., when the body is abandoned to death but the true I survives.”[1]

Things get even more complicated when we consult the Hebrew text of the Delitzsch gospel of Matthew.  In this verse, the Hebrew word is gufah, a word that appears only twice in the Tanakh and clearly means dead body.  The Shem Tov Hebrew text uses the word gewiyya which also usually means dead body.  The only cases where gewiyya means a living body are cases where defeat and humiliation are also present.  This raises an important question.  If Yeshua used either of these terms, how does it make any sense to connect them to “kill” or “destroy”?  Can someone kill a dead body?  Once more we are faced with what appears to be in internal contradiction – or at the least an absurdity.  The only resolution seems to push us in the direction of some idiomatic expression, not a literal declaration about “body and soul.” (As we shall see, the Hebrew texts also use nephesh for the Greek word psyche – soul – but nephesh doesn’t mean “soul” in the sense that Greek uses the term, or, for that matter, in the way we use the term.)

We know that the dualism of body and soul is introduced via Greek philosophy.  While it is present in rabbinic thought after 400 BC, it is not present in the Tanakh.  On this basis, we conclude that it is not the underlying thought of Yeshua’s warning.  This conclusion is supported by the fact that Paul does not endorse the Greek dualism either.  In Paul’s writings, soma is a technical term for “person.”  Paul endorses the older meaning of the Tanakh that human existence is embodied existence.  The body is not simply an outer shell that surrounds the eternal “soul.”  The soma is the person.  “soma can be understood as man as the object of an action and man as the subject of an action.  He has a relationship with himself.”[2]  This should remind us of the origin of Man, a creature who is defined by relationship, not by biological or spiritual elements.  In fact, Genesis chapter 2 suggests that the formation of the woman taken from the man creates an essential relationship that was once involuntary and internal but is now voluntary and external.

Before we look at the idea of “soul” (Greek psyche), we can offer a temporary idiomatic translation of this verse.  “Do not fear those who are able to cause terrible forms of death but cannot kill the nephesh [soul?].  Rather, fear him who can be cut off from life by wasting it away [in Gehenna?].”  Will this idiomatic translation suffice?  That depends on what Yeshua meant with the word He used that is translated as psyche (soul).

Topical Index: body, soma, soul, psyche, kill, apokteino, destroy, apollumi, Matthew 10:28


[1] Eduard Schweizer, soma, TDNT (Abridged), p. 1143.

[2] J. A. Motyer, “Body” in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol 1., p. 235.

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Losing Your Way (2)

Thursday, August 02nd, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Destroy – [WARNING:  This a long because the subject is complicated.]  Does Yeshua teach the destruction of the soul?  If He does, doesn’t this stand in utter contradiction to the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul?  Is this verse really nothing more than an endorsement of Greek dualism in the mouth of a Hebrew prophet?

Since it seems very unlikely that Yeshua taught Greek dualism, we will have to replace this Greek language with Hebraic concepts.  That means “Do not fear those who kill” also requires some re-interpretation.  The verb for “to kill” in Greek is apokteino, an intensive form of the verb kteino, “to slay, to kill, to destroy.”  The Hebrew parallel is harag (e.g. Psalm 78:47), but the Hebrew verb is never about “eternal” life.  It is about killing, war, fratricide and the slaughter of men and animals in this life.  We noticed that the Greek text distinguishes two verbs for the termination of life in this verse.  Whatever Yeshua said in the second half of the verse, He apparently did not employ the same verb used in the first half, otherwise it would make no sense for the translator to provide two different Greek verbs, apokteino and apollumi.  We may conclude from an Hebraic perspective that the opening statement of this verse is about death as we know it on this earth, especially horrendous death as a result of aggravated violence.  The intensive Greek verb provides justification for an idiomatic translation such as “Do not fear those who are able cause terrible forms of death.”  We still have to deal with the application of this action to “body and soul,” but before we can do that, we need to examine the second verb in this verse.  It isn’t apokteino.  That itself is strange.  Why is the second verb different than the first?  Aren’t both verbs about death?  What are we to do with apollumi – to destroy?

In his article on the Greek word apollumi, Albrecht Oepke draws attention to the “familiar Jewish expression avad nephsho, an idiom for ‘trifling away one’s life.’”[1]  This Jewish background is particularly relevant to this text.  It helps us distinguish between the Greek implication that Yeshua is speaking about eternal damnation and the Hebrew implication that Yeshua is speaking idiomatically about the consequences of living a lawless existence.

The apparent theological contradiction in the Greek text is set aside if the words in this Greek translation really attempt to capture a Hebrew idiom about pointless, lawless living.  If Yeshua’s worldview is rabbinic, first century, conservative Judaism, then the Hebrew idiom would have readily come to mind when He uttered these words.  His audience would not think about a Greek dichotomy between body and soul since no such dichotomy existed in Hebrew thought and there is no word for “body” in Hebrew.  Instead, they would have been reminded of the absolute necessity of purposeful living, that is, living according to God’s instructions in order to accomplish God’s purposes here and now.  They would have heard Yeshua teaching about the senseless waste of a life that comes from not acknowledging the sovereignty of God.

Let’s attempt to understand this verse from its Hebrew perspective.  First we should note that it won’t do much good to attempt a word-for-word backwards translation from Greek to Hebrew.  Idioms resist wooden word-for-word renderings.  Idiomatically, the opening thought of this verse is probably something like this:  “Do not fear those who are able to bring about violent termination of life.”  The idiom does not allow us to posit a distinction between body and soul.  But if our idiomatic translation is correct, we still have to deal with the question, “How come the Greek text says ‘body and soul’?”

Suddenly things get far more complicated.  We have already acknowledged that there is no Hebrew word for the Greek idea of “body” (soma).  When soma is used for an Hebraic concept, the meaning is always the whole person or even a dead body, but never a body as distinct from a “soul.”  Schweizer says, “There is no sense of his [man’s] standing at a distance from himself or regarding his corporeality as something which can finally be parted from him.”[2]  In other words, even when the biblical texts use the word soma (body), the Hebraic worldview does not mean that the “body” is a separate element of human existence.  As Bultmann remarks, “Man does not have a soma; he is soma.”[3]  The fundamental Hebraic concept of human existence is embodied existence.  Every translation that suggests a division of human existence into separate ontological parts relies on a Greek paradigm, not a Hebrew one.

What does this mean for Matthew’s account of Yeshua’s warning?  It means that Yeshua could not have suggested the supposed separation of body and soul.  The translator introduced this division because there was no other way to capture the Hebraic point of view.  Why would the translator change the Hebrew idiom in this way?  The answer to this question comes from a brief historical analysis of rabbinic literature prior to the birth of Yeshua.

Rabbinic thought began to be influenced by Greek philosophy as early as 400 BC.  By the time of the Maccabees, the Greek distinction between body and soul was already present in rabbinic written material.  Therefore, in The Book of Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Judah and 2 Esdras we find the distinction between body and soul with the emphasis placed on the eternal and undefiled soul in opposition to the material, temporal and corrupt body.  In these writings, the rabbis suggested that death separated body and soul; that the body remains on earth but the soul is taken to heaven.  This teaching stands in opposition to the older teaching of the Tanakh that the embodied person returns to the earth at death but is resurrected at the Judgment.  This means that by the time Yeshua taught, the rabbinic view, influenced by Hellenism, existed alongside the more conservative view of the Tanakh.  It is possible that the translator of Yeshua’s Hebrew statement recorded in Matthew was also influenced by this rabbinic material and therefore converted Yeshua’s Hebraic view into a view that would have been acceptable by rabbinic Judaism in the first century but did not reflect the older view of the Tanakh.

While we may not be able to prove this hypothesis, what we do know for certain is this:  the idea that Man is composed of parts (whether body and soul or body, mind and soul-spirit) is not found in Hebraic thought before the influence of Hellenism and is not consistent with the view of the Tanakh.  If Yeshua is a reformer, one who calls the people of Israel back to the strict teaching of the Tanakh, it is simply impossible that He would embrace the Greek dualism of body and soul.  It is far more likely that His words have been reconstructed in translation.

Topical Index:  body, soma, soul, psyche, kill, apokteino, destroy, apollumi, Matthew 10:28

 

[1] Albrecht Oepke, apollumi, TDNT, Vol. 1, p. 394.

[2] Eduard Schweizer, soma, TDNT, Vol. 7, p. 1048.

[3] R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, Vol. 1, p. 194.

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Losing Your Way (1)

Wednesday, August 01st, 2012 | Author:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  Matthew 10:28  ESV

Destroy – It is my intention, over the next several days, to deal with the concept of body and soul.  We can begin with this verse since it is often used to support a Christian separation of body and soul.  This study will take some time as it is difficult to articulate the changes in thought between Greek and Hebrew on these topics.  Both languages lack words that allow us to translate from one paradigm to the other.  Furthermore, the implications for our views of death, heaven, the afterlife and many eschatological topics are quite significant.  We begin with Epictetus.

Epictetus, a Greek philosopher of the first century (born 55 AD), said that the death of the body is not to be feared, but only the death of the soul.[1]  Does that sound familiar?  You thought that Yeshua’s statement was unique, but what about Epictetus?  Are we to assume that Yeshua did nothing more than mimic what Greek philosophy was already thinking?  After all, Epictetus’ statement comes from a chain thought among the Greeks that goes back to at least pre-Platonic views.  Is this verse, so often used to support a body-soul dualism, just warmed-over Greek thinking?

As soon as we begin to examine the ideas, we are confronted with monumental translation problems in this verse in Matthew.  The problems are not simply about which words to use to translate the Greek text into English.  Nor are the problems simply about translating Matthew’s Greek back into the original language of Yeshua.  In this verse, translation must arise from understanding the opposing paradigms of the Greek and Hebrew world.  The result of an investigation into the thought structures behind the words leaves us, perhaps, with an entirely different understanding of what Yeshua really said.  All of the difficulties begin with the fact that in Hebrew there is no word for body.  If that is the case, then how is it possible for the Greek translation of Yeshua’s speech to include the dualism of “body and soul”?

When we read this verse from the paradigm of the Church, we often think Yeshua is expressing a warning about our spiritual condition.  We are seduced by the “body and soul” dichotomy inherent in Greek thought.  Therefore, we conclude that Yeshua must also embrace this dichotomy.  Because we assume that the Platonic distinction between the material and the spiritual is a biblical idea, we imagine Yeshua is concentrating on the “soul” of a man rather than a man’s physical body.  We then conclude that the most important thing in life is not life here (which is transient, corrupt and without eternal value) but rather life somewhere else – in heaven, of course.  This philosophical orientation causes us to read this verse as if Yeshua is saying, “Don’t worry about your life in this world.  Worry about your life in the next world,” or “Don’t worry about men who can only kill your physical existence.  Worry about God who can destroy both the physical and spiritual in hell.”

Even without the issues that arise when we try to back-translate this text into Hebrew, we are left with internal contradictions in the Greek itself.  First, we should notice that this verse opposes “to kill” (apokteino) with “to destroy” (apollumi).  While the meaning of the two verbs is similar, it is not identical.  If it were, there would be no reason to use two different Greek verbs in the same sentence.  Whatever Yeshua actually said, the Greek translator thought it necessary to use two different verbs to capture that thought.  But even the use of apollumi is problematic.  In what sense is the body and soul destroyed in hell?  The adoption of the Platonic idea of the immortality of the soul stands in opposition to the plain meaning of this statement.  According to Christian-Platonic doctrine, the soul is eternal.  It cannot be destroyed.  Therefore, the translation of apolesai as “who can destroy” contradicts the Christian idea of the soul.  Even if we are tempted to reduce the strength of the translation to “who can kill,” then we must ignore the intensive apo attached to the verb (apo + ollumi) and we must offer some reasonable explanation why this verb isn’t the same as apokteino, used in the opening phrase.

You can’t have it both ways.  If this verse is an accurate rendering of Yeshua’s statement, then either the soul is eternal and cannot be destroyed (or killed) or Yeshua is correct and the soul can be destroyed.  Is the doctrine of the eternal soul correct, and Yeshua wrong, or is it the other way around?  Are we really facing theological contradictions or is something else amiss?

It seems to me that the real problem is not in these apparent contradictions but rather in the Greek rendering of Yeshua’s Hebraic thought.

Stay tuned.

Topical Index:  Matthew 10:28, apollumi, destroy, apokteino, kill, body, soul

 

[1] Eduard Schweizer, soma, TDNT, Vol. 7, p. 1036 referencing Epictetus, Discourses, I, 5, 4.

YESTERDAY I FORGOT to post a Today’s Word.  To make up for this oversight, here is a short audio file about the final lessons we learn from our study of Ruth.

If you haven’t followed the audio study of Ruth, you can do so by clicking here.

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Once More into the Breach

Friday, June 08th, 2012 | Author:

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever -“  Genesis 3:22  NASB

Live forever – Before we attempt to understand this tangled verse, we need to listen to Ellul.  “Hebrew thought was sown in a field nourished by Greek thought and Roman law. [in a footnote] A familiar example of the mutation to which revelation was actually subjected is its contamination by the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul.  I will briefly recall it.  In Jewish thought death is total.  There is no immortal soul, no division of body and soul.  Paul’s thinking is Jewish in this regard.  The soul belongs to the ‘psychical’ realm and is part of the flesh.  The body is the whole being.  In death, there is no separation of body and soul.  The soul is as mortal as the body.  But there is a resurrection.  Out of the nothingness that human life becomes, God creates anew the being that was dead.  This is a creation by grace; there is no immortal soul intrinsic to us.  Greek philosophy, however, introduces among theologians the idea of the immortal soul.  The belief was widespread in popular religion and it was integrated into Christianity.  But it is a total perversion.  Everything is not now dependent on the grace of God, and assurance of immortality comes to be evaluated by virtues and works.  All Christian thinking is led astray by this initial mutation that comes through Greek philosophy and Near Eastern cults.   . . .  belief in the soul’s celestial immortality arose in the second half of the fifth century B.C. on the basis of astronomy.  Pythagorean astronomy radically transformed the idea of the destiny of the soul held by Mediterranean peoples.  For the notion of a vital breath that dissipates at death, for belief in a survival of shades wandering about in the subterranean realm of the dead, it substitutes the notion of a soul of celestial substance exiled in this world.  This idea completely contaminates biblical thinking, gradually replaces the affirmation of the resurrection, and transforms the kingdom of the dead into the kingdom of God.”[1]

Were you aware of this Hellenization of Hebrew thinking?  If we separate ourselves (as best we can) from the pervasive Greek idea of the eternal existence of the soul, will that help us understand this knotty verse?  It might.  First we need to correct our idea of va-hay le-olam (live forever).  Remember that these words find their meanings within the context of recently-freed Israel, in other words, within the context of ancient Egyptian mythology.  In Egyptian mythology, unquestionably there is life after death.  But it is not clear if such life is full or worth living.  Eternal punishment is not part of the thinking of Egypt (nor is it part of the thinking of Israel).  In general, the world to come is merely an extension of this world, with all of its consequent difficulties.  Therefore, continued existence without death was especially important.  Postponing entry into a world of eternal unsatisfying existence was the highest priority.  This mythology stands in the background of this complicated verse.  It explains the elaborate funeral embalming processes of the Egyptians, including the interment of food, slaves, wives and utensils.

Remove yourself from concerns with the eternal soul and ask, “What message does this verse send to people who came from a culture that prized staying alive at all costs?”  Sarna provides a clue.  “ . .  the text presupposes a belief that man, created from perishable matter, was mortal from the outset but he had within his grasp the possibility of immortality.”[2] What message does this relay to a people who had just emerged from saturation in Egyptian thinking?  Sarna comments: “Man, having already exceeded the limits of creaturehood, has radically altered the perspective of human existence.  He lives henceforth in the consciousness of his mortality.  He may therefore be tempted to change his condition by artificial means, rather than by restoring the ruptured harmony between divine will and human will,  . . .”[3]

In other words, this passage in Genesis closes the door on the Egyptian idea that men may somehow postpone indefinitely the specter of death without reconciliation with God.  The verse is aimed directly at overturning Egyptian mythology.  It is not a theological proclamation about eternal existence through some magical means.  It is a statement that the Egyptian idea is impossible.  That door is closed and locked shut.  God has insured that no magical rite, no fountain of youth, no priestly incantation, no “holy grail” brings everlasting life.  Ancient near-Eastern expressions of human acquisition of living forever are false.  The only path is the path back to God, teshuvah – repentance.

Does this unknot the passage?  Well, it helps.  It helps us see that the verse is not about some Greek idea of the eternal existence of the soul.  It is about invalidating Egyptian religious beliefs.  Who more than Israel needed to know this?

Topical Index:  live forever, hay le-olam, Egyptian mythology, soul, Genesis 3:22


[1] Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity, p. 25.

[2] Nahum Sarna, Genesis: The JPS Torah Commentary, pp. 18-19.

[3] Ibid., p. 30.

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Paul’s Summation (2)

Sunday, May 13th, 2012 | Author:

“Behold, his soul is puffed up, it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.”  Habakkuk 2:4  ESV

Puffed up – Let’s get the Greek out.  Neither Habakkuk nor Paul nor God Himself use the word “soul.”  The Hebrew is nephesh.  We have the English translation “soul” because of the influence of the Greek word psyche.  It is true that the LXX translates nephesh with the Greek psyche, but I can assure you that there is no Hebrew thought of a man’s soul separated from the rest of what it means to be human.  The division of man into body-mind-soul is a thoroughly Greek invention.  In Hebrew, human beings are one homogenized entity, the person, the nephesh.  Paul certainly knew this.  When he cites Habakkuk, he is not speaking about the soul as if the soul could be saved but the body could not.  Paul is speaking about the entire person, just as the verse in Habakkuk suggests.  It is not a man’s soul that is “puffed up.”   It is a man’s entire way of being in the world.  It involves everything about this man – his thoughts, his choices, his feelings, his will, his bodily actions.  God says (through Habakkuk) that this man is ‘uppelah, here translated as “puffed up.”  But what does that mean?

There are some issues with this word.  When we examine the verb ‘afal (the root of ‘uppelah), we find two schools of thought.  One school ties this verb to an Arabic verb meaning “to be heedless, neglectful, reckless.”  This school believes the verb in Habakkuk comes from this root, and therefore means “to be proud, presumptuous.”  The other school notes that ‘afal is used only one other time in this way in the Tanakh (Numbers 14:44) and it is not clear that the word in Habakkuk is directly connected.  The majority of these uses are nouns, not verbs, describing boils or abscesses (thus, “puffed up”).  The idea is something diseased, something abnormally swollen.  In Habakkuk, the man who is not upright is considered infected and sick.  His entire person, not his soul, is diseased.  Saving his soul is not going to fix the problem.  He has a serious health issue – an issue that affects the entire person.  This is Paul’s argument as well.  We are not in need of a soul doctor.  We are in need of a completely new nephesh.

The translation says that this sick person is sick because he is “not upright within him.”  But that doesn’t quite capture the image.  The verb yashar means “to be level, straight, right, just or lawful.”  As an adjective, it means “upright” and is used extensively to describe the character of God.  In the phrase, “to do what is right,” obedience is linked to righteousness.  God says that this man is sick because he is bent, twisted, not level in himself.  He appears swollen, but on the inside he is mortally damaged.  The disease has metastasized.  It has infected every part of him.

All of this stands in utter contrast to the righteous.  In order to see the scope of this contrast, we must recognize the depth of this recklessness.  Habakkuk paints the picture of a man whose cancer has spread throughout his body.  He is still functioning but his days are numbered.  Just watching him, we see the results of the illness.  His thoughts, his will, his movements are all affected.  He is dying before our eyes.  And there is no cure.  It’s too late for any self-determined remedy.  “Look and see,” says the Lord.  “Don’t you recognize the signs?”

Only when we realize that our tiny external symptoms are indicators of a much greater problem will we confront the true illness.  A little swelling, a small bump, a tiny spot – perhaps we ignore.  We pretend we can handle it.  But underneath something else is happening.  Something tragic and disastrous.

Twisted or straight.  Which is it to be?  There are no small issues here.

Topical Index:  puffed up, ‘afal, twisted, yashar, soul, nephesh, Habakkuk 2:4

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The Shema (5)

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 | Author:

And you shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Deuteronomy 6:5

Heart/ Soul/ Might – If we are commanded to love God with all (kol) we’ve got, obviously that command affects the entire body of behaviors.  Rather than allow us to fumble around trying to decide exactly what is included in the “all,” God’s Word provides three general categories.  Each category helps us focus on the wider implications of kol.  Unfortunately, in a Greek-based culture, we tend to think of these categories as separate boxes.  This division of Man into separate parts often allows us to imagine that we can be “all in” in one area and have less commitment in another.  But Hebrew never views Man as the combination of separate pieces.  Man is a completely unified, embodied, homogenized whole.  Using the three words “heart,” “soul,” and “might,” doesn’t mean we can divide the Hebrew Man.  It only means that Hebrew asks us to pay particular attention to what it means to love God in these three ways.

So what are the three ways?  The first is “heart,” (lev), the way of our choices, our emotions, our actions-decisions, and our thinking.  You could conclude that this covers it all.  How we decide, what we decide, what we do as a result of what we decide, how we feel about what we do and what we think about all of that is “heart.”  To love God with all your heart is to apply God’s point of view and character to our ways in the world.  Make Him count in every thought, word and deed.

So what’s left?  Hebrew suggests that there is a second area of application – the “soul.”  Of course, our Greek understanding of soul follows Plato.  In his view, the soul is a separate, divine spark imprisoned in a moral, fleshly body.  The objective of Greek-based religion is to free the soul from the corruptible body and allow it to ascend to heaven.  If this sounds a little like our theology of “saving souls” and “insuring you’ll get to heaven,” don’t be too surprised.  Most of the early Christian theologians introduced this Platonic interpretation as a replacement of the Hebrew unified view.  The “mind-body-soul” view of Man comes directly from Greek philosophy, not Scripture.

“Soul” is the Hebrew word nephesh.  It is better translated “person.”  It’s everything that makes me who I am.  But isn’t that what “heart” just described?  Not quite.  “Heart” focuses on the individual “me.”  It is about my thoughts, words and deeds.  But who I am as a person is also defined by my relationship to others.  Nephesh isn’t my internal, hidden, spiritual “soul.”  It is the whole person, defined by his relationship to his Creator and to creation.  Since we know that being human is a verb, a process of becoming through a dialog with the Creator and service to the creation, we know that who I am is defined by my connections to God and to His world.  I am to love God through all these connections.  By the way, there is considerable overlap between lev and nephesh, so I can never divide the two in Hebrew.

Finally, there is me’od (translated “might”).  Unfortunately, the translations like “might” or “strength” aren’t quite correct.  The word isn’t a noun.  It is either an adverb or an adjective that is sometimes used like a noun.  But what it really means is “great,” or “very,” or “exceedingly.”  It is the what-ness of life, all the stuff we have on loan to do His bidding.  This is the great abundance of what is put into our hands for His use.  We are to love Him with all our on-loan provisions.

Combining these three areas of focused attention demonstrates that God commands love as the active behavior of treating everything as He would.  His thought must become our thoughts.  His deeds our deeds.  His care of creation our care.  His expressions of emotions ours as well.  Love is what we do in all that we do.  The standard is the behavior of God.  “Be holy for I am holy.”  That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?

Topical Index:  heart, soul, might, lev, nephesh, me’od, Deuteronomy 6:5

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Carnal?

Friday, August 07th, 2009 | Author:

because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able {to do so,} Romans 8:7

The Mind Set On The Flesh – How are you doing in your fight for sinless perfection? Are you winning the battle every day or have you suffered defeats? Are you a sanctified soul or a carnal Christian?

Do these questions bother you?  They should.

Somewhere along the way, Christianity embraced the Greek metaphysics of the body/mind/soul split. When this alien concept crept into Christian thinking, it eventually led to the postulation of a carnal Christian, the believer who has confessed Christ as Savior but does not live with Christ as Lord. This is the person whose life is characterized by actions that do not glorify God but at the same time claims God’s forgiveness and acceptance. The “carnal” Christian has a body under sin’s control but a soul that belongs to God. What? Does that mean God saves only part of this person? Does that mean that what happens in my body doesn’t really matter as long as my soul is saved? A careful reading of the Bible endorses none of this Greek nonsense, but it certainly is a popular way of explaining behavior. Perhaps we need to take another look at Paul’s famous comments about “carnal” Christians (the King James translation of this phrase).

The critical Greek word is phronema. This word covers the entire translated phrase, “the mind set on”. Phronema means “what one has in mind, purposes or thoughts.” In this case, Paul says the purpose or thoughts of this mental condition is sarx, the flesh. This should remind us of the passage in Genesis 6:5, “the intent of the thoughts of the heart.” But notice that the Hebrew equivalent does not suggest a split spiritual state where men confess God but act disobediently. In the Genesis equivalent, the thoughts of their minds were given over to evil and, as a result, God brought judgment upon the earth. These were a long way from the “carnal” Christian bifurcation we find today. In Genesis, intent and purpose in thoughts leads directly to judgment, not excuse. In the ancient world, if your mind was filled with purposes of the flesh, you were not standing in God’s grace. You were not redeemed. You died in the flood along with all the other evil people in the world because the mind whose purposes and intents are determined by sarx is the enemy of God. In Hebrew thought, this is yester ha’ra run amuck.

Paul is a Jewish Messianic rabbi. Do you suppose that he entertained the Greek tripartate division of human beings (body, mind and soul)? Not likely. Paul’s anthropology was homogenized; the neshama or nefesh was one person all mixed up together embodied in this world. God doesn’t save the soul and leave the body to rot. That’s Greek, not Hebrew. So, if Paul would never have accepted the division of human being into parts, then how could he possibly suggest that spiritual existence could be divided between the carnal and the spiritual? If the purposes and intents of my mind (read neshama or nefesh) are filled with hostility toward God, doesn’t that force us to conclude that such a person is not redeemed? After all, this person is an enemy, not a humble seeker. This person is dominated by the yester ha’ra, not struggling against the evil inclination in order to be obedient to the Lord.

Does that mean that Christians are only those who no longer experience the fight for personal holiness? Of course not. That fight goes on for a long, long time. But the person who isn’t fighting probably isn’t domesticated to God. I am either motivated to obey and struggling to do so, or I am capitulating to the evil inclination and comfortable with the result. I am either fighting for God or fighting against Him. There are no fence-sitters in this war.

Topical Index: yester ha’ra, sarx, phronema, mind, body, soul, Genesis 6:5, Romans 8:7, carnal

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