Soul

VIEW:23 DATA:01-04-2020

SOUL.—The use of the term in the OT (Heb. nephesh) for any animated being, whether human or animal (Gen_1:20 ‘life,’ Gen_2:7), must be distinguished from the Greek philosophical use for the immaterial substance which gives life to the body, and from the use in the NT (Gr. psyche) where more stress is laid on individuality (Mat_16:26 RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ). As the Bible does not contain a scientific psychology, it is vain to dispute whether it teaches that man’s nature is bipartite (body and soul or spirit) or tripartite (body and soul and spirit): yet a contrast between soul and spirit (Heb. rûach, Gr. pneuma) may be recognized; while the latter is the universal principle imparting life from the Creator, the former is the individual organism possessed of life in the creature (Gen_2:7—‘breath of life’ and ‘living soul’).—In some passages the terms are used as equivalent (Isa_26:9, Luk_1:46-47, Php_1:27 RV [Note: Revised Version.] ), in others a distinction is made (Heb_4:12, 1Th_5:23). The distinction is this: ‘soul’ expresses man as apart from God, a separate individual; ‘spirit’ expresses man as drawing his life from God (cf. Joh_10:11, ‘life’ = ‘soul,’ and Joh_19:30). This separate individuality may renounce its dependence and refuse its submission to God. Hence the adjective ‘psychical’ may be rendered sensual (Jam_3:15, Jud_1:19 [RVm [Note: Revised Version margin.] ‘Or, natural. Or, animal’]), or natural (1Co_2:14; 1Co_15:44-46). Probably sensual in the two passages conveys more moral meaning than the term ‘psychical’ justifies, and natural is the better rendering, as expressing what belongs to the old unregenerate life in contrast with the characteristic of the new life in Christ, the spiritual (pneumatic). A parallel change in the use of the term ‘flesh’ and its corresponding adjective may be noted.
Alfred E. Garvie.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

that immortal, immaterial, active substance or principle in man, whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons, and wills. See MATERIALISM.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

Like the word ‘spirit’, the word ‘soul’ has a variety of meanings in English. There is some variety also in the usages of the original words from which ‘soul’ has been translated. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament the word is nephesh. In the Greek of the New Testament the word is psyche.
Old Testament usage
The writers of the Old Testament did not speak of the soul as something that exists apart from the body. To them, soul (or nephesh) meant life. Both animals and people are nephesh, living creatures. Older English versions of the Bible have created misunderstanding by the translation ‘man became a living soul’ (Gen_2:7), for the words translated ‘living soul’ are the same words as earlier translated ‘living creatures’ (Gen_1:21; Gen_1:24). All animal life is nephesh (or psyche; Rev_8:9), though human nephesh is of a higher order than the nephesh of other animals (Gen_2:19-22).
From this it is easy to see how nephesh came to refer to the whole person. We should understand a person not as consisting of a combination of a lifeless body and a bodiless soul, but as a perfect unity, a living body. Thus nephesh may be translated ‘person’; even if translated ‘soul’, it may mean no more than ‘person’ or ‘life’ (Exo_1:5; Num_9:13; Eze_18:4; Eze_18:27). A reference to someone’s nephesh may simply be a reference to the person (Psa_6:3-4; Psa_35:9; Isa_1:14) or the person’s life (Gen_35:18; 1Ki_17:22; Psa_33:19).
New Testament usage
Similarly in the New Testament psyche can be used to mean no more than ‘person’ (Act_2:41; Act_2:43; Act_7:14; Rom_2:9; Rom_13:1). Again, a reference to someone’s psyche may simply be a reference to the person (Mat_12:18; Mat_26:38; Luk_1:46; Luk_12:19; 1Th_2:8; Heb_10:38) or the person’s life (Mat_16:26; 1Co_15:45; Php_2:30; 1Pe_4:19). Sometimes ‘soul’ appears to be the same as ‘heart’, which in the Bible usually refers to the whole of a person’s inner life (Pro_2:10; Act_4:32; see HEART; HUMANITY, HUMANKIND).
A person characterized by psyche is an ordinary person of the world, one who lives solely according to the principles and values of sinful human society – the ‘natural person’, in contrast to the ‘spiritual person’. The latter is one who has new principles and values because of the Spirit of God within (1Co_2:12-16; cf. Jud_1:19; see FLESH; SPIRIT).
Human uniqueness
Both Old and New Testaments teach that when people die they do not cease to exist. The body returns to dust (Gen_3:19; Ecc_3:20), but the person lives on in a place, or state, of the dead, which the Hebrew calls sheol and the Greek calls hades (Psa_6:5; Psa_88:3-5; Luk_16:22-23; see HADES; SHEOL). The Old Testament does not say in what way people live on after death. Certainly, they live on as a conscious personal beings, but that personal being is not complete, for it has no body (Psa_49:14; Eze_26:20).
The New Testament also is unclear on the subject of a person’s existence after death. It speaks of the bodiless person after death sometimes as a soul (Act_2:27; Rev_6:9; Rev_20:4), sometimes as a spirit (Heb_12:23; 1Pe_3:18), but again the person, being bodiless, is not complete. Also, this existence as a bodiless person is only temporary, just as the decay of the body in the grave is only temporary. That is why the Bible encourages believers to look for their eternal destiny not in the endless existence of some bodiless ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, but in the resurrection of the body to a new and glorious life (1Co_15:42-53; Php_3:20-21).
Since there is more to a human life than what people experience during their earthly existence, psyche naturally developed a meaning relating to more than normal earthly life. Eternal destiny also is involved (Mat_10:28; Mat_16:26; Heb_10:38-39).
From this usage, psyche developed an even richer meaning. It became the word most commonly used among Christians to describe the higher or more spiritual aspect of human life that is popularly called the soul (Heb_6:19; Heb_13:17; Jam_1:21; 1Pe_1:9; 1Pe_1:22; 1Pe_2:11; 1Pe_2:25; 3Jn_1:2).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

sōl (נפשׁ, nephesh; ψυχή, psuchḗ; Latin anima):

1. Shades of Meaning in the Old Testament:
(1) Soul, like spirit, has various shades of meaning in the Old Testament, which may be summarized as follows: ?Soul,? ?living being,? ?life,? ?self,? ?person,? ?desire,? ?appetite,? ?emotion? and ?passion? (BDB under the word). In the first instance it meant that which breathes, and as such is distinguished from bāsār, ?flesh? (Isa_10:18; Deu_12:23); from she'ēr, ?the inner flesh,? next the bones (Pro_11:17, ?his own flesh?); from beṭen, ?belly? (Psa_31:10, ?My soul and my belly are consumed with grief?), etc.
(2) As the life-breath, it departs at death (Gen_35:18; Jer_15:2). Hence, the desire among Old Testament saints to be delivered from Sheol (Psa_16:10, ?Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol?) and from shachath, ?the pit? (Job_33:18, ?He keepeth back his soul from the pit?; Isa_38:17, ?Thou hast ... delivered it (my soul) from the pit of corruption?).
(3) By an easy transition the word comes to stand for the individual, personal life, the person, with two distinct shades of meaning which might best be indicated by the Latin anima and animus. As anima, ?soul,? the life inherent in the body, the animating principle in the blood is denoted (compare Deu_12:23, Deu_12:24, 'Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for the blood is the soul; and thou shalt not eat the soul with the flesh'). As animus, ?mind,? the center of our mental activities and passivities is indicated. Thus we read of 'a hungry soul' (Psa_107:9), 'a weary soul' (Jer_31:25), 'a loathing soul' (Lev_26:11), 'a thirsty soul' (Psa_42:2), 'a grieved soul' (Job_30:25), 'a loving soul' (Son_1:7), and many kindred expressions. Cremer has characterized this use of the word in a sentence: ?Nephesh (soul) in man is the subject of personal life, whereof pneúma or rūaḥ (spirit) is the principle? (Lexicon, under the word, 795).
(4) This individuality of man, however, may be denoted by pneuma as well, but with a distinction. Nephesh or ?soul? can only denote the individual life with a material organization or body. Pneuma or ?spirit? is not so restricted. Scripture speaks of ?spirits of just men made perfect? (Heb_12:23), where there can be no thought of a material or physical or corporeal organization. They are ?spiritual beings freed from the assaults and defilements of the flesh? (Delitzsch, in the place cited.). For an exceptional use of psuchē in the same sense see Rev_6:9; Rev_20:4, and (irrespective of the meaning of Psa_16:10) Act_2:27.

2. New Testament Distinctions:
(1) In the New Testament psuchē appears under more or less similar conditions as in the Old Testament. The contrast here is as carefully maintained as there. It is used where pneuma would be out of place; and yet it seems at times to be employed where pneuma might have been substituted. Thus in Joh_19:30 we read: ?Jesus gave up his pneuma? to the Father, and, in the same Gospel (Joh_10:15), Jesus gave up His ?psuchē for the sheep,? and in Mat_20:28 He gave His psuchē (not His pneuma) as a ransom - a difference which is characteristic. For the pneuma stands in quite a different relation to God from the psuchē. The ?spirit? (pneuma) is the outbreathing of God into the creature, the life-principle derived from God. The ?soul? (psuchē) is man's individual possession, that which distinguishes one man from another and from inanimate nature. The pneuma of Christ was surrendered to the Father in death; His psuchē was surrendered, His individual life was given ?a ransom for many.? His life ?was given for the sheep?
(2) This explains those expressions in the New Testament which bear on the salvation of the soul and its preservation in the regions of the dead. ?Thou wilt not leave my soul unto Hades? (the world of shades) (Act_2:27); ?Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil? (Rom_2:9); ?We are ... of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul? (Heb_10:39); ?Receive ... the implanted word, which is able to save your souls? (Jam_1:21).
The same or similar expressions may be met with in the Old Testament in reference to the soul. Thus in Psa_49:8, the King James Version ?The redemption of their soul is precious? and again: ?God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol? (Psa_49:15). Perhaps this may explain - at least this is Wendt's explanation - why even a corpse is called nephesh or soul in the Old Testament, because, in the region of the dead, the individuality is retained and, in a measure, separated from God (compare Hag_2:13; Lev_21:11).

3. Oehler on Soul and Spirit:
The distinction between psuchē and pneuma, or nephesh and rūaḥ, to which reference has been made, may best be described in the words of Oehler (Old Testament Theology, I, 217): ?Man is not spirit, but has it: he is soul.... In the soul, which sprang from the spirit, and exists continually through it, lies the individuality - in the case of man, his personality, his self, his ego.? He draws attention to the words of Elihu in Job (Job_33:4): 'God's spirit made me,' the soul called into being; 'and the breath of the Almighty animates me,' the soul kept in energy and strength, in continued existence, by the Almighty, into whose hands the inbreathed spirit is surrendered, when the soul departs or is taken from us (1Ki_19:4). Hence, according to Oehler the phrases naphshı̄ (?my soul?), naphshekhā (?thy soul?) may be rendered in Latin egomet, tu ipse; but not rūḥı̄ (?my spirit?), ruḥăkhā (?thy spirit?) - soul standing for the whole person, as in Gen_12:5; Gen_17:14; Eze_18:4, etc. See PSYCHOLOGY.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

The present article is a sequel to that on Punishment, in which literature only of the question concerning future punishment will be briefly stated. The literature of the question concerning the nature and duration of future punishment consists of the following particulars. First, its duration was believed by the heathens to be eternal. Secondly, there is a still more striking similarity between the descriptions both of the nature and duration of future punishment given in the Apocryphal books and those of the New Testament. Thus Jdt_16:17; 'Woe to the nations which rise up against my kindred! the Lord Almighty will take vengeance on them in the day of judgment, in putting fire and worms in their flesh; and they shall feel them, and weep for ever' (comp. Sir_7:17; Mar_9:44). These terms seem borrowed from Isaiah's description of a different subject (Isa_66:24). Thirdly, Josephus describes the doctrine of everlasting punishment as being held by the Pharisees and Essenes: 'that the souls of the wicked should be punished with perpetual punishment, and that there was appointed for them a perpetual prison' (De Bell. Jud. ii. 8. 11, 14; Antiq. xviii. 1, 3). In the New Testament the nature of future punishment is almost always described by figures. 'The most abstract description occurs in Rom_2:9-16 : 'Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men.' Our Lord generally describes it under figures suggested by some comparison he had just before made, and in unison with it. Thus, having described future happiness under the figure of a midnight banquet, lighted up with lamps, then the state of the rejected is described under that of 'outer darkness' outside the mansion, and 'gnashing' or chattering 'of teeth,' from the extreme cold of an Oriental night (Mat_8:12; Luk_13:28). If 'the end of the world' be described by him under the figure of a harvest, then the wicked, who are represented by the tares, are accordingly gathered and burned. Our Lord also frequently represents future punishment under the idea of fire, which Calvin, on Isa_66:24, remarks, must be understood metaphorically of spiritual punishment. Indeed both the nature and variety of the figures employed by our Savior in regard to the subject fully justify Paley's observation, 'that our Lord's discourses exhibit no particular description of the invisible world. The future happiness of the good and the future misery of the bad, which is all we want to be assured of, is directly and positively affirmed, and is represented by metaphors and comparisons which were plainly intended as metaphors and comparisons, and nothing more. As to the rest a solemn reserve is maintained' (Evidences of Christianity, part ii. ch. ii.). The question of the duration of future punishment chiefly turns on the force of the words translated 'ever,' 'everlasting,' 'never,' which our Lord and his apostles apply to it, and which it is well known have sometimes a limited signification, and are very variously translated in the English version. Hence, therefore, it is urged on the one side, that we can never settle the precise import of these words, as applied in the New Testament to the duration of future punishment, until we shall be able also to answer the following questions; namely, Was it part of the commission of Christ and His apostles to determine this matter? and if so, In what sense were the terms they used in regard to it meant by themselves, and understood by their hearers?whether as denoting a punishment of unknown duration, or one literally coexistent with the duration of the Eternal God? On the other side it is objected, that the same word is applied both to the happiness of the righteous and the misery of the wicked, though varied in our translation of Mat_25:46 : 'These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.' Upon this truly important subject we cordially acquiesce in the remark of Doddridge: 'Miserable are they who venture their souls upon the possibility that the words in question, when applied to future punishment, may have a limited meaning.'




The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

This word is used as a picture of, or a type of, many things.

Below is a list of some of the things which are covered by this word:

Gen_2:7 The human life
Gen_34:8 Human feelings
Gen_35:18 The human spirit
Lev_5:2 The person's body
Lev_17:11 The whole person
Lev_17:12 The person's body
2Ch_6:38 Purpose of heart
1Sa_18:1 Human affections
1Ki_17:21 The spirit of life
Deu_11:13 The human mind or will
Heb_10:39 The whole person
Heb_13:17 The human life

The above types cover practically all of the places where the word "soul" is used throughout the Scriptures. These passages are a guide to other Scriptures.
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.


(prop. רוּחִ, πνεῦμα, the rational spirit; but occasionally נֶפֶשׁ, ψυχή, the animal principle of life), that vital, immaterial, active substance, or principles in man whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons, and wills. The rational soul is simple, uncompounded, and immaterial, not composed of matter and form; for matter can never think and move of itself as the soul does. In the fourth volume of the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester the reader will find a very valuable paper by Dr. Ferrier, proving, by evidence apparently complete, that every part of the brain has been injured without affecting the act of thought. It will be difficult for any man to peruse this without being convinced that the modern theory of the Materialists is shaken from its very foundation. SEE MATERIALISM.
The soul is rather to be described as to its operation than to be defined as to its essence. Various, indeed, have been the opinions of philosophers concerning its substance. In the second book of his treatise Περὶ Ψυχῆς, Aristotle has given two definitions of it. In the first of these he calls it “the Entelechy (Ε᾿ντελέχεια), or first form of an organized body which has potential life.” The Epicureans thought it a subtle air, composed of atoms, or primitive corpuscles. The Stoics maintained it was a flame, or portion of heavenly light. The Cartesians make thinking the essence of the soul. Critics, a Sophist, regarded the blood as the seat and substratum of the soul. According to Plato, “The first or invisible element of the soul in man is the instrument of rational cognition, the other element is the organ of perception and representation. With this soul, having its seat in the head, are combined the courageous and the appetitive souls, the whole resembling the composite force of a driver and two steeds.” Aristotle distinguished several forms of soul, viz. the rational, which is purely spiritual; and infused by the immediate inspiration of God; the appetitice, which was the source of desire and will — the motive of locomotion; the sensitive, which, being common to man and brutes, is supposed to be formed of the element, and is the cause of sensation and feeling and, lastly, the vegetative soul, or principle of growth and nutrition, as the first is of understanding, and the second of animal life.
Modern philosophy has made many attempts to define the soul, of which we give the following resume. “It is not I that thinks, but it thinks in me; and it is not I that am, but it is something in me” (Baggesen, Zeitschr. von Fichte, 34, 153). “Spirit is a substance, immediately immanent in thinking, or of which thinking is immediately the form of activity. Spirit is thinking substance, the soul is dynamically present in the entire organism” (Chalybais, ibid. 20, 69). “We are compelled to suppose that there must be a real essence as the substantial bearer of all psychical conditions. This essence is the soul. It must stand with other real essences in causal relation, in order to the generation in it of manifold internal conditions. In brief, the soul needs the body, the body needs the soul” (Cornelius, Zeitschr. fir exacte Philosophie, 4, 99-102). “In the organism formed of atoms, which are spiritual essences, one unfolds its spiritual force to the point of self- consciousness; this atom, which as gas form atom interpenetrates the entire organism and occupies space as a center, is the soul” (Drossbach, Harmonie der Ergebnisse d. Naturforschung, p. 101-129, 229). “The phenomena of body and soul hang together as internal and external phenomena of the same essence. This primary essence is, however, nothing more than the conjunction of phenomena themselves in the unitv of the general consciousness. The soul becomes aware only of its own proper phenomena, the body becomes aware only through that which appears of it to the soul itself. It is a common essence which appears externally as body, internally as soul” (Fechner, Physical. und philosoph. Atonzenlehre, 2d ed. p. 258, 259). “The soul is no more than nature; it is a phenomenon of the internal sense” (J.G. Fichte, Grundlage d. ges. Wissenschaftslehre, 1794, 1802). “The fact of self consciousness can only be explained on the supposition that the soul is a real essence, distinct from the organism, capable of reflection upon itself, that is, of consciousness. “Soul and body are diverse substances, but in the most intimate union and mutual interpenetration. It is the idea of its body.” “Every soul acquires for itself an organic body.
The external material body is but the changing image of the internal process of soul and life” (I.H. Fichte, Zeitschr. 12, 246; 25, 176-178). “Spirit is but a higher potency, a mere continuation of development of the animal soul, and the animal soul itself is a mere exaltation of the vital force of the plant. These three principles are in man, in virtue of his self consciousness, comprehended in one and the same Ego” (Fischer, Metaphysik, p. 36-38; Sitz der Seele, p. 8, 16). “The soul is a substantial essence. The inmost essence, the Ego, is unattainable to our cognition” (Frohschammer, Athehaumn, 2, 116, 119). “The body is the same life as the soul, and yet they may be spoken of as lying asunder. A soul without body would be nothing living, and the converse is true. The soul posits and produces itself; it has a body in itself, not without which it composes one total and actual, and in which it is omnipresent” (Hegel, Wereke, 5, 16; 8, 22, 23; 15, 339; 18, 29, 93). “We have no cognition of what is strictly the essence of our soul. We cannot reach the Ego itself with our consciousness; we can only reach it in the constantly shifting modifications, as it thinks, feels, wills, especially as it possesses the power of representation.” “The soul is a simple essence without parts, and without plurality in its quality, whose intellectual manifoldness is conditioned by a varied concurrence with other and yet real essences” (Herbart, Werke, 1, 193, etc.). “The Ego is an absolute unity, and, as it is no object of outward sense, is immaterial; and though it is present in space, and operates in it, occupies no space and has no special place in the body. The body is, rather, but the form of the soul; and birth, life; and death are but the diverse conditions of the soul. The conception of soul can only be reached by deductions” (Kant, Vorlesungen uber Metaphysik, p. 133-254; Werke, 7, 60-78). “The what of the soul, its nature, comes as little into view as does the essential nature of things in general; the essential nature of the soul in itself remains unknown to us before it comes into a situation within which alone its life unfolds itself.
The soul is also the focus into which flow together the movements of the bodily life that play hither and thither. The. soul neither arises from the body nor from nothing, but goes forth from the substance of the infinite with the same substantiality which pertains to all the actual in nature that has sprung from the same infinite source. Our personality is not composed of body and soul; rather does our true essence lie exclusively in the soul. The spirit is something higher than the soul. In the spirit is the unity of our being, our true Ego. The soul is but an element in its service. At death the soul passes away, the spirit ripens to a new existence” (Lotze, Mlikrokosmus; Sfreitschriften, 1, 138). “The soul, the consciousness a posteriori, is nothing but the individual being, so far as it is conscious, and can neither be, nor be thought of, apart from that individual being” (Schellwien, Seyn und Bewusstseyn, p. 117, 122). “The Ego which now apprehends itself as sentient or percipient, now as putting forth effort, willing, etc., knows itself at the same time as one and the same, the same abiding self. It is but an expression of this consciousness of unity when we speak of our own soul, and impute to it this or that predicate; that is, when we distinguish our own soul, with its manifold characteristics, from ourselves, and in this act implicitly contrast ourselves as unity with the mutation and manifoldness of our intellectual life” (Ulrici, Glauben und Wissen, p. 64-66; Zeitschr. von Fichte, 36, 232; Gott u. die Natur, p. 414-417).
Modern philosophers in Germany thus make a distinction between Ψυχή (Seele) and πνεῦμα (Geist), or spirit and soul; but they reverse the relative significance of these terms. Prof. G.H. Schubert says that the soul is the inferior part of our intellectual nature, while the spirit is that part of our nature which tends to the purely rational, the lofty and divine. The doctrine of the natural and the spiritual (q.v.) man, which we find in the writings of Paul, may, it has been thought, have formed the basis upon which this mental dualism has been founded. The plainest and most common distinction taken in the use of the words soul and mind is, that in speaking of the mind of man we refer more to the various powers which it possesses, or the various operations which it performs; and in speaking of the soul of man we refer rather to the nature and destiny of the human being. The following distinguishing features of spirit, mind, and soul have been given: “The first denotes the animating faculty, the breath of intelligence, the inspiring principle, the spring of energy, and the prompter of exertion; the second is the recording power, the preserver of impressions, the storer of deductions, the nurse of knowledge, and the parent of thought; the last is the disembodied, ethereal, self conscious being, concentrating in itself all the purest and most refined of human excellences, every generous affection, every benevolent disposition, every intellectual attainment, every ennobling virtue, and every exalting aspiration” (The Purpose of Existence [1850, 12mo], p. 79). Ψυχή, spirit, when considered separately signifies the principle of life; νοῦς, mind, the principle of intelligence. According to Plutarch, spirit is the cause and beginning of motion, and mind of order and harmony with respect to motion. Together they signify an intelligent soul. Thus we say the “immortality” of the soul, and the “powers” of the mind (Fleming, Vocabulary of Science, s.v.). SEE MIND.
In the Holy Scriptures three principles are recognized (see especially 1Th_5:23) as essential components of man — the soul (רוּחִ, πνεῦμα), the spirit (נֶפֶשׁ, Ψυχή), and the body (בָּשָׂר, σάρξ, or σῶμα); but these are not accurately, much less scientifically, defined. The first and the last of these elements clearly correspond to the material or physical and the immaterial or spiritual parts of man's nature, i.e. the soul and the body, as ordinarily defined by modern philosophers and scientists; but the middle term, the “spirit,” is hard to be distinguished. Yet in all earthly creatures, even in the lowest forms of animals, there is clearly observable a principle, inherent indeed in the body, and yet distinct from the rational faculty of man or the instinctive intelligence of brutes. This is usually styled “the animate principle,” or briefly life. It is this which molds the whole physical organism, and for this end controls, and to a large degree overrides, mere chemical and inorganic laws, producing combinations and results impossible to unvitalized substance. This power or essence — for it has not yet been determined whether it be distinct from or a mere result of the combination of soul and body — has hitherto eluded the analysis of scientific and philosophical research, and it will probably remain an inscrutable secret; but it is a sufficiently separate element of human and animal nature to warrant the distinctive use of a special term for it by the Biblical writers (which is carefully observed by them in the original, although frequently obscured in the English version). Thus spirit (נֶפֶשׁ, ψυχή) is never applied to God or to angelic beings, who are incorporeal; nor, on the other hand, is soul (רוּח, πνεῦμα) ever used of beasts (except in Ecc_3:19; Ecc_3:21, where it is evidently employed out of its proper sense for the sake of uniformity). Yet life (חִיָּה) is ascribed equally to all these classes of existence, although those only who have bodies are endowed with the organic locomotive principle (Gen_1:20; Gen_2:7). SEE PSYCHOLOGY.
On the general subject, see Baxter, On the Soul; Drew, Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul; Doddridge; Lectures, p. 92-97; Flavel, On the Soul; Locke, On the Understanding; oore, Immortality of the Soul; Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy. SEE SPIRIT.



CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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