Early Belief That The Soul And Body Are Seperate

[etana]

I hope this hasn't already been discussed (or if it has that you are not sick of it).

University of Chicago archaeologists who made the discovery last summer in ruins of a walled city near the Syrian border said the stele provided the first written evidence that the people in this region held to the religious concept of the soul apart from the body. By contrast, Semitic contemporaries, including the Israelites, believed that the body and soul were inseparable, which for them made cremation unthinkable, as noted in the Bible

this is from 2,800-Year-Old Monument to the Soul Is Discovered in Turkey - NYTimes.com

There is a better article here: http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/zincirli/ with more details.

I wasn't aware that the the ancient semites believed the soul and body were inseperable. Could this just reflect the imperfect pairing of English "soul" with Hebrew "np$" (nabsh in the aramaic inscription). That the english word has connotations that bleed over into ruax and neshamah and that nephesh has physical connotations lacking in the english word (but somewhat restored in the LDS religious dialect).

[maklelan]

I hope this hasn't already been discussed (or if it has that you are not sick of it).

this is from 2,800-Year-Old Monument to the Soul Is Discovered in Turkey - NYTimes.com

There is a better article here: http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/zincirli/ with more details.

I wasn't aware that the the ancient semites believed the soul and body were inseperable. Could this just reflect the imperfect pairing of English "soul" with Hebrew "np$" (nabsh in the aramaic inscription). That the english word has connotations that bleed over into ruax and neshamah and that nephesh has physical connotations lacking in the english word (but somewhat restored in the LDS religious dialect).

Ruah means wind or breath, in addition to soul. It's been long believed that the soul is separate from the body. A good example is the ancient Egyptian short story, "Conversation Between a Man and His Ba." The version to which I linked translated "ba" as soul, even though it's a bit different. This discovery shouldn't get anyone excited about beliefs similar to our own, as the person was attempting to imbue the stele upon which the text was engraved with his soul. again, a parallel is found in Egypt, where they believed representations of people, whether on papyrus, in stone, or in wood, held their soul after death.

[lukas_s]

Genesis 2 is the basis for the Jewish belief that the body and soul are inseparable. In it we have:

v.7: vayitser Adonai Elohim et-ha'adam afar min-ha'adamah vayipach pe'apav nishmat chayim vayehi ha'adam lenefesh chayah. (God formed man out of dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the soul of life. Man [then] became a living creature.)

God 'breathed' part of His Soul into Adam, giving rise to the notion in Judaism that our souls are eternal, because they are literally a part of God. Ecclesiastes 12:7 states "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit (soul) shall return unto God who gave it." I think that pretty well summarizes the Jewish belief of the union of soul and body. Judaism also maintains that the soul is made up of 5 parts, 3 of which you stated (nephesh, ruach, and neshamah), along with chayyah and yehidah, whereas our concept of the soul is a lot more singular and simplistic. The Zohar posits a few more soul-states in Judaism, mainly states for the kodeshim, or holy people.

The reason cremation is unacceptable, insofar as I remember what I learned in Hebrew school, is because God formed man from the dust of the earth as a whole being. He is meant to return to the earth in much the same state. Being that Judaism has no concrete belief in the afterlife, this mitzvah to bury the dead whole has no significance, for Jews at least, about resurrection.

[maklelan]

Genesis 2 is the basis for the Jewish belief that the body and soul are inseparable. In it we have:

v.7: vayitser Adonai Elohim et-ha'adam afar min-ha'adamah vayipach pe'apav nishmat chayim vayehi ha'adam lenefesh chayah.

That's a bet, not a pe. It doesn't mean anything as a pe.

God 'breathed' part of His Soul into Adam, giving rise to the notion in Judaism that our souls are eternal, because they are literally a part of God. Ecclesiastes 12:7 states "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit (soul) shall return unto God who gave it." I think that pretty well summarizes the Jewish belief of the union of soul and body. Judaism also maintains that the soul is made up of 5 parts, 3 of which you stated (nephesh, ruach, and neshamah), along with chayyah and yehidah, whereas our concept of the soul is a lot more singular and simplistic. The Zohar posits a few more soul-states in Judaism, mainly states for the kodeshim, or holy people.

This is actually a modern Jewish interpretation. The five-part soul is based on long-winded Rabbinic interpretation. Nishmah means "breath," not "soul," in the Bible. Nephesh is the soul. And the Israelites, like the other ancient Near Eastern peoples, believed in a soul separate from the body because when a person died their personality and life was gone, but their body remained. When they saw bodies decompose they determined that the soul must be the element giving life to the body. That belief far predates the composition of Genesis.

The reason cremation is unacceptable, insofar as I remember what I learned in Hebrew school, is because God formed man from the dust of the earth as a whole being. He is meant to return to the earth in much the same state. Being that Judaism has no concrete belief in the afterlife, this mitzvah to bury the dead whole has no significance, for Jews at least, about resurrection.

More accurate would be the statement that Modern Judaism has no ecumenical belief in the afterlife. Ancient Jews certainly had concrete beliefs, but ever since the divided kingdom different beliefs have cropped up all over.