What Is a Soul?

Man has a soul and an animal does not. At least, this is the common idea in Christendom. It betrays a double error in thinking. Already on the very first pages of Scripture this comes to light. Unfortunately, the translators of the Dutch NBG translation have obscured this by translating away the ordinary Hebrew word for “soul” (nephesh).

20 And Elohim said: Let the waters swarm with the swarming thing, the living soul, and let the flyer fly above the earth on the face of the expanse of the heavens. And it came to be so.
21 Elohim created the great sea monsters and every moving, living soul with which the waters swarm according to their kind, and every winged flyer according to its kind. And Elohim saw that it was good. – Genesis 1:20–21

The very first time the Bible speaks of souls it is about… animals! Animals are souls. Note well: animals do not have a soul, they are souls. Of these souls here it is said that they swarm and teem. In this the fauna distinguishes itself from the flora. Plants, trees, etc. are rooted in one place and do not move about. They do not swarm and teem. Nowhere are plants in the Bible called “souls.” After the creation of the animals follows on the sixth day the creation of man:

7 YHWH Elohim formed the human out of soil from the ground, and He blew into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living soul.
Genesis 2:7

Here too, unfortunately, the NBG translation has translated away the word for “soul.” And thereby the Bible reader is deprived of the truth of what a human soul actually is. Man did not receive a soul, but he became a soul. Here the soul is the result of the combination of formed dust from the ground and the breath of life.

Soul & Blood

That the soul is the combination of body and breath of life, we see portrayed in the type of the soul par excellence: the blood.

“For the soul of the flesh, it is in the blood…”
Leviticus 17:11 (see also 17:14 and Genesis 9:4)

Just as the soul is a combination of dust from the ground and breath of life, so we also find this thought reflected in the blood as a type of the soul. Blood too is nourished both from the ground (food) and from the breath of life (air). Remarkable in this connection is that the Hebrew word for “blood” (dam) is directly related to “red” (edom), but also to “ground” (adamah), as well as to “man” (adam). Man comes forth from “mother earth.”

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