Spirit & Soul

Having a word or name for something doesn't mean that we truly understand it. Nor is a name a 'thing' in itself. It 's just a squiggle we can put down on paper or a sound we make when we open our mouths. Being 'named' doesn't make something real – nor does having a word for it mean that it actually exists in the real world.

Furthermore, for words to work they have to have agreed meanings. If I call a spade a spade then all parties concerned have to understand what 'spade' means – if they don't: or their meaning is different to mine, then we're talking different languages and communication becomes impossible.

Spirit and soul are such words. Words that we think we understand but don't. Words that have no concrete reality attached to them and – what 's more - mean different things to different people.

Most people, when asked, will describe a spirit or soul as being, 'What 's left when you die'. If pressed to explain further they will, generally, struggle to elaborate on this vague notion.

Not so religious people. They will tell you that spirits and souls are essentially the same thing and that this 'immaterial essence' of a person survives death: it is immortal, and will live on - in either heaven or hell. This belief is founded – they will attest – on Holy Writ: their ultimate authority.

Are they correct in thinking this?

In Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 you will find these words, '...the dividing asunder of soul and spirit...': words which tell us that the writers of the Bible, at least, thought soul and spirit to be two distinct – not to be confused – concepts.

So what are the biblical concepts of spirit and soul?

Lets begin with spirit.

The English word spirit is derived from the Latin spiritus: which means 'breath'. The biblical words that were often translated as spirit in English versions of the Bible were: ruach (sometimes ruah) from the Old Testament Hebrew, and pneuma from the Greek New Testament. Ruah and pneuma both relate to 'breath', 'wind' or 'air'.

Now in nearly every instance, throughout the Bible, where the word spirit is used something (eg, a skill, attribute or quality) is being bestowed - by God - upon someone via the holy ruach or pneuma: IE God's breath.

For instance: Samson was able to perform amazing feats of strength after, '...the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him...'. (Judges 14: 6).

God could also transfer gifts that he had bestowed in this manner from one person to others. '...( God) took of the spirit that was on him (Moses), and gave it unto the elders...'. (Numbers 11:25).

These gifts were not, either, necessarily permanent endowments. ' But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him,'. (1 Samuel 16:14).

(NB In the Old Testament evil spirits [bad breath?] are invariably sent by God – not the Devil).

Nor were these gifts from God only ever of a positive or beneficial nature, '...Behold, the lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouths of these thy prophets...'. (1 Kings 22:23).

In the New Testament we find that, contrary to popular belief, God retains this power to bestow gifts and does not delegate this function to Jesus. '...That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him...'. (Ephesians 1:17).

So the words ruach and pneuma: translated as spirit, refer to an action (benefaction) performed by God upon people. Nowhere in the Bible are these words used to reference a deceased person's immaterial, disembodied essence.

From where, then, has all this confusion about the meaning of the word spirit arisen? The problem lies with English translations of the Latin Bible that was – itself – translated (often loosely and with an agenda that wasn't overly concerned with either accuracy or honesty) from the original Hebrew and Greek. It is only in these versions that spirit (spiritus) was translated as ghost. Ghost comes from the Old English gast which, in turn, is derived from the Germanic geist. These words relate to pagan ancestor worship; the practice of which could involve, among other things, seeking advice from the ghosts of the revered dead (necromancy) and even the disinterment of cadavers so that the deceased could attend feasts and religious observances. In the pagan psyche death was not the end of life but rather a transition between separate, yet overlapping, realities: the world of the living existed alongside – and sometimes interfaced with – the realm of the dead. This was a concept that the pagans refused to let go of so early Christian evangelists thought it theologically expedient to incorporate it into the 'teachings' of the church and, in that way, more readily win over converts.

The inclusion of the word ghost in modern versions of the Bible has now been, for the most part, discontinued.

There is, however, one instance in English versions of the Old Testament where the original Hebrew word ruach was correctly translated. We find it in Genesis 2: 7, 'And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul'.

This rather quaint description of the medical procedure that we know as CPR brings us, rather neatly, to the second of our problematic words: soul.

We are already aware that – contrary to popular belief – the Bible differentiates between the concepts of spirit and soul;and that the widely accepted view of what constitutes a spirit doesn't have any foundation in scripture either.

With soul we will find that popular perception is even more at variance with what the Bible is actually telling us.

The words that we need to be looking at here are: nephesh in the Old Testament, and psyche (or psuche) in the New Testament. Both these words are rendered soul in English versions of the Bible.

Lets look at what the Old Testament (OT) has to say first.

Although the word nephesh appears 751 times in the OT – it was only translated as soul on 472 of these occasions. This leaves us with 279 instances where it was translated differently. These alternate translations included words and phrases such as: himself, herself, themselves, living creature and living thing (NB this is not a complete list).

What becomes abundantly clear when researching the Old Testament meaning of this word, and its English translation, is that they both refer to physical entities: including animals, that – not only - possess life but are also susceptible to being killed. Nowhere in the Old Testament are they used to indicate a spiritual essence that survives death.

Consider these passages.

From the Book of Joshua: when his forces are attacking the city of Eglon during his bloodily brutal campaign to seize control of the Promised Land, '...And all the souls that were therein he utterly destroyed that day...'. (Joshua 10:35).

In Ezekiel we find, 'Behold, all souls are mine...the soul that sinneth, it shall die'. (Ezekiel 18:4).

The Old Testament is even more emphatic when it comes to describing what constitutes the death of the soul.

We have this: from Psalms, on the process of dying, 'His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish'. (Psalm 146:4).

Again: in Psalm 115, we find, 'The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence'.

If you have any lingering doubts about the Old Testament view on this subject read these passages from Ecclesiastes 9: 5 and 6 ( in their entirety).

5) 'For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten'.

The emboldened words here suggest eternity.

6) 'Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything done under the sun'.

This fatalistic, 'Death comes as the end,' view of things is attributed to the teachings of the Sadduccees: the aristocratic high priests of Judaism throughout the pre-Christian era. Around the time that the Hebrew scriptures were first translated into Greek: circa 200 BC, however, things began to change. With the Greek versions of these texts the Hebrew word for grave - Sheol, was translated into - Hades a word that has a whole raft of connotations associated with it. Hades was both the name of the Greek god of the dead and the shadowy underworld: the dwelling place of disembodied spirits, over which he presided.

Over time this Greek vision of the immortal spirit lingering on in the afterlife was adapted and incorporated into Judaic doctrine. The Jews did not, though, switch from one school of thought to the other in one giant leap. There seems to have been a transitional period during which the Jews adopted a sort of 'half way house' position. This involved believing that – at some future time after death – the physical bodies (souls) of the departed (all of them – IE many millions – in a single day) would be resurrected (literally re-created from the dust to which they had been consigned) and have to stand in judgment before God. Those adjudged would either be born again to live as the subjects of God's Kingdom to come here on Earth or be cast into the the lake of fire: Gehenna, which was once the name of a perpetually burning rubbish dump on the outskirts of biblical Jerusalem. The peculiar thing about this halfway house position is that it has never fully given way to the contradictory spiritual (as opposed to physical) reward/punishment scenario espoused in the New Testament.

This has led to a situation where Christians believe that when they die: their immortal souls (spirits) will go (straightaway) to either an other worldly heaven or hell and that - come the day of judgment (which will occur shortly after Satan's forces are defeated at the battle of Armageddon) - they will also (conversely) be resurrected in the flesh so that they can either walk the streets of the New Jerusalem (the capital city of God's kingdom here on Earth) or be cast into the bottomless pit (whereabouts unknown) to be tortured by demons (another purely Greek invention) for all eternity. With Christianity, it would appear, you can have it both ways – that is as long as you can disregard the contradictions inherent in this duck soup of a doctrine.

I make no apologies for the complexity of the paragraph above. I am, after all, attempting to describe a potpourri of beliefs masquerading as a coherent belief system - which it patently isn't. The only reason this mishmash of Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek mythology grew into the edifice we know as Christianity is because it was adopted: and brutally enforced, as the official religion of the Roman Empire which was – rather ironically – clearly identified as the Beast/Whore of Babylon by St John the Divine in The Book of Revelation. In fact if you read Revelation you will discover that Christ's bride: the New Jerusalem, will only descend – space ship like - to Earth from Heaven after Rome has been utterly destroyed.

Another, related, word that is often banded about by 'believers' without regard to any clear cut definition or agreed meaning is 'spirituality'. This word, also, seems to inhabit a gray, fuzzy, limbo land where words are ill-defined and their meanings smudged and fudged to the point that they become meaningless.

If asked: those whom claim to possess spirituality, might describe it as the state of being, 'Close to God'. Which is, of course, nonsensical. If God possesses omnipresence then everyone is – at all times – equidistant from God (regardless of whether they believe in him or not). No – what they actually mean when they make this claim is that they have presumed to pre-judge themselves and that when they die: they have decided, that they are going to heaven. God's agreement with this course of events is, for them, a foregone conclusion.

Once such people have assured, for themselves, that their own individual destinations are divine they usually go on to decided who isn't going to go to Heaven when they die. A lot of the time this is quite easy for them to determine. If, for instance, they happen to be citizens of a country that is embroiled in a military conflict with another country then their enemies are obviously not going to qualify for a ticket to paradise. Such is the certitude with which many people hold this conviction that it enables them to condone acts of appalling violence and the slaughter of those: including children, innocent of any crime.

Then there are the weirdos. People: such as myself, that are not going to Heaven because we don't believe in a Heaven. As atheists we don't mind, either, being told that we are not going to Heaven by people that have managed to convince themselves that they are. Although I do feel that I should point out that the Old Testament does appear to support our view of things.

What I do find objectionable is biblical myth being taught as history. We are now at the threshold of understanding how the Universe works at every level of scale. Every day the evidence of a Cosmos ruled by quantum physics is mounting. Every new discovery in the biological sciences and related disciplines underpins and reinforces Darwin's theory of evolution. Yet, still, the believers deny the empirical truth. They refuse to see the evidence before their very eye's.

None of this would really matter were it not for the fact that this is what they – the believers - would bequeath to our collective future: mind numbing ignorance and prejudice, the eons old precursors of war.

Religion is a mind crime perpetrated by successive generations upon those that follow after. The sins of the father are, indeed, visited upon the son. Religion seeks to turn back the clock and instigate a new, dark age of ignorance and enslavement. We atheists are here to stop this from happening.

The truth will out.

Where in the Bible does it prophesy this event? The Milky Way Galaxy is on a collision course with another galaxy: dubbed The Great Attractor, in the constellation of Andromeda. This event will make the Apocalypse of St John the Divine seem like a sideshow. This is a truth that you will not find in the Bible. This is not spirituality. This is science.