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Path: utzoo!utcsri!utai!utflis!brown
From: brown@utflis.UUCP (Susan Brown)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <279@utflis.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Sep-85 17:51:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: utflis.279
Posted: Wed Sep 25 17:51:29 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 25-Sep-85 19:24:05 EDT
References: <696@utastro.UUCP> <1560@umcp-cs.UUCP> <733@psivax.UUCP>
Reply-To: brown@utflis.UUCP (Susan Brown)
Organization: FLIS, University of Toronto
Lines: 27
Summary: meaning of "soul"

In article <733@psivax.UUCP> friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>In article <1560@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
>>To be more precise, what I am rejecting is the notion of souls *in the form
>>of* supernatural beings which are somehow linked to physical people.  If you
>>choose to identify the soul with the information comprising a person, then I
>>have no objection-- but such a soul is obviously not supernatural, even
>>though it isn't physical either.
>	As a matter of fact, *historically* speaking, this is very
>close to the older definitions of 'soul'. Certainly the modern concept
>of a *disembodied* soul is just that, relatively recent. Early
>Christian and Jewish writers had no such concept. It is interesting
>how easily we read occidental dualisitc interpretations into biblical
>language which really has no such sgnificance.
>				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)
I agree. The Genesis account speaks of man *becoming* a living soul, not 
of *receiving* one and the Bible frequently speaks of various animals as
souls, or of the soul of a person as the whole being including physical
body, personality, and spirit or life force.  The early Hebrew writers  did
not anticipate their "immortal soul" living on after death.  They hoped that
God would remember them, as an individual, and resurrect them to life on
earth again -- as the same person.  The Hebrew word used for soul is nephesh,
and carries this meaning.  The Greek word psyche was used to translate these
statements when they are quoted by early Christian Biblical writers without
a change in the concept.  The current common religious belief in an immortal 
soul seems to have originated in Greek philosophy.
Susan
(sources available on request, but I realize this is net.philosophy)


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