SOUL: JEWISH CONCEPT

Unlike the Egyptian and Akkadian terms that have been translated as "soul" (e.g., ba, ka, khu, shimtu, shedu, ishtaru ), the most important Hebrew words for this concept (nefesh, neshamah or nishmah, and ruaḥ ) do not primarily refer to appearance, destiny, power, or supernatural influences, but to respiration—the inner, animating element of life. While the Hebrew Bible distinguishes between spirit and flesh, it does not accept the type of dualism of body and soul characteristic of Greek thought. Hebrew terms for the soul usually refer to an activity or characteristic of the body or to an entire living being. To "afflict the soul" means to practice physical self-denial (Lv. 16:29ff.).

Hebrew nefesh, usually translated as "soul," refers to the breath, as does the term neshamah (or nishmah ), which became the most common word for the soul in postbiblical Hebrew. The verbs formed from the roots of these words (nafash and nasham ) mean "to breathe." The two words are found together in Genesis 2:7, which narrates how the first human (adam ) received the breath of life (nishmat ḥayyim ) from God and became a living soul (nefesh ḥayyah ). Another meaning of nefesh is "life," particularly animal life. Here the soul is a kind of material principle of vitality, which is separable from the inert substance (basar ) of the body. Neshamah, on the other hand, sometimes refers particularly to conscious life or intelligence. Nefesh also may refer to mental states, in particular to strong emotions or physical cravings. At times nefesh refers to human capabilities, such as the capacity for eloquent speech.

The word ruaḥ, which is often rendered as "spirit," refers to powers or actions outside the body and often has the meaning of "wind." Ruaḥ is the mysterious vitality in the material body, which is considered a divine gift. Ruaḥ sometimes denotes forces external to the body that operate in or through the body or the mental faculties. These forces are states of exaltation and depression beyond normal experience that come and go "like the wind." (The clearest example of the various meanings of ruaḥ in a single passage is Ezekiel 37:1–14, the vision of the valley of dry bones.)

According to the Hebrew Bible, a dead human being remains in possession of the soul upon entering Sheʾol, a shadowy place sometimes synonymous with the grave, where the vitality and energy associated with worldly life are drastically decreased. Since both the body and the soul enter Sheʾol, the later doctrine of the resurrection (as expressed in Isaiah 24–27 and Daniel 12) indicates a reentry into life in both aspects. The first definite appearance in Jewish thought of a doctrine of personal survival of death in a general resurrection of the dead comes in the literature associated with the Hasmonean Revolt (166–164 bce), from which time it increases in importance to become a central dogma, later a part of the basic doctrine of Christianity.

The work in the Hebrew canon that expresses the idea of resurrection most explicitly is the Book of Daniel. The final chapter of this Hebrew-Aramaic text of the second century bce expands some details of the divine judgment of the nations with a "secret" revelation wherein it is made known that at some future time many of the dead will wake to everlasting life, while some will wake only to eternal suffering. References to the concept of resurrection are also found in Isaiah 26, which modern scholars regard as part of a late addition to the book. It alludes to personal resurrection, which, it suggests, will be restricted to certain categories of the dead and to the shades or refaʾim. The original nature of the refaʾim in Canaanite mythology is the subject of continuing debate, but in biblical contexts they are usually understood as impotent ghosts.

The "dew of light" mentioned in Isaiah 26, as well as in the Pseudepigrapha (e.g., 1 Bar. 29:7, 73:2; 1 Enoch 60:7), suggests ideas of restored fertility, and is associated in the Jewish tradition with individual resurrections as well as a general resurrection. However, the passages in Daniel and Isaiah concerning the role of the soul in resurrection are ambiguous and have allowed for extensive and often contradictory speculation. The Sadducees, in the first century ce, followed a literal reading of the accepted scriptures and denied that the idea of a general resurrection was found there. But the Pharisees and their successors, the tannaim (first and second centuries ce) and the amoraim (third through fifth centuries ce) were convinced that the scriptures, properly understood in the light of an oral instruction passed down through Moses and the later prophets, were filled with hints and allusions concerning the world to come.

Rabbinic Views

A synopsis of concepts of the soul in rabbinic literature may give an overly uniform appearance to this material, which developed over many generations. Statements scattered through this vast literature may appear when cited in isolation to be pure speculation or assertions of dogma, but they often have a primarily polemic point in context. With explicit and implicit contradictions so abundant in the Talmud, no fully articulated system (or systems) can be found, but it is possible to summarize majority views and influential positions.

The close connection between soul and body characteristic of the biblical worldview is continued in the rabbinic literature. The Palestinian Talmud (J.T., Kil. 8.4, 31c) attributes the origin of different portions of the physical body to human parents, while the spirit, life, and soul are attributed to God. This admits a greater duality than is acknowledged in the Hebrew Bible, but the soul is regarded as the active element, and so is responsible for sin, while the body is only its vehicle. Such an attitude is contrary to Greek views known in Hellenistic Judaea whereby the body is seen as a trap that debases or hinders the soul. According to Kaufmann Kohler and Ephraim Urbach (see, respectively, Jewish Theology and The Sages, ) this view of the body as the source of sin and impurity is not found in rabbinic Judaism. Urbach also concluded that neither the concept of the soul's immortality, separate from the body, nor the idea of its transmigration into other bodies, is rabbinic. The absence of early, authoritative pronouncements on such points allowed for widely variant speculations within later orthodox and heterodox thought. Talmudic Judaism, as Urbach indicates, found moral duality existing within the soul, which contains both good and evil impulses, the latter including the ambitious, self-centered, and envious impulses in human beings that must be controlled rather than extirpated. The Talmud presents the soul as a supernatural entity created and bestowed by God and joined to a terrestrial body (B.T., Ber. 60a). God takes back the soul at death, but later restores it to the dead body. Similar views of the soul are elaborated elsewhere in the Talmud and early midrashim, although not without opposing voices. Among these is the concept of the soul's preexistence, which, Urbach argues, appears in rabbinic sayings only after the third century centuries ce. According to some, all human souls came into existence during creation as parts of the "wind of God," understood here as "spirit" (B.T., ʿA. Z. 5a, Yev. 62a; Gn. Rab. 8.1, 24.4). Unborn souls abide in a guf ("a body"; commentators suggest "promptuary") among the treasures of the ʿaravot, the seventh heaven, where also are found the souls of the righteous and the "dew of light" with which God will resurrect the dead (B.T., Ḥag. 12b, Yev. 62a, Shab. 152b). The Messiah will come when the supply of souls in the guf is exhausted, or, according to others, when God has created those souls he has held in his intention from the beginning (B.T., ʿA. Z. 5a, Yev. 62a, Nid. 136; Gn. Rab. 24.4; cf. also Apocalypse of Ezra 4:35).

According to one view, God compels the selected or newly created soul to enter the womb at the time of conception. Even after the soul has entered this world, it is not entirely forgetful of its origins and is not without divine care. It is accompanied by angels (B.T., Ber. 60b, end; B.T., Shab. 119a), and nightly, while the body sleeps, the soul ascends to heaven, from which it returns with renewed life for the body (Gn. Rab. 14.9; probably implied in B.T., Ber. 60a). On the Sabbath the body enjoys an "additional soul," which is sent forth by and returns to God, as Shimʿon ben Laqish discovered by an ingenious rendering of the word va-yinafash in Exodus 31:17 (B.T., Beits. 16a, Taʿan. 27b).

Although the soul had protested at its embodiment and its birth into the world, it also protests at the death of the body. The soul hovers about the dead body for three days, hoping that life will return (Tanḥumaʾ, Miqets 4, Pequdei 3; cf. B.T., Shab. 152a). Ultimately the soul leaves the body and awaits the resurrection, when they will reunited and judged together (B.T., San. 91). Concerning the fate of the soul in the meantime, one view is that the souls of the righteous will remain with God, while the souls of the wicked wander in the air or are hurled from one end of the world to the other by angels (B.T., Shab. 152b).

Not everyone will be resurrected. The generation destroyed in the Flood, the men of Sodom (San. 10.3) who were punished by complete annihilation, and, with ironic appropriateness, those who denied the doctrine of resurrection will not return to life. Attempts have been made as well to relate doctrines of the soul or of the resurrection to Jewish concepts of religious duty and piety (e.g., B.T., Ket. 111b), a problem that was to be taken up at length by philosophers and mystics in later centuries.

Philosophical Views

Philosophical speculation in Judaism arose through the desire to reconcile the Jewish tradition with contemporary intellectual discourse. In medieval Jewish philosophy, the effort at reconciliation was directed at two rival forms of thought, Platonism and Aristotelianism, both of which were read under the influence of Neoplatonic commentaries and misattributed texts, such as the excerpts from Plotinus that circulated as the Theology of Aristotle. Isaac Husik noted (1916) that as a group, Jewish philosophers hesitated between (1) the Platonic view of the soul as a distinct entity that enters the body from a spiritual world and acts by using the body as its instrument and (2) the Aristotelian view that, as far as the lower faculties such as sense, memory, and imagination are concerned, the soul is merely a form of the physical body and perishes with it. They found biblical references to support both views, although the latter provided a clearer division between the human and the divine.

Philo Judaeus (d. 45–50 ce) sought to reconcile Greek, predominantly Platonic and Stoic, philosophy with scripture, particularly the Pentateuch. He accomplished this through a device he borrowed from the Greeks, the allegorical method of interpretation, which the Stoics had used for the Homeric epics. Philo accepted most of the Greek distinction between body and soul, including the belief that the body and its desires were the cause of the pollution of the soul, the body being a prison from which the soul must escape. Humans are related to the world of the senses through the body and the lower parts (or functions) of the soul, but through reason a human being is related to the suprasensual, or divine, realm, to which the higher portion of the soul seeks to be reunited. For Philo, the religious task is to bring about the union of the individual soul with the divine Logos, transcending both the material world and the limits of the rational soul.

In Philo's adaptation of Plato, there is a transcendent, preexistent, incorporeal Logos, a direct projection of the ideas in the mind of God, and there is also an immanent Logos, the totality of God's powers existing in the material world. The intelligible world of the transcendent Logos is the model for the human world, in which all things, including individual souls, or minds, are reflections of the ideas, or images, as these are mediated through the immanent Logos. Directly below the immanent Logos in the descent from God are the rational, unbodied souls, which have the nature of living beings. Some of these were, or will be, incarnate in human bodies; others have not and never will be so embodied. These latter beings are ranked according to their inherent level of likeness to the divine. They are found in the heavens and in the air, and are known to the Greeks as daimones, that is (following the etymology in Plato's Cratylus 398b), "knowers," but in Hebrew they are called malʾakhim, "messengers," because they are God's messengers in his dealings with the created world. Translators of scripture have called them "angels," that is, "heralds."

The rational, human soul, a fragment of the Logos in human form, is capable of achieving a separate existence at a new level; the angels cannot. Without the support of God, however, the rational soul would perish by dissolving into its original, undifferentiated state. This is the fate of personal obliteration awaiting the wicked. The souls of the righteous, the wise and virtuous, will be brought close to God in proportion to their merits. Not only can some reach the level of the highest angels beneath the immanent Logos, as did Elijah, but some can attain the level of the ideas of the intelligible world, as did Enoch. Moses, the most perfect man, who delivered the most perfect law by which souls are disciplined and improved, stands above all created species and genera, before God himself. Philo thus attempts to link the Platonic ascent of the soul to the Platonic ideas, using the biblical concepts of prophecy and election. No place is made for a resurrection of the body reunited with the soul.

Philosophical and systematic theological writings from Jewish sources appear again later in the ninth and tenth centuries in response to the philosophical schools of Islam. The work of Yitsḥaq Yisraʾeli (c. 850–950) is largely Platonic in origin. Yisraʾeli believed in the substantiality and immortality of the soul, of which he distinguished three kinds in every human being. The first is the rational soul, which receives wisdom, discriminates between good and evil, and is subject to punishment for wrongdoing. The second is the animal soul, which humans share with beasts. It consists of sense perception, and it controls motion, but has no connection with reality and can judge only from appearances. The third is the vegetative soul, which is responsible for nutrition, growth, and reproduction; it has no sense perception or capacity to move. These distinctions, with major and minor variations, were to become common in Jewish as well as in Muslim and Christian writings.

Yitsḥaq Yisraʾeli's younger contemporary, Saʿadyah ben Yosef, or Saʿadyah Gaon (c. 882–942), summarized his ideas about the soul in the sixth treatise of his Book of Beliefs and Opinions (Arabic version, Kitāb al-amānāt wa-al-Iʿtiqādāt, completed about 933; Hebrew paraphrases and full translation as Sefer ha-emunot ve-ha-deʿot ). Saʿadyah follows the less widely accepted of the Talmudic and Midrashic views that the soul is formed with the completion of the body and that there is a continuous creation of souls. He accepts, however, the predetermined limit of the total number of souls. He defends the localization of the soul in the heart with a demonstration of synonymous uses of the words in biblical texts, as well as with ancient and medieval physiological theories locating consciousness in the heart. Like the celestial spheres, the soul is perfectly transparent, so that although it permeates the body through vessels leading from the heart, it is too fine to be seen. When the soul leaves the body it is stored up until the time of general retribution, when it is restored to its own body to face God's judgment. Because of their pure, celestial nature, the souls of the wise and just rise to the heavenly spheres. The souls of the wicked, however, become turbid from the impurities of their earthly lives, and after death they drift aimlessly among the lower elements. When it first leaves the body, the soul is troubled by the thought of the disintegration of its former abode. The earthbound souls of the wicked are greatly distressed by this corruption, while pure souls are much less concerned by it and soon begin their ascent.

Saʿadyah used the resources of Arabic philosophical teachings to construct a rationalized exposition of some Talmudic views of the soul. The majority of his successors were content with more general resemblances, preferring to concentrate on the assurance of personal immortality and retribution when they discussed the soul. Shelomoh ibn Gabirol (c. 1021–1058), one of the great Jewish liturgical poets of medieval Spain, connected the soul with the nature of the universe. For Ibn Gabirol, a Neoplatonist, the individual human soul is part of the world soul and contains a higher faculty than that of the rational soul, which is that of immediate intellectual intuition. The soul contains all the forms of existence in its essence and can intuit these forms. Ibn Gabirol separates the soul from God through an intricate series of emanations, but to many his views seemed to attribute too much of the divine to the human soul.

Elaboration of the concept of soul in terms of Jewish thought was attempted by another Spanish poet-philosopher, Yehudah ha-Levi (c. 1058–1141), in his Arabic dialogue Al-Khazarī (The book of argument and proof in defense of the despised faith). Ha-Levi argues that philosophy, which has been presented as an eclectic Neoplatonism, is not absolutely wrong in teaching men to seek communion with the divine by subduing the organic and emotional, or vegetative and animal, elements of the soul to the rational. He states that there is another faculty of the soul, the religious faculty, which is capable of grasping truths and experiences beyond the reach of reason alone, so that the immaterial substance of the higher faculties of the soul becomes indestructible and immortal by assimilating universal and eternal concepts. According to ha-Levi, rabbinic Judaism is uniquely able to foster this higher, religious faculty of the soul. By leading a temperate and moral life the soul attains immortality and closeness to God.

The Neoplatonic approach of Shelomoh ibn Gabirol was resumed in later decades by another Spanish poet, Mosheh ibn ʿEzraʾ (1070–1138), who was influenced, it is thought, by the Ṣūfīs. Ibn ʿEzraʾ believed in the preexistence of the individual soul and in the transmigration of souls until they gain sufficient wisdom to be reunited with their source in the world soul. Markedly Aristotelian, in contrast, is the work of Avraham ibn Daud (1100–1180), a Spanish historian and astronomer who argued that the soul is the form of the body, that it can grasp universal ideas and discriminate between good and evil, and that it can survive the body. Ibn Daud criticized the idea of the preexistence of the soul as illogical, arguing that if a preexistent soul died with the body their union was without purpose, while if it survived the body their temporary union was also pointless.

In the twelfth century the dominant influence was not that of Ibn Daud, however, but of Moses Maimonides (Mosheh ben Maimon, 1135/8–1204). In his major philosophical work, The Guide of the Perplexed (c. 1190), he bases his theory of the soul on Aristotelian thought as he understood it through the great Arabic commentaries of Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and Al-Fārābī and on biblical texts interpreted by an elaborate theory of the meaning of scriptural language. For Maimonides, the complete soul, or nefesh, is coextensive with the physical body and is not separable from it. It has five functions, namely, (1) the nutritive, (2) the sensitive, which consists of the five senses, (3) the imaginative, (4) the appetitive, which manifests itself in desires and emotions, and (5) the rational. The rational function itself consists of (1) the reflective aspect, which acquires knowledge and makes ethical judgments, (2) the practical aspect, and (3) the theoretical aspect, which consists of knowledge of unchanging realities.

The rational faculty is twofold. The material intellect latent in all human beings can be developed into the acquired intellect by the proper use of the mind. The acquired intellect is a disposition of the soul and perishes with the body. The acquired intellect can realize correct general concepts about the world, and when these are realized the rational soul assimilates the corresponding thoughts of the Active Intellect, which is the emanation through which God governs the material world. In this manner elements of divinity enter into the acquired intellect. If the soul has been directed toward contemplation of the nature of God and the world, the acquired intellect is replaced by the actualized intellect, which consists of these general concepts received from the active intellect. When the body dies the lower faculties of the soul are destroyed, but the actualized intellect, being of divine origin, is reunited with God through the Active Intellect. Through rational contemplation, such souls are rewarded by immortality. The souls of those who indulged the senses and emotions will perish with their bodies. According to the Treatise on Resurrection, although Maimonides believed in resurrection, he considered it a temporary condition wherein the souls of the righteous remain before they depart from the physical world entirely.

The threat to traditional religious beliefs presented by Maimonidean intellectualism was not met successfully until the late fourteenth century, in the Or Adonai (Light of the Lord) of Hasdai Crescas. Crescas attacked the theory of the soul as being a form coextensive with the physical body. He also rejected the assumption that reason is the characteristic feature of the human soul. He argued that the will and the emotions are basic parts of human nature and not merely bodily distractions to be discarded with the flesh, which survive the death of the body and play a part in determining the ultimate condition and fate of the soul. He contended that religious teaching and practice are correctly directed at shaping the will and the emotions, rather than the reason.

Qabbalistic Views

According to Qabbalah, a person is a spiritual being whose body is merely an external wrapping. There are three essentially different parts of the soul in qabbalistic thought, designated by the Hebrew terms nefesh, ruaḥ, and neshamah. The nefesh is the vital element and enters the body at birth; it dominates the physical and psychological aspects of the self. In contrast, the ruaḥ and neshamah must be developed through spiritual discipline. The ruaḥ comes into being when a person can overcome the body and its desires and it is thus associated with the ethical aspects of life. The neshamah is the highest part of the soul and is produced through study of the Torah and observation of the commandments. Torah study awakens the higher centers, through which the individual attains the capacity to apprehend God and the secrets of creation.

According to Gershom Scholem, Qabbalah took this division of the soul primarily from Jewish Neoplatonism and introduced theosophic and mythic elaborations. In Qabbalah the neshamah is that part of the soul that consists of the spark of the divine and is exclusively concerned with the knowledge of God. According to the fundamental text of thirteenth-century qabbalistic literature, the Zohar, each part of the soul originates in the world of the sefirot (the emanations of God). Nefesh originates in the sefirah Malkhut ("kingdom"), the lowest emanation, which corresponds to the Congregation of Israel. Ruaḥ originates in Tifʾeret ("grandeur"), the central sefirah, also known as Rahamim ("mercies"). Neshamah emerges from the third sefirah, Binah ("understanding"). The sefirot are assigned male and female aspects, and the soul has its origins in a union of these male and female archetypes and takes on masculine and feminine forms only in its emanations downward.

After the compilation of the Zohar, two additional parts of the soul were introduced, the ḥayyah and ye-ḥidah ("life" and "only one"; cf. Psalms 22:21). These were assigned higher levels than the neshamah and could be acquired only by spiritually evolved individuals. The soul of the Messiah, which was on the level of yehidah, had its source in the sefirah Keter ("crown"), the highest of the emanations.

According to Qabbalah, the nefesh, ruaḥ, and neshamah have different destinies after death. The nefesh hovers over the body for a time; the ruaḥ goes to a terrestrial realm assigned according to its virtue, and the neshamah returns to its home with the divine. Only the nefesh and ruaḥ are subject to punishment.

In the thought of Isaac Luria (1534–1572) and his disciples, the doctrine of metempsychosis was incorporated into concepts of the nature and destiny of creation and the mission of the Jewish people. The task of tiun, that is, the restoration or reintegration into the divine pattern of existence of the flawed material universe, is entrusted to human souls, who seek out and redeem the scattered sparks of divinity in the world. Most souls are given repeated chances to achieve this task, thus constituting a kind of reincarnation, which earlier Jewish mystics had considered primarily a form of punishment or expiation for sins. In the Lurianic system, ritual commandments are important for achieving tiun, both for the individual soul and for the whole world.

See Also

Ascension; Jewish Thought and Philosophy, article on Premodern Philosophy.

Bibliography

For a brief discussion of the historical and theoretical background of Jewish views of the soul, see Louis Jacobs's A Jewish Theology New York, 1973). Walther Eichrodt provides a useful treatment of Israelite views of the human personality and the problem of death in Theology of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1961–1967); see pages 118–150 and 210–228 in volume 2. Louis Ginzberg offers an incomparable survey of the entire postbiblical period in The Legends of the Jews, 7 vols. (1909–1938; Philadelphia, 1937–1966). His survey includes the intertestamental literature and the writings of the church fathers on biblical events, as well as Jewish sources through the nineteenth century.

Although dated, George Foot Moore's Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era; The Age of Tannaim, 3 vols. (1927–1930; Cambridge, Mass., 1970), remains a classic treatment of postbiblical sectarian Jewish literature, particularly the pseudopigrapha and the other Talmudic and Midrashic literature. On concepts involving the soul, see especially pages 368–371, 404, and 486–489 in volume 1; pages 279–322 ("Retribution after Death"), 353, and 377–395 ("Eschatology") in volume 2; and pages 148 (note 206), 196–197, and 204–205 in volume 3. A more advanced and detailed work then Moore's, and one covering a longer period, is E. E. Urbach's The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, 2 vols. (1969; Jerusalem, 1975). The chapter titled "Man" in volume 1 covers in great detail the Talmudic and Midrashic views on ensoulment, preexistence, and embryonic consciousness, as well as related concepts, and attempts to determine the relative and absolute chronologies of statements and their attribution in the sources. Notes on pages 784–800 in volume 2 and the bibliography, pages 1061–1062, cite many earlier secondary studies. A specialized work is Shalom Spiegel's The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Issac as a Sacrifice; The Akedah (1950; Philadelphia, 1967), which includes a chapter on the soul's flight from the body and the dew of resurrection in Midrashic literature.

A comprehensive survey from the perspective of philosophy is Julius Guttman's Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig (1933; New York, 1964). Articles on the Jewish concept of the soul from the Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971) have been collected together with new material, in a single volume; Jewish Philosophers, edited by Steven T. Katz (New York, 1975). On the philosophy of Philo, see Harry A. Wolfson's Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1947); see especially chapter 7, "Souls, Angels, Immortality," in volume 1. Issac Husik's A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy (1916); New York, 1969) remains a standard, detailed survey of Jewish philosophies in the Middle Ages. For the concept of the soul during this period, a useful but rather narrowly focused volume is Philip David Bookstaber's The Idea of Development of the Soul in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Philadelphia, 1950).

Articles by Gershom Scholem written for the Encyclopedia Judaica have been collected in Kabbalah (New York, 1974); see especially "Man and His Soul (Psychology and Anthropology of the Kabbalah)" and "Gilgul," on the transmigration of souls.

New Sources

Arbel, Daphna V. "Forms of Spirit and Soul: Transcendent Anthropomorphism in the 'Shi'ur Komah' Traditions." Studies in Spirituality 12 (2002): 5–22.

Baumgarten, A. I., J. Assmann, and G. G. Strousma. Self, Soul, and Body in Religious Experience. Leiden and Boston, 1998,

Blau, Yitzchak. "Body and Soul: 'tehiyyat ha-metim' and 'gilgulim' in Medieval and Modern Philosophy." Torah U-Madda Journal 10 (2001): 1–19.

Eylon, Dina Ripsman. Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism. Jewish Studies, no. 25. Lewiston, N.Y., 2003.

Kallus, Menachem. "Pneumatic Mystical Possession and the Eschatology of the Soul in Lurianic Kabbalah." In Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present, edited by Matt Goldish, pp. 159–185, 385–413. Detroit, 2003.

Newmyer, Stephen T. "Antoninus and Rabbi on the Soul: Stoic Elements of a Puzzling Encounter." Koroth 9 (1988): 108–123.

Rubin, Nissan. "Body and Soul in Talmudic and Mishnaic Sources." Koroth 9 (1988): 151–164.

Tucker, Gordon. "Body and Soul in Jewish Tradition." Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly of America 45 (1984): 141–156.

Jack Bemporad (1987)

Revised Bibliography