Soul

Judaism

In the Hebrew scriptures, the soul and the body are not sharply distinguished. The words ruʾaḥ (‘breath’, ‘wind’), nefesh (that which locates the animate as opposed to the dead—as e.g. ‘the waters have come up to my nefesh’, i.e. neck), and neshāmah (‘vitality’) have no independent, ontological status: they refer to that which gives life and which, if it is absent, leads to death. The rabbis of the Talmudic period recognized some separation. The soul was understood as the guest of the body during the body's earthly life (Lev.R. 34. 3). Jewish philosophers, such as Philo, Saʿadiah Gaon, and Solomon ibn Gabirol, were influenced by Platonism in their teachings on the immortality of the soul, while the kabbalists taught that the soul was a divine entity that evolved downwards to enter the body. It has its origins in the divine emanation and its ultimate goal is its return to the world of sefirot.

Christianity

The New Testament writers inherited the biblical terminology (though in Greek), together with the undecided contest about the basic human composition and about whether any part of it might continue after death. Roughly, nephesh became psyche and ruaḥ became pneuma; but both these were transformed by the resurrection of Jesus and by the experience of the Holy Spirit in the early Church. Thus early Christianity came to believe that the psyche must be surrendered to God with complete commitment and trust, even to the extent of, so to speak, losing it (Matthew 6. 25, 16. 25; Mark 8. 35; Luke 9. 24; John 12. 25) and thus securing it. The soul was then associated with a belief that there will be an embodied resurrection. In the Hellenistic world, an application of the dualism of Plato nevertheless seemed spiritually attractive, since the sense of a soul imprisoned in a body (sōma sēma, ‘the body a tomb’) led to a heroic spirituality in which ascetic efforts might be made to ensure the soul's escape and safety.

Islam

See NAFS.

Indian Religions

See ĀTMAN; ANĀTMAN; JĪVA.