Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Jason Hare" <jason AT hareplay.com>]

Peter, Rolf, and others following this thread:

I would agree with Peter and Rolf on this point (that earliest Christianity
did not have such a perspective), but could I conjure up the idea without
inciting any violence (LOL) that such a belief did take root in Christianity
just shortly after its formation? I would say that although Jesus, James,
John, Peter, and all the other original formers of "the Way" viewed the soul
as the Tanakh presented it, there was another thread of thought
soon-to-come. It was with Paul that such a view came into Christianity.
Apparently, while incorporating Gentiles into the Church, he also
incorporated Gentilic perspectives. This seems to play into the discussion
when we read such verses as "to be absent from the body is to be present
with Christ" and the like.

I hate to bring doctrine into the discussion, but it seems to be playing in.
Let us remember to keep this impersonal and discuss the HISTORY of the
doctrines rather than their nature as right-vs-wrong. (Stay on the high
road!)

Shalom aleichem,
Jason

> >> I keep reading the above in different words, from
> >> various posters, and I still issue the challenge to
> >> prove it.  Who can prove that this concept of
> >> NEFESH=soul found in the Intertestamental Writings,
> >> the Mishna, and the New Testament was simply adopted
> >> from the Greeks?  Counter to "the Hebrew mind."
> >> Wouldn't it be better for us to admit that this is
> >> merely a working assumption?  Not a fact.
> >
> >
> > ... I dispute that you find an immaterial soul (YUCH) in the NT, but
> > the teaching of the soul in the NT is exactly the same as in the
> > Tanakh,  ...
>
> For once I agree with Rolf on this one. The concept of the immortal soul
> was not an original part of Christianity any more than of Jewish
> religion. Early Christianity shared with second temple Judaism a concept
> of the resurrection of the body, i.e. of the complete person, but not of
> the separate immortality of the soul.
>
>
> --
> Peter Kirk