nefesh

A common perception among dominant Christian sects is that the body and the soul are distinct elements; the body is a temporary vessel holding the more valuable soul. It has led to a pervasive theme in Western thought--earth/body/present have little value, while heaven/soul/infinity exist on some higher plane.² The soul may eventually get to heaven, but at any rate, it is immortal.

An unfortunate result in this belief is that some Christians, not content with saving their own souls, seek to save others from eternal damnation. What's a little corporeal torture if it leads the unfaithful to infinite heavenly bliss? Western history is littered with the burned and quartered carcasses of people whose spiritual lives were "improved" by the good intentions of respectable Christians.

Defending modern Christianity against the acts of the past becomes a rancorous exercise for the "faithful." It is easy enough to rationalize the Crusades away as something that occurred in the past (while skirting the problems of proselytizing in the present). Hanging witches no longer occurs in the States (though we do still execute the retarded and the insane for certain criminal acts).

Still, there is a certain comfort that while bombing mortals in, say, the Middle East may be distasteful, it does not preclude our going to heaven for all eternity. (There is an interesting discussion among the Methodist community, to which President Bush belongs, about the justification for bombing Afghanistan. While Bush represents one side, my daughter, arrested and beaten without resistance last October, fairly represents the other, one happy faith under the same steeple.)

The creation myth is shared by Christians and Jews. Despite the glib talk of a Judeo-Christian culture, however, the dominant culture in the western hemisphere does not actively seek the counsel of rabbinical thought. Still, we are bound by a common pre-Christ heritage, and for better or worse, share (at some level) the myths of our origins.

The first mention of man's "soul" happens in Genesis 2:7, quoted above. Man became a "living soul," or nefesh. Deriving a definition of soul from a single early source in the Hebrew Bible defies intelligent discourse, and it is not my intent.³ I hope that this leads others to look closer at our common texts.⁴

The same word "nefesh" is applied earlier to living creatures. In Genesis 1:31, we see that "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the heaven and to every thing that creeps upon the earth, wherein there is (a) living soul, (I have given) every green herb for food."5 (Makes a good case for veganism, at least prior to the Fall.) When I was a child, my folks assured me that my dead doggie would go to doggie heaven. Being raised Catholic, I was insufficiently versed in scripture to argue that perhaps my doggie would join me in people/animal/nefesh heaven.

So why do I presume that I know enough to start a node on nefesh (a goy, no less)? E2 fascinates me; the neural network developing here adds a compelling human touch to information. Should this node escape node heaven, I hope fellow noders can help delineate the early Judaic (and thus the Christian) concept(s) of soul, and perhaps explore other tenets common to Judeo-Christian history.

² I owe my nefesh journey to Wendell Berry, a modern day prophet of sorts (or at least a cogent thinker who happens to be a farmer and who offers challenging views on today's trust in technology over less efficient models of living). For a brilliant dicussion on the artificial dichotomy of soul and body see "Christianity and The Survival of Creation" in Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, Pantheon Books, 1993 by Wendell Berry.
Berry notes that while Western culture behaves as though body + soul = man, allowing us to debase our bodies and our planet while holding on the hope that our spiritual component (soul) will live forever in bliss, the original view of man in Genesis is dust + God's breath = living soul.

³ I am not a Biblical scholar (or, obviously enough, a scholar of any sort); I was raised Roman Catholic, and am currently a Methodist on very shaky ground (ground that shook in 2000 when the Methodists revised their Book of Discipline to allow "just" war). The point of this essay is to sharpen my rather fuzzy views on origins, and perhaps to gently explore links between Judaism and Christianity (at least in its historical context) without the poison of prosyletizing. At any rate, I am hung up on the meaning of "nefesh," and write this while I am in the midst of an interesting journey.

⁴ I sought "neshama" and "ruach" here on E2, both of which would make for interesting nodes.

⁵ Ibid., Isaiah and Sharfman, p. 16.