On page 6 of this topic thread I mentioned my revised ideas of what the Bible says in use of the words commonly translated as "soul" and "spirit". After further study since then, I have revised my views even further. This post relates to what I further found about those topics.
I have an edition of Cruden's Complete concordance which appears to have been printed in the latter part of the 1800s, and it's front fly sheet even has an ink stamp saying it was distributed by a company of Charles Taze Russell. [The ink stamp says the following. "BIBLES AT COST. TOWER TRACT SOC'Y. BIBLE HOUSE. ALLEGHENY. PA. BIBLE-STUDY HELPS." The Proclaimers book confirms that Tower Tract Society was a WT affiliated company.] I also have a newer printing of the same edition. This edition (of both of my copies) has a copy of the "Preface to the Octavo Edition" and that preface has the date of 1823 (the most recent date in the book), but the book has no copyright date and no printing date. Both printings of the edition I have include a concordance to the Apocrypha, not just to the OT-NT Holy Bible! Wow!
Under the heading of "Soul" the book says "This word in scripture, especially in the style of the Hebrews, is very equivocal. " It then lists 5 categories/types of usage for the word, namely as follows. (1) "For that spiritual, reasonable,and immortal" [note: that latter word is my correction of broken type of the printed word] "substance in man, which is the origin of our thoughts, desires, and reasonings ...."; (2) "taken for the whole person, both soul and body"; (3) "taken for the life of man"; (4) "taken sometimes for death, or a dead body"; and (5) "taken for"desire, love inclination". Notice that usages 2 through 4 and perhaps also usage number 5 are those which the WT claims is what the biblical meaning of "soul" is.
Under the heading of "Spirit" 19 types of usage are mentioned! I won't bother to list those here.
The edition of Cruden's Complete Concordance of the OT-NT Bible which is copyright 1930 by The John C. Winston Company, is a re-edited edition and one in which a number of the explanations of words were revised to embody "the latest Scriptural interpretations and the results of the most recent discoveries of archeology". It is also owned by me.
That edition says the following under the heading of "soul". '(This word is used in the Bible in much the same variety of senses as it is used to-day. The Hebrews used the word rather more generally, and the renderings of Hebrew expressions given in the margins of many editions of the Bible frequently contain the word when it does not appear in the text, but some other word, as mind, life, or persons, is used. Frequently, where the word soul is used in the Authorised or " King James " Version the revisions have changed it to life)' By 'the revisions" the book means that the (English) Revised Version of 1881-1885 and the "American Revision" (possibly of the American Revised Version [as described in appendixes of the American preferred revisions to the RV and later incorporated into the 1898 ARV], but probably of the American Standard Version of 1901, or possibly of both revisions).
That same edition (the one copyright 1930) under the heading of "spirit" gives 8 categories of usage. Number 3 says "Signifies the soul, which continues in being even after the death of the body, Acts 7:59". Number 7 says "For the breath, the respiration, the animal life that is in beasts, Eccl 3:21." Number 8 says "Spirit is also taken for the wind, Amos 4:13 ...."
Under the heading of "hell" the 1930 copyright edition says the following. "This word is generally used in the Old Testament to translate the Hebrew word Sheol, which really means simply the place of the dead, without reference to happiness or the reverse.... In other passages there is an idea of punishment. ...." The older edition of the Concordance said the place of the dead referred to by Sheol sometimes meant the grave or pit. That is the meaning which the WT assigns to the words Sheol and Hades and to the word hell (when "hell" is a translation of either of those words).
The Bible thus expresses a range of views of what happens to humans after their bodies die, and in regards to whether humans have an immortal component or not. Furthermore, when it says or suggests there is an immortal component, it also states competing views of whether it is conscious or not. These observations are further mentioned in another book I own, one called THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE BIBLE, Edited by Metzger and Coogan. This book is copyright 1993. Note some of what it says, in the following.
The entry of "Afterlife and Immortality" "consists of two articles on views of life and death within the historical communities of Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity." Some of things said in the first article of that entry say the following.
'Israelite views of the afterlife underwent substantial changes during the first millennium BCE, as concepts popular during the preexlic period eventually came to be rejected by the religious leadership of the exilic and postexilic communities, and new theological stances replaced them. ...
Because many elements of preexilic beliefs and practices concerning the dead were eventually repudiated, the Hebrew Bible hardly discusses preexilic concepts at all ....
Like all cultures in the ancient Near East, the Israelites believed that persons continued to exist after *death. It was thought that following death, one's spirit went down to a land below the earth, most often called Sheol, but sometimes merely "Earth," or "the Pit (see hell). In the preexilic period, there was no notion of a judgment of the dead based on their actions during life, nor is there any evidence for a belief that the righteous dead go to live in God's presence. ...
The exact relationship between the body of a dead person and the spirit that lived on in Sheol is unclear, since the Bible does not discuss this issue. ... during the late eighth and seventh centuries' [BCE] there were 'laws against necromancy' which 'assume not that it was
impossible to summon the dead from Sheol but that it was inappropriate. ...
During the exile, when the "Yahweh alone" party finally came to control the religious leadership of Judah, a further step was taken', and several texts from that period 'suggest that it is not only improper to consult the dead but actually impossible to do so.' [Note that the WT also teaches that only Yahweh is God (at least in the full sense) and it teaches that it is both improper and impossible to consult the dead - except possibly those they consider to be resurrected anointed JWs in heaven.] 'A new theology developed that argued there is no conscious existence in Sheol at all. At death all contact with the world, and even with God, comes to an end.' [This is what the WT teaches, except they don't say it is a new biblical theory, and furthermore they teach the hope of a resurrection.]
The second article in the entry describes how the Jews, "owing to the widespread influence of the platonic idea of the immortality of the soul (see Human Person)" came to believe in immortality and resurrection and that there would be "reward or punishment" for those who die, and that those ideas were adopted by Christianity. That article also says that such ideas created a tension between ideas both in Judaism and in Christianity.
The entry/article called "Human Person" says the following.
"The Hebrew word for the human being is nepeš, which among its wide range of meanings connotes both flesh and soul as inseparable components of a person." But how they be viewed as inseparable, since later on the article says the following. "At death, the person's flesh dies, and the soul dwells in Sheol, a shadowy place for the dead (see Afterlife and Immortality; Hell)." Perhaps the explanation lies in the next two sentences of the article which say the following. "There is no notion in what may be called orthodox Israelite religion of a separate existence for the soul after death. Death is accepted as a natural part of the life cycle, but it is not welcomed, for the person who dies loses his or her being." After referring to Psalms 30:9 the paragraph later by says the following. "Death is thus perceived to be the end of all sentient life.
Later the article says the following. "In the New Testament, the still prominent idea of bodily resurrection (see especially the resurrection narratives in the Gospels and also 1 Cor. 15) implies that the soul and body are inseparable, but the notion of a human being composed of a separate soul and body slowly gains ascendancy."
Note that parts of the Bible teach that humans do have an immortal soul, but that some of those parts teach the soul of the human dead is unconscious whereas some other verses teach that is conscious. Furthermore, note that other parts of the Bible teach that humans do not have an immortal soul at all.
The above content to me is enormous further proof that the Bible's theological teachings are not the word of God, but merely human ideas of theology, and that such human ideas evolved over the centuries. The Bible are the words (and ideas) of humans (including conflicting views between various human writers of the Bible, not just pertaining to the topics mentioned above) and not the Word of God. Since the Bible is not the word of God, of any god, humans should not feel obligated by the Bible to believe anything the Bible teaches. People thus should feel free to decide which teachings of the Bible, if any, are correct - just as we would do for any nonreligious secular writing or teaching. I encourage believers in the Bible to question what the Bible teaches.
