Nephesh
Nephesh (נֶפֶש) is a Biblical Hebrew word which occurs in the Hebrew Bible. The word refers to the tangible aspects of life, and human beings and higher animals are both described as having a nephesh.[1][2][3] The Hebrew term נפש is literally "living being", although it is commonly rendered as soul in English translations.
Biblical use
The word nephesh occurs 754 times in the Hebrew Old Testament.[4][5][6] The first four times nephesh is used in the Bible, it is used exclusively to describe animals: Gen 1:20 (sea life), Gen 1:21 (sea life), Gen 1:24 (land creatures), Gen 1:30 (birds and land creatures). At Gen 2:7 nephesh is used as description of man.
Job 12:7-10 offers a distinct similarity between רוח (ruah) and נפׁש (nephesh): “In His hand is the life (nephesh) of every living thing and the spirit (ruah) of every human being.” Although this passage could indicate that only humans have a spirit, while animals are only imbued with life, Levison asserts that this passage actually implies that every living creature, including animals, is endowed with the spirit (ruah) of God.[7][8]
The Hebrew term, nephesh chayyah is often translated "living soul".[9] Chayyah alone is often translated living thing or animal.[10] The Hebrew word tsiyyi is translated wild animal.[11]
The Greek the word ψυχή (psyche) is the closest equivalent to the Hebrew nephesh.
| Number of times Nephesh and Psūchê are translated into certain English words.[12] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Translated as | Nephesh | Psūchê | ||
| NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | |
| Soul | 110 | 475 | 25 | 58 |
| Life | 165 | 117 | 37 | 40 |
| Person | 25 | 29 | ||
| Spirit | 5 | |||
| Mind | 3 | 15 | 3 | 3 |
| Heart | 21 | 15 | 4 | 1 |
| Yourselves | 19 | 6 | ||
| Himself | 18 | 8 | ||
| Any | 11 | 3 | ||
| Creature | 10 | 9 | ||
| Themselves | 10 | 3 | ||
| Number of miscellaneous words & phrases appearing >10 to 1 times |
301 | 53 | 25 | 1 |
| Not Translated | 47 | 0 | 8 | 2 |
| TOTALS | 754 | 753 | 102 | 105 |
| Number of times Hebrew and Greek words are translated into certain English words.[12] | ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Translated as: | ruah | neshama | leb | Kilyah | ’ob | elohim | pneuma | autos | sympsych | |||||||||
| NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | NIV | KJV | |
| Spirit | 182 | 232 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 325 | 317 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| Spirits (angels, evil spirits) | 4 | 16 | 34 | 42 | ||||||||||||||
| Soul | 1 | |||||||||||||||||
| Breath | 31 | 27 | 18 | 17 | 3 | |||||||||||||
| Wind | 94 | 92 | 2 | |||||||||||||||
| Mind | 6 | 5 | 28 | 12 | 4 | 1 | ||||||||||||
| Heart | 4 | 384 | 517 | 6 | 1 | |||||||||||||
| Number of miscellaneous words & phrases appearing >4 to 1 times |
69 | 22 | 22 | 4 | 187 | 64 | 20 | 31 | 15 | 17 | 2601 God |
2606 | 13 | 21 | 5592 pronouns |
5785 | ||
 |
For a list of words relating to Nephesh, see the Nephesh category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
 |
Hebrew edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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Hebrew edition of Wikisource, the free library |
See also
- Human spirit
- Immortality
- On the Soul by Aristotle
- Soul in the Bible
References
- ↑ Hoffman, Joel M. And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning, Chapter 4.
- ↑ biblehub.com, Nephesh
- ↑ ecclesia.org
- ↑ The first occurrence of nephesh in the Bible is Gen. 1:20, "the moving creature that hath life (nephesh)".
- ↑ Dan. 3:64
- ↑ Job 12:10
- ↑ Archie T. Wright, “The Spirit in Early Jewish Biblical Interpretation: Examing John R. Levison’s Filled with the Spirit,” Pneuma 33(2011) 37.
- ↑
- ↑ biblehub.com, Living Creature
- ↑ Strong's Lexicon #2421b
- ↑ biblehub.com Strong's Concordance, tsiyyi
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Numbers come from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and Zondervan’s Exhaustive NIV Concordance.
- Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (3 Volume Set), March, 1993, by Horst Balz