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On Saving One's Soul
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Extract
The oldest biblical view of man, that which is contained in the corpus put together towards the end of Solomon's reign or the early period of the divided monarchy, brings out with a concrete and satisfying amplitude of vision arid with compelling images a profound intuition into the ambiguous position which man holds in the hierarchy of nature, to which he certainly belongs but which he in part transcends; he is an animal, but he is also ‘just a little lower than the elohim.’ Yahweh God made him out of clay and breathed into his nostrils the breath of Life. He thus became a ‘living soul’ - nefesh hayyah. The word which is usually translated ‘soul’ seems to have been primitively connected with breathing, as also was ‘spirit’ - both words in Hebrew and cognate languages started off with the meaning ‘throat'.
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- Copyright © 1963 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Ps. 68.2. For other examples see Ps. 104.18; Is. 5.14; Jer. 4.10; Jonas 2.6; Hab.2.5.
2 Especially close to the plastic representation of Gen. 2 is that of the Babylonian Enuma elish in which, so far as we can make out, man is made by mixing clay With the blood of a supernatural being, Kingu, captain of Tiamat goddess of Chaos, Also the Promethean myth which sees man as compounded of clay and heavenly fire.
3 Job spring to mind as an example of this dialogue, but parts at least of this Book are written consciously in dramatic form; Ps. 22 with its alternation of Iand thou is perhaps a more spontaneous and intense example.
4 Theology of the New Testament, S.C.M. (1955) p. 177
5 The Vulgate followed by Douai has ‘tongue', others read ‘glory'. ‘Liver (kaved) is very similar to this latter (kavod) and in view of the frequent paralleling of heart - Ever we read it here. For the third verse Douai has, following Vulgate literally: ‘Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell’ which brings one up against the exegetical question behind the Descent into Hell.
6 This last phrase is from the Credo, but the scriptures nowhere speak of a resurrection of the body, the soma as distinct from the psyche.
7 Mt.24.15ff. There are some similarities including the injunction to flee to the mountains: cf. Gen. 19.17. the whole point is made more firmly if, following Feuillent and an increasing number of exegetes, the whole eschatological discourse is referred to the destruction of Jerusalem.
8 Incidentally an interesting little exercise in the synoptic problem, since Luke puts it in a different context into which it does not fit very comfortably since the injunction to remember Lot's wife in the preceding verse would argue in favour of surviving physical peril and therefore preserving one's physical life.