Very thought provoking post by Paidon!
Hi Catherine.
With regard to the possible immortality of humans and whether the bible indicates any difference between humans and animals in this regard, I must add further to the post above.
The Hebrew language has five different words that get translated as “soul”: **nephesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah and yechidah.
**
Nefesh is the physical life force of the body. Of course, all animals have this.
But Chayah (Which literally means “living.”) is used in Genesis 2:7 , where God breathed the breath of life into Adam and then Adam “became a living soul (nephesh chayah).” Note that this term combines nephesh, the life force of the body, with chayah, “living.” But isn’t a body with nephesh already living? But ‘chayah’ means to sustain life or to live forever. So, the question I leave you with is what ‘nephesh chayah’ means which applies to humans and humans alone.
God bless
Hi Sturmy, your thoughts on this are much appreciated. It’s weird that, just before I read your message, I’d just finished emailing a lady at Whitehorsemedia (I think they’re seventh day adventists) and had mentioned that the account of the ‘dead’ Samuel speaking to Saul had always bothered me. When I read about it, it doesn’t sound like it’s anyone other than Samuel.
I totally agree with your thoughts on our perception of time and how the dead are outside time , and so someone who has been dead six thousand years will think only a second (if that) has passed when they’re resurrected back to life. I’m sure this is what Paul means when he says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2Cor 5:8). 
You did Cindy, thank you again. It makes much sense.
Brilliant post Paidion. Thank you so much for sharing your testimony. I agree with all you say and believe this is what the bible teaches. Two comments of Paul’s which you cite, seem to confirm this beyond doubt:
‘comfort one another with these words’ (regarding those dead in Christ and their future resurrection). 1 Thess 4:14-18. Why would they need comforting at all, if their dead loved ones had already been ‘resurrected’ to heaven to be with Christ? Wouldn’t Paul have have rather said something like: ‘be comforted that those who have died in Christ are now living in heaven with Him and are awaiting the grand reunion, when Christ brings them with Him when He returns to get us the living’. Also 1 Cor 15:32 ‘if the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we will die’. This makes NO sense whatsoever, if the dead are actually ‘alive’ in ‘paradise’ being comforted like Lazarus. That doesn’t sound a bad prospect to me. Only if the dead are conscious of nothing would Paul’s words make sense. 
Thank you again Paidion. The quote from Justin Martyr is very interesting and I will look further into that.
Hmm Pilgrim, I will need to study what you are saying. I’ve had a quick look at ‘chayah’ and saw a reference for Gen 1:20 which also uses ‘nephesh chayah’ but of animals. All the other references have ‘chayah’ as ‘living’ and none of those examples indicate that this ‘living’ is going to continue forever?? I have always understood ‘living soul’ to mean a ‘living creature’ as opposed to a ‘dead creature’. If we take Adam who is called a living soul after the breath of life is breathed into him, this suggests to me he was not a living soul prior to the breath of life. His newly formed body was a ‘soul’ ready to be brought to life with the ‘spirit’ or breath of life??? The life force or spirit is breathed into him and he becomes a ‘nephesh chayah’. I don’t see how this would indicate living forever? (In order to live forever in man’s case, he had to eat of the tree of life). Maybe I’m misunderstanding you but are you saying that the ‘spirit’ or ‘chayah’ is eternal and therefore man has an eternal part to him? I have no problem with the spirit (life force) that God gives us as being eternal. Jesus said ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’. Maybe our spirit is our essence of life force which is what is put back into our resurrected bodies, but it itself is not conscious. 
Maybe I’ve got this all wrong…
Hi Catherine.
You are right that nephesh Chayah is not solely used with reference to humans. My bad and apologies 
I was clearly miss-informed but I’ll try to get back to you if I discover something of more value. You have raised a question which I would like to make progress on myself and just like you, I would have found it interesting to read any early literature on this subject.
I wonder whether examination of the three Greek words to describe the complete human being is of any value?
Body (soma), Mind (psyche) and Spirit (pneuma)?
cbn.com/spirituallife/inspir … Parts.aspx
God bless you
Pilgrim, it’s good for us to make sure of these things. I’ve had a quick look at the article you linked to and it makes some interesting observations. I’m particularly interested in it’s mention of Num 16:22 - ‘…God of the spirits of all flesh’. I wondered if the Greek word for ‘spirits’ as used in the Septuagint is the same as the one used in 1Pet 3:19. I’ve looked both verses up via Biblos, and they seem to be the same, but I can’t get the Greek up for the Num verse in the same way I can for 1Pet and so they look almost the same but not sure. If they are the same, then that would make me wonder why Jesus ‘preached’ to the life forces of dead people assuming the life force is not conscious? 
I have also been under the impression that the ‘spirits’ in 1Pet 3:19 were ‘angels’ and not humans, so I need to look into this further.
Another verse that has always puzzled me and seems to be ‘wrong’ is Rev 6:9 which talks of the ‘souls under the altar’. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to say ‘spirits under the altar’?
You really have got me thinking about this Pilgrim. Thank you. I’ll come back to you once I’ve looked into this some more and please let us know if you find anything else out.
Lots of opinion out there.
In order to understand what spirits under the alter, you need to define spirit.
SPIRIT simply means living, or that which gives life, and is alive.
Back to the original topical request:
Several of the books I’ve been reading over the past year or so indicate that 1st century Judaism (roughly speaking) had a wide variety of concept on the state of the dead; and that early Christianity picked up on this (outside the texts of the canon).
However, a consensus emerged in orthodox Christianity fairly quickly, based on various scriptural indications of Christ’s descent to preach to and/or free the dead in hades, that the dead (significant numbers of them if not all of them) were at least partially conscious after death.
The first part of this book collects primary sources indicating how and why this doctrinal consolidation happened: [.
Hope that’s helpful, Catherine! (Although it may not be helpful in the way you were hoping for. Sorry if so.)Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent Into Hades From an Orthodox Perspective](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881410616)
Hmm, I get the impression it means more than that. But I may be wrong…
That’s appreciated Jason.
Is it possible that ‘nephesh chayah’ is different in the Torah than in the Hebrew version of the OT ? I’ve no idea but the following is intriguing:
rooster613.blogspot.co.uk/2011/0 … art-i.html
(see point no. 4, but I’m not relying on it)
I’ve also remembered what my first source was - it was found on this forum and it’s well worth a listen:
God bless you in your search Catherine.
Catherine,
I’ll try to figure out what books I was reading elsewhere that indicated a more-or-less-1st-century divergence of opinion on the topic (within Judaism and/or Christianity), since it’s likely they’re more freely accessible to the public for download; but I’m going to be super-busy at work for the next few days I expect.
Pilgrim,
I appreciate your linguistic explorations in this thread, too. 
Hi Pilgrim, I had a quick look at the link to Rooster’s blog and as soon as I see ‘Kabbalah’ I hear warning bells go off. I’ve only read negative stuff about Kabbalah. They sound like they’ve mixed lots of mystical weird stuff into Judaism??? ‘Rooster613’ says that the first mention of ‘nephesh chayah’ is in Gen 2:7 and so I rechecked Gen 1:20 and the only difference between the two, is that in Gen 2:7 ‘nephesh’ has ‘le’ in front of it. I’m not sure if this makes a big difference. I’ll check this and come back to you- I know a man who will know the answer… ).
Jason, I appreciate any help you can give us, if your time allows…
Darn it! I was going to message Jeff Benner of the Ancient Hebrewe Research Centre, but he’s on a Sabbatical at the minute. He would have known all about ‘nephesh’ etc and what the difference was between the Hebrew of those two Genesis verses. I’ll keep looking though… 
I recall “le” is just a preposition meaning something like “to” the noun it prefixes.
The two phrases are otherwise consonantly identical, with very slight vowel differences that I’m sure mean something grammatically but I’m not even remotely good at Hebrew. The NIV super-literal confirms that the Lamed consonant is a only a preposition, though (they translate as “into-living”): whatever the two words are for nephesh, they’re close grammatic cognates. The lamed is irrelevant for purposes of this inquiry I think. (Green’s superliteral ignores its presence altogether anyway.) I suspect the slight vowel differences amount to singular at Gen 2:7 and plural at Gen 1:20.
NIV translates the final clause of 2:7, “and-he-became the-man into-being living”, but I suspect “into-breath living” would work, too.
1:20, “let-them-teem the-waters creature breath-of living”
Green’s superliteral 2:7, “and became the man a soul living”
1:20, “let swam the waters (with)-a-swarmers having soul living”
Concordant Hebrew superliteral, 2:7, “and•he-is-becoming the•human to•soul living” LNPhSh CHIE
1:20, “they-shall-roam the-waters roamer-of soul living” NPhSh CHIE
I’ve provided the Westminster Leningrad Codex transliteration of the phrases in question with the Concordant Hebrew superliteral, as noted above: the two words are consonantly identical aside from the preposition Lamed.
In conclusion, the term at 2:7 does show up at 1:20. I don’t think the grammatic vowel distinctions are going to amount to any significant difference of meaning between the two verses.
(However, for God’s sake definitely keep pinging the Ancient Hebrew guy!–I know next to nothing on the topic of even modern Hebrew. )
The same term shows up again one verse later at 1:21,
U•IBRA
and•he-is-creating
ALEIM
Elohim
ATH
{unknown/silence/pause?}
E•ThNIM
the•monsters
E•GDLIM
the•great-ones
U•ATh
and•{unknown/silence/pause?}
KL
every-of
**NPhSh
soul
E•ChIE
the•living**
E•RMShTh
the•moving
Exactly the same term, although arguably the meaning is a bit different as the phraseology pairs “living” with “moving” as a set of descriptions for nephesh. So in English we would translate it more like “every soul that is living that is moving” or “…that which lives, that which moves” or “every soul, living, moving”, rather than “every living soul moving”. It doesn’t seem like a linked technical term here, is what I mean. If not, then it may not be back at verse 20 either where describing the same kind of things.
Ecclesiastes 3:21
Who knows the spirit of man, whether it goes upward, and the spirit of the beast, whether it goes downward to the earth?
Ecclesiastes 12:7
Then shall the dust [out of which God made man’s body] return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God Who gave it.
SPIRIT = the principle of conscious life; the vital principle in humans, animating the body or mediating between body and soul.
syn. = life, mind, consciousness, essence
I understand; however it is a fair point, I think, to note that anyone else writing on this subject, scholar or no, early Christian or no, is going to end up being an appeal to a lesser authority than the scripture itself. I personally think it’s quite clear that the dead are actually completely dead (no soul sleep; this is a misunderstanding of what the soul is) until the resurrection. Otherwise, what’s the purpose of the resurrection(s)? It’s true that the spirit returns to God who gave it upon physical death, but the spirit really has no consciousness of its own.