In my last post on biblical anthropology, I left you with three questions: 1. What about Old Testament thinking about the "heart"? Does this point to a third part of a human being, or does it overlap with nephesh and ruach? 2. What about the OT Shema statements ("You...
Nephesh
Biblical Anthropology, Part 5
In my last biblical anthropology post, I posed these three questions. Here they are again with some proposed answers: 1. When nephesh is described as being in sheol, does the term refer to only the inner part, the body, or the totality? It seems that if Sheol refers...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 4
I've posted prelimianry notes on both ruach and nephesh in the previous two posts. Now it's time to merge those files and observations. It's pretty interesting that the terms are used so often in the same ways and to describe the same things. Here's a list: 1. The...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 3
This one is like Part 2. I'm sharing my notes on nephesh now that I'm through all 50 pages of the PDF. Here are my notes on the range of meanings. My next step is to take my notes on ruach and nephesh and starting raising some questions and drawing some conclusions...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 1
I've been thinking about getting into this topic for some time. The issue can be cast in two ways. 1. In terms of biblical theology, is a human being composed of two parts (flesh/body + immaterial soul) or three parts (flesh/body + soul + spirit)? 2. In terms of...