Immortality
The concept of an immaterial soul separate from and surviving the body is common today but according to modern scholars, it was not found in ancient Hebrew beliefs. The word nephesh never means an immortal soul or an incorporeal part of the human being that can survive death of the body as the spirit of dead, although the related concept ruah, traditionally translated "spirit", is often used in this sense, as in Ecclesiastes 8:8: "There is no man that hath power over the spirit (ruah) to retain the spirit (ruah), neither hath he power in the day of death."
Read more about this topic: Soul In The Bible
Famous quotes containing the word immortality:
“The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“We have ... a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man.... It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us—but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“The immortality of the soul is a matter which is of so great consequence to us and which touches us so profoundly that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent about it.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)