Is God more concerned with bodies or souls? It’s an imperfect indicator, but a count of the use of terms in Scripture is revealing, perhaps even startling.
The word “soul” is used in the NASB just under 300x (a few dozen more than the number of times that the NASB uses “body,” which of course is used for “bodies” other than the individual human body. The word “soul” is used about as much as the word “foot/feet,” about half the number of times that the word “eye(s)” is used, and a third of the times that the word “hand(s)” is used (which is well over 1000). ”Mind” is used a bit about 140x, but a number of those are English idioms; in the Hebrew Old Testament, “mind” sometimes translates a body part (sometimes “face,” as in Exodus 10:10). ”Heart” is the “soul-word” used most frequently (680 times), but of course the heart is a body part.
Should we be spending as much time discussing the “foot-hand” relation as we do the “soul-body” relation?
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry
On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…
The Return of Blasphemy Laws?
Over my many years in the U.S., I have resisted the temptation to buy into the catastrophism…
The Fourth Watch
The following is an excerpt from the first edition of The Fourth Watch, a newsletter about Catholicism from First…
