Soul of Fire: A Theory of Biblical Man

By Ethan Dor-Shav

Our common fate as water, earth, wind, and fire.

The most telling example, however, is that of Moses, of whom the Bible says, “Never again has there arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord had known face to face.”¹³⁰ On the one hand, we find that the manifestation of this unsurpassed spiritual status is defined as God’s knowing his name, “And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that you have spoken: for you have found grace in my sight, and I know you by name.”¹³¹ More pointedly, though, when Moses argues for the salvation of his people he offers his eternal name as a bargaining chip, “But now, if you will forgive their sin—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of your book which you have written.”¹³² This is the same “book” that Daniel invokes.

Finally, our “name” is to Heaven as our “seed” is to Earth. This is proven from the closing verses of Isaiah: “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain.”¹³³ One’s name is precisely what will be remembered forever—by God and through God—enlightened with one’s acquired share of divine wisdom.¹³⁴

VIII

At first glance, one may question the value of connecting the idea of man to an archaic picture of the cosmos. We have come to know the heavens as an expanding emptiness, rather than a translucent fire-dome. The idea of neshama as a heavenly “light,” therefore, loses for us its concreteness. This was not the case in antiquity. No doubt, Israelite Sages held the hierarchical picture as more “scientific” than metaphoric. The elements of man were—to them—tangible insertions from the multiple rings of reality. Just as the body was shaped from soil, the neshama was fashioned of stardust, taken from the hosts of angelic chariots.

Nonetheless, the Bible transcends the limits of antiquated perceptions. It teaches how to distinguish within each one of us the material, the dynamic, the relational, and the ideal, and these distinctions add up to a worldview with far-reaching philosophical consequence.¹³⁵ In so doing, it allows the ideal “I” to shed not only the physical body and mortal life, but also the constituent of social relativity: In the kingdom of light we transcend all characteristics of gender, status, tongue or nationality. In turn, the other three components of our being attain their own continuity: The body in progeny, the nefesh in universal life energy, and the ruah in the collective.¹³⁶ Modern cosmology, therefore, does not debase the Israelite four-tier paradigm any more than dissecting a heart obliterates the idea of love.

In addition, deciphering biblical metaphysics allows us to correct not only the dualist prejudice regarding the Hebrew Bible, but also our entire understanding of the canon. The process forces us to reconsider the common notion that it is a book of stories—one with moral lessons, but without a philosophical backbone. As we can now see, this is hardly the case. Indeed, the discovery of the elemental structure may provide an incentive to relate to the Hebrew canon as a whole, rather than as fragments.

The early appearance of the elemental theory, meanwhile, defies the conventional view regarding Greek influence on the Bible, especially in the wisdom writings—ideas that pushed the dating of Ecclesiastes, for instance, as late as the third century B.C.E. There is, now, more room to view late biblical ideas as drawing upon earlier Israelite thought, rather than Greek. At the same time, we have reason to connect teachings by medieval Jewish philosophers to their own traditional roots; when a Maimonides or a Saadia Gaon mentions the elements, it is not only because he is projecting an Aristotelian prejudice onto the Bible.

Last but not least, we now understand that the biblical aversion to picturing souls is deliberate. Israelite thought believed in a heavenly afterlife, but—by definition—not one than can be pictured, any more than pure wisdom can be given shape. For the Bible, then, even imagining souls with ghost-like bodily forms constitutes a philosophical aberration. Instead, the Bible teaches of a multi-layered afterlife, intertwined with the entire scope of existence. Its anthropocentric concept of the cosmos lends the Bible a powerful humanist angle, and at the same time highlights deep ecological and spiritual affinities between humankind and the rest of creation.

Above all, the notion of being created “in the image of God” may now acquire dramatic new meaning. Furthering this idea, I wish to conclude with an implication of these discoveries for the meaning of kadish, the ancient but mysterious Jewish prayer of mourning. As an orphan stands over a parent’s grave, breaking his teeth on the Aramaic, he in fact utters no words at all in honor of the deceased. The kadish does not petition the deceased to intervene on behalf of those alive, or declare faith in God’s judgment for the righteous, or seek to justify God’s sovereignty over man’s life, or even allude to death. Most pointedly—and with intriguing similarity to our analysis of the Bible’s narrative—the prayer does not even mention souls, or the afterlife, or any Eden-like world of the dead. Instead, for a millennium, adherents of the Israelite tradition repeat a phrase that is intended to offer ultimate solace, and lend meaning to death: Yitgadal v’yitkadash shmeih raba, “magnified and sanctified be God’s great name.”¹³⁷

Why choose these words for this moment? The biblical verse that stands behind the opening phrase of kadish teaches that the magnitude and sanctity of God’s name are, in fact, not yet possible; they refer only to the fulfilled state of the world. Only when creation will be fully redeemed at the End of Days, says God, “I will magnify myself and sanctify myself.”¹³⁸ Zechariah completes the message: “On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.”¹³⁹ This is why the kadish is in the future tense, applicable “when his kingdom shall reign.” The meaning, according to rabbinic sources, is that until the days to come, the name of God is somehow incomplete. We pray, therefore, for its renewed completeness.¹⁴⁰ The hymn in effect mourns for God, rather than for the dead.

Only when we appreciate that the essence of man’s neshama lies precisely in the idea of an eternal “name” can the death of our beloved—or rather his or her posthumous existence—contribute to the completion of God’s name.¹⁴¹ What makes the kadish so poignant is that a man’s name is carved out of the divine throne, and when it itself reaches a state of fulfillment it reunites with its source, the great name of God. By doing so, it adds a unique spark towards the latter’s ultimate completeness. Man’s acquired name, then, completes God’s name. In praying for the completion and enlargement of God’s name, the mourner relates the name of the deceased—the realized essence of his or her neshama—to the divine, as a purified identity. In Jewish philosophy, this is true, and eternal, salvation.

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Ethan Dor-Shav is an Associate Fellow at the Shalem Center. His last essay in Azure was “Ecclesiastes, Fleeting and Timeless” (Azure 18, Autumn 2004). The author dedicates the essay to the memory of his grandfather, Rabbi Elisha Kohn.

Notes

1. The post-death souls most frequently seen in the New Testament are those of Abraham, Moses, and Elijah. Examples of sightings of souls include Luke 16:19-24, Mark 9:2-4, and Revelation 6:9, 20:4 (see also Luke 9:7-8, I Corinthians 15:42-49).

2. Koran 78:31 and elsewhere.

3. The one biblical story that pictures a man after death is that of Samuel appearing to the witch of Endor. The overtly pagan—and highly critical—context of the story serves only to reinforce the conclusion that Israelite thought itself was sketchy at best regarding the whole idea.

4. II Kings 2:12. Verse translations are mine, based on the King James Version (KJV) and Revised Standard Version (RSV) Bibles. Verse numbers are masoretic.

5. Though some interpret the idea of “going to Sheol” to mean no more than “going to one’s death” or going to the grave. This questionable interpretation strips Sheol of its reality as a netherworld.

6. II Samuel 28:15.

7. II Kings 2:11; Genesis 5:24.

8. II Chronicles 21:12.

9. Daniel 12:1.

10. For example, the idea of the all-encompassing “breath of life.”

11. For example, the idea of formless “shades” in the underworld. Indeed, so strong is this transference that in early translations of the Bible, the Greek concept for the underworld, Hades, is actually used to render the Hebrew “Sheol,” thereby inserting a pagan deity into the Israelite canon.

12. H.W. Robinson, The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament (London: Charles Scribner’s, 1913), p. 83, cited in H.W. Robinson, “Soul (Christian),” in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, vol. xi (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 733.

13. Lynn de Silva, The Problem of Self in Buddhism and Christianity (London: Macmillan, 1979), p. 75. See www.members.shaw.ca/mschindler/A/eyring_2_14.htm.

14. See www.elca.org/questions/Results.asp?recid=32.

15. Samuel G.F. Brandon, “Sacred Rites and Ceremonies,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 26 (1998), p. 805.

16. Paul’s “unclean spirit” is a notable exception, but otherwise, pneuma is something a human soul can be either graced with, or deprived of, but never integrated with. Subsequently, it is only the one soul—not the spirit—that goes to heaven, or to hell.

17. Empedocles is credited by Aristotle as the first to articulate the four elements, albeit in a mythic form: “Hear first the four roots of all things: bright Zeus and life-bringing Hera and Aidoneus, and Nestis, whose tears are the source of mortal streams.” Empedocles: The Extant Fragments, ed. M.R. Wright (London: Bristol Classical, 1995), p. 164. (Zeus was the god of fire, Hera supposedly of wind, Aidoneus of earth, and Nestis of water.) The idea that these same four elements serve to explain the story of creation in Genesis is not new. Though the hierarchy suggested here is my own, as is the connection to souls, Maimonides and other Jewish scholars used the model in their biblical interpretations.

18. Ecclesiastes 1:4-7. Readers familiar with the Greek version will find the stanza striking not only because it describes all four elements, and none other, but also because it too stressed the issue of movement and direction. The vectors themselves, however, differ: In Ecclesiastes Earth is “still,” rather than pulling down, and Wind circles neither up nor down. The two remaining vectors are identical: The sun, like all fire, rises upwards; and water, like all water, rushes down, running to the bottom of the sea. These up and down vectors will prove crucial.

19. Genesis 1:14.

20. Contrary to the common idea that links the word shamayim to mayim, i.e., water; the first consonant cannot be a prefix, while the yim suffix depicts only the double plural (or “dual”) property of the Hebrew “heavens” (like yadayim—hands, raglayim—legs, etc.). Indeed, Strong’s Lexicon sees shamayim as a dual of an unused singular shameh, from an unused root meaning to be lofty. Toward the end of the essay I will present a more plausible root to the double reflex. Poetic or etymological, then, the connection between shemesh and shamayim is implied.

21. Jeremiah teaches the same, when he refers to the predicament of heavens withholding their light (4:23).

22. In antiquity the heavenly bodies (such as star constellations) and the metaphysical beings (such as angels) were interchangeable, one and the same.

23. Ezekiel 1:13-14, 27-28.

24. Proverbs 30:4.

25. Psalms 18:8-12.

26. Other four-element examples may be found in Isaiah 40:12-13, Psalms 104:1-6, Jeremiah 10:12-13, and–as a decomposition process–Exodus 32:20.

27. Genesis 1:1-2. The interim clause deals explicitly with the original chaotic nature of the Earth dominion alone, stating, “and the earth was....”

28. Exodus 20:11.

29. Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8. The ten plagues also follow the hierarchical cosmos, from the deepest dark waters up to the lights of heaven, in a distinct ascent through the four hierarchical realms. The end of the essay reveals why the death of the firstborn, designate carrier of the family name, is manifest in the high heavens, above the sphere of the sun.

30. The Bible knows that rain falls from the sky. Nonetheless, the water in clouds originates from rising mists (Genesis 2:6, Job 36:27). Regarding all rain, the original source of the water is tehom, from which the water initially rose. This is why in the story of the flood, though the flooding came from a downpour of rain (no up-swell is mentioned), this downpour was released by first bursting open “fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11). The verse is sequential: waters reached from tehom, up through “arubot hashamayim” (the socket/chimneys of heaven), to be released downwards to earth. In stopping the downpour, yet again, it is tehom that needed to first shut down (Genesis 8:2). Other mentions of these heavenly “sockets” have to do not with water, but with food and thunder. Interpreting them as pathways to the “upper waters” above the firmament is, therefore, suspicious. Even so, if you do read these sockets as releasing the “upper waters,” then again the waters come from a place other than Heaven. In either reading, Heaven itself is made solely of fire and light. “Rains of shamayim,” like “birds of shamayim,” refer to a lower sky than the true celestial fire-sphere.

31. For Aristotle, all four elements relate to the sub lunar, terrestrial world. For him, the heavens aren’t made of fire—nor can they represent a domain of fire—but rather they are made of a fifth element called ether. Also, the Aristotelian cosmos places earth underneath water, and not vice versa. Though sharing in name, Aristotle’s four composite “terrestrial” elements—which exist to different degrees even in inanimate objects—have very little in common with the Bible’s idea of the four metaphysical elements.

32. Genesis 3:19. See also Job 10:9, Ecclesiastes 3:20, and elsewhere.

33. Basar, itself, I believe, should actually be translated as “body” in a great majority of cases. Modern “clarity” as to the body-soul distinction does not prevent minor diffusion any more than biblical use (e.g., “strike the body, not the face”; “everybody went home”; “I didn’t see a soul”; etc.). A careful analysis of each occurrence of basar, however, is beyond the scope of this article. The same limitation applies to the required verse-by-verse accounts of the Hebrew soul-terms and other significant concepts, as well as to detailed etymological, methodological, and historic cross-cultural argumentation. Throughout the article, I also smooth over many of the functional questions regarding the different elemental components (e.g., their ailments, variations, etc.). The book that I am in the process of writing will address the inevitable omissions.

34. See Genesis 29:14; Judges 9:2; II Samuel 5:1, 19:13-14; Job 2:5, 10:11; I Chronicles 11:1. When Adam says of Eve, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23), it was in the very first moment that they both acquired the familiar gender-characterized bodies. In the Bible relations are never called of the same flesh and blood, for the blood flow is one’s strictly personal share of life. Therefore, there is no such thing as a “blood relative.”

35. Job 34:15.

36. Psalms 139:5.

37. Ibn Ezra on Job 1.

38. In the El Amarna Tablets one finds haparu with a non-guttural xet or even just aparu. This suggests that the ‘ayin in ‘afar might be–to some extent–a prefix. A link to afar (ashes), hafar (dig), and kafar (plaster), all substituting the ‘ayin, supports the same notion. Thus, fr or pr is a key that connects ‘afar to the root p-r-h for fertility.

39. Job 8:19.

40. Levin describes the /m/ as a “replacement of /*n/–if originally present…” on p. 42 of his discussion. S. Levin, “Semitic and Indo-European: The Principal Etymologies (with Observations on Afro-Asiatic),” Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 129 (Amsterdam/Philadelphia 1995), pp. 40-44. Earlier on p. 41 he claims that “—n is revealed to be originally a suffix of some sort….” This means that without the suffix we are left with etz for both etzem (bone) and etz (tree). In Akkadian we find isu for “tree” and esemtu for “bone”. But there are also occurrences of esentu or even esettu, without any /m/ or /n/. It seems that both may be connected to (w)asu(m) in the sense of “to grow.” Thus one may link etz and etzem also in Akkadian, and perhaps associate both with the idea of growing. J. Yaacobovitz, in his book Lashon Meshutefet (Monogenics of Language), very naturally links etz to OS which is Latin for “bone” (Jerusalem: Reuben Mass, 1968, pp. 122-124).

41. Genesis 1:11.

42. Seeds that maintain “their kind” parallel Aristotle’s idea of “a being-at-work-staying-itself of a first kind of a natural, organized body.” Aristotle, On the Soul, trans. Joe Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2001), book 2, ch. 1, 412b. He defined the vegetative force as responsible for “self-nourishing as well as growth and wasting away.” Aristotle, On the Soul, book 2, ch. 1, 412a 10. Through the body-plant analogy, this exact vegetative force is captured by the idea of etzem. The Bible and Aristotle both see this force as not really distinct from the body itself.

43. Compare also the plant-related words of novel, alim, perah, nevet, and kotz to their body-related counterparts: nevela, alumim, efroah, beten, and kutzotav. Other words, including kaf, rakav, and zav, are used interchangeably for both bodies and plants.

44. Isaiah 11:1.

45. Isaiah 66:14.

46. Ezekiel 16:7.

47. Psalms 92:12.

48. Ecclesiastes 1:4.

49. The compound term appears nine times in the Hebrew Bible, always regarding waters directly connected to their cosmic source, like those in a spring or a well. “Living waters” became the prerequisite of tvila, ritual immersion in water that wards off the contamination of death.

50. The link between nefesh and life appears five times as frequently as the connection between life and ruah. This is without counting the links between blood (i.e., nefesh) and life. Ten other verses link nefesh to life’s opposite–death; the phrase nefesh met (a dead nefesh) has no parallel regarding ruah. Indeed, nine times is the nefesh itself called “alive” (nefesh haya), while the three ruah-hayim indicate a life-enabling breath. For higher animals, breathing is a prerequisite for living; it does not, however, embody life itself. Note 76 below explains the inevitability of these three exceptions due to their appearance in regard to the flood.

51. Genesis 1:20-21.

52. Leviticus 24:17-18.

53. Judges 16:30. See also Numbers 23:10, Ezekiel 18:20, Isaiah 53:12, and elsewhere.

54. Isaiah 53:12.

55. Psalms 119:28.

56. Numbers 11:6.

57. I Samuel 1:15.

58. II Samuel 14:14. See also Job 14:10-11: “But man dies and slacks; man expires, and where is he? As water evaporates from the sea, and a river parched and dried up.” In both cases, death is signified by a seepage of water.

59. See Leviticus 17:11, Deuteronomy 12:23-24, and Ezekiel 16:6, respectively. The nefesh-blood connection appears in a dozen other verses. This idea of life as animation, manifest in the perpetual flow of the bloodstream, survives to this day: When British pop singer Robbie Williams says, “I got too much life running through my veins,” it is his nefesh that he is referring to.

60. “Prana (breath) is the living creature, the universal soul, the eternal Being, and the Mind, Intellect and Consciousness of all living creatures, as also all the objects of the senses. Thus the living creature is, in every respect, caused by prana to move about and exert.” The Mahabharata, book 12: Santi Parva: sect. clxxxv. Cited in www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m12/m12b012.htm

61. Though Homer also has occasion to relate psuche to blood.

62. “Sheol… woke up the refaim for you” (Isaiah 14:9). Proverbs (21:16) considers their state one of resting, and other verses talk of them needing “to be risen.” Scholarship refers to these creatures repeatedly as the remaining shades of human beings. The quote from the Britannica, brought in the opening section of this article, continues: “The ancient Mesopotamians, Hebrews, and Greeks, for example, thought that after death only a shadowy wraith descended to the realm of the dead, where it existed miserably in dust and darkness....” However, there is absolutely no basis for this assertion. It is complete conjecture, drawing on the Greek idea of the posthumous shades in Hades. In truth, not a single biblical verse suggests that its own silent dwellers of the underworld were ever human beings, or that they are transformed souls. Nothing in the Bible implies, even hints, that when people or souls (of any sort) go down to the underworld, this is what they become. Rather, just like angels are the natural dwellers of heaven, refaim are their counterparts in the underworld domain.

63. Job 26:5.

64. Jonah 2:3-4.

65. Ezekiel 31:15.

66. II Samuel 22:6. See “The heathen drown in the rut of their doing… The wicked shall be turned into Sheol” (Psalms 9:16-18). Similarly, “the rivers of perdition assailed me… the pangs of Sheol encompassed me…” (Psalms 18:5-6). Psalm 124, with its mention of “malicious waters,” refers in its entirety to the threat of being swallowed by Sheol.

67. Isaiah 14:15. See specifically bor shaon (Psalms 40:3), connecting bor to the gushing sound of the great deep waters. In this manner, Sheol relates to many early mythologies that depict the underworld as a Leviathan-like water-monster that drinks the dead. The book of Jonah plays on this theme as well.

68. Ecclesiastes 9:10.

69. Genesis 37:35.

70. “Let the wicked dry out (yevoshu), and let them bleed (yidmu) to Sheol” (Psalms 31:18). This verse calls for the sinners’ immediate and premature demise, and as Hebrew commentaries acknowledge, the second verb is damam, which has nothing to do with “similarity”; compare Jeremiah 51:6.

71. Or: Dam (blood) to Duma (another name for Sheol). Not to be mistaken for “silence,” the term damam means to be stilled or “inanimate” (as a stone); it is the semantic opposite of flowing blood: “and I stilled (domamti) my nefesh” (Psalms 131:2).

72. In Isaiah 58:11 we find: “And the Lord will… satisfy your nefesh with good things, and make your bones strong—you shall be like a sated garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not”; nefesh is to a spring as bones are to a garden grove.

73. Psalms 104:30.

74. Ecclesiastes 3:19.

75. Genesis 7:15.

76. This is why the wording “kol nefesh,” standing for “all life forms,” never appears in this story. It couldn’t have. Instead, we find the repeated qualifier of ruah when generalizing about the flood’s destruction. For instance: “Behold, I do bring floodwaters on the earth, to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is a ruah of life; everything that is on earth shall die” (Genesis 6:17). And later: “They went into the ark to Noah, two by two, of all flesh in which is a ruah of life” (Genesis 7:15). Needless to say, nowhere in the 389 references to ruah in the Hebrew and Aramaic scripture is the term ascribed to a non-breathing creature.

77. “Iguanas recognize their human handlers and greet them differently compared with strangers.” Claire Bowles, “Lizards Do Really Learn to Recognize People,” New Scientist (June 30, 1999).

78. There is a new scientific debate about fish. However, Paul J.B. Hart and Ashley Ward of the University of Leicester explain the questionable data as reflecting recognition of fish that come from the same close environment, not individuals: “Our work suggests that although fish can recognize familiar individuals they do not do it through individual visual recognition... Sticklebacks can recognize a familiar being from the same environment as themselves but they cannot recognize the fish as an individual it has encountered before.” Paul Hart, “Finding a Friendly Faced Fish,” Planet Earth (June 2004), cited in http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004/11/nparticle-jwq-6wd-f4c. In any case, fish do not recognize human handlers and it is fair to assume that in biblical times fish-recognition data were unheard of (unlike higher animals, where their ability to recognize people was a first-hand experience).

79. Leviticus 22:28.

80. Deuteronomy 22:6.

81. Genesis 3:8.

82. Genesis 2:18.

83. Numbers 5:14.

84. Isaiah 54:6.

85. Genesis 26:35.

86. Judges 9:23.

87. Malachi 2:16. Loyalty and treachery are practiced between higher animals and their own peers, not only in regard to human handlers. Last year, in the journal Animal Cognition (April 2004, pp. 69-76), the behavioral biologist Thomas Bugnyar described a deliberately deceitful raven, and Frans de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1982) shows many such cases in apes.

Loyalty is something that higher animals can manifest as well, just as they can feel shame for being “bad” or feel gratified for being “good.” Other ruah verses are less straightforward, yet they too regard social personalities, as opposed to instincts, and physical well-being.

88. There is a direct connection between “smell” and ruah throughout the Bible; here the meaning is similar to “smelling out” the wicked–using the precise “ruah of knowledge and the fear of the Lord” he was reported to receive in the previous verse. The word “fear,” yira can also be read as “perception.”

89. Isaiah 11:4.

90. Judges 14:6.

91. Numbers 11:25.

92. II Kings 2:9.

93. I Samuel 10:6.

94. I Samuel 16:14.

95. Such mirror usage is common. Note that shmama means wilderness—back to the wild state of nature—and should not be misunderstood for desolation. Indeed overgrowth of wild fauna and flora are almost prerequisite: “Lest the land become shmama, and the beast of the field multiply…” (Exodus 23:29, also Jeremiah 49:33 and Ezekiel 14:15); “As long as it [the land of Israel] lies shmama it shall rest; because it did not rest in your Sabbaths” (Leviticus 26:35)—compensating for a sabbatical where “That which grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap....”). The only thing that shmama places are barren of is human inhabitants: “…a shmama forever; No man shall reside there” (Jeremiah 49:33); “the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land become shmama” (Isaiah 6:11-12). The same reference to human habitation per se is apparent in the verb form nasham: “The highways lie deserted, the traveling man ceases” (Isaiah 33:8); “Let their habitation be forsaken, let no dweller in their tents” (Psalms 69:25).

96. Proverbs 20:27. Therefore we light a ner neshama as a candle for the deceased, and light Sabbath candles to undo the fact that “the neshama of the first man blew out (kavta nishmato),” Genesis Raba 17.

97. Isaiah 30:33.

98. Commentary on Genesis 7:19.

99. Genesis Rabba on Genesis 2:7.

100. Other cultures may have the same idea: “As for the inner light which plays a part of first importance in Indian mysticism and metaphysics as well as in Christian mystical theology, it is, as we have seen, already documented in Eskimo shamanism. We may add that the magical stones with which the Australian medicine man’s body is stuffed are in some degree symbolic of solidified light (Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy [Bollingen Series lxxvi, Princeton, 1974], p. 508. Also: “Hippocrates says that the soul is an Immortal Warmth (Athanatos Thermon), which sees, hears and knows everything; most of this Warmth is pushed to the outermost sphere, where it is called Aithêr, and forms a kind of Fiery World Soul.” Essay by the seventeenth-century scholar John Opsopaus on “The Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of the Elements: Fire,” cited in: www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/AGEDE/Fire.html. “The Ancient Greek Esoteric Doctrine of the Elements: Fire, Fire in the Microcosm,” extended version, 1999.

101. Shekalim 86a.

102. Jeremiah 5:14.

103. Psalms 19:1-4.

104. Psalms 119:89.

105. Genesis 2:7. The scope of this article does not allow for a full linguistic exposition. A few points, however, should be made. Genesis 2:7 correctly reads “and he kindled (yipah) in his inner-fire (apav) a neshama of life.” Yipah is a form of puah—to kindle or set ablaze—as in Song of Songs 2:17: “Until the day blazes (yapuah) and the shadows flee away.” It is cognate to piah (soot) and other fire-related words. As to apaiv, plural of af, we must recall that in over 90 percent of the 276 biblical appearances of af it denotes heated, fiery anger. The meaning of “nose” appears only half a dozen times, and always in the singular, being a secondary derivative of “anaf” (the nose is the place where inner seething is released). Etymologists agree that af comes from the original root a-n-f. Lipinski includes this instance as an example where “assimilation between consonants takes place most often between a liquid l, r or the nasal n and another consonant… vowelless n assimilates regularly to a following consonant....” Edward Lipinski, Semitic Languages: Outline of a Comparative Grammar (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), p. 187. In Hebrew, the earlier a-n-f appears only in regard to fiery wrath, supporting the idea that “nose” is secondary. Indeed, biblical Hebrew has other words both for breathing (nashaf and sha’af) and for nostrils (nahir). That an inner fire was the seat of the soul is a known idea in antiquity. The only other possible translation of apav is “his countenance,” based on cognate languages. In modern Hebrew, of course, nasham has come to mean breathing, yet this development is late, and probably reflects Christological influences. I must, therefore, contend with Jewish commentators who follow the Christian reading of this verse as relating to breath. Indeed it might not be a coincidence that only after receiving the neshama man’s designation expanded from adam (of adama, earth) to include ish (relating to esh, fire). “Tefillin” (prayer phylacteries) thus symbolize human constitution: a shell of flesh (animal hide is obligatory), and a core of language allotted in divine words.

106. Job 26:4.

107. Job 27:3-4.

108. Job 32:8.

109. Daniel 10:17. Likewise, to become shomem means being dumbfounded. Losing one’s neshama can mean losing the self-conscious, sentient ability associated with language; one becomes inarticulate.

110. Job 37:2-10.

111. II Samuel 22:16; Psalms 18:16.

112. Psalms 150:6.

113. Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven: Yale, 1976), p. 242.

114. According to The Comprehensive Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary, the Arabic root s-m-w is the basic root of the noun samaa–sky in Arabic. A. Sharoni, 1999. The Comprehensive Arabic-Hebrew Dictionary (Tel Aviv: The Ministry of Defense, 1999), vol. 2, p. 735. In Hebrew, sh-m would be, then, the root (perhaps as two letters) behind the mysterious double plural of shamayim (heavens) as well, just as sh-d is to the Hebrew shadayim (breasts). See note 19 above. At the end, the direct neshama-fire connection is reinforced by proving both the fire-heaven and the fire-word links as well as independent links between neshama and heaven, and words (language), and between “the word” and heaven.

115. Jerusalem Sanhedrin 22.

116. Ecclesiastes 12:5.

117. Ecclesiastes 12:6-7.

118. François Daumas talks of “an identity between gold and sun” in ancient Egypt. François Daumas, “The Value of Gold in Egyptian Thought,” Religious History Review 75, 1956, p. 4.

119. Isaiah 60:19.

120. Malachi 3:20.

121. Daniel 12:3. See also: “Light is sown for the righteous” (Psalms 97:11), and “To enlighten (le’or) in the light of [eternal] life” (Job 33:30).

122. For a possible derivative of this ancient Israelite idea, compare Revelation 19:12-13, regarding Jesus, “His eyes were as a flame of fire… and his name is called the Word of God.”

123. Daniel 12:1.

124. Psalms 147:4.

125. Isaiah 66:22.

126. Job 14:12.

127. Isaiah 56:5.

128. Proverbs 10:7.

129. Deuteronomy 7:24. The destruction of the evildoers’ names is equivalent to the destiny described in Isaiah 34:4: “The host of the heavens shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a book: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falls from the vine, and as a falling [fig] from the fig tree.” Other examples of the eradication of heavenly names include: “Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven” (Deuteronomy 9:14); “the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man… and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven” (Deuteronomy 29:20); “you have destroyed the wicked, you have put out their name for ever and ever” (Psalms 9:6, 9:5 in KJV). And it is this name destruction that the author of Lamentations calls upon his enemies: “Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens (shmei) of the Lord.”

130. Deuteronomy 34:10.

131. Exodus 33:17. See also Exodus 33:12.

132. Exodus 32:32.

133. Isaiah 66:22.

134. Since God is indestructible and intrinsically aware, remembrance in God is a concrete reality–much more so, for instance, than a photo still “existing” in the memory of a computer (a notion we easily accept). Thus the New Year, as a day of judgment, is called yom hazikaron—the day of “recall” of one’s current-state name. The idea continued in Jewish tradition: “Three crowns were given to the people of Israel: the crown of the Law, the crown of Priesthood, and the crown of kingship. Rabbi Nathan said: And the crown of shem tov (a worthy name) supersedes them all” (Mechilta d’Rabbi Shimon, 19:6).

135. The dynamic sphere (“life”) is sequential and individual, while the relational sphere (“social convention”) is synchronic and structural. In the philosophy of language, for instance, the four realms would correspond to the following: intention = the ideal sphere; semantics and pragmatics = the relational sphere; grammar = the dynamic sphere; and phonetics = the material sphere.

136. The final destiny of ruah remains something of an enigma even for Israelite philosophy itself, as Ecclesiastes (3:21) retorts, “Who knows the ruah of man, does it rise upwards (like the neshama), and the ruah of the beast, does it descend down beneath the earth (like the nefesh)?” By stipulating both, Kohelet hints that neither familiar option is correct. Two sources confirm that, in its own way, ruah does return to God, elohim. They, however, refrain from any association with the heavens. They imply, I believe, a returning of one’s ruah to the framework elohim circling in the Garden of Eden, indeed to the very ruah Elohim that hovers forever over the waters of life.

137. Mourner’s kadish is a thousand-year-old tradition, known from the Mahzor Vitri. At the graveside, though, kadish has been recited since talmudic times.

138. Ezekiel 38:23.

139. Zechariah 14:9.

140. See Tur Orah Hayim 56b.

141. Only by understanding the Bible’s meaning regarding “The Name of God” will we grasp the meaning of our own, human, immortal names. While a comprehensive discussion of God’s names demands a full essay in itself, a few things can be stipulated: First, God’s various names are seen as distinct, characterized emanations of his omnipotent being. As such, they hold power over this world. God’s name is a function, ruling over existence. Second, while his being is unattainable by us, his manifested name is the subject of our devotion and spiritual pursuit: “and praise thy name for ever” (Psalms 44:9). Last, God’s name is eternal: “This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations” (Exodus 3:15).