Questions From Readers

● The Watchtower, September 15, 1955, page 572, paragraphs 38, 39, states that Satan did not promise immortality to Eve in Eden. Who, then, began this teaching, and when? Was it during Nimrod’s time that this teaching first began?—E. D., United States.

Satan, as the father of the lie and the originator of all false religion, must be held accountable for the teaching of the immortality of human souls. However, it does not seem that we can construe his remarks to Eve as teaching the immortality of a soul separate and distinct from the body, but rather that he led her to believe that even in the flesh she would not die at all.

As to when this teaching originated, that the dead did not actually die but lived on, Qualified to Be Ministers indicates it was believed in by men even before the flood of Noah’s day. Suggestion of this is seen where survivors placed food in the tombs of their dead. The present teaching of the immortality of the human soul, however, cannot be traced back to preflood times because all false worship was wiped out at the time of the Flood and only pure worship was engaged in right after the Deluge. Just exactly when the teaching of an immortal soul’s surviving after death of the human body again arose may be open to question, but at least by the time of Nimrod’s death it was current, as his wife taught that after his death he had become a god and was to be worshiped.