22. What common religious idea do some try to read into what Genesis 2:7 actually says?

²² Let us note once again what Genesis 2:7 states about the creation of man. Does it say that Jehovah God put in man a soul separate and distinct from his body? That is what many religious people want to read into the text. In fact, the Spanish Bible translation by F. Torres Amat–S. L. Copello, of 1942 C.E., reads, when translated into English: “Then the Lord God formed the man of the slime of the earth, and breathed in his face a breath or spirit of life, and the man remained made living with a rational soul.”b This is very different from the Roman Catholic Douay Version, which says: “And man became a living soul.” Also, the version published by The Jewish Publication Society of America reads: “And man became a living soul.” In order that our readers may see the literal word-for-word reading (from right to left) of the Hebrew text we present below a photostatic copy of this part of Genesis 2:7 in The Interlinear Literal Translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, by G. R. Berry, copyright 1896-1897:

the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 8 ¶ And the LORD God planted a garden

יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים אֶת־הָאָדָם עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה

,ground the from dust [of out] man (the) God Jehovah

וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים וַיְהִי הָאָדָם

man (the) became and ;life of breath nostrils his in breathed and

8 לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה וַיִּטַּע יְהוָֹה אֱלֹהִים גַּן בְּעֵדֶן

Eden in garden a God Jehovah planted And living soul a (for)

23. When the human body dies, what happens to the soul?

²³ Since God’s inspired Word plainly says, “Man became a living soul,” man is a soul. The Bible tells the truth! It is the authority on what the human soul is. The pagan philosophers of ancient time, who did not have God’s written Word, are the ones who say that man has inside him an invisible spiritual soul that departs into the spirit realm at the death of the human body. In the Hebrew text the word for “soul” is nephʹesh; in the Greek Septuagint Version of the Hebrew Scriptures it is psy·kheʹ. Hence, what happens to man’s body happens to the human soul. It is not just the human body that dies, but, as Jehovah God says in Ezekiel 18:4: “Look! All the souls—to me they belong. . . . The soul that is sinning—it itself will die.” (Also, verse 20)

24. Why is a “physical body” distinct from a “spiritual one”?

²⁴ Man is not of the spirit, spiritual. Man is of the earth, earthy: “Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground.” (Genesis 2:7) The body that God created for man was made up of the elements taken from the earth and the atmosphere. It was not a spiritual body, and it cannot be spiritualized so as to become invisible and able to inhabit the spirit realm. It was a physical body, separate and distinct from a spiritual body such as the heavenly “sons of God” possess. Just as a Bible commentator of the first century C.E. said: “If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual one.” The two kinds of bodies must not be confused, and the Bible does not confuse them.—1 Corinthians 15:44.

25. What did God breathe into man’s nostrils to make him a “living soul,” in contrast with Greek philosophy?

²⁵ The naked human body that God formed out of dust from the ground there in the Paradise of Pleasure was perfect, none of its necessary parts or members missing. “Perfect is his activity, for all his ways are justice.” (Deuteronomy 32:4) “See! This only I have found,” said wise King Solomon, “that the true God made mankind upright.” (Ecclesiastes 7:29) To make that first human body alive and functioning perfectly, God did not take from heaven a bodyless “soul” (psy·kheʹ)c that, according to the pagan Greek idea, was flitting around like a butterfly, and breathe or insert it into the lifeless body. God breathed into the body not a mere current of air to expand the body’s lungs. It was nothing like mouth-to-mouth reviving as in the case of a drowned person. What God breathed into the nostrils of the body is called “the breath of life,” which not only filled the lungs with air but also imparted to the body the life-force that is sustained by breathing. In this way “the man came to be a living soul.”

26. Why was the first man named Adam, and how did God put real purpose in his life?

²⁶ Jehovah God became the Father, the Life-Giver, of this first human soul. Materials for forming the human body were taken from the ground, which, in Hebrew, is called a·da·mahʹ, and so this living soul was appropriately named Adam. (Genesis 5:1, 2)