Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The word nephesh occurs 754 times in the Hebrew Bible. The first four times nephesh is used in the Bible, it is used exclusively to describe animals: Gen 1:20 (sea life), Gen 1:21 (great sea life), Gen 1:24 (land creatures), Gen 1:30 (birds and land creatures). At Gen 2:7 nephesh is used as description of man.
Over 120 species of animals are mentioned in the Bible, ordered alphabetically in this article by English vernacular name.Animals mentioned in the Old Testament will be listed with their Hebrew name, while those mentioned in the New Testament will be listed with their Greek names.
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. [1] The word nephesh never means an immortal soul [27] or an incorporeal part of the human being [28] that can survive death of the body as the spirit of the dead. [29]
Another view found in a popular Greek Orthodox Catechism, is that the living creatures represent four covenants given to mankind. The lion represents the Noahic covenant in the sign of the rainbow, the ox represents the Abrahamic covenant of circumcision , the man represents Moses giving the law, and the eagle represents the new covenant Gospel ...
More recently, The Oxford companion to animal behaviour (1987) advised that "one is well advised to study the behaviour rather than attempting to get at any underlying emotion". [59] Some scientists, like William M Wheeler (writing apologetically of his use of anthropomorphism in 1911), have used anthropomorphic language in metaphor to make ...
Personification, the attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions and natural forces like seasons and the weather, is a literary device found in many ancient texts, including the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament. Personification is often part of allegory, parable and metaphor in the Bible. [1]
In terms of the afterlife and the world to come, descriptions of heaven describe an existence without violence and strife either among non-human animals or in their relationship to people. For example, Isaiah 65:25 (NIV) states: "The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food.
In kabbalah, the animal soul (נפש הבהמית ; nefesh habehamit) is one of the two souls of a Jew. It is the soul that gives life to the physical body, as stated in Tanya , and is the source of animalistic desires as well as innate Jewish characteristics such as kindness and compassion .