G5590 Psyche, soul

Strongs Concordance:

• "From G5594, psucho, breath, i.e. (by implication spirit, abstract or concrete.
  • The animal sentient principle only; thus distinguished on the one hand from G4151, pneuma, which is the rational and immortal soul; and on the other from G2222, zoe, which is mere vitality, even of plants.
  • These terms correspond respectively to the Hebrew:
    • Gk psucho/psyche -- Heb nephesh.
    • Gk pneuma -- Heb ruwach (H7307, breath, wind).
    • Gk zoe -- Heb chay (H2416 living flesh).

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament:

• "In Homer sṓma is the dead body, words like mélea are used for the living organism, and psychḗ is the vital force that resides in the members and finds expression in the breath.
• Older and Classical Usage. Psychḗ becomes a master concept in the sixth century B.C. The idea of retribution helps to bring this about. The psychḗ in the underworld assures continuity between this world and the next. The psychḗ, then, is the epitome of the individual. The sṓma (body) comes to be seen as the sḗma (tomb) of the soul.
• Old Testament usage
  • "Breath (nephesh). The Hebrew term which psychḗ renders is a fluid and dynamic one which it is hard both to define and to translate. The root means “to breathe” in a physical sense. Breathing is a decisive mark of the living creature; its cessation means the end of life. The root thus comes to denote “life” or “living creature.” In a localization, the meaning may be “neck” or “throat.” Departure of the breath is a metaphor for death.
  • Person. nep̱eš denotes the total person, what he or she is. Gen 2.7 expresses this truth, although more in relation to the external aspect than to the modalities of life. What is meant is the person comprised in corporeal identity. Yet the total personality, the ego, is also involved. The noun can thus become a synonym of the personal pronoun (Gen 27.25, Jer 3.11).

• New Testament usage
  • As in Ac 20.10 the psyche is the life, which can be lost (Ac 27.10), and needs nourishment (Mt 6.25).
  • "When Jesus says that He gives His psyche as a ransom for many, what He means is the life bound up with flesh and blood, along with the individual ego (Mk 10.45, Jn 10.11).
    • Rev 12.11 refers to those who do not love their psyche unto death.
    • In Ac 20.24 Paul does not hold his life dear.
    • In Lk 14.26 psyche embraces everything that makes up the earthly life that one must hate for Jesus' sake."

• "Psychḗ often denotes physical life. Pneúma may be used for this too, but whereas the psychḗ can be persecuted and slain, one can only hand back the pneúma to God. Only psychḗ, then, can refer to the purely natural life that can reach an end (cf. the contrast in 1 Cor 15.45."
• "Psychḗ is authentic life only as God gives it and one receives it from him. Whereas the problem with pneúma is that it tends to be seen as the inner spiritual life that we are given, the problem with psychḗ is that it tends to be restricted to the physical sphere instead of embracing within this sphere the gift of God that transcends death.
• As God’s faithfulness does not end with death (cf. Ps 49), so psychḗ comes to signify a life that death does not extinguish. Later this is specifically the religious life that one must nurture as a gift, which implies responsibility. The continuity of the life of faith and the resurrection life does not reside in the divine indwelling but in the divine faithfulness, pneúma, too, can denote the departed believer, but in this context both terms refer, not to a surviving part, but to the total life given by God and lived out before him: a bodily but not a fleshly life. John develops psychḗ to express the continuity, but Paul prefers pneúma, which stresses the continuity of the divine activity.