We continue our survey of What Is the Soul?, Otis Q. Sellers’s early (1939) substantial study of certain the God-breathed (theopneustos, θεόπνευστος) Hebrew and Greek words. Anglophone Bible translators have traditionally rendered them “soul,” a choice that tends to support doctrines that most Christians implicitly believe are grounded in the Word of God. (See Part I.) The aim in this series is to go beyond general claims about what Sellers was doing to examine the ore he mined. We will catch the miner’s mind at work so we may evaluate it for ourselves, to see if he answered questions that were worth asking.
The words in question are נֶ֫פֶשׁ (nephesh) and ψυχή (psyche, which Sellers preferred to represent as psuche). Let’s take the Hebrew nephesh first. Implicitly referencing 2 Peter 1:21, he begins with a methodological reminder:
The word nephesh occurs seven-hundred and fifty-four times in the Hebrew Old Testament. Seven-hundred and fifty-four times God breathed the word nephesh; seven-hundred and fifty-four times holy men of God wrote the word nephesh as they were moved by the Holy Ghost [2 Peter 1:21]. Each time it was written it expressed the mind of God; each time it was used it was the word of His choice.
The average Bible student not only doesn’t know that numerical fact, but 
also doesn’t know an equally remarkable one:
But in the Authorized Version we find the word nephesh rendered at least thirty-three different ways, and fourteen times that it occurs in the Hebrew it is unrecognized and omitted altogether by the King James translators. Thus, their unfaithful treatment of the word nephesh becomes so contradictory and confusing that the value of the God-breathed Word is destroyed, and the Word that cannot be broken is shattered into many fragments, so far as those readers who are shut up to the Authorized Version are concerned.
He clarified:
Yet every reader of the Authorized Version must face the fact that he does not possess any word in English to represent the word nephesh on fourteen occasions that it came from the mouth of God. The translators treated it as if it was superfluous and unnecessary. But this was not their greatest error.
By his count, they rendered it “soul” 471 times; “life,” 119 times; “person,” 30; “self,” 21; “heart,” 15; “mind,” 15; “creature,” ten times; “dead,” “desire,” and “dead body,” five times each; “any” and “body,” four times each; “man,” “me,” “pleasure,” and “will,” three times each; “appetite,” “ghost,” “lust,” “thing,” and “he,” two times each; “hearty,” “own,” “him,” “one,” “mortally,” “whither will,” “they,” “breath,” “deadly,” “would have,” and “fish,” once each.
As for ψυχή (psyche), “the translators did not do much better. This word occurs 105 times in the Greek Scriptures,” and here’s how they rendered it: “soul,” 58 times; “life,” 40 times; “mind,” three times”; and “heart,” “you,” “heartily,” and “us,” once each.
It is my conviction [Sellers continued] that no Bible student or teacher would dare to try to defend this disloyal, confusing and unfaithful treatment of the Hebrew word nephesh and the Greek word psuche. There is no concrete word in any language that will yield as many diversified and contrary meanings as the translators have forced upon the word nephesh.
In a footnote, Sellers noted another oddity: although the word “soul” appears in the KJV in Job 30:15 and Isaiah 57:16, the “word nephesh is not found in either of these two passages.” In Job, the Hebrew נְדִבָתִ֑י, (nedibah) “should be translated nobility or excellency”; and in Isaiah, the Hebrew ר֣וּחַ (ruach), breath. “Apart from these two instances, every occurrence of the word soul in the Old Testament can be depended upon to represent the word nephesh.”
With these facts before us, the ground is now cleared [Sellers resumes], and we are ready to examine every one of the 859 occurrences of the word soul [in the so-called Authorized Version]…. I am confident that these will provide a full, perfect, and authoritative statement by the Creator of man as to the meaning and nature of the soul…. So let none become frightened by the mere mention of Hebrew and Greek…. Remember that if our great God saw fit to give His Word to mankind in Hebrew and Greek there can be nothing terrifying about these languages…. Our God is for us in our desire to know all truth. Let us go on trusting in the ability of the Spirit of God to reveal the truth even to babes and to fools.
But that doesn’t mean the work will be easy. “The truth concerning the soul cannot be gained by memorizing one or two selected texts,” but rather only “from a careful consideration of all the texts and contexts in which the words occur. And no man can claim to have considered all the truth on this subject until just that work has been done.” (My emphasis.) And Sellers claims to have done that work.
Yet, “it seems to be the general custom to begin with a small selection of passages which seems to support a doctrinal position already held by the student…. What is the soul?, is simply a part of the problem of What is Man?, our studies must begin with man as the general subject and work down to the soul as the particular subject.” Pneumatology, the study of πνεῦμα, pneuma, falls under anthropology, the study of ἄνθρωπος “man” (in the inclusive sense, that is, “humanity”).
Sellers shows the hazards of starting with one of one’s favorite verses, say, “Matthew 22:37: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.”
… [W]e could from this verse deduce that man is a tripartite being composed of heart, soul, and mind. But this could not be true, for the fact of the human body being a part of man is too patent to be denied. However, if someone desired to include in his creed that man is a being composed of three parts—heart, soul and mind—he would not be lacking a proof text to support his confession…. But, every careful Bible student knows that Matthew 22:37 does not deal with the constitution of man, and that nothing concerning man’s nature is taught or refuted by this passage.
How about Luke 10:27: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind”?
We could stake our all upon this passage and by its authority insist that man is quadripartite, that is, a being composed of four parts heart, soul, strength, and mind …. [W]e could work backwards and forwards through all other passages and interpret … them so that they would fit in with this conception. But, this we will not do, for it is evident that the subject in this passage is not the constitution of man, and nothing concerning man’s nature can be taught or refuted by this passage.
It is also tempting to find anthropology in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 teaches: “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord. Jesus Christ.”
If the student begins here, he can from this passage take the stand that man is a tripartite being composed of body, soul, and spirit; and then from this verse work backwards and forwards through every other passage and interpret each in harmony with this conception. Of course, those who do this cannot work very far forward as this passage occurs near the end of all that the Bible tells us about the soul….
Hebrews 4:12 cannot be rightfully used to teach that man is soul and spirit; Matthew 10:28 cannot be rightfully used to teach that man is soul and body; Luke 10:27 cannot be used to teach that man is heart, soul, strength and mind; and 1 Thessalonians 5:23 cannot be rightfully used to teach that man is spirit, soul, and body.
1 Thessalonians 5:23 “is a ‘favorite text’ of many preachers,” Sellers observed, “a ‘favorite verse’ of many Christians. But it would not be hard to demonstrate that so-called ‘favorite verses’ are the ones that seem to support a preconceived view.”
By contrast, the “studies in this book,” that is, Sellers’s What Is the Soul?, “begin at the beginning. They do not begin with the eight hundred and thirty-third reference to the soul (1 Thessalonians 5:23), but with the very first time this God-breathed word appears in the Scripture.”
To be continued