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IMMORTAL
SOUL
(Continued from page 23)
B.C.) tells us in bis
History
that
the ancient Egyptians were the first
to teach that the soul of man is
separable from the body, a nd
immortal. This Egyptian idea was
centuries befare Judaism, or Hin–
duism, Buddhism, Christianity and
Islam carne onto the scene.
Nowhere in the ancient world
was the afterlife of more concern
than in Egypt. The countless tombs
unearthed by archaeolo–
gists along the Nile pro–
vide eloquent testimony
to the Egyptian belief
that man possessed a spi r–
itual aspect extending
beyond his physical life.
To the east, the ancient
Babylonians also held a
belief in a future life of
the soul in a "lower
world." But Babylonian
beliefs were nowhere so
elaborate as the Egyp–
tian .
A person, the Egyp–
tians believed, consisted
of a physical body and not
one but
two
souls that
lived on after his death: a
ka
soul and
aba
soul.
The
ka
was said to be a
spirit replica of a man,
containing the "vital
force" g iven to him at
birth. At death, the
ka
was bel ieved to take up
residence in a statue or
picture of the deceased.
The statue or picture was placed in
the to.mb for that very purpose. As
the tomb was to be the eterna!
home of the
ka,
it was provided
with everything the
ka
would need
for a happy afterlife- food, furni–
ture, games, reading material ,
grooming aids and the like.
The other soul, the
ba,
was held
to be that part of man that enjoyed
an eterna! existence in heaven. It
was believed to fly from the body
with the last breath. The
ba
was
often depicted on tomb paintings as
a human-headed hawk hovering
over the deceased's body. Th.e
ancient Egyptians believed the
ba
occasionaJly carne back to "visit"
the body in the tomb and to partake
28
of the food and drink offerings
there.
The famous
Book of The
Dead-a
collection of ancient
Egyptian funerary and r i tual
texts- lays out in great detail the
many Egyptian beliefs about the
afterlife. In one version of the
work, dating from the 15th century
B.C., the
ba
of a deceased person is
pictured as asking one of the Egyp–
tian gods, "How long have I to
live?" To which the god replied:
"Thou shalt exist for millions of
millions of years, a period of millions
of years." What better depiction of
the concept of immortality?
Passed on to Greeks
The idea of the soul's immortality
did not cease with ancient Egyptian
civilization. Notice again the testi–
mony of the historian Herodotus:
"The Egyptians were the first
that asserted that the soul of man is
immortal. ... This opinion
sorne
among the Greeks
have at different
periods of time adopted as their
own" (from
Euterpé,
the second
book of Herodotus'
H istory).
The pagan Greeks got the con–
cept of an immortal soul from the
Egyptians!
The foremost advocate among
the ancient Greeks of the idea of an
"immortal soul" was the Athenian
philosopher Plato (428-348 B.C.),
the pupil of Socrates. Plato was the
founder of the Academy, an insti–
tute for philosophical and scientific
research j ust ou tside of Athens.
The pre-Socratic Greek philoso–
phers had no real conception of any
nonmaterial element in man. The
philosophers Socrates and Pythago–
ras were among the first of the
Greeks to adopt the Egyptian view.
They subsequently had a great
influence on the thought of Plato.
lt
was Plato who popular–
ized the immortal sou l
concept throughout the
Greek world.
In the
Phaedo-one
of
Plato's most famous
works-Plato recounts
Socrates' final conversa–
tion with his friends on
the last day of Socrates'
life. Socrates declared to
them:
"Be of good cheer, and
do not lament my pass–
ing.... When you lay me
down in my grave, say
that you are burying my
body only, and not my
soul."
Socrates' statement is
little different from the
teaching of most churches
today!
Notice also the follow–
~
ing assertion from Plato,
§
agai n taken from the
Phaedo:
~
"The soul whose insep-
arable attitude is life will
never admit of life's opposite,
death. Thus the soul is shown to be
immortal, and since immortal,
indestructible.... Do we believe
there is such a thing as death? To
be sure·. And is this anything but
the separation of the soul and
body? And being dead is the attain–
ment of this separation, when the
soul exists in herself and separate
from the body, and the body is
parted from the soul. That is
death. ... Death is rrierely the sep–
aration of the soul and body."
In Book X of
The Republic–
another of Plato's major works- he
again wrote: "The soul of man is
immortal and imperishable."
Statements by such a ncient
The PLAIN TRUTH