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The Pagan Origin of
lmmortal Souls
S
INCE
immortal souls didn't come
from the Bible, where did our
Judea-Christian religions find them?
The
Jewish Encyciopedia
freely ad–
mits that:
The belief that the soul conünues
its existence after the dissolution of
the body is ... speculation ... nowhere
expressly taught in Holy Scripture ....
The belief in the immortality of the
soul carne to the Jews from contact
with Greek thought and chiefly
through rhe philosophy of Plato, üs
principal exponent, who was led to
it through Orphic and Eleusinian
mysteries in which Babylonian and
Egyptian views were straogely blend–
ed.
Plato is also the authoritative
source for the "Christian fathers"
(e.g., Origen, Tertullian) who, two
centuries after the death of their sup–
posed founder, first introduced im–
mortal souls into a rapidly paganized
Christianity.
Most have assumed that the doc–
trines of traditional Christianity have
come from the Bible. Well, compare
present-day teachings on the immor–
tality of the soul with what Plato
wrote in the
Phaedo:
... the soul is shown to be immor–
tal, and since immortal, indestructible.
. . . Do we believe there is any such
thiog as death? To be sure. And is
this anything but the separation of
the soul and body? And beiog dead
is the attainment of this separation,
when the soul exists in herself and
separare from the body, and the body
is
parted from the soul.
That is denth.
...
Death is me·rely the separation of
soul atJd body.
It
is interesting that materialism
and immortal soulism
both
received
their first detailed explanation in an–
cient Greek philosophy - and this
occurred at approximately the same
time in history.
Materialism
-
the pre-Socratic
philosophers, in and prior to the 5th
century B.C. (chiefly Democritus),
and the Stoics and Epicureans in the
early 4th and 3rd centuries.
44
lmmortal Sortlism
-
Orphic mys–
teries in the 6th century B.C., Pindar
in the 5th, and Plato in the 4th.
Plato argued the first comprehen–
sive case for immortal souls, while
just a very few years later, Epicurus'
Scripr,t Nutlhematica
chief objective was to abolish Plato's
dualism between mind and matter.
Of course, neither philosophy orig–
inated in Greece. Both can be traced
back to Egypt. (As a matter of fact,
tbe first record of the soul being
immortal goes clear back to the Gar–
den of Eden, where "the serpent said
unto the woman, "Ye shall not surely
die" - Gen. 3:4.) Nevertheless, the
first in-depth discourse - available
to modern man - on either mater–
ialism or immortal souls carne from
Greece:
These "coincidences" of time and
place of origin and exposition for
both materialism and immortal soul–
ism suggest that we may not be deal–
ing with sworn enemies after al! -
but rather, figuratively speaking,
with partners who feign mutual an–
tagonism and mortal competition,
partners who are actually working
hand-in-hand,
deceiving the entire
tuorld.
tape recorder. Analogously, the spirit
in man imparts the capacity of creative
intellect and self-conscious personality
to
tbe brain, while at the same time,
the spirit in man itself is recording
and storing the stamp impress
from
the brain.
2
At death, the spirit in man "tape"
is complete - it contains, at that time,
every nuance of life, thought, person–
ality and character which made us just
exactly the singular individual who
we were. The "tape" can then be
"fi led" - until needed again for reac–
tivation, an event called the
"reStlrrec–
tionu
in Biblical terminology. Solomon,
whose writings decimate the immortal
soul fantasy, al!udes to this "filing":
"Then [at death) shall the dust (the
human being] reh1rn to the earth as
it was, and the spirit [the spirit-in–
man tape
J
shaU return unto God who
gavc it" (Eccl.
12:7).
Again, don't make tl1e mistake of
attributing consciousness to this filed–
away "tape" - it is no more the for–
mer living individual than a boxed
piece of magnetic recording tape
is
the
peaceful third movement of Beetho–
ven's Ninth Symphony. In arder to
reconstitute those serene musical vibra–
tions from the magnetic recording tape,
the tape must be reinserted into a
tape recorder. Similarly, in order to
reconstitute the specific person's con–
scious awareness from the "spirit-in–
man tape," the spirit in man must be
reinserted into a brain. Therefore a
reorganized brain and body (whether
spiritual or physical) are necessary
adjuncts to the spirit-in-man tape in
order to reactivate - or
resut-rect
-
the original individual.
3
Importance for Now
We are no longer harassed by the
dogma of materialism. And we are no
longer harnessed by the doctrine of
immortal souls. We are armed with
the sure knowledge of the
Bibticat
spirit in man.
And it is in the arena of
hmnan
survival
that the spirit in man takes
on monumental significance because
the mere
existence
of a spiritual com-
PLAIN TRUTH
June
1972