a soul". Animals as nephesh In 1 Corinthians 15:45 (KJV), soul [psūchê] is defined based on an interpretation of Old Testament text. "And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul[psūchê]; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."() New Testament The New Testament counterpart to the Old Testament word for soul, nephesh, is psyche. The two words carry a similar range of meanings. Both can designate the person or the person’s life as a whole. For all uses and meanings of psyche/ψυχἠ, see Joseph Henry Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Death of the soul According to some writers, nephesh and psūchê are not naturally immortal. They die and are uncomprehending during the time between death and Judgment Day resurrection, also known as the intermediate state. John Goldingay writes, "The life of a human being came more directly from God, and it is also evident that when someone dies, the breath (rûaḥ, e.g., Ps 104:29) or the life (nepeš, e.g., Gen 35:18) disappears and returns to the God who is rûaḥ." Immortality 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. The word nephesh never means an immortal soul or an incorporeal part of the human being that can survive death of the body as the spirit of dead, Traditional Christianity In Patristic thought, towards the end of the 2nd century, psūchê had begun to be understood in a more Greek than a Hebrew way, contrasted with the body. By the 3rd century, with the influence of Origen, the traditions of the inherent immortality of the soul and its divine nature were established. As the new Encyclopædia Britannica points out: “The early Christian philosophers adopted the Greek concept of the soul’s immortality and thought of the soul as being created by God and infused into the body at conception.” Inherent immortality of the soul was accepted among western and eastern theologians throughout the Middle Ages, and after the Reformation, as evidenced by the Westminster Confession. Modern scholarship The modern scholarly consensus holds that the canonical teaching of the Old Testament made no reference to an immortal soul independent of the body. A wide range of scholarly reference works consistently represent this view. In recent times, a minority of scholars have partially dissented from