Skip to content

Like this? Share it!

  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on LinkedIn
  • Share on Email
Closer To Truth
  • Watch
    • Seasons & EpisodesWatch complete episodes as aired on public television
    • Curated PlaylistsExplore collections of videos curated by our team
    • ProjectsDiscover collaborations with leading institutions
    • ContributorsMeet the greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions
    • CTT ChatsWatch candid conversations with the brightest minds on the boldest ideas
    • Roundtable ArchivesView roundtable discussions from our early years
  • Topics
    • Cosmos, Life, Consciousness, Meaning: Explore the fundamental questions of existence.Topic Guide
    • All Topics
      • CosmosExplore cosmology, physics, and the fundamentals of existence
        • Back
        • All Cosmos
        • Deep Laws of Nature
          • Back
          • All Deep Laws of Nature
          • Cosmic Fundamentals
          • Time and Space-Time
          • Quantum Theory
          • Philosophy of Science
          • Complexity and Emergence
          • Mathematics as Fundamental?
          • Information as Fundamental?
          • Universe as Simulation?
          • Deep Discoveries in Science
        • Vast Cosmos
          • Back
          • All Vast Cosmos
          • Cosmic Immensity
          • Cosmic Beginnings
          • Cosmic Structure
          • Multiple Universes (Multiverse)
          • Black Holes, Dark Energy, Dark Matter
        • Our Special Universe
          • Back
          • All Our Special Universe
          • Fine-Tuning of the Universe?
          • Fine-Tuning the Universe for Life & Mind?
          • Breathtaking Universe
          • Alien Intelligences?
          • Far Future of the Universe
        • Breakthroughs
          • Back
          • All Breakthroughs
          • Breakthroughs in Science
          • Breakthroughs in Mathematics
        • Science and Religion
          • Back
          • All Science and Religion
          • Science vs. Religion?
          • Science and God
          • How Science and Religion Think
          • The New Atheism
          • Limits of Science
        • Mystery of Existence
          • Back
          • All Mystery of Existence
          • The Mystery of Existence
          • The Mystery of Laws & Cosmos
          • Metaphysics of Cosmos
          • Why Anything at All?
      • LifeJoin our in-depth exploration of life on planet earth and beyond.
        • Back
        • All Life
        • Philosophy of Biology
          • Back
          • All Philosophy of Biology
          • Why Philosophy of Biology?
          • Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology
          • Philosophy of Genes and Information
          • Philosophy of Evolution and Religion
        • What is Life?
          • Back
          • All What is Life?
          • What is Life?
          • What is Death?
        • Human Biology
          • Back
          • All Human Biology
          • Human Nature & Uniqueness
          • Evolutionary Culture and Ethics
          • Sex and Gender
          • Biology of Race
          • Medicine and Healthcare
          • Biological Futures
        • Life in the Cosmos
          • Back
          • All Life in the Cosmos
          • Life in the Cosmos
        • Biological Concepts
          • Back
          • All Biological Concepts
          • Mathematics and Biology
          • Deception
          • Plant Sentience
      • MindSearch mysteries of mind and individual awareness
        • Back
        • All Mind
        • Mind-Body Problems
          • Back
          • All Mind-Body Problems
          • The Mind-Body Problem
          • Brain Structure and Function
          • Brain Explains Mind?
          • Elements of Mind
        • Consciousness
          • Back
          • All Consciousness
          • Mystery of Consciousness
          • Landscape of Consciousness
          • Consciousness as Emergent
          • Consciousness as All Physical?
          • States of Consciousness
          • Sleep and Dreams
          • Purpose of Consciousness?
          • Metaphysics of Consciousness
        • Persons
          • Back
          • All Persons
          • Persons and Selves
          • Personal Identity
          • Life After Death?
          • Souls?
          • Human Uniqueness
          • Creativity
          • Music
          • Epistemology
          • Belief Systems
          • Mind and Society
          • People and Society
        • Free Will
          • Back
          • All Free Will
          • Mystery of Free Will
          • Philosophy of Free Will
          • Free Will and Consciousness
          • Science of Free Will
          • Free Will and Morality
          • Theology of Free Will
        • Extrasensory Perception
          • Back
          • All Extrasensory Perception
          • ESP and New Realities?
          • ESP and the Nonphysical?
        • Art Seeking Understanding
          • Back
          • All Art Seeking Understanding
          • Aesthetic Cognitivism
          • Art and Philosophy
          • Neuroscience/Cognitive Science of Art
          • Neuroscience/Cognitive Science of Music
          • Art and God
          • Art and Religion
          • Art and Culture
          • Mind, Art, Transcendence
          • Art Seeking Understanding Projects
      • MeaningSeek whether God exists through diverse perspectives
        • Back
        • All Meaning
        • Philosophy of Religion
          • Back
          • All Philosophy of Religion
          • Concepts of God
          • Alternative Concepts of God
          • Faith and Belief
          • Conflict Among Religions
          • Philosophy and Analytic Theology
          • Contemporary Theological Engagement
          • How Philosophy Informs Religion
          • Religion Without God
          • Eastern Traditions and the Big Questions
          • Global Philosophy of Religion
        • Existence of God
          • Back
          • All Existence of God
          • Arguing God's Existence
          • Philosophical Arguments For God
          • Experiential Arguments For God
          • Arguments Against God
        • Attributes of God
          • Back
          • All Attributes of God
          • God's Nature?
          • God's Essence?
          • God's Powers?
          • God and Time?
        • God as Creator
          • Back
          • All God as Creator
          • God The Creator?
          • God's Interactions?
          • God's World?
        • Ultimate Destinies
          • Back
          • All Ultimate Destinies
          • God's Knowledge and Future Events?
          • Judgment (Heaven, Hell)?
          • Resurrection?
          • Eschatology (End Times)?
          • Eternal Life?
          • Search for Meaning
  • News
    • All NewsStay up-to-date with the latest from Closer To Truth
    • Book ExcerptsExplore recently authored books from our contributors
    • PerspectivesRead essays and articles from our community
  • About
    • About Closer To TruthWe are a digital-media nonprofit and TV series
    • The TV SeriesWhere to watch on PBS stations nationwide
    • DonateDonate now to keep our content free!
    • Meet the TeamMeet the host and team behind Closer To Truth
    • PartnershipsLearn about our partners and collaborators
    • Support Closer To TruthWays to engage with and support our work
    • PodcastListen on your favorite podcast player
    • StoreBuy official Closer To Truth merchandise
    • YouTubeSubscribe to Closer To Truth on YouTube
  • Donate
Search
  • Login
  • Join
  • Watch
    • EpisodesWatch complete episodes as aired on public television
    • Curated PlaylistsExplore collections of videos curated by our team
    • ProjectsDiscover collaborations with leading institutions
    • ContributorsMeet the greatest thinkers exploring the deepest questions
    • CTT ChatsWatch chats with the brightest minds on the boldest ideas
    • RoundtablesView roundtable discussions from our early years
  • Topics
    • Topic GuideCosmos, Consciousness, Meaning: Join us as we explore the fundamental questions of existence.
    • CosmosExplore cosmology, physics, and the fundamentals of existence
    • MindSearch mysteries of mind and individual awareness
    • MeaningSeek whether God exists through diverse perspectives
  • News
    • The Latest
  • About
    • About Closer To TruthWe are a digital-media nonprofit and TV series
    • TV SeriesWhere to watch on PBS stations nationwide
    • Meet the TeamMeet our host and our team
    • DonateDonate now to keep our content free!
    • PartnershipsLearn about CTT’s partners and collaborators
    • Support Closer to TruthWays to engage with and support our work
    • PodcastListen on your favorite podcast player
    • StoreBuy official Closer To Truth merchandise
    • YouTubeSubscribe to Closer To Truth on YouTube
    • FAQLearn about Closer to Truth membership
  • Login
  • Join

video

Topic Series

Neil Gillman

  • Watch Next
Cover image for What is Human Nature?

What is Human Nature?

Cover image for Zoltan Istvan on Transhumanism

Zoltan Istvan on Transhumanism

Cover image for Zoltan Istvan on Neologisms

Zoltan Istvan on Neologisms

Cover image for Susan Schneider: MindFest Retrospective

Susan Schneider: MindFest Retrospective

Cover image for Zoltan Istvan on the Impact of AI Deepfakes

Zoltan Istvan on the Impact of AI Deepfakes

Cover image for James Hughes on Transhumanism: Citizen Cyborg and Democratic Societies

James Hughes on Transhumanism: Citizen Cyborg and Democratic Societies

  • Details
  • Transcripts
  • Formats
    • Share
Featured In

  • Can a Person Be a Soul?
Contributors

Neil Gillman

Neil Gillman was a rabbi (Conservative Judaism) and philosopher, explored tensions of...
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Neil, the common perception of Judaism, like Christianity, is that the teaching is that we are souls that have been united with our body, but the real me is an immortal soul. You teach that that's not true.
Neil Gillman
That's Plato. That's great Greek philosophy, and Plato believed that we are made up of two different, you know…
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Stuffs.
Neil Gillman
Stuffs. There is the physical body, and there is, within the physical body, an imprisoned spiritual substance that was eternal from the beginning and is immortal, and that at death, that spiritual entity departs from the body, the body disintegrates, and the spiritual substance, the soul, the psyche, goes up to be with the world of Forms, the Platonic Forms.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Common perception of most Western religions today.
Neil Gillman
Common perception, right. Yep. Well, one of my professors of philosophy at Columbia said that all of philosophy – I don't know if he said it or maybe I think… somebody said it – all of philosophy is a footnote to Plato. So, Plato, you know, asked all of the important questions. That certainly is not the Jewish, or the biblical, certainly not the biblical point of view. Although everybody wants to read it back into Hebrew scriptures. The words nephesh, neshamah, ruach in the Bible…
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Those are three Hebrew words…
Neil Gillman
Three Hebrew words. Right.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
…that are used to translate spirit or soul, or people have used that.
Neil Gillman
They ended up meaning that, but largely post-biblically. In the Bible itself, they mean the living person. There's no sense in the Bible that I'm made up of these two different stuffs, I am one. And at creation, God, in the second chapter of Genesis, God breathed into this clod of earth, nishmat chayyim, the breath of life, and out of that, this first person became a living human being. Now and at death, that… what God did then was vivified the clod of earth. He didn't put anything into it, he vivified it, much like I guess – since I live in Manhattan, I don't drive a car, but I would imagine that when your battery dies out, you spark the battery into life by connecting it to some other battery. That's, but when the battery dies, nothing leaves the battery, right? There's no spiritual soul substance in the battery that leaves the body. The material dies, and I think that's the… that's the biblical view. And that the words neshamah, nephesh, in the Bible itself, means living people. Seventy people went into Egypt, right? [speaks Hebrew] doesn't mean 70 souls, it means 70 living people. And, and, and the last verse of the last psalm, [speaks Hebrew] does not mean all souls praise God. It means all living things praise God. So neshamah, nephesh signify a living, breathing entity. It also incidentally means the blood, [speaks Hebrew], which is what conveys life, which gives life. So, it's only in post-biblical times, when Jews began to read Greek literature, that this dualistic view of the human person developed, so that at death, they just bought Plato, right? The neshamah leaves the body and goes to be with God, and the body itself goes into the earth and is, deteriorates, disintegrates, and at the end of days, God will raise the body from the dust, reunite it with that person's soul, and the individual human being, reconstituted as he or she was on Earth, will come before God in judgment. But that's Talmudic, that's post-biblical.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
So, if we stick with the Bible…
Neil Gillman
Stick with the Bible…
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
What do we have? What do we have…
Neil Gillman
What do we have? Death is final.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Death is final.
Neil Gillman
Sorry.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Okay, I'm coming to you to…
Neil Gillman
Death is final.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
I'd rather know the truth than to be happy.
Neil Gillman
Only two biblical characters survive death. That's…
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Enoch?
Neil Gillman
Enoch and Elijah. And they…
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
[crosstalk] enigmatic stories and brief stories, it's [crosstalk].
Neil Gillman
Right. But each has legs, because Elijah then, in post-biblical Judaism, is all over the place. He comes back into our homes at the Passover Seder, he comes to every circumcision, he comes at the Shabbat.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
He's sitting here right now.
Neil Gillman
He's sitting, right, and he's portrayed in the Bible as having conversations with the rabbis, he appears in the gates of Rome, and he goes back and forth. He talks to God, comes back and tells the rabbis what God is thinking, and then he goes back and tells God what people are thinking. You know, and Enoch, of course, has a whole [unintelligible] of literature around and around the personality of Enoch. So, these two, these are the only two people who survived, who just didn't die. It's not that they survived death, they just didn't die.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
They seemed to, yeah.
Neil Gillman
They seemed not to have died. And of all the people who died, only Samuel is the one who is brought up from the pit for one brief moment…
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Wasn't happy about it either.
Neil Gillman
Wasn't happy and went, quickly went back down. But once you're dead, you're dead. And there is this notion of the fact that when you're dead you go to Sheol, which is not a very happy place, and there you don't really… there's no connection between people in the pit and God, or people in the pit with one another. They are there and it's not a happy place, and that's the end and that's death.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
And that's an unconscious… seems to be an unconscious situation, or is that ambiguous? It's not a happy place, it's Sheol, but the human being is dead, and it's final, and it's not conscious.
Neil Gillman
Yes, except… except that, you know, these are not clearly developed categories. If in fact people who are Sheol, in Sheol are dead-dead-dead, why does Samuel come back up for that brief shining moment and then goes back down again? So, it's not clear, but it's not a very happy place. There's only one other reference to what happens when you're dead, and that is you're gathered unto your kin, the patriarchs, for example. Now, that may be a reference to burial in a family plot. It's a more gentle kind. It's people who died a, you know, a better death. But almost everybody else goes to Sheol, and you're dead. And, so there's no real consistent theology of an afterlife throughout scripture, except in the book of Daniel, the 12th chapter of the book of Daniel, which is probably the latest stratum of literature to be canonized in the Hebrew scriptures, and which everybody dates clearly from the time of the Maccabees, which is about 155 BCE. And, and–
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
Everybody other than the Orthodox tradition in…
Neil Gillman
Sorry, yes.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
…in both Judaism and Christianity.
Neil Gillman
Of course. There is… there is of course, in, then in Talmudic literature, an impulse to retroject the idea back into Hebrew scriptures, and there is all kinds of imagine-proof texts from Hebrew scripture to prove that in fact, the notion of resurrection was Torah-itic from the very beginning. But that's… that's the work of people who don't accept historical development. If you accept the fact that there is historical development in, in biblical religion, then you know, not everything was there at the beginning. But in Daniel, somewhere around the time of the Maccabees, you have this very, one very powerful verse, that many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awaken, some for eternal blessing and some for eternal damnation. And that's Daniel 12, verse 2. And there, the… the general, the conventional interpretation of that, and it's pretty unanimous – it's not completely unanimous, but it's just about unanimous – that there, this is a document written to attract people to the Maccabean cause. And people who were potentially volunteers to join the Maccabean cause in opposition to the Syrians said, why become martyrs if our death is final? And with what I've called incredible theological chutzpah, the author of Daniel sort of subverts the entire tradition and says not so. Many of those, not everybody, but many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awaken. That's clearly a reference to bodily resurrection. It can only… it's got nothing to do with souls, he doesn't care about souls. He cares about bodies, bodily resurrection. And they will… and the good guys will be blessed for eternity, the bad guys – namely those guys that joined the Greeks – they're going to be, they too will be resurrected for eternal damnation, okay? And that's where you stand somewhere around the middle of the 2nd century BC. That's the first hint of an afterlife in the Jewish tradition.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn
But in the Bible then there is no clear afterlife, and indeed there is the notion that death is death and death is final.
Neil Gillman
Right, except in Daniel, and there the need to establish God's justice trumped the notion that there can be no afterlife. God's power over my destiny ends with my death. And if that is the case, then there's no way of establishing God's justice. And so, the need to establish God's justice trumped that, and suddenly you have a flowering of afterlife theologies, including souls.
  • Short Video
  • Long Video

Watch Next

Members Only

Please login or join to view

Cover image for What is Human Nature?

video

What is Human Nature?

Episode 4

Season 27

26:47

Watch

Cover image for Zoltan Istvan on Transhumanism

Zoltan Istvan Gyurko, professionally known as Zoltan Istvan, is an American transhumanist, journalist, entrepreneur, political candidate, and futurist.

video

Zoltan Istvan on Transhumanism

Classic Chats, CTT Chat

17:28

Watch

Cover image for Zoltan Istvan on Neologisms

What role do new words—neologisms—play in shaping the future? Futurist and transhumanist Zoltan Istvan explores how neologisms reflect evolving technologies, radical...

video

Zoltan Istvan on Neologisms

Classic Chats, CTT Chat

5:26

Watch

Cover image for Susan Schneider: MindFest Retrospective

Dr. Susan Schneider is a philosopher and artificial intelligence (AI) expert. She is the founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University...

video

Susan Schneider: MindFest Retrospective

Classic Chats, CTT Chat

12:07

Watch

Cover image for Zoltan Istvan on the Impact of AI Deepfakes

Zoltan Istvan Gyurko, professionally known as Zoltan Istvan, is an American transhumanist, journalist, entrepreneur, political candidate, and futurist.

video

Zoltan Istvan on the Impact of AI Deepfakes

Classic Chats, CTT Chat

13:50

Watch

Cover image for James Hughes on Transhumanism: Citizen Cyborg and Democratic Societies

James Hughes Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, and a bioethicist and sociologist who serves as the Associate Provost for...

video

James Hughes on Transhumanism: Citizen Cyborg and Democratic Societies

Classic Chats, CTT Chat

11:33

Watch


Become a Member

Get free access to exclusive content and more.

  • facebook
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • Watch on YouTube
  • Find us on PBS
  • Donate
  • Contact Us

Policies Terms © Closer To Truth. All rights reserved Website by Visceral