How the Jewish soul dies
...watching its flesh decompose in Sheol?
This is Who made our minds?, my Thursday essay probing the greatest, cruellest and most beautiful minds of the past 5,000 years, inspired by my book, The Soul: A History of the Human Mind (Penguin 2024).
Next week: Why were the ‘Chosen People’ chosen? (4th of 7 essays on Judaism)
‘THEN GOD said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’
Thus God made the first man, whom he called Adam.
Here, then, was the first religious suggestion that human beings were equal before God. For if God created men in his image, why would he create better or worse versions of himself?
This act of creation also implied that God had created a peaceful, loving creature, for why would God’s human creations seek to destroy one another?
To shed another man’s blood was to attack God himself…