p. 204 | Questions and Answers

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 11, 1872

Questions and Answers.

QUESTION. A few days ago, a Baptist minister, trying to establish the immortality of man, said, “The original words from which soul and spirit in the New Testament are translated are used interchangeably in a great many instances.” I would like to know the truth of the matter.

J. O. C.

ANSWER. 1. There is not an instance in the New Testament in which the word for soul, psyche, is translated spirit. 2. There is not an instance in which the word for spirit, pneuma, is translated soul. 3. There is not an instance in which these words are applied indiscriminately to the same object, in the same connection. But 4. They have some definitions in common; as for instance, psyche in Matt. 10: 28, explained by verse 39, undoubtedly ‘means life; and in Acts 7: 59, pneuma means substantially the same thing.

QUESTION. How many times hotter was the furnace heated than it was wont to be, at the time Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, were cast into it? It reads “One seven times.”

M. A. G.

ANSWER. None of the commentaries to which we have access, regard this expression as referring to any particular number of degrees of heat, but only as signifying that the furnace was raised to the highest degree of heat possible. It would be inconsistent to understand it as meaning seven-fold; that is, if the ordinary temperature of the furnace was 350°, that it was raised to seven times that, or 2450°. And it would hardly seem worthy of record to understand it as adding only one-seventh to the heat; that is, if the ordinary temperature was 350°, that one-seventh or 50° more were added, bringing it up to 400°. It seems therefore most natural to understand it to mean simply that the heat was raised to the greatest intensity possible.