Elements of a History of the Soul in North-West Semitic Texts

Amongst Hebrew Bible scholars the question of the understanding of biblical key terms and concepts pertaining to the human condition has attracted a fair amount of interest. And amongst those key terms and concepts it is the concept of nefeš that has proved to be particularly attractive and challenging. New light is thrown on the biblical concept by the recent discovery of the Katumuwa stele in Zincirli. The present article examines the evidence and draws conclusions with regard to the history of the concept of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible and in North-West Semitic literature and religion generally.


Introduction
Amongst Hebrew Bible scholars of a variety of languages and traditions-and not just amongst those who take a special interest in social anthropology and its uses for the understanding of ancient Northwest-Semitic texts and artefactsthe question of the understanding of biblical key terms and concepts pertaining to the human condition has attracted a fair amount of interest.1 Amongst those key terms and concepts it is the concept of nefeš that has proved to be particularly attractive and challenging. Probably the main reason for that is the perennial interest taken in concepts of the "soul" in the Western philosophical and theological traditions. Recent decades have seen a shift of emphasis in the interpretation of nefeš, and many exegetes have claimed that the theological anthropology of the biblical authors excluded concepts of the soul as a material or immaterial entity distinct from the human body. That shift has had an effect on contemporary Bible translations and revisions in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. If, for example, we compare the ways in which the instances of nefeš in Ezek. 18:4 are rendered in the Revised Standard Version and in the New Revised Standard Version respectively, there is an interesting observation to make. The Hebrew text reads as follows: The RSV has: "Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins shall die." In the New Revised Standard Version, we read: "Know that all lives are mine; the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die." The New JPS Tanakh gives the following rendering: "Consider, all lives are Mine; the life of the parent and the life of the child are both Mine. The person who sins, only he shall die." The reluctance to translate nefeš as "soul" is palpable and most probably a result of the exegetical discussions of the term in the wake of the contributions of Johannes Pedersen, Hans Walter Wolff and others.2 The scholars who produced the New Revised Standard Version, as well as the translators of the New JPS Tanakh, obviously thought that the choice of "soul" in earlier translations had been inappropriate. Both groups of translators chose two English terms to render one and the same Hebrew term, which is a problematic decision at the best of times, and they tied themselves into knots: with regard to the last instance of nefeš in the verse, they realised that "life" would have been a nonsensical choice and went for "person" instead: the need for a rendering such as "person" or "soul" really is indeed inescapable here. The exegetical trend that informs the two versions has been going hand in hand with the reasoning of Jewish and Christian scholars of religion and theologians who profess to have a deeper understanding of biblical concepts of personal eschatology than their predecessors in times past. By contrast, some philosophers and theologians have tried to revisit, re-evaluate and revive traditional views. However, in the study of biblical and other North-West Semitic literatures, too, there have been dissident voices-that is, voices that do not chime in with the chorus of those who deny that the Hebrew term nefeš displays any traces of the concept of the human soul as an entity that is in some sense distinct from the body. The discussions between both camps have often tended to focus on some of the biblical psalms, and Psalms 16 and 49 have been at the centre of one of the debates.
I will need to go into a bit more detail regarding the exegetical discussion among biblical scholars, especially with a view to the psalms, and to the wider philosophical and theological context in which it is taking place. The exegetical and theological debate around the term nefeš and the conceptualization of the term with regard to views of the soul and the person has been particularly lively in German-language scholarship. There are those who argue for a (for want of a better term) monistic understanding of the human person and assume that the nefeš was considered to be inseparable from the body and would perish together with it. This is the view held, and argued in great detail, by-amongst others-Johannes Pedersen, Hans Walter Wolff, Christoph Barth and Bernd Janowski.3 Oswald Loretz turned against such interpretations of nefeš in his compendious essay on Psalm 16 in which he advocates the understanding of nefeš, in Psalm 16, as "soul". Loretz provides a very detailed analysis of Psalm 16 and its use of nefeš and interacts with the opposing view, rightly devoting much space to the parallel debates in philosophy and theology.4 Ulrich Barth, a philosopher of religion on whose work Loretz partly relies, regrets that what he calls "archaizing and eliminative interpretations"5 of the relevant texts in the Hebrew Bible make it impossible adequately to understand the true complexity of the conceptualization of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible. In Barth's view, this may be due to a present-day abhorrence of a certain type of supposedly Platonizing interpretations of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that are perceived to lead exegetes astray.6 Much could be said about the motives behind this resistance against allegedly Platonizing interpretations, which often remain unconscious, but this is not the place for it. Let us instead focus on the need to return to the biblical texts, to take their North-West Semitic setting seriously, and not to dismiss exegetical approaches out of hand simply because they are perceived to be either "archaizing and eliminative" or Platonizing and ahistorical. What, then, do those who think that the concept of the "soul" can be found in the Hebrew Bible mean when they speak of the soul? Is it possible that their view is not simply an anachronistic, Platonizing aberration in the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible? First of all, we need to take on board that having a concept of the soul does not necessarily entail an endorsement of the dualistic Platonic conception of the soul, as expressed in Plato's Phaedo (79e-80b). There, Plato's Socrates describes the soul, while it is still joined to the body, as the ruling force and the body as the subordinate servant.7 Socrates' conversation-partner then concludes: "The soul resembles the divine and the body the mortal." And from that follows, according to Socrates, [80b] "that the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and rational, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and that the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and irrational, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable".8 It is the Platonic understanding of the soul that colours all talk about the soul to this day. Yet it is a fact that other concepts of the soul existed in the Mediterranean and the Near East in antiquity-idealist ones, like Plato's, and materialist ones, like those promoted by the Stoics. Of course we will not find a Platonic understanding of the soul in the Hebrew Bible, but that does not necessarily mean that concepts of the soul generally are absent from the Hebrew Bible, as J. Pedersen and others have claimed.9 Important parts of the ongoing debate about anthropological terms and concepts in the Hebrew Bible took place before the Katamuwa stele was found and its inscription published. Since its publication, the discussion among scholars of North-West Semitic philology and biblical scholars has very much focused on the stele and its inscription in the immediate North-West Semitic linguistic and archaeological contexts. By contrast, I should like to focus on biblical texts that, in my view, conceptualize nefeš as "soul" or "person": after exploring the use of the cognate term in the Katumuwa inscription, I should like to apply the insights thus won to some biblical texts of key importance. As we shall see, the inscription, in the context of the stele overall and its cultic use, lends considerable support to one of the two opposing views of nefeš in the Bible expressed in the recent exegetical, theological and philosophical debates.
The Katumuwa stele was discovered in Zincirli in Anatolia by the Neubauer expedition on 21 July 2008 and, amongst many other things, throws new light on the meaning and uses of *napš and its cognates in North-West Semitic and other Semitic literatures. From the point of view of Hebrew Bible scholarship, this is significant because the conceptualization of nbš (the Aramaic term in the inscription, which is the cognate of Hebrew nefeš) adds a new dimension to the quest for the correct interpretation of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible. Therefore I shall discuss the text and image found on the Katumuwa stele, but I shall not explore them for their own sake. Rather, I shall interpret them with the aim of using them as a key to a more subtle and differentiated understanding of the term nefeš in the Hebrew Bible.
The lead questions for the purposes of the present paper will therefore be: 1) what does the Katumuwa stele say and show with regard to the supposed location and characteristics of the nbš as well as the ritual context and function of the stele itself? 2) Do biblical texts that employ the term nefeš, and do other ancient Near Eastern texts and artefacts, betray concepts that are cognate with the understanding of nbš informing the Katumuwa stele? 3) What light, if any, does the Katumuwa stele throw on the interpretation of the concept of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible?

The Supposed Location and Characteristics of the nbš According to the Katumuwa Stele's Inscription and Iconography and the Ritual Context and Function of the Stele
On the basis of archaeological, palaeographic and philological considerations the stele can be confidently dated to the time of the reign of Panamuwa II.10 After it was initially thought that the inscription was written in Sam'alian, Pardee thinks-rightly, in my view-that it does not have a sufficient number of differential characteristics to make it anything but an example of a "previously unattested dialect of Aramaic".11 This is the transcription offered by Pardee in his editio princeps:12 year after year. He shall also [ritually] 11. slaughter for my soul 12. and apportion 13. for me a leg-cut. Let us first explore the way in which a channel of communication is established between the stele and the ancient readers of its inscription in the stele's ritual context.
The first remarkable fact is that the reader is being addressed by a disembodied first-person speaker: "I am Katumuwa". The Phoenician and Punic form of the 1st ps. sg. c. pronoun, 'nh 3 , here occurs in an Aramaic text; cf. KAI 214:1 and KAI 215:19 where the personal pronoun 'nk occurs in Aramaic texts instead of the 'nh one would expect.14 The disembodied "I" of the inscription is equated with Katumuwa's nbš, which is, of course, the Aramaic actualization of the original Semitic *napš, found in Hebrew as nefeš and in Arabic as nafs. The underlying idea is that of Katumuwa's nbš speaking from the stele, through the medium of the inscription. Thus, in a sense, the "I" is not disembodied at all. It speaks from the stele, which has been its abode ever since the event of Katumuwa's physical death. The fact that Katumuwa has physically died is implicitly conveyed when the inscription tells us that he commissioned the stele "while [still] living" (bḥyy, l. 1-1). The reader is then informed that Katumuwa owns an "eternal [assembly-]chamber"-I am here reading syd, with Sanders15-which he had had ritually established (wḥggt). The verb in question here is ḥgg, used in the pa''el or D-stem, as has been pointed out by Pardee.16 The verb, thus used in the causative and factitive sense, signifies the act of establishing the chamber (syd) as a place of ritual. This must be the correct reading: while there is a problem with the precise identification of dāleṯ and rēš respectively in the Aramaic monumental script used at the stele's time of origin, syd makes sense as an actualization of the root s-w-d, as discussed by Sanders.17 The ritual of dedication clearly entails the sacrifice of a bull and four rams. The last of the rams in each celebration is to be offered "for my soul which is in this stele" (wybl . lnbšy . zy . bnṣb . zn; l. 5); zy here "introducing [a] relative subordinate clause".18 The inscription consists of two parts which "are joined conceptually by the appearance of the word nbš [nabsh] 'soul' near the end of each section (lines 5 and 11), each time explicitly associated with the sacrifice of an animal, and by the explicit stipulation of how the 'eternal' chamber is to be maintained as such".19 The original dedicatory ritual thus established a recurring sacrificial ritual that was supposed to take place "year by year" (l. 10: ywmn lywmn). The ritual slaughter-the verb hrg is used-is to take place bnbšy (l. 11). Pardee translates "in (proximity to) my soul", but this should rather be rendered as "with regard to" or "for" my soul, Aramaic b here being understood as meaning "with regard to".20 The inscription is thus predominantly occupied with ritual matters, ensuring the supply of the sacrifices needed for the eternal wellbeing of Katamuwa's nbš.
Let us now turn to the ritual context and the ritual actions and their significance. How did the ritual actually work, and how was it conceptualized? Is sacrifice for Katumuwa's nbš a case of "feeding the dead",21 or is the "soul" present at the ritual without partaking in the eating? If my interpretation of the use of the preposition b is correct, the soul was indeed thought to be fed the sacrifice. And there was nothing new to the concept of a nbš being fed; this practice was well known in the North-West Semitic world, as we shall see in a moment. What does the image on the stele tell us? The interdepence of the inscription and the image must be taken seriously.22 As we heard, Katumuwa's nbš is described as being present in (Aramaic b) the stele, which ties in with the stele's iconography. As pointed out by Bonatz, the Katumuwa stele is one of those stelae which "bear inscriptions […] that confirm that the main figure […] represents the deceased. As in the case of the Katumuwa Stele, the basic concept is that of a male or female person seated alone at the feasting table […]. The visual focus is on the table, emphasized by food and drink laid on it near the cup in the hand of the seated figure."23 Katumuwa is enjoying a drinkprobably wine, as mentioned in l. 9-from the phiale which he holds in his right hand; food is on the table. If we try to understand what the image tries to convey to its beholder, the foodstuffs and drink are important. In his analysis, Bonatz writes: "The various types of food and drink offered to Katumuwa can in fact be seen as representing a source of continuous life and regeneration after death. He enjoys a quantity of bread, a portion of meat, and probably some sort of spices or aromatics kept in a luxury stone or ivory pyxis."24 It is quite fascinating that the Katumuwa inscription can be linked with other Aramaic inscriptions,25 inscriptions that have been known for a long time and were edited and commented on in of the Katumuwa stele. In the last four lines of the Katumuwa inscription, the expressions "for my soul" and "for me" are clearly used in parallel: Katumuwa, as the donor of the inscription, thus takes for granted that the nbš encapsulates the whole of his person. That ties in with the activities of the nbš described in KAI 214 and KAI 215. This observation alone should advise against interpreting nbš simply as "life", "vitality" or the like. And the nbš is clearly Katumuwa's nbš, it is tied to his name, as Matthew Suriano rightly points out.26 Summing up, we can conclude that the Katumuwa stele seems to combine the functions of a house for the nbš and an altar and that the nbš is conceptualised as an entity that equates the whole of the personality of Katumuwa, has continued to be alive and active beyond the point of his physical death, and now inhabits his stele.

3
Are biblical texts that employ the term nefeš, and are other ancient Near Eastern texts and artefacts that do, similar to and possibly influenced by concepts that are cognate with the concept of nbš informing the Katumuwa stele?
There is a multitude of biblical uses of nefeš, most of which are discussed in a wide-ranging essay by B. Janowski.27 For the purposes of the present investigation, I will concentrate on some uses of nefeš in a number of biblical texts that may-at first sight-not lend themselves to a comparison with the Katumuwa stele. I am not going to address Ezekiel 13:18, a fascinating text that is most likely informed by a particularly interesting conceptualisation of the soul. Yet it is not directly relevant to my argument, and it has been interpreted admirably by Richard C. Steiner in his remarkable study Disembodied Souls.28 First of all, I would like to draw the reader's attention to Genesis 35. The text has a complex literary history, of which more in a moment. In Genesis 35 we find, amongst other things, the narrative of the death of Rachel. It is described in the following terms, in. v. 18: In the translation of the RSV: "And as her soul was departing (for she died), she called his name Ben-o′ni; but his father called his name Benjamin." After Rachel's burial Jacob acts as follows (v. 20): The RSV translates: "and Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave; it is the pillar of Rachel's tomb, which is there to this day".
While the text of Genesis 35 in its present form does not say explicitly that the maṣṣēbā which Jacob puts up for Rachel houses her nefeš, the conclusion that this is actually taken for granted by the author can be inferred on the basis of the following considerations.29 It is clear from Gen. 35:14 that a maṣṣēbā invites libation and anointment: Jacob provides both for the maṣṣēbā which he erects in the place where he had his encounter with God. In fact, the maṣṣēbā of Gen. 35:14 is likely to have been erected for Deborah, who, we have been told in v. 8, just died: God said to Jacob, "Arise, go up to Bethel and remain there; and build an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you were fleeing from your brother Esau." 2So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, "Rid yourselves of the alien gods in your midst, purify yourselves, and change your clothes. 3Come, let us go up to Bethel, and I will build an altar there to the God who answered me when I was in distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone." 4They gave to Jacob all the alien gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears; and Jacob buried them under the terebinth that was near Shechem. 5As they set out, a terror from God fell on the cities round about, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob. 6Thus Jacob came to Luz-that is, Bethel-in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him. 7There he built an altar and named the site El-bethel, for it was there that God had revealed Himself to him when he was fleeing from his brother. 8Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, died, and was buried under the oak below Bethel; so it was named Allon-bacuth. 14Jacob set up a pillar, a pillar of stone, and he offered a libation on it and poured oil on it. 16Rachel was in childbirth, and she had hard labor. 17When her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, "Have no fear, for it is another boy for you." 18But as she breathed her last-for she was dying-she named his name Benoni; but his father called him Benjamin. 20Over her grave Jacob set up a pillar; it is the pillar at Rachel's grave to this day.32 The sequence of actions related to the maṣṣēbōth is of central importance, and their original purpose suddenly becomes clear. Let us have a closer look at vv. 16-69: Rachel dies-in the words of v. 18: her nefeš proceeded-literally: went out-from her (the verb used is yṣ'). Once again Jacob puts up a maṣṣēbā, this one he places "on her grave": a maṣṣēbā which is referred to "to this day", the text says, as the "maṣṣēbā of the grave of Rachel" (v. 20 the beginning of v. 18 as "But as she breathed her last" and thus overlooks a key characteristic of the Elohistic narrative he has reconstructed, i.e., the fact that it stresses the departure of the nefeš from the body: "And when her nefeš was departing ‫ּה‬ ָ ‫ׁש‬ ‫פְ‬ ‫נַ‬ ‫את‬ ‫צֵ‬ ‫,בְ‬ because she was dying" (v. 18). And it is precisely because the nefeš departs from the body that it can move into a maṣṣēbā-which is one of the central concerns of the Elohistic narrative in this section: the care for the living nefašoth of the deceased. We are not told about Jacob pouring libations on Rachel's maṣṣēbā and anointing it, but we are implicitly encouraged to assume that he did, since he did precisely that, according to Gen. 35:14, on Deborah's maṣṣēbā. Also, we are not explicitly told that Rachel's nefeš, after having proceeded from her body, entered the maṣṣēbā that Jacob put up for her.
It is highly probable that what we have here is essentially the same practice as that of the sacrificial offering for Katumuwa. This can be concluded for the following reasons: on the basis of the parallel events and actions narrated in vv. 8 and 14, on the one hand, and vv. 14 and 20, on the other, it is safe to assume that they illuminate each other and that Rachel's maṣṣēbā is thought to receive the same treatment as Deborah's, i.e., is used for libations. The libations in v. 14 and (implicitly) in v. 20 would be pointless without someone/something the libation is supposed to benefit. The object of the libation can, according to the context, only be the nefeš which has left the body. The maṣṣēbā of v. 14 is assumed to contain Deborah's nefeš, and that of v. 20 to house Rachel's nefeš: the Katumuwa inscription provides the key to understanding where the nefeš is supposed to go, i.e., from the body into the maṣṣēbā.
It is not necessary to postulate a direct influence of Northern Syrian concepts of the nbš on the understanding of nefeš in the Southern Levant. Z. Zevit has shown how widespread the use of maṣṣēbōth was across the whole area in question, from the Negev to Phoenicia and northern Syria, and he has pointed out the close similarities between the standing stones, their uses, and the terminologies used to designate them across a number of Semitic cultures and languages.33 The Katumuwa inscription gives us the key to viewing the biblical evidence synoptically in the context of the evidence of standing stones across the various Semitic cultures in the area. It allows us to conclude that, in pre-exilic Israel and Judah, maṣṣēbōth were understood to house the deceased persons' nefašoth and thus give the deceased persons' relatives the opportunity to visit and feed them. This conclusion is supported by other texts and by archaeological finds which indicate that libations and ointments applied to such standing stones were sacrifices for the persons of the deceased. They were thought to live on in some way in the standing stone, or else such sacrifices would have made no sense.
Let us now turn to Psalm 16. There are those who think of it as an early, socalled "Canaanite" psalm, and others who date it to the third century. The key verses for the purposes of this investigation are vv. 10 and 11:  It should be noted that neither "thy godly one" nor "thine Holy One" is a good translation of ‫ָך֗‬ ְ ‫יד‬ ‫סִ‬ ֝ ‫;חֲ‬ "your devout one" or "faithful one" would be more appropriate.
Let us have a closer look at the verses. In v. 10, nafši is used, in v. 11 the 1st ps. pers. suff. is added to a form of yd': the author thus clearly distinguishes between the use of nefeš and the standard use of suffixes to refer to agents in the text. Therefore translating the crucial segment of v. 10 as "thou dost not give me up" is inadequate. That is confirmed by the fact that nafši and ‫ָך֗‬ ְ ‫יד‬ ‫סִ‬ ֝ ‫חֲ‬ are in parallel: the nefeš is equated with the devout/faithful person. With regard to what will or will not happen to the nefeš, the psalmist states that God will not abandon it, will not leave it to Sheol. The verb 'zb is used, in parallel with yr': just as much as the nefeš of the psalmist will not be abandoned, the faithful Schaper Vetus Testamentum 70 (2020) 156-176 one-i.e., the psalmist-will not see ‫ת‬ ‫חַ‬ ֽ ָ ‫,ׁש‬ that is, corruption, decomposition. The root š-ḥ-t refers to actual corruption (amongst Phoenician inscriptions, cf. KAI 24:15.16; amongst inscriptions in Aramaic, cf. šḥt 2 in KAI 215:2.7). To use it to refer to the burial pit means using it metonymically. The consequences of God's action are spelled out in v. 11: the faithful person will see the "path of life" and will experience the "fullness of joy" and eternal pleasures in the presence of the deity. The psalmist thus paints a picture of eschatological salvation for the individual who will forever be in the presence of the divine: v. 11 explicates v. 10 and illuminates the future state of the faithful person's nefešthe nefeš, which is thought to encapsulate the whole person, is here viewed as being capable of eternal existence. The only adequate translation of nefeš, in this verse, is "soul"35-the nefeš is in parallel with ‫ָך֗‬ ְ ‫יד‬ ‫סִ‬ ֝ ‫חֲ‬ and is thus seen as a personal force, as an agent orientated towards the deity's salvation, which lies in the future, as is clarified by the context generally and the use of the verbs in particular.
Let us also cast an eye on Psalm 49:15-56: There is a contrast between the godless whose form (ṣyr*4 "form" (in the sense of Gestalt), "image") "shall waste away in Sheol" (NJPS) and the nefeš of the psalmist which God will redeem from the "clutches of Sheol". The redeeming, or taking away from, is expressed through the same verb lqḥ that we find applied to Enoch (Gen. 5:24) and Elijah (2 Kings 2) when they are taken up into heaven.36

The Katumuwa Stele and the Conceptualization of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible
Let us now summarize and interpret the evidence we have adduced. I should like to start with a longish quotation. I have chosen it because it is characteristic of a certain trend of interpreting the biblical and related evidence. Seth Sanders summarizes his views on nefeš and states that 35  In the case of Genesis 35, for example, Sanders overlooks the significance of yṣ' and becomes the victim of his own translation: yṣ' does mean "to go out", but not like a light-it means "to go out" in the sense of "to leave", "to proceed from", as in a number of Ugaritic texts, for example in the context of the murder of Aqhat, CTA/KTU 1.18 IV, when it is stated that his soul left the body, using the Ugaritic cognates of nefeš and yṣ'. That is why an expression like nefeš mēt in Num. 6:6 and Lev. 21:11, referring to the soul of a dead person, is possible in the first place: because the underlying notion is that the nefeš has left the (now dead) body.38 As we have seen, in pre-exilic Israel and Judah maṣṣēbōth were conceptualised as houses of the nefašoth of human beings and as altars for their service, including the cases of Jacob's anointing of and libation for the maṣṣēbā of Deborah and of the maṣṣēbā of Rachel in Genesis 35. KAI 214 and 215 and, strikingly, the Katumuwa stele are witnesses to the same practices, only in a more elaborate form. Both the maṣṣēbōth in Genesis 35 and the Katumuwa stele were thought to house the nefeš of departed persons. In this respect the Katumuwa stele-called a nṣb in its inscription, the Aramaic cognate of Hebrew maṣṣēbā-very much resembles the maṣṣēbōth known from the Schaper Vetus Testamentum 70 (2020) 156-176 Bible and through archaeological excavations, which also combine the two functions.
At least since the days of William Robertson Smith and Julius Wellhausen, there has been a debate, on and off, about the purpose of the maṣṣēbōth mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Until very recent times, not that much progress had been made with regard to finding a definitive answer. In his work The Religions of Ancient Israel, with its extremely thorough discussion of cult places and objects, and especially of maṣṣēbōth, Ziony Zevit concludes with regard to maṣṣēbōth that they "were aniconic representations of the deity [i.e., Yhwh] whose function was to guarantee its presence when addressed".39 Others stress the connection with burial, but see maṣṣēbōth simply as "grave-markers". 40 On the basis of our exploration of the biblical texts in conjunction with the Katamuwa inscription and stele, we can now conclude that maṣṣēbōth typically were neither of the two. They housed the nefašoth of the deceased in order for them to be fed and thus properly looked after in their post-mortem existence. The fact that mortuary steles can be called nefašoth is explained by the belief that the soul enters its new "house" and the latter then becomes identified with the former. Georg Beer held that view, and published it, in 1921, but his conclusions were speculative and did not have much non-biblical evidence to support it.41 On the basis of the Katumuwa find, seen in conjunction with other Aramaic inscriptions and the biblical texts, especially the Elohistic material in Genesis 35, we can now confidently state that one of the main purposes of maṣṣēbōth-maybe the main purpose-was to ensure the continued existence of the soul of the deceased person and its presence both amongst the living and simultaneously in the presence of the deity.42 This confirms that in ancient Israel the same notion existed as that found in Western Anatolian funerary monuments, of which Craig Melchert says "that the notion of the soul residing in the funeral stele is a result of the cultural synthesis that took place in the Syrian-Anatolian contact zone". 43 Different biblical authors had different concepts of the nature and significance of the human nefeš, but, as we have seen, to understand it as "soul" or "(essence of the) person" was clearly one of them. In fact, the views of some biblical authors and redactors, like those expressed by the Elohist in Genesis 35, were virtually identical with those held by Katumuwa. Those of others were not: to name just one possibility, nefeš could be conceived of as simply indicating the vital force, desire, appetite, cf. Deut. 12:20-01, Jer. 2:24, Prov. 28:25. This divergence of views within the same literary collection is not surprising. Not only do we have a huge range of meanings of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible, we also find that the conceptualizations of nefeš as soul or person are not uniform. Furthermore, they do not seem to follow any developmental pattern. But one thing is for sure: they existed, and they were expressed ritually. We can reconstruct the practice of feeding the souls or personal essences of individuals after those individuals' physical deaths. This conceptualization of an individual's nefeš and its post mortem existence and presence was an important part of the Israelites' view of the human condition, at least up to the seventh century, when the Deuteronomistic movement44 tried to suppress certain funerary rituals and the beliefs that provided their basis. This meant that concepts which implied some form of continued existence of the dead now came under the scrutiny of the propagators of the supposed purification of the Yahwistic religion, a purification that was in fact the consequence of new economic and social constellations in Judah,45 as discussed by J. Blenkinsopp.46 The belief in the nefeš as soul or personal essence provided that basis, and that is why the Pentateuch redaction tried to obfuscate its traces. Funerary cults are targeted by both the Deuteronom(ist)ic movement and the Priestly School (Num. 19:11-16; Num. 31:19) as well as the Holiness School (cf. Lev 21:6), probably for the reasons given by Blenkinsopp in his application of Max Weber's insights. Both the Deuteronomic-Deuteronomistic view (cf. Deut. 26:14), possibly foreshadowed in Hos 9:1-1,47 and the Priestly views of the matter deeply influenced the work of redactors who worked on texts that betrayed older notions of nefeš as soul or person, as in the case of Genesis 35, where the traces of the archaic concept of the nefeš in the maṣṣēbā was skilfully transformed into the notion of the maṣṣēbā as a memorial of God's presence.
The fact that we only have a few instances in the Hebrew Bible which clearly point to the concept of a soul must have to do with the marginalisation and attempted eradication of any ritualized action for the benefit of the dead. The conceptualization of nefeš as soul was suppressed because it was a constant reminder of the existence and attraction of traditional cults of pre-Israelite origin employing maṣṣēbōth and other objects that now seemed unacceptable.
The fact that many contemporary scholars cannot see that nefeš was conceptualized as soul-or, if preferred, essence of the person-during the pre-exilic period is due to a number of intellectual constellations. The two most important ones are, in my view, (1) the weight of Deuteronomistic ideology in the biblical tradition and (2) a certain perception of what is intellectually responsible exegesis today. The former constellation dominates much of the biblical tradition and continues to dominate and prejudice the minds of many present-day exegetes when they go about their work, thus affecting their historical-philological work. The latter constellation leads to statements such as the following. Matthew Suriano writes in his very thorough study of the Katumuwa stele, when discussing its ritual use and location: "Within these performative frameworks, the ‫ׁש‬ ‫פֶ‬ ֫ ‫נֶ‬ becomes [!!] an object of selfhood that transcends death."48 Also, he says: "The rituals that occur inside this space reify Katumuwa's self; that is, the act of feeding objectifies his defunct-soul within a specialized location."49 So Suriano concludes that while the Katumuwa inscription clearly speaks of the nefeš as a living entity present in the standing stone, and while nefeš should be translated as "soul", the soul was nevertheless conceptualized as becoming (instead of being!) "an object of selfhood" and that the feeding "objectifies" the soul in a certain location. We have here an interpretation of the evidence which is, in my view, dominated by the sense that, after the collapse of its metaphysical foundations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it no longer makes sense to speak of the soul as a distinct, permanent entity. Some exegetes seem to project that view onto ancient texts that are governed by the belief in a soul and relativize that belief: the soul "becomes" an "object of selfhood" where quite clearly the ancient text takes for granted that nefeš does not become, but is a permanent, distinct entity that is distinguishable from the body, inhabits the body, in some way encapsulates and expresses personhood, and leaves the body at the point of the person's physical death. The fact that this is so hard to grasp for contemporary Hebrew Bible scholarship is due to the lasting effect of a certain understanding of the Kantian criticism of traditional concepts of the soul that we have all imbibed.50 While, generally speaking, the insights, achievements and methods developed by the Enlightenment and the new approach to history which it triggered are the basis of everything we do, we must not let its philosophical notions stand in the way of exegetical attempts to uncover the meaning of ancient texts and 48 Suriano, "Breaking Bread", p. 393. 49 Suriano, "Breaking Bread", p. 396. 50 Barth, "Selbstbewußtsein und Seele", p. 201: "Kant ist der eigentliche Urheber des für die Moderne signifikanten Wandels vom Substanzdenken zum Funktionsdenken." That had a massive effect on all later conceptualizations of the soul and also adversely affected reconstructions of historical conceptualizations of the soul, as Barth demonstrates in his essay.

Schaper
Vetus Testamentum 70 (2020) 156-176 artefacts. As we have seen, a self-reflexive comparativist approach to the study of North-West Semitic religious practices, combined with a fresh analysis of the relevant texts and artefacts, can advance the understanding of a key concept of ancient Israelite religion that permeates much of biblical literature.51 51 And if one extends the enquiry beyond the Hebrew Bible and into Jewish Hellenistic literature, including Jewish Hellenistic works that have traditionally been valued as scripture by the Christian Church, it becomes even more obvious what range of views of the nature of the soul existed: suffice it to mention the quasi-Stoic view of the soul, ψυχή, as an entity composed of ἄφθαρτον (incorruptible) πνεύμα, i.e., of matter (!), in the Wisdom of Solomon, as opposed to the Platonic view of the soul as non-material. In a sense, things come full circle in the Wisdom of Solomon: it is informed by a view of the soul as being material, as in Genesis 35 and the Katumuwa inscription, but for very different reasons and on the basis of a very different tradition.