Soul, Body, Plato, Aristotle, and Hebrew Ethical Materialism

Kendrey, as the old saying goes, it is better late than never!   It applies here!   Thank you for your careful recheck and resubmission.  Yes, soul is an interesting concept.  For your humble servant, it means we come into the physical world and later leave the physical world.  The entity that comes and goes is, in the view of your humble servant, the soul.  It is our core self, identity.  It gets a physical dwelling, but it transcends the physical.  Plato called the soul eternal "Forms."  They exist outside the physical world; they express themselves in the physical world.  Aristotle on the other hand, his pupil, argues that the soul, or Forms, are simply extrapolations, extensions of the physical, material world.  Ancient Jews could not conceive of a personal without a physical body, an Aristotlean  viewpoint.  This is why the bible speaks of the literal resurrection of the dead in physical form.  This is also why the Bible places value on the human body, how we treat each other physically, as a reflection of this viewpoint "grounded" in materialism.  To put it another way, the slave owners in America said, "Oh well, we can work the slaves good and hard, for we let them get religious instructions to save their souls.  Meanwhile we can whip them good and hard."  This is also why the Sacrament of the Alter, Communion, or Eucharist, depending on the religious tradition, emphasizes the "real presence" of the "body and blood" of Jesus in the bread, wine.  The point is, the human body, the material world, has value; we need to respect it.  To simply say we are all soul and nothing else throws us off-balance.  Thanks for listening to the lecture on Biblical materialism as a basis for ethical behavior toward others and ourselves.  Dr. Rux