Blood, Breath & Soul: No Afterlife in the Hebrew Bible? With Dr. Yitzhaq Feder

Welcome to KEDEM Channel. Today we host Dr. Yitzhaq Feder (University of Haifa and University of Tel-Aviv) for a deep dive into three threads running across the Bible—blood, breath, and soul—to ask a bold question: Does the Hebrew Bible really teach an afterlife? In this conversation we explore: Genesis’s “breath of life” vs. ancient myths that use divine blood to make humans Corpse impurity — why being under the same roof as a corpse defiles (Numbers 19) Blood, kosher, and karet — “the life is in the blood,” covering the blood, and being “cut off” Graves, ghosts, and Saul’s medium — the Bible’s rare glimpse of the dead Nephesh, ruach, neshama — what these terms meant in context, and vs. Plato Israel and its neighbors: Mesopotamian blood-creation and Egypt’s elaborate afterlife About our guest: Dr. Yitzhaq Feder is a lecturer in Hebrew Bible at the University of Haifa and a leading biblical scholar specializing in ritual, impurity, and moral discourse in ancient Israel. He is the author of Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual (SBL Press, 2011) and Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible: From Embodied Experience to Moral Metaphor (Cambridge University Press, 2021). His honors include the SBL David Noel Freedman Award (2012), and Purity and Pollution was named Best Book on the Hebrew Bible (2023) by the Biblical Archaeology Society. Chapters: 0:00 Intro — Where is the soul? 2:05 Nephesh, ruach, neshama: mapping the terms 6:40 Breath vs. blood: creation stories in context 11:30 Corpse impurity: airspace and enclosure (Num 19) 16:55 “The life is in the blood”: eating/covering blood, karet 22:40 Graves, ghosts, and what (if anything) lives on 28:05 Takeaways: a down-to-earth Bible and the limits of afterlife talk Support our work: https://patreon.com/Kedem?utm_medium=... Further reading (by Dr. Feder): Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, 2021) Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual (SBL Press, 2011) If you enjoy evidence-driven, no-hype conversations on the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near East, subscribe, like, and share to help more people find KEDEM. Thank you for watching!