In Biblical Hebrew, the word translated as “soul” (nephesh) means something like “self” or “person.” Etymologically, it comes from a word referencing an individual’s throat. In the Old Testament, “soul” rarely has the sense of one’s spirit or eternal being, nor does it have the sense given in Doctrine and Covenants 88:16 of the “spirit and the body” being the soul of humanity. Many of these ideas come from ancient thinkers and translators who connected Hebrew nephesh with Greek psyche, which in Greek thought does have some sense of the element that animates a human being. This idea is not present in Hebrew.

Genesis 2:7