What is the soul?

Jaywill-It is very clear in the New Testament that the human soul and the human spirit are not identical compenants of the human make up.There are verses there however, which arguably might seem to contradict this even in the New Testament.Because I don't believe that man's make up changes from one period of time to another, therefore what is soul and spirit in man in the New Testament must also have been soul and spirit previously.Having said that it is not reasonable for me to think that the human make up changed from Old Testament times to New Testament times, the revelation of the difference between human soul and human spirit is not as pointed in the Old Testament as in the New. But there are some clear verses that I believe show that there is a difference.God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul. Like you I take this to mean that God imparted something into man's body and the contact between it and man's body brought about the existence of a third matter - man's soul. The union between the breath of God and the frame of man's body caused man to become a living soul.Now all the verses in the Old Testament are not this clear. So I think that the revelation of the distinction of soul and spirit in man runs concurrently with the gradual and progressive revelation of the nature of God's full salvation. As the nature of God's salvation is progressively revealed more and more as the Bible progresses so also the tripartite nature of man is made more and more clear.