When Does Life Begin?

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Old Testament scholars agreed that the most important Hebrew word describing a human being was nephesh, a word that occurs 755 times in the Hebrew Bible. The defining characteristic of a nephesh is breath.

Genesis 2:7:

Then God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

The language in Genesis 2:7 suggests a potter molding a vessel of clay—the form is

made from the dust of the earth. But not until the form breathes is it a nephesh. If nephesh is the fundamental term for the living being, the “person,” in Hebrew thought, and if nephesh is basically understood as a creature that breathes, then a fetus is not a nephesh, a living person.

The distinction in Judaism between the breathing nephesh and the fetus is illustrated by the rule in the Mishnah concerning therapeutic abortion:

If a woman was in hard travail, the child must be cut up while it is in the womb and brought out member by member, since the life of the mother has priority over the life of the child; but if the greater part of it [the child] was already born, it [the child] may not be touched, since the claim of one life cannot override the claim of another life.

The biblical portrait of personhood begins with a portrayal of the creation of Adam and Eve. Three texts are important:

Genesis 2:7 (see above),

Genesis 1:26-28 distinguishes persons from the animal creation.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:26)

According to Christian ethicist Paul D. Simmons, the biblical portrait of person centers on the notion of the image of God, which is not a physical likeness but a similarity of powers or abilities. These capacities or powers are spiritual, personal, relational, moral and intellectual. Of all the creatures fashioned by God, only people are able to relate to the Creator by obedience or rebellion. People may reflect upon the past, anticipate the future, and discern the activity of God in his/her personal life and history.

Genesis 3:22 portrays the person as a moral decision-maker. God says:

Behold, mankind is become as one of us, to know good and evil…

To be a person is to be a choice maker, reflecting God’s own ability to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong. People are free moral agents. This does not mean they have perfect knowledge of right and wrong as some intrinsic gift from birth. Decisions must be made on the basis of one’s understanding of God’s will.

The biblical portrait of a person, therefore, is that of a complex, many-sided individual with godlike abilities and the moral responsibility to make decisions. The fetus hardly meets those characteristics. At best, it begins to attain the biological basics necessary to show such capacities with the formation of a neocortex, which occurs no earlier than the second half of gestation.