Eternal definition : lasting or existing forever; without end or beginning <bolding mine> cite
Immortal definition : living forever; never dying or decaying cite
I have heard the soul described by Christians both as eternal and immortal. Which one is it ? Is the soul believed to be created during conception and lives on forever from there ? Or was the soul always there even “before” time ? - This is GQ - so I am looking for mainstream belief not individual opinion.
Also - is it believed that the soul is capable to feel the pleasures of heaven or the miseries of hell ?
If “eternal” involves having existed since always, never having begun, then in the Judeo-Christian tradition only God is eternal. Souls are created things; they have a beginning.
As for feeling the pleasures of heaven or the miseries of hell, the question incorporates a lot of assumptions which at least some elements of the Judeo-Christian tradition would quibble with. But in general souls are taken to be aware and rational and to be capable of fulfilment at acheiving the destiny to which they are ordered (“heaven”) and despair or regret at not fulfilling it (“hell”).
Answer for Judaism: according to the Talmud, G-d created all the souls that are ever to be born during the initial six days of creation, after which they are everlasting.
And certainly, they feel the pleasures of heaven and the torments of hell, heaven and hell are for souls. An embodied being is too encumbered by physicality to properly experience either of those.