AFIAK, many or most Christians believe only humans have souls. (Maybe that’s why Heaven is often depicted as being in clouds – there aren’t any plants or animals up there! 
) I assume the Bible states that humans have souls. Does it explicitly say that only humans have them? Does it explicitly say that animals (other than humans) don’t have them?
Ecclesiastes 3:21 is the only place that I recall off the top of my head that mentions the topic.
“Soul”, “spirit”, and “breath” are the same word in Hebrew IIRC.
OTOH the Preacher says “who knows”, so who knows?
Regards,
Shodan
I’m pretty sure the answer is no. Here’s one article, out of many available online, that addresses the question: “Do Animals Have Souls?”
(That article says “Theologians say no,” but I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as that. I think some theologians would say no, others would at least speculate that the answer is yes, and plenty would just say “We don’t know.”)
Interesting. That would imply that the Bible says animals do have souls. (Sort of along the lines of ‘You shall have no other gods before me,’ implying that there are other gods.)
I don’t know about the ancient Hebrews, but the ancient Romans had two different words for “spirit of a living thing”, “animus” and “anima”, often translated as “soul” and “spirit”. All animals have an anima (the words are of course related), with the anima being what gives the creature motion, senses, and so on. Humans specifically, though, have an animus, which is associated with morality, the afterlife, and so on. The author of Ecclesiastes might be trying to allude to the same thing, with “spirits that rise” as opposed to “spirits that go down into the Earth”… but of course he says that it’s unknown, anyway.
There are angels and other strange creatures that seem to have souls or are them in ‘raw’ form, not meat covered.
God knows, it’s implied that only God knows. Fairly common theme in the Bible, some things only God can know or comprehend. We are just flawed humans, we can’t possibly know what God knows about souls.
Johnny L.A.:
They have animal souls, but not human-like souls. Humans have that same “animal soul” that animals have, but in humans, it is fused with the divine spirit that G-d breathed into Adam. It is that portion that makes the human soul different in Biblical theology.
In more English terms, you might think of that “animal soul” as what some fictional milieus refer to as “life force”, but a human being has that plus a genuine consciousness and free will.
It implies no such thing. It means you shall not deem anything else a god. For example, there were ancient people who worshiped the sun. Certainly the sun exists, but the Jewish people were commanded to not believe it to be a deity, for it is not one (in Biblical theology).
Technically speaking, the Bible doesn’t explicitly say so. However, there are plenty of passages that speak of people in starkly different terms than the Bible speaks of animals. For example, Genesis 2:7: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The creation of animals is never spoken of in that manner.
There’s also Leviticus 6:1-5:
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, if a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or hath deceived his neighbour; or have found that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein: then it shall be, because he hath sinned, and is guilty, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he found, or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering.”
We see from this passage that “soul” is used as synonymous with “person”; animals do not have a moral sense. There are examples very similar to this all throughout the Bible.
Is the Hebrew word translated here as “soul” in the KJV the same word used for “soul” elsewhere in the Bible? Neither the New International Version, the Living Bible, nor the New Revised Standard Version translate the word in Leviticus 6 as “soul”.
And we know that animals do not have consciousness or free will… How?
It might mean that. It can also mean that Kali exists, but people must not worship her to a greater degree than Yahweh.
There are three words used in the Bible for “soul” or “spirit”: Nefesh, Neshama, and Ruach (that “ch” being the gutteral Hebrew sound, not ch as in chair). Neshama is exclusively human, that is the word used by the creation of Adam for the “soul” that G-d “blew into [Adam’s] nostrils.” Nefesh can refer to the spirit of either human beings or animals - the quoted verses in Leviticus use the word “Nefesh”, though in that case, it clearly means humans exclusively. “Ruach” pretty much just means anything that has energy to move - even wind is referred to as “Ruach.”
I thought the wind was called Mariah. 
That is Lithuanian.
This is backed up with:
God use the plural form of the first person pronoun … who are the others if not lesser gods? …
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Only Man and Woman partook of the fruit of the tree of good and evil knowledge … the beasts of the field didn’t … so if animals have souls, they are not judged by the standards of good and evil … maybe all dogs do go to heaven …
Sort of. As mentioned, it might be that the Bible says that animals have life, or breath, or soul, or spirit. The Hebrew word (I believe ruach is the term) is used for all.
The Neo-Platonic idea of “soul” came much later than the Bible, especially the Old Testament.
I don’t read Hebrew, but I believe “ruach” is the term used in Ecclesiastes.
Regards,
Shodan
Surprisingly (to me, anyway), the answer is yes. The first word of Leviticus 6:1 (5:21 in Hebrew; this tripped me up at first) is NEPHESH, the same word used in Genesis to refer to the breath/soul God breathed into Adam.
Figuring that out was fun. It’s been years since I’d translated any Hebrew. Google makes it a million times easier than using a Hebrew lexicon.
In my experience ruach is not spirit as in soul (in the Christian sense), but spirit as in energy/drive/enthusiasm/spark etc. Sometimes people forget that Judaism may use similar words but the underlying ideas can be quite different from Christian basic principles.
Couldn’t it just be the “royal we”?
Oops, I see that I was ninjaed (ninjewed? ;)) by Chaim. There is something poetically apt about that.
And he is, of course, correct that the breath breathed into Adam’s nostrils is NISHMACH. NEPHESH is the word used at the end of the verse when the Man becomes a living being/living soul [NEPHESH CHIAH].