A fascinating anecdote preserved in the Babylonian Talmud (b. ῾Abod. Zar. 17a) tells the story of a woman who comes before Rav Hisda and discloses to him that her younger son is the product of incestuous intercourse she has performed with her older son. Rav Hisda, in turn, rather than instructing her with regard to her penance, orders the preparation of her shrouds, thus indicating that her death is inescapable and imminent. Although the nature of the encounter between Rav Hisda and the sinner is not explicit in the story itself, the passage is situated within the Babylonian Talmud in the context of a broader legal and theological discussion centered on the penitential requirements for a person seeking to turn away from minut (heresy).

In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes:

In recent years, there has been a surge in the study of ritual impurity and its relationship to immorality (or, perhaps more accurately, prohibited activity) in biblical literature and early Judaism. Yet relatively scant attention has been paid to one of the most important topics pertaining to impurity—the menstrual laws of Leviticus (the laws of [niddah]) and their development in early Jewish texts. The niddah laws are uniquely important because they appear both in the context of ritual-impurity legislation (Leviticus 12 and Leviticus 15) and in the context of legislation concerning prohibited acts (Lev 18:19 and Lev 20:18). Or, to put it another way: biblical menstrual laws comprise both impurity and prohibition elements.

As the first Christian bishop executed by his Christian episcopal opponents through a secular court, Priscillian of Avila has stirred the interest and imagination of many scholars. A well-known problem with reconstructing both Priscillian's life and theology is that, apart from some authentic treatises, most of the information about him comes from the polemical statements of his sworn enemies, such as Ithacius of Ossonuba. Sulpicius Severus contended that Ithacius was a “worthless . . . bold, loquacious, impudent, and extravagant man,” and yet he “poured forth entreaties full of ill-will and accusations against Priscillian.” Although Ithacius's book is lost, writers such as Filaster, Sulpicius Severus, Orosius, Jerome, Consentius, Augustine, Leo the Great, Vincent of Lérins, Prosper of Aquitaine, Hydatius, and Isidore of Seville received their information about Priscillian mostly from Ithacius's book or from the readers of his book. Later perceptions of Priscillian (and Priscillianists) have, no doubt, been influenced by what these prominent figures reiterated following Ithacius.

Modern philosophy has been inhospitable to the soul. In the English-speaking world, the dominant tendency, since Hobbes and Locke, has been to subordinate the mental to the physical. Even where mental phenomena are granted real existence, they are construed as effects of underlying physical processes. To explain them is to identify their physical causes. Physicalist approaches to the mind cannot but see the soul as, in Gilbert Ryle's derisive phrase, a “ghost in the machine.” It is an unwanted leftover from a religious age with a bygone philosophical psychology. To the extent that mental entities do any explanatory work, modern philosophy favors “mind” over “soul.”