He Named the Destroyers of Body and Soul Separately
When Jesus described ultimate danger, he split body and soul into two distinct vulnerabilities — and assigned them different destroyers.
In Matthew 10:28, Jesus draws a precise anatomical and spiritual distinction that no other saying in the four gospels quite replicates. He tells his disciples: 'Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.' The structure is formally contrastive: human enemies can kill the body (soma) but cannot touch the soul (psyche); only one agent — unnamed, referred to only as 'him' — can destroy both, and in a specific location (Gehenna, rendered 'hell'). What makes this finding textually precise is the word choice: human actors 'kill' (apokteinonton), while the unnamed agent 'destroys' (apolesai). Jesus uses two different Greek verbs for two different categories of harm. The body can be killed; the soul cannot be killed by human means but can be destroyed by a non-human one. The body's danger and the soul's danger are assigned different agents and described with different vocabulary. Nowhere else in Jesus's speech do body and soul appear together as separate objects with separate vulnerabilities. Luke 12:4-5 contains a parallel version, but it omits 'body' from the second clause — Jesus there says only 'fear him which...hath power to cast into hell,' without specifying soul and body jointly as the object of the superior agent's destruction. Matthew's version is the only one where both nouns appear in both clauses.
Red Letter Sources
Matthew 10:28Luke 12:4Luke 12:5
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.
But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.
Evidence Notes
Matthew 10:28 uses apokteinonton (kill) for human agents vs. apolesai (destroy) for the unnamed agent, with soma and psyche both named as objects in the second clause. Luke 12:4-5 parallels the fear structure but the second clause names only the power to 'cast into hell' without pairing soul and body as joint objects. The two-verb distinction (kill vs. destroy) is verifiable in the Greek underlying the KJV rendering.
Greek Note
apokteinonton (ἀποκτεινόντων) = 'those who kill,' present participle, used for human agents; apolesai (ἀπολέσαι) = 'to destroy,' aorist infinitive, used for the unnamed superior agent. The KJV renders both contexts with 'kill' and 'destroy' respectively, preserving the distinction. Psyche and soma are the two nouns: psyche in secular Greek could mean life-force or the seat of personality; soma is the physical body.