Aristotle thought, much like Judaism, that the soul was substantially the body. This is more or less the view I've come to hold loosely. Here is a good short introduction to Aristotle's ideas on the soul.
The first point of distinction I would make is that even if Judaism was correct in their guess on the soul it wouldn't alter the fact that the history contained in the Torah is abysmally inaccurate over a large span of issues, so this isn't an endorsement of Jewish literalism. I've also argued in past posts that Judaism doesn't have an adversary in the same way Islam and Christianity do so it doesn't work to say an enemy obscured archeological truth from humanity; no, it's simpler to say stories like the Exodus are factually impossible once considering the literal numbers talked about in scripture.
I come at this from a neo-gnostic perspective. Let's suppose that the body is the soul and sleeps at death until some unforeseen resurrection, and let's suppose further that there really are archons who are mechanical with artificial intelligence and that they are hostile to humanity; let's also consider that they are wardens of some kind over the earth and they have the ability to download consciousness, or more accurately one's memories. Suppose that they shouldn't be doing this...And then consider that they've somehow been able to download memories into those they shouldn't be downloading memories into! Imagine the cosmic chaos that this would cause. Yikes!
Now what if there really were higher dimensional existences that are populated by real bodies and some of them are bodies which used to be human; what if the only way there is via the transfiguration of this body via human will (no, not necessarily free, but that's another discussion), and via certain esoteric little known practices--perhaps sex magic? What if that was one of the only avenues of escaping this prison? I'd imagine if one were an archon one would do everything possible to obscure this mechanism or phenomenon. It also raises the question of whether there is someone 'made' for you to help obtain this gnosis?
We need to touch on the Bardos from this perspective. If what I'm saying is possible then what is happening in the Bardos with NDE is happening while the subject is still technically alive even if proclaimed dead by the physicians in any particular instance; if the body is the soul then this experience is a subtle form of mind manipulation while the patient is alive as it's mainly framed within Platonic dualism which is false from the Aristotelian view of the body as soul. From my neo-gnostic view, the experiences in the Bardos are manipulation of human minds by earth wardens. They are even somehow able to manipulate memories and are implanting them where they shouldn't be causing a massive cosmological clusterfuck!
All this begs the question of whether reincarnation is true if the body is the soul? Aristotle didn't think so but we could be dealing with the ocean/wave metaphor of certain Buddhist or Vedic schools of philosophy. A part of my neo-gnostic view on this is that this knowledge is intentionally obscured by the archons keeping humanity confused and blinded on this issue. The Judaic idea of one life and then a deep sleep until a future resurrection makes little sense to me either although as a gnostic I still consider non-dual Gnosticism a possibility. I have, however, expressed important critiques of that view and would somehow need some kind of evidence or demonstration to alter my skeptical views on that one.
To my thinking, even if the body is the soul there is still a dualism between the earth dimensions and higher dimensional realities and it's here I lean towards traditional gnostic views and consider the demiurge and the archons to be a real part of this life. They control this matrix.
A song about this topic: