 From
time to time in Jewish history, there was an
insistent belief that their prophets were reborn.
Evidence of this can be found in the Hebrew
scriptures, the Dead Sea Scrolls, early Christian
and Jewish Gnostic writings, the New Testament,
and the writings of ancient historians. At the
time of Jesus, there were many competing ideas
concerning death and what happens afterward.
Greek and Neo-Platonic concepts of reincarnation,
Persian resurrection, ancient Hebrew ideas of
"She'ol", beliefs in no afterlife at all, and
religions and philosophies from other sources,
all existed among the Jews in those days.
The origin of resurrection in Jewish and Christian doctrine began with the Babylonian exile, a period when the Jews in Israel were conquered and taken captive to Babylon. Later, in 539 B.C., Babylon itself was conquered by the Persians who installed a Zoroastrian theocracy throughout the defeated Babylonian empire. It was then that the Zoroastrian religion and its doctrine of resurrection began exerting a tremendous influence on Judaism. Christianity, in turn, inherited the concept of resurrection from Judaism. In fact, it was the Zoroastrian religion that was the source of resurrection, the belief in angels (including that of Satan), the afterlife, rewards and punishments, the soul's immortality, and the Last Judgment. Before the influence of Zoroastrianism on Judaism, the Jews believed in "Sheol," a pit beneath the Earth where people went after death. As time went on, many Jews greatly resisted the imposition of Zoroastrianism masquerading as Judaism. Whatever the Persian governors and priests were doing in Jerusalem in the name of Judaism, caused a great schism. A sect of purists, called the Sadducees, which was made up of over 97% of the population, rose up. They rejected all Persian concepts such as resurrection, angels, or spirits. The Sadducees did not emphasize life after death at all according to the New Testament (Matt. 22:23). The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote that the Pharisees, the Jewish sect that founded rabbinic Judaism to which Paul once belonged, believed in reincarnation. He writes that the Pharisees believed the souls of evil men are punished after death. The souls of good men are "removed into other bodies" and they will "have power to revive and live again." Josephus records that the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scrolls lived "the same kind of life" as the followers of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher who taught reincarnation. According to Josephus, the Essenes believed that the soul is both immortal and preexistent, necessary for tenets for belief in reincarnation. Because Israel was located at a strategic crossroad where several continents come together, Jews in those days were exposed to many religions and philosophies. Some Jews were Gnostics of the Platonic tradition and were believers in "transmigration," a form of reincarnation held by the Greeks. Other Jews held to the Persian concept of resurrection. Jewish ideas included the concept that people could live again without knowing exactly the manners by which this could happen. Today, believers in traditional Judaism firmly believed that death was not the end of human existence. However, because Judaism is primarily focused on life here and now rather than on the afterlife, Judaism does not have much dogma about the afterlife, and leaves a great deal of room for personal opinion. Today, it is possible, for example, for an Orthodox Jew to believe the "resurrection" refers to a time when souls of the righteous dead go to a place similar to the Christian heaven. It is also possible for an Orthodox Jew today to believe the "resurrection" refers to the reincarnation of a soul through many lifetimes. In the Talmud, "gilgul neshamot" (i.e., reincarnation) is constantly mentioned. The term literally means "the judgment of the revolutions of the souls." Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel (1604-1657), one of the most revered Rabbis in Israel, states in his book entitled Nishmat Hayyim: |
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Reincarnation
has been a belief for thousands of years for
orthodox Jews. The Zohar is a book of great
authority among Kabbalistic Jews. It states
the following:
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That
is, in their "revolutions" they lose all memory
of the actions that led to their being judged.
Another
Kabbalistic book, the Kether Malkuth states:
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How can
the soul be defiled before birth? Where does
the soul wander if not on this or some other
world until the days of her purification? The
rabbis explained this verse to mean that the
defiled soul wanders down from paradise through
many births until the soul regained its purity.
When the Dead Sea
Scrolls were discovered in 1947, it was considered
the greatest archeological discovery ever found.
It revealed never before known information about
the Jewish sects at the beginning of the transformation
of a small sect of Jews that later developed
into Christianity. Two years earlier, in 1945,
early Christian Gnostic writings were discovered
which also provided important details about
the early sects of Christianity. Together, the
Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic discoveries
yielded more information in particular concerning
Jewish and early Christian mystic belief and
practice of divine union (i.e., attaining a
perfect human-divine unity). In fact, the Dead
Sea Scrolls prove that the Jewish mystical tradition
of divine union went back to the first, perhaps
even the third, century B.C.E. Jewish mysticism
has its origins in Greek mysticism, a system
of belief which included reincarnation. Among
the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the hymns found
are similar to the Hekhaloth hymns of the Jewish
mystics. One text of hymns gives us clear evidence
of Jewish mysticism. The text is called "Songs
of the Sabbath Sacrifice." Fragments of 1 Enoch,
which is considered the oldest text of Jewish
mysticism, were also found with the Scrolls.
Since evidence shows Jewish mysticism existed
in the third century B.C.E., as Enoch indicates,
then it would certainly have existed in first-century
Israel. As stated earlier, the ideas of divine
union and reincarnation can both be found in
early Christianity. One may easily conclude
it was the key to the very heart of Jesus' message.
One particular Dead Sea Scroll entitled "I IQ Melchizedek Text" which contains a sermon called "The Last Jubilee", mentions reincarnation. This scroll is about the "last days" during which time it says, a "Melchizedek redivivus" (revived, reincarnate) will appear and destroy Belial (Satan) and lead the children of God to eternal forgiveness. Below are parts of this message from this scroll, parts of which are unreadable. The unreadable parts will be denoted by this (...) symbol. Here is it's message: |
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As was mentioned earlier,
Melchizedek was the High Priest described in
the Bible who sounds remarkably like an incarnation
of Jesus. It was also mentioned how some early
Christians believed Melchizedek to be an early
incarnation of Jesus. If the above message of
the Dead Sea Scrolls can be believed, then the
passage is very likely referring to the coming
of a Messiah who will be a reincarnation of
Melchizedek.
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"What has been
will be again, what has been done will be
done again; there is nothing new under the
sun ... Whatever is has already been, and
what will be has been before; and God will
call the past to account." -
Ecclesiastes 1:9; 3:15)
