Belief in Prenatal
Existence . . . In Talmudic times (the first centuries of the Common Era) the
belief was current among Jews that man’s soul was independent of his body,
existing eternally in the past and in the future. Only for a short, limited time
is it placed in the body of a certain human being. All the souls of the world
preexist in heaven in a kind of a spiritual reservoir, and at first have no
desire to enter the human bodies on earth. They do it only by force. God decrees
that a certain soul shall enter a certain body, and God also decrees the moment
when the sol shall leave the body.
In this realm of
belief, the vanishing mortal body plays an insignificant role in comparison
with the pure and eternal soul. Accordingly, man attains the highest stage in
his spiritual life not after the full growth of his body, but before he is
projected in the form of a human being into the light of the world. In his
prenatal existence in his mother’s womb, a light burns over his head, and he
sees from one end of the world to the other. He sees there much more than a human
being is capable of seeing during the course of his entire life.
According to this
belief, a special angel is appointed to supervise the souls. He receives an
order from God to place a certain soul in a certain child at the time of its
conception. At first the pure soul recoils from entering the foul body. It
yields only to the force of God’s decree. The angel brings the soul into the
womb and joins it with the embryo. He places it under the good care of two
angels who place the burning light over his head.
The next morning the
supervising angel pays a visit to the soul and takes it for a promenade through
Paradise. There he shows it the saints in their fully glory seated on golden
thrones with crowns on their heads. He asks it: “Do you know to whom that soul
belonged? The soul answers, “No,” and the angel says, “The saint whom you see
in such glory was also created, like you, in his mother’s womb. This is true of
all the other saints whom you see here. They were pious and kept the
commandments of God. If you will do the same, after your death you will share
in this great glory. Otherwise, after death, you will descend to a place which
I shall show you later.”
In the evening, the
angel takes the soul for a visit into the Gehenna to show it how the angels of
destruction torment the wicked souls and flog them with whips of fire. The
wicked ones groan and cry, “Ah!” and “Woe! But no one sympathizes with them.
The angel says to the soul: “Do you know that these were created like you, in
their mothers’ wombs, and came forth afterwards into the world? But they did
not observe God’s commandments. Therefore this terrible shame has come upon
them. And now you should know, my son, that you are also destined to come forth
into the world and to die afterward. Be not wicked, therefore, but righteous
and you will have a share in the world to come.”
Thus the prenatal man
goes about under the guardianship and tutelage of the angel. In the morning he
visits Paradise, in the evening, Gehenna, and in between, the angel shows him
every nook and corner that his foot will tread, every place where he will
dwell, the place where he will die, and the place where he will be buried. In
the evening he brings him back into his mother’s womb.
When the moment
arrives for the child to leave the mother’s womb, the same angel comes and
tells him: “The time has arrived for you to emerge.” But the child is not
willing to go out into the world. He does it under compulsion, and starts to
cry. In the moment of coming forth from the womb, the angel strikes the child
on the upper lip just under the nose, making a dent on that spot. Thereby the
angel extinguishes the light and causes the child to forget all that he has
seen and learned in the womb of his mother. That which the child learns
thereafter is merely a recollection of the knowledge acquired during his
prenatal life.
Some scholars think
that this Jewish belief is an echo of the platonic idea of man’s soul knowing
everything before birth. Others assume that both the Jewish belief and the
platonic ideas of the preexistence of man’s soul are derived from another
common course—the mythology of ancient Egypt. Another group thinks that the
common source of the belief in the preexistence of the souls is to be found in
the religion of the ancient Persians. (Hayyim Schauss, The Lifetime of a
Jew: Throughout the Ages of Jewish History [New York: Union of American
Hebrew Congregations, 1950], 63-65)
