Friday, November 24, 2023

Personal Preexistence of the Soul in Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20

  

As a child I was naturally gifted, and a good soul fell to my lot; or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body. (Wisdom of Solomon 8:19-20 | NRSV)

 

The preexistence referred to here is therefore not to be taken in its Greek philosophical sense but to be understood only as consisting in the creation of the soul immediately before its “coming” into a determinate body, as in the case of Adam (Larcher:277). It seems to me, however, that had the author merely wished to emphasize the primacy of the soul in the identity of the personal ‘I’, his initial formulation would have been completely apt, and in need of no further revision. For once having asserted that the body-soul complex constituting the child Solomon could be called “well-endowed” merely by virtue of its being allotted a noble soul, he had already thereby clearly indicated the primacy of soul over body. (Larcher’s statement that pais apparently refers to the “état embryonnaire” is unwarranted.) Since he was not indeed satisfied with his initial formulation, and felt constrained to correct it, we must conclude that the words “I entered an undefiled body” are meant to suggest the preexistence of souls of varying spiritual capacities, and that in the case of Solomon it was a noble soul that had taken the initiative of entering an undefiled body.

 

. . . This verse is as clear a statement of the concept of preexistent souls as one could wish, and there is no need to explain it away as many commentators have done. (David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 43; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 26, 198)

 

(Van Hale, Mormon Miscellaneous Note Cards, 3 vols. [Sandy, Utah: Mormon Miscellaneous,