Did the Pharisees of Jesus' Day Believe in Reincarnation?

[Paidion]

In August, 2008, when reading Wars of the Jews by Josephus (75 A.D.), I came across a remarkable description of the Pharisees. Part of that description reads as follows:

[The Pharisees] say that all souls are incorruptible; but that the souls of good men are only removed into other bodies; --- but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment. Wars of the Jews II.Viii.14. (Underlining mine)

This looked a lot like reincarnation to me. Yet we do not find such a description of Pharisaic belief in the New Testament. Indeed, when it seemed Paul was in trouble for having rebuked a high priest, he sought to side with the Pharisees:

Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” Acts 23:6

Luke, the author of Acts explained in verse 8:

For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.

So the issue for Paul (and Luke) seemed to be that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead, not reincarnation. So I concluded that Josephus must have been mistaken.

However, after having read the article to which Steve provided a link: The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment By Thomas B. Thayer, I began to rethink the matter. Reincarnation would indeed appear to have been a Jewish belief in the first century before Christ. Thayer wrote in Chap IV:

In the apocryphal Book of Wisdom, written perhaps from fifty to ninety years before Christ, by an Egyptian Jew, we have the following: "I was a witty child, and had a good spirit. Yea, rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled." Chapter viii 19, 20. (underlining mine)

Thayer also quotes Josephus as having said:

The souls of the pure and obedient obtain a most holy place in heaven, from whence, in the revolution of ages, they are again sent into pure bodies. (underlining mine)

Josephus’ writings are difficult to search, and I was unable to find this quote.

Thayer indicates that there are hints even in the New Testament that the Pharisees believed in reincarnation. He suggests considering the following question which Jesus’ disciples posed to Him concerning the man who had been blind from birth:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? John 9:2

Now how would it have been possible for the man to have sinned with the result that he was born blind, unless he had lived another life previous to his birth? The disciples themselves appear to have believed in reincarnation.

Thayer also gives the following as an indication of belief in reincarnation in Jesus day:

In Luke xvi 14, we have another trace of the doctrine among the people. In answer to the question of Jesus, "Whom do men say that I, the son of man, am?" the disciples reply, "Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some say Elias; and others Jeremias, or one of the prophets." They seemed to think the soul of some one of these ancient men of God had returned again to the earth in the body of Jesus, which to them was a satisfactory explanation of the miracles He wrought. Many of the Jewish doctors have believed that the souls of Adam, Abraham, and others, have at different times animated the bodies of the great men of their nation.
It is not easy to see how those alluded to by the disciples could believe the soul of John Baptist, who had so recently been put to death, could have entered into the body of Jesus, who was thirty years old. But then the ideas of the common people on this subject, as well as of the learned, were very much mixed and confused; and, moreover, there was every variety of opinion respecting the moral theory of the system.

[mikew]

hmmm. interesting.

I have had a question on the back burner about the prophecies that the people of Israel would follow other gods. This would then be part of the reason for their judgment. Yet Jesus doesn't give an indictment against them for following other gods -- refer to Matt 23 for a lack of such allegation. Jesus instead spoke of something more explicit that they would do, namely the acts of persecution against the believers who would be as prophets amongst them. The idea here was that it did not matter what the Pharisees and people had been guilty of before, now they would have a blatant guilt for murder about which Jesus had forewarned them.

Yet these verses you mentioned do show an adherence to other religious views. Then this also appeared where the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out devils by Beelzebub (Matt 12:24). In this verse there was a definite religious viewpoint not supported by the Old Testament regarding the idea that there was a ruler of devils. And the extension of this verse would be to say that this ruler was Satan.
(There is kind of a support in Matt 25:41 for the idea of Satan functioning as a ruler of demons, Matt 12:24, but I'm still not settled on ideas here.)
But apart from anything that Christ Jesus may have affirmed, there still was this tendency to look at the world through other religions.

[kaufmannphillips]

Sundry inklings:

(1) How, then, might this relate to the stories where Jesus' followers do not recognize him in his resurrected state? Do we have traditions that imagine him to have been reincarnated into a different body? (These might stand in contrast to the tradition where he retains the scars of the passion.)

(2) For the great men of oldentimes, whose appearance was not known, might this have been seen as reincarnation/resurrection - the body reconstituted in the present to receive its former soul? (This, for persons who might distinguish the soul from the body itself.) This reconstitution could even take place in utero (even more easily in the minds of persons without a concept of DNA).

(3) The "other bodies" or "pure bodies" might not have been conceived of as utterly different bodies, but reconstituted bodies - on the same pattern, but refurbished. So, then, was the resurrected body understood to have been composed of the self-same material components as previously, or simply composed according to the same basic pattern? Do all of the various elements rejoin one another, or is that missing the point, since we are comprised of an ongoing turn-over of various atoms?

(4) The blind man could be punished pre-emptively, if G-d is held to know his life or character prior to his birth. Resurrection/reincarnation is not a necessary theory in this case.

(5) For persons who did not know Jesus growing up, he might have seemed to have come out of nowhere, removing an obstacle to the speculation that he was John the Baptizer come again.