Pre-Mortal Existence as found in early Christian writings and other ancient documents

From Hugh Nibley's "Old Testament and Related Studies" Chapter 6:

In the Berlin Papyrus, "The first man, Adam, was really the third sent one at the Creation." (There were three sent ones, and he was the third one.) According to the Apocryphon of Adam, Adam was awakened from his deep sleep by three men from on high, who said to him, "Adam awake, arise and hear the teachings of the Savior." It was through a team of three, according to the Sophia Christi, that God created everything, employing them as his agents. As the Abbaton puts it, "The Father instructed the Son, who in turn instructed the great angel to go down and form a new world." But they didn't merely delegate the work, they worked together. "The three," says our source, "stretched forth their hands, took clay and made man." And many expeditions were sent to the earth before things were ready to receive him. Codex Brucianus 96 says, "Whenever that life-giving spark is sent, it is always followed up by three Sent Ones to give instruction." So in any world, those who receive the spark will also find three helpers ready to instruct them. The three are always there to supervise, and the evil spirits resent it. Here is a very interesting passage from the Ginza where the evil spirits say, "They claim this world for their own." They have been cast down here, this is theirs, and they don't like people intruding. "These three men," they say, "are in the world. They are not really men. They are light and glory, and they have come down to this little enush [Adam--he's little enush now because he has taken on flesh, and he's very susceptible to ills of the world], who is helpless and alone in the world. They are intruding in our world. The children of men have taken over the earth. They are really strangers who speak the language of the three men, and they have accepted the teachings of the three men and rejected us in our own world and refused to acknowledge our kingdom and our glory." And thus the evil ones plotted to overthrow Adam, who was hoping for the Savior, the Teacher of Life, to come down later and teach him--give him did and support.

"At the creation," says the Ginza, "God gave an order that the angel should come and keep Adam company." And at the beginning, it was the Lord himself and two companions who instructed Adam and Eve in everything. "When Adam was placed on the earth, three Uthras were sent to oversee him, with myself at their head. I taught Adam and Eve the hymns and the order of prayer and the Masagases (that is, the Mounting Up or Returning to Heaven) and the pattern of the universe." "In sending three," God said to the Pure Sent One, "go call Adam and Eve and all of their descendants and teach them concerning everything, about the kingdom of Light and the worlds of Light. Be friendly with Adam and keep him company, you and the two angels that will be with you, and warn them against Satan." That's the Berlin Papyrus. Another one says, "Also teach them chastity."

We read of another team of three when Adam called upon God; the Great Spirit sent to him from the land of greatness the three who belonged to the twelve who were hidden in the veil of light (and those were later Peter, James, and John). Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael and all the angels come down. "I will come, and my Father and Michael," Jehovah says; "we are the great three who have visited the earth." They are also matched by the three violent ones and the Watchers.

All this implies, of course, preexistence. Adam coming down to earth is a theme you find frequently now. Throughout early Christian literature, in fact, going to heaven is constantly being described as a return to an old home, and that's the way the present Pope describes it: man is an outcast in this world, yearning for his home. If he was created here, and this was the only world he ever knew, that wouldn't be his position at all. He would not be an outcast or a stranger. He'd be in his own world. The implication of preexistence is very strong; these writings talk about it frequently. In the Apocryphon of James, for example, the Lord tells the apostles, "They will ask you where are you going." The answer, "To the place from which I came. I return to that place." And the elect are those individuals, according to the Gospel of Thomas, who shall find the kingdom because they came from it in the first place. The Gospel of Truth dwells at length on the theme of the return: "Whoever has this knowledge is a being from on high. When he is called, he hears and answers and turns toward him who calls him and re-ascends to him. He knows what he is called; he knows whence he has come and where he is going. He has turned many from error and preceded them to the places which belong to them but from which they have strayed. Joy to the man who has rediscovered himself and has awakened and helped others to wake up."

Just so, in the great old Manichaean Song Book, Adam is received by a happy family on his return. On the other side, they have awaited him in high expectation, or the return of the first man with news from him. They have eagerly awaited news of Adam's victory, of the success of his mission; and they want to hear it from his own lips when he returns. On his part, Adam, being away from home, asks a Newsbearer of the Skies, as he is called, ""How is my Father, the Father of Light? How is my Mother,. the mother of the living whom I left, and her brethren also? Rejoice with me, ye holy ones, for I have returned to my original glory again." And again, in leaving the earth, he says, "My hour has come. They summon me. I will go from your midst and return to my true home." Accordingly, "The Sent One comes to take the soul of Adam back to the great first house of his Father to the place where he formerly lived." And so his children were admonished, "Arise, old soul, return to your original home, to the place from which you were planted. Put on your garment of glory. Sit down upon your throne. Dwell in the dwellings among the Uthras, thy brethren." And again, "Now arise and return to the place of thy family." "I came from the house of my Father," the Psalm of Thomas, "in a far land, and I shall mount up until I return to that land of the pure." There is a moving scene at the end of the Pearl, the most moving of all the early Christian Syriac writings, where the hero finally returns to his home, his mission accomplished. He's met at the gate of greeting and honor by his entire family. He bows and worships his father and the Christ of the Father "who has sent me the garments and given me the orders while I was on the earth." All the princes of the house were gathered at the gate. They embraced him with tears of joy as the organ plays and they all walk back to the house together.

And Gregor of Nyssa, one of the three great Cappadocians, writing about this, says that in his time, the Fourth Century, the church was very confused about these teachings. They were being rapidly lost. He says, "Christians are all confused about the preexistence. Some say we lived in families there, and in tribes just as we do here, and that we lost our wings when we came down here and will get them back again upon earth." So they mix up tenable and untenable things; all sorts of strange ideas get in the picture. Regardless of what the true picture is, we know that the early Christians did believe very strongly in the preexistence. The mysterious word propators, which they used a lot, is now recognized as not meaning the Father who was before our Heavenly Father but our Heavenly Father as our forefather, our propator---"the father of our preexistent spirit," says a quotation from a newly found work. "When they ask you who you are," says the Apocryphon of James, "say 'I am a son and I come from the Father.' And when they ask you what sort of son and from what father, answer, 'From the preexistent Father and I am a son of the Preexistence-' .... The spirit existed before the flesh," says a psalm. Commenting on the teaching of this doctrine, the Clementine Recognitions, the editors of the Patrologiae Graecae note that various fathers of the church represented every interpretation of the doctrine, from absolute acceptance to absolute denial. Most of the fathers temporized somewhere in between. Again, this is a good indication that we are dealing with an authentic teaching of the early church, since the early fathers are all for it. The later ones don't know; they are not so sure.

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From Hugh Nibley's "Old Testament and Related Studies" Footnotes for Chapter 7:

(Note from Webmaster: Footnote 19, below, contains Dead Sea Scroll and other references from the ancient texts.)

19. IQH 1:21; 2:7, 13, 17; 3:19ff.; 4:27; 5:25; 6:10-11; 7:26-30; 10:4, 14ff., 22ff., 29; 11:4-8, 10; 27-.28; 12:11-12; 13:18-19; 15:21-22; cf. IQS 11:6-7; 9:16-18; Isa. 45:3; Matt. 11:25ff.; Rom. 11:33, 12; Eph. 3:8-9; Col. 1:26-27; 2:2-3, 26-27; Phil. 4:19; Ep. Barnab. 6; Odes Sol. 11:4-5; Gospel of Truth, fol. XVIr, 17; Test. Dora. nostri J. Christi 43 (Rahmani, 103); Ben Sirach 17:11-13; Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 120, 126.

"In a certain way, election is pre-existence," writes J. Zandee in Numen 11 (1964): 46, citing Logion No. 49 of the Gospel of Thomas. Not only the Son of Man but Isaac, Jacob, Jeremiah, the Twelve Apostles, Peter, etc., are specifically said to have been chosen and set apart in the preexistence.

20. Clement of Alexandria, Paedagog., I, 7 (in Migne, Patrologiae Gracae [hereinafter "PG"] 8:321), citing Jer. 1:7, 5; cf. Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:20. The awards and assignments handed out at the Creation must have been earned in a preexistent life. (Origen, De princip., I, 8:4; II, 9:6-8; cf. Zadokite Document 2:7; IQS 1:7; 3:15; 4:22.)

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From Hugh Nibley's "Old Testament and Related Studies" Chapter 7:

(Note from Webmaster: Qumran is the Dead Sea Scrolls community)

What most thrills the psalmist of Qumran as he sings of the bounteous fountain of God's hidden treasures is the thought that he is not only a beneficiary of God's plan, but was actually taken into his confidence in the making of he was there!*19 When Clement of Alexandria recalls that "God knew us before the foundation of the world, and chose us for our faithfulness," he is attesting a well-known teaching of the early Church.*20 The recurring phrase "Blessed is he who is before he came into being" is not a paradox but refers to two states of being:*21 if (following Baruch) "we have by no means been from the beginning what we are now," it does not follow that we did not exist, for it is equally true that "what we now are we shall not afterwards remain."*22 We are dealing here not with existence and nonexistence but with a passing from one state to another, sometimes explained as a passing from one type of visibility to another.*23 It is common to speak of the Creation as a renewing,*24 even as a reorganizing of old matter, nay as the building of a world from materials taken from the dismantling of older worlds.*25 Preexistent man had been around a long time before it was decided to create this earth: the whole thing was produced, when the time came, for his benefit; and though he was created last of all to take it over, in his real nature he is older than any of it.*26 He is the child of an earlier, spiritual birth or creation.*27

Nothing could be more gratifying to the ego or consoling to the afflicted spirit of mortals than the secret intimation of a glorious past and an exalted parentage.*28 The exciting foster-parent illusion was exploited by the Gnostics for all it was worth;*29 but the idea was no invention of theirs: it was the thought of his preexistent glory that was Job's real comfort--"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth... when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" is not a rhetorical question. For it was the recollection of that same Creationhymn of joy and their part in it that sustained the Sons of Light in the midst of terrible reverses.*30 "If you could see your real image which came into being before you," says a logion of Jesus, "then you would be willing to endure anything!"*31 The author of the Thanksgiving Hymn is simply drunk with the idea of his own preexistent glory.*32 Such glory, according to the Johannine writings, belongs not only to the Lord but to all who follow him.*33

But why leave one's heavenly home for a dismal earthly one? To that question, constantly reiterated in the Mandaean writings, the Gnostic answer was that we were forced to make the move as a punishment; but the "Treasure" doctrine was the very opposite--we are here as a reward, enjoying an opportunity to achieve yet greater things by being tried and tested, "that each one might be promoted, according to his intelligence and the perfections of his way, or be retarded according to his wrong-doings."*34 This is the well-known doctrine of the Two Ways: For this reason the world has existed through the ages, says the Clementine Recognitions, so that the spirits destined to come here might fulfill their number, and here make their choice between the upper and the lower worlds, both of which are represented here.*35 In what has been regarded as the oldest ritual document in existence, the so-called Shabako Stone from Memphis, we find the concept full-blown: "To him who doeth good will be given Life and [of] Salvation [htp]. To him who doeth evil will be given the Death of the condemned [criminal]... according to that decree, conceived in the heart and brought forth by the tongue, which shall be the measure of all things."*36

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From Hugh Nibley's "Old Testament and Related Studies" Later footnotes for Chapter 7:

126. In their main points, the two doctrines are in striking contrast, for example: (1) The idea that all matter is evil heads the list of "orthodox" charges against the Gnostics. (Bodmer Papyrus 10:51:10; Const. Apostol. 6:10; C. Schmidt TU, 8 [1892]: 402-3; cf. Clementine Recognitions 4:23: "absolute dicimus in substantia nihil esse mali.") Cf. the Gnostic denial of a physical resurrection with the attitude of the Gospel of Philip 105:9-19. (2) The Gnostic idea that Adam was "predisposed to evil" and that souls come to the earth to be punished is the opposite of that of man's preexistent glory. (J. Zandee, Numen 11 [1964]: 31; Creation Apocryphon 171:10ff.; Cyril of Jerusalem, Migne, PG 33:481. (3) Gnostic dualism--between physical and non-physical states of being--is anti-cosmist. (U. Bianchi, Numen 12 [1965]: 165-66, 174, 177; S. Giverson, Studia Theologica 17 [1963]: 69-70. (4) The Gnostics put God utterly beyond man's comprehension, not in the same family as the "Treasure" concept does (Bodmer Papyrus 10:51:10; Const. Apostol. 6:1); Israel means "man who is God," according to the Creation Apocryphon 153:25. (5) Whereas the true Gnostic achieves complete spirituality on earth and goes directly to heaven (or the sun) at death (C. Schmidt, TU 8 [1892]: 521ff.; Puech, "Epist. to Rheginos," in Vigiliae Christianae 8 [1956]: 44-46), the idea of a long and gradual progress of the soul is older than the Gnostics (K. Kohler, JQR 7:598; cf. IQS 2:23ff.; IQH 10:28). (6) Whereas pessimism is the hallmark of all Gnostic systems (Numen 11 [1964]: 17; 12 [1965]: 165), the "Treasure" doctrine is completely optimistic and joyful. (7) The Gnostics show the influence of the schools (Bianchi, Numen 12 [1965]: 162), while the other teaching is characteristic neither of the schools nor of religions in general (K. Koch, ZThK 62 [1965]: 263). (8) Following the schools, Gnosticism shuns literalism and turns everything into abstraction and allegory: it is not a real system but poetic fantasy (C. Schmidt, TU 8 [1892]: 397, 413, 421-22); but "of mystical rapture there is no hint" in the other tradition (H. P. Owen, New Testament Studies 3 [1957]: 251; K. Koch, ZThK 62 [1965]: 263).