Have you ever searched for what your earliest memory was? Have you wondered what it was like before you were born? It is entirely possible that you had a life before you were conceived. In this article, we will examine this possibility closely. This essay is not about reincarnation, something that I personally do not subscribe to. Additionally, the preexistence of the soul is highly speculative, and there is not a shred of proof regarding its authenticity. It is an interesting topic that few people have probably considered during their lives, since it has been drilled into us that life begins at conception. So why even bother discussing something that cannot be proven?
When myths matter
There are several reasons. While I have never taken a college course on mythology, I have learned from my lifelong personal readings that you can gain significant insights about a people or culture from the myths they may still believe in and the fairy tales they tell their children. In most cultures, wolves are portrayed as bad because a wolf tried to eat Little Red Riding Hood. Then, there is the story of the boy who cried wolf. In the U.S., our earliest political leaders believed that honesty was a virtue that the American people should uphold. An author in the nineteenth century named Mason Weems wrote a book about George Washington, the “Father of Our Country,” and included the story of George chopping down a cherry tree outside his home when he was a young boy, upsetting his parents in the process. When George was asked if he knew who did it, he replied that he could not tell a lie and confessed to the deed. But did that event really happen? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Yet, even if the story is completely false, it was still presented to me in grade school as a fact, and it encouraged and instructed me to be truthful in life. If only our elected and appointed political leaders today had learned that same lesson!
The role of commentaries
Let’s consider evangelical Christians. I confess to being one myself. However, I am aware of the hurt, hate, pain, and rejection that many evangelicals are inflicting on others in the U.S. during these present times. I am profoundly sorry for this un-Christian behavior. Evangelicals tend to believe that there is literal truth, such as that found in the Bible, and then there is what isn’t true and should not be relied upon because it may be fallible.
Like Jews have for the Old Testament, evangelicals have commentaries for the New Testament, written by such people as Matthew Henry, Charles Spurgeon, and C.I. Scofield, but no one would say that their comments are inspired to the same degree that Scripture is. Thus, things in evangelical Christianity are generally viewed in black and white. If I were to start referencing the Apocrypha (e.g., Tobit, Baruch, Esdras, or Enoch—which is not even apocryphal) in my Sunday School lessons, I would, at some point, be called out. My faith might even be questioned.
The Torah
Jews believe that during the weeks that Moses spent with God on Mt. Sinai, he received the Torah Shebichtav, or Written Torah. These are the tablets containing the Ten Commandments, which Jews, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Protestants all acknowledge. However, Jews also refer to the Torah Shebe’al Peh, which is the Oral Torah—something that non-Jews rarely discuss, let alone teach.
It is important to recognize that the first five books of the Old Testament include much more than could fit on two tablets of stone; we must therefore accept that God and Moses had discussions that extended long into the night. These discussions encompassed the history of Creation, including stories about Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Great Flood, and more. At some point in history—perhaps during Abraham’s time—there were individuals who began to record these narratives. However, there was no one present when Adam was created, meaning that God had to reveal this information to someone, and this “someone” is traditionally thought to be Moses. This is why the first five books of the Bible are referred to as the Books of Moses.
In some sense, it may not matter whether something in a rabbinic commentary, such as the Niddah or the Yoma, is historically true. For example, the idea that an unborn baby is tutored by an angel on the existence of God, on moral behavior, and so forth, is not an obstetrical fact. However, philosophy and theology have their own often overlapping domains. For example:
James Irwin was the eighth person to walk on the moon. He was conducting an experiment that was not going well and prayed, “God, I need your help right now.” He not only found the solution, but reportedly felt the presence of God unlike anything he ever experienced on earth.
Irwin returned from the moon a different person. Seeing Earth thousands of miles away and feeling closer to God there than in Pittsburgh, where he grew up, awakened his spirit. But would his experience be considered an important event in astronomy or interplanetary travel? Probably not. Nor would the daily routine on the International Space Station be the subject of a sermon. Yet, the same circumstances are somehow linked.
The Guf
Jews believe that every soul born or yet to be born was created on the sixth day of Creation. They believe there is a place in heaven called the Guf, which serves as a sort of holding place for unborn souls. An estimated 8,300,678,395 people will be born in the world in 2026. Therefore, the number of souls in the Guf will shrink by that amount. How many souls does that leave in the Guf? No one knows. Maybe 500 billion? Perhaps the Guf will run out of souls by next July? When the last soul leaves the Guf to be born, Jews believe, the Messiah will arrive and our lives will be transformed into something we could never imagine.
So why doesn’t God create souls when they are ready to be born? The answer is pretty straightforward. Since the Fall, everything related to life in our world, if not the cosmos at large, has become corrupt and sinful. Creation no longer occurs according to Genesis and the First Law of Thermodynamics. If souls are being created every time a woman conceives, then these souls that God creates would be corrupted by sin. We cannot believe that God creates sinful or imperfect beings. While God can suspend or upend the laws of the universe, there is no suggestion that He would do so in this case. On the other hand, there is some circumstantial evidence in the Bible that souls have a prelife and have existed since at least the sixth day of Creation.
Not being Jewish, let alone a rabbi, my exploration and explanation of the topic of preexistence may be limited or awkward. So please bear with me. I want to return to the beginning of this essay to add more color to it and fill in the blanks.
Torah Shebe’al Peh
Part of the Torah Shebe’al Peh, or oral traditions passed down by Moses (according to Jewish belief), is a document called the Niddah. The Niddah is a book of ceremonial instructions dealing with menstruation, postpartum bleeding, and related topics. This book is one of several that references an angel called Lailah.
The Angel of the Night
In rabbinic literature, Lailah is the Angel of Conception who watches over each human embryo until it is born (Lailah also has other responsibilities). Lailah brings the soul and the seed together and ensures that the seed is planted correctly in the womb. In doing so, Lailah serves as a sort of midwife of souls, acting as a guardian angel. Lailah is the Hebrew word for “night” (Laylah), hence her title “Angel of the Night.” That might sound sinister, but it is not. In the AI illustration I’ve included, an angel with black wings, black hair, and a black gown is depicted, complimenting the word “night.” Lailah is not mentioned in the Protestant Bible, but neither are Uriel or Raphael.
Every newborn baby brings the Messiah closer simply by being born.
People have strange but untrue opinions about angels. Adults, and especially children, do not become angels when they die. Angels are a separate and unique species of created beings. Every angel in Scripture is presented with masculine names or referred to in the masculine pronoun. The belief that Lailah is called the Angel of Conception and that Lailah, as a servant of God, is contrasted with Lilith, an evil spiritual feminine being of death, makes it possible that Lailah is female in this case, but we cannot know for certain.
We should not be overly fascinated by angels because they are servants of God, just as we are. I would strongly advise against anyone trying to “meet” their angel or communicate with them, as there are more than a few mischievous or nefarious spirits around who are more than willing to impersonate an angel in order to mislead or harm you. Then again, you may have already met your angel (Hebrews 13:2).
How souls acquire their moral foundation
Every soul is tutored prior to birth on the True God and His commandments, the nature of righteousness and Godliness, though most or all of the detail is wiped from our memory just before birth when Lailah touches us on our upper lip, leaving an indentation called the philtrum. After that touch, only our conscience (e.g., moral compass) and knowledge of right and wrong (righteousness), and perhaps a deep subconscious hunger to know our Creator, remain. This means that throughout our lives, we are not learning things as much as rediscovering them.
The Torah Shebe’al Peh says that when a soul is called by God to be born, it is distressed because it understands the life of pain and sin that lies ahead for it. Then again, when it is time to return to God, it is again occasionally unhappy because it has by this time become comfortable in the world.
Filling in the blanks
Some of the millions and millions of souls born each year will wind up in Jewish families, some will be born to Muslim families, some to Christian families, Hindu families, or the children of atheists. This is not a random, “luck-of-the-draw” process according to the Torah Shebe’al Peh. God Almighty, Himself determines which soul will be born to which mother. Things that the Jews believe God considers as He assigns a soul to its “mission” is the context of when and where the baby will be born (e.g., Somalia during famine, Syria during war, Sweden in prosperous times, the fifth century AD, the twenty-seventh century AD and so on). Also relevant are the mother’s prayers, perhaps during her life or in the context of having a child. When the baby reaches what Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) called the preoperational stages (around two years) most of its prenatal indoctrination from Lailah is gone except for deep core concepts. These concepts do not lead the child, however, to become Jewish later in life (thought they could). And obviously Piaget was silent on preexistence. The topic likely never entered his mind.
What the rabbinic literature tries to do is to preserve and balance the free will of the baby with those fundamental traits that make us human. In a sense, this is sort of what we call innate learning. So, when you look at those behaviors that matter to God (and they can be found in the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes of our Bibles), you’ll also find these same core concepts in the religious literature of other faiths. God loves mercy. He is merciful and wishes us to be merciful. He is pleased to see a merciful Jew, but equally pleased to see a merciful Christian, a merciful Muslim and so on. I am not implying that there are many ways to get to heaven or that all faiths are equally valid. I’m just repeating what I understand from the teachings of the Torah and this essay has nothing to do with the “last things” and the often thorny question of who goes to heaven.
While everything I’ve presented thus far may be a complete fairy tale, a rabbi might say that it was not a waste of your time to read this, because it supports certain moral truths in any event. It fills in blanks in some meaningful way that has stood the test of time. The Scripture include what we need to know. The Torah Shebe’al Peh tells us what is nice to know.
Remember, righteousness and hunger for God are not uniquely Jewish traits. They exist elsewhere in our world. And God will chose who it is that He will reveal Himself to (Jeremiah 29:13).
Are Morals Universal?
If every soul is tutored or hard-wired with certain behaviors before birth, might we not find common behaviors or taboos in other primitive societies? The short answer is, “Yes! We can.” Let me focus on the Sentinelese people, who were discovered in 1867 on an island close to modern-day Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal, though prior to that, seafarers reported seeing lights on the island at night. Anthropologists believe the island has a population between 50 and 200 people, but no one knows for sure because it is forbidden for any outsider to land on or even approach the island. Those who do are either turned back by law enforcement authorities or killed by the natives. In the mid-nineteenth century, Europeans removed several natives from the island, and they quickly died in captivity. As a result, the Sentinelese have a protected status under the auspices of the United Nations.
What might we expect if we learned about them and their society? Keeping in mind that there are occasional exceptions to these generalizations, we already know that they use violence to defend their island, throwing spears at helicopters and such. However, they probably would not allow random brutality from others in their tribe against fellow members. They would likely forbid incest, as well as adultery and lies. They would understand and demand fairness in their transactions with other tribal members. They might recognize what a favor is and seek to return the favor if the opportunity presented itself. They would likely understand the difference between killing an enemy in war and murdering a member of the tribe for their property. So, with some exceptions, there is more or less a fundamental code of ethics and behavior even among those today who appear to be living in the Stone Age.
Noachide Laws
The Midrash, another rabbinic commentary, lays down a set of rules called the Noachide Laws, named for Noah and said to have been given before Moses was born. Yet, these laws are not specifically ascribed to Noah in the Bible, though the individual injunctions are repeated elsewhere in Scripture. These laws include prohibitions against blasphemy, murder, theft, adultery, idolatry, eating an animal unless it is dead, and the establishment of courts of justice. When people read “Thou shalt not” over and over, they sometimes wonder why God doesn’t let people have fun. However, God knows that the world is a dangerous place, and these injunctions are meant to keep people safe (for example, from parasites like Trichinellosis found in uncooked or undercooked pork).
I could take this to another level, but I think this is enough to think about for now. I have friends who might skim this article impatiently and tell me it’s a waste of time to write about things like this. But I’ve taught for a quarter of a century in the Liberal Arts departments at various colleges, and I appreciate the richness and color that myths and minutiae can bring.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or contributions of your own.
#Myths
