The Preexistence of the Soul

There are times we meet people who don't seem to have been born into the right generation. We might even refer to them as an "old soul."

The general sense is that they exude a level of wisdom that exceeds their physical age. We get the sense that their soul has been around for a while.

But can the soul be older than the body?

Many people leave the generals and particulars of the soul¹ unexplored.

Pre-Existence of the Soul

Since ancient times, the Jewish people have sought to understand the Torah's vague references to the afterlife. Combined with hints in the texts, thousands of years of observation and personal experiences have helped us to better understand the soul's journey.

The general belief is that the soul exists long before entering a body. We see a hint at this in Deuteronomy:

Not with you, you alone
do I cut this covenant and this oath,
but with the one who is here, standing with us today
before the presence of YHWH our God,
and with those who are not here with us today.
- Deuteronomy 29:13-14

Many commentators understood this phrase as a reference to future generations of the Jewish people² being present in spirit, at the foot of Sinai.

"... all the souls were there, [even] when [their] bodies had not been created."
- Midrash Tanchuman Nitzavim 3

A majority opinion in the Rabbinic literature is that most³ of our souls were created somewhere in the first few days of creation, whereas the body was first created on the sixth day.

"The souls were created on the first of the six days."
- Rabbeinu Bachya on Numbers 8:2

Throughout the Torah, everything exists first in a higher form before manifesting physically; the lower world is patterned on the upper. The spiritual precedes the physical, a principle the New Testament shares as well⁴.

The Soul of Adam

Kabbalah teaches that Adam's soul originally contained every human soul that would ever live. At the sin in the Garden, that soul splintered into tiny shards. Each of us still carries our own fragment.

Emerging theories such as quantum entanglement reinforce the Torah's assumption that humanity is interconnected beyond the physical.