Pre-mortal Life
Num. 16: 22(Num. 27: 16) God of the spirits of all flesh.
Job 38: 7all the sons of God shouted for joy.
Eccl. 12: 7the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Jer. 1: 5Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.
Zech. 12: 1Lord . . . formeth the spirit of man within him.
John 9: 2who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind.
Acts 17: 28poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Rom. 8: 29For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.
Eph. 1: 4chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.
Heb. 12: 9subjection unto the Father of spirits.
Jude 1: 6angels which kept not their first estate.
Rev. 12: 7Michael and his angels fought against the dragon.
Alma 13: 3called and prepared from the foundation of the world.
Hel. 14: 17bringeth mankind . . . back into the presence of the Lord.
D&C 29: 36third part of the hosts of heaven turned he away.
D&C 38: 1seraphic hosts of heaven, before the world was made.
D&C 49: 17man, according to his creation before the world.
D&C 93: 29Man was also in the beginning with God.
D&C 138: 53choice spirits who were reserved to come forth.
D&C 138: 56before they were born . . . received their first lessons.
Moses 3: 5in heaven created I them, and there was not yet flesh upon the earth. Moses 6: 36he beheld the spirits that God had created.
Abr. 3: 22intelligences that were organized before the world was.
Abr. 3: 23he stood among those that were spirits.
Abr. 5: 7took his spirit . . . and put it into him.
The doctrine of the preexistence, for example, appears frequently in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the pseudepigrapha, and the Nag Hammadi texts.
Two examples in the Dead Sea Scrolls:
“Before things came into existence He determined the plan of them” (The Manual of Discipline [1QS] 3. 15–17, as quoted in Theodore H. Gaster, ed. and trans., The Dead Sea Scriptures [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976], p. 48); and
“By wisdom of thy knowledge thou didst establish their destiny before they came into existence” (Thanksgiving Hymns [lQH], in Herbert G. May, “Cosmological Reference in Qumran and the Old Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature 82 [1963], p. 32n).
The Pseudepigrapha:
2 Enoch 23. 4–5: “All the souls of mankind, however many of them are born, and the places prepared for them from eternity for all souls are prepared from eternity before the foundation of the world” (as translated in R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. [London: Oxford, 1913], 2:444, and The Testament of Naphtali 2. 2–4).
The abode for preexistent souls is the promptuaria animarum, according to 2 Baruch 23. 5. The preexistence of Moses is indicated in the Assumption of Moses 1. 13–14. Abraham saw the “ [divine] world counsel . . . [wherein] whatever I had determined to be was already planned beforehand in this [picture], and it stood before me ere it was created.” He also saw “they whom I [God] have ordained to be born of thee and to be called My People” (as quoted in G. H. Box, ed. and trans., The Apocalypse of Abraham [London: SPCK, 1919], pp. 68–69).
The idea is found in the Dead Sea Scrolls via the Essenes, according to Marc Philonenko in Les Interpolations Chretiennes des Testaments des Douze Patriarches (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960), p. 39.
For references in Rabbinical literature, see Tenchuma Pikkude 3; Chagiga 12b; Bereshit Rabbah 100.
3 Enoch 43. 3
Wisdom 8. 19–20. For examples in Gnostic literature, see the Gospel of Thomas, Logia 49 (“Blessed are the lonely and the elect, for you will find the kingdom. It is from there that you have come and there you will return again.”);
Logia 84 (“When you see your images [\ikQn] that came into existence before you, which neither die nor are manifested, how much you then will bear!”);
Gospel of Truth 18—all located in Mario Erbetta, Gli Apocrifi del Nuovo Testamento (Torino, Italy: Marietti Editori, 1976),
pp. 271, 278, and 526.
The soul must journey to the earth in order to prove itself as part of God’s plan set down before the foundation of the world. (Angelo Rappoport, Myth and Legend of Ancient Israel, 8 vols. (London: Gresheim Pub. Co, 1928), 8:21)
Ben Sirach 16. 26–29
1 Enoch 23. 11
Apocryphon of Abraham, in Box, Apocalypse of Abraham, p. 68
Odes of Solomon 7. 7–10
Gospel of Philip 114. 7–20, in R. M. Wilson, ed. and trans., The Gospel of Philip (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 125.)
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