Reincarnation and the Hebrew Religion
The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote about the Pharisees being believers in reincarnation. The Pharisees were the Jewish sect which Paul belonged to before his NDE and conversion to Christianity. Josephus wrote about the Pharisees' belief that the souls of evil men are punished after death. But the souls of good men are "removed into other bodies" and they will have "power to revive and live again."
From time to time throughout Jewish history, there was a persistent belief about dead prophets returning to life through reincarnation. But the Sadducees, a purist sect of Judaism, rejected the Persian concepts of resurrection and all Hellenistic influences involving reincarnation that was happening in Jesus' day. The Sadducees accepted only the orthodox Hebrew belief in Sheol. So there were a variety of influences going on in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.
When Jesus began his ministry, many people wondered if he was the reincarnation of one of the prophets. Some people wondered the same thing concerning John the Baptist. And even Jesus affirmed to his disciples that John the Baptist was indeed the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. Throughout his ministry, Jesus taught people about the true resurrection - a spiritual rebirth within a living person. Thus, when Jesus stated that he was the resurrection and the life, he was teaching them a radical new principle. It was a rebirth of the spirit - not into a new body - as when we are born from our mother's womb - but a rebirth of our spirit within the body we now inhabit. Jesus was distinguishing between what was already believed in those days concerning the afterlife and a new teaching concerning a spiritual change within us that can lead to liberation. He was making a distinction between "the resurrection of the body" (returning to life from physical death) and "the resurrection of the spirit" (returning to life from spiritual death). As you will soon see, this confusion concerning Jesus teachings is documented in John 3 when Jesus had to explain to Nicodemus the difference between physical rebirth and spiritual rebirth.
Reincarnation and Early Christianity
The first great Father of the early orthodox Church was Origen (A.D. 185-254) who was the first person since Paul to develop a system of theology around the teachings of Jesus. Origen was an ardent defender of pre-existence and reincarnation. Pre-existence is the religious concept of the soul as not being created at birth; rather the soul existed before birth in heaven or in a past life on earth. Origen taught that pre-existence is found in Hebrew scriptures and the teachings of Jesus.
Origen was a disciple of Clement of Alexandria who was a disciple of the apostle Peter. Clement and Origen wrote about receiving secret teachings of Jesus handed down from the apostles. One of these secret teachings was the concept of physical and spiritual rebirth. The existence of secret teachings and mysteries from Jesus is recorded in the Bible. Here are some of them:
He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance." (Matt. 13:11-12)
I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness - the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Col. 1:25-27)
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. (1 Cor. 15:51)
The doctrines of pre-existence and reincarnation existed as secret teachings of Jesus until they were declared a heresy by the Roman Church in 553 A.D. It was at this time that the Roman Church aggressively destroyed competing teachings and so-called heresies within the Church. Along with the destruction of unorthodox teachings came the destruction of Jews, Gnostics, and ultimately anyone who stood in the way of the Inquisition and Crusades.
But on December, 1945, writings containing many of these secrets of early Christianity were unearthed in upper Egypt. This area was one of the the main locations where Christians fled to when the Romans invaded Israel. It was here that these secrets were continued to be taught. Undisturbed since their concealment almost two thousand years ago, these writings of the secret teachings belonged to a early sect of Christians called Gnostics and these writings ranked in importance with the Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered two years later. These so-called secret teachings concerning life and death are strikingly similar to what we know about near-death experiences.