Was Rein­carn­a­tion Removed from the Bible?

The Bible refers in many places to a single resur­rec­tion and the Last Judge­ment. Is there any evid­ence to sup­port the claim that the doc­trine of rein­carn­a­tion was removed from the Bible?

1 Was the Text of the Bible Altered Dur­ing a Council?

Many people claim that a cer­tain coun­cil took the teach­ing of rein­carn­a­tion out of the Bible. Although the major­ity can­not name the spe­cif­ic coun­cil, they most fre­quently refer to the Second Coun­cil of Con­stantinople (A.D. 553) and the Coun­cil of Nicaea (A.D. 325).

In real­ity, though, at that time there were already many manu­scripts in exist­ence spread through­out the Roman Empire, which makes it dif­fi­cult to ima­gine how someone could have col­lec­ted all the extant cop­ies in order to have all of them “cor­rec­ted”. Today there are many sur­viv­ing manu­scripts from the time before the coun­cils, whose text accur­ately cor­res­ponds to the cur­rently accep­ted text of the Bible. (See: “Selec­tion of Ancient Manu­scripts of the New Test­a­ment”)

The two coun­cils’ course of events is well doc­u­mented by his­tor­i­ans, and the records show that the sub­ject of rein­carn­a­tion was not addressed at all. Although the teach­ing of pre-existence (the exist­ence of the soul before con­cep­tion) was con­demned by the Second Coun­cil of Con­stantinople (AD 553) in response to the teach­ing of Ori­gen^[1], the teach­ing of suc­cess­ive rein­carn­a­tions is a sep­ar­ate mat­ter and was not dealt with by the council.

2 What do Ancient Authors and the Church Fath­ers Say About Reincarnation?

While many people think that Ori­gen believed in rein­carn­a­tion, he him­self writes in his com­ment­ary on the Gos­pel of Matthew:

Some one might say, how­ever, that Herod and some of those of the people held the false dogma of the trans­mi­gra­tion^[2] of souls into bod­ies, in con­sequence of which they thought that the former John had appeared again by a fresh birth, and had come from the dead into life as Jesus. (Book X,20)

…In this place it does not appear to me that by Eli­jah the soul is spoken of, lest I should fall into the dogma of trans­mi­gra­tion, which is for­eign to the church of God, and not handed down by the Apostles, nor any­where set forth in the Scrip­tures… (Book XIII,1)

Sev­er­al church fath­ers and early Chris­ti­an authors con­firm this opin­ion (e.g. Iren­aeus: Against Her­es­ies Book II,33:1–2, Ter­tul­lian: Apo­logy 48, Gregory of Nyssa: The Mak­ing of Man 28,3, etc.).

3 The Teach­ing of the Bible: Death, Resur­rec­tion and Judgement

If rein­carn­a­tion was really taken out of the Bible, it is not enough to assume that such pas­sages were deleted from the Bible. The New Test­a­ment is inter­woven with pas­sages which speak about the fun­da­ment­al Chris­ti­an belief in Jesus’ resur­rec­tion and our own resur­rec­tion. All these pas­sages refer­ring to the teach­ing of resur­rec­tion (e.g. John 5:28–29), the last judg­ment (e.g. 2 Cor­inthi­ans 5:10; Acts 24:15), etern­al life and etern­al con­dem­na­tion (e.g. Mat­thew 25:46) would have to have been inser­ted, because the teach­ing of the last judg­ment clearly con­tra­dicts the idea of repeated rein­carn­a­tions, through which people get a second, third (and so on) chance.

One pas­sage in par­tic­u­lar (Hebrews 9:27) clearly excludes the doc­trine of reincarnation:

And just as it is appoin­ted for man to die once, and after that comes judgement….

The old­est extant manu­script con­tain­ing this clear state­ment is Papyr­us 46, a doc­u­ment writ­ten in the second cen­tury AD, long before the Coun­cils of Nicaea and Con­stantinople. Since the Enlight­en­ment the Bible has ceased to be the exclus­ive priv­ilege of the clergy. Today’s crit­ic­al Bible schol­ar­ship (e.g. arche­ology, tex­tu­al stud­ies) would not be at all inter­ested in keep­ing silent on rein­carn­a­tion if there were even a trace of this teach­ing in the ancient manu­scripts of the Bible. Addi­tion­ally, there are surely many schol­ars who would rel­ish the fame res­ult­ing from such a sensation.

4 Is There Any­thing About Rein­carn­a­tion in the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The dis­cov­ery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 raised the hopes of many that evid­ence for the belief in rein­carn­a­tion would finally be unearthed. How­ever, the bib­lic­al manu­scripts found there have been closely examined and pub­lished in Eng­lish. They are now pub­licly avail­able to every­one who wants to read them. They com­prise the writ­ings of a Jew­ish com­munity, whose concept of the after-life cor­res­ponds to the teach­ing of the Old Test­a­ment that phys­ic­al death is final and is the end of life on earth (e.g. 2 Samuel 12:23; 1 Kings 2:1–2; Gen­es­is 25:8) and that the right­eous will rise and be with God in etern­ity (e.g. Daniel 12:2–3).

5 Why It’s Worth Read­ing the Bible For Yourself

Finally, we want to encour­age every­one who is search­ing for the truth and is in any doubt regard­ing the authen­ti­city of the Bible, to start read­ing it for your­self with an open heart. We believe and have also per­son­ally exper­i­enced that, if we are open to listen to them, the words of Jesus can touch us very deeply and can shape our life and our way of thinking.