says: "The company of disembodied souls is distributed in various
orders. The law of some of them is to enter mortal bodies, and after
certain prescribed periods be again set free." John the Baptist was
according to the Jews a second Elijah; Jesus was believed by many to
be the re-appearance of some other prophet. (See Matt, xvi, 14, also
xvii, 12.) Solomon says in his Book of Wisdom: "I was a child of good
nature and a good soul came to me, or rather because I was good I came
into an undefiled body."

The Talmud and Cabala teach the same thing. In the Talmud it is said
that Abel's soul passed into the body of Seth, and then into that of
Moses. Along with the spread of the Cabala this doctrine (which was
known as Transmigration and Metempsychosis) "began to take root in
Judaism and then it gained believers even among men who were little
inclined towards Mysticism. Juda ben Asher (Asheri) for instance,
discussing this doctrine in a letter to his father endeavored to place
it upon a philosophical basis." (Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. XII,
p. 232.) We also read, "The Cabalists eagerly adopted the doctrine on
account of the vast field it offered to mystic speculations. Moreover
it was almost a necessary corollary of their psychological system. The
absolute condition of the soul is, according to them, its return,
after developing all those perfections, the germs of which are
eternally implanted in it, to the Infinite Source from which it
emanated. Another term of life must therefore be vouchsafed to those
souls which have not fulfilled their destiny here below, and have not
been sufficiently purified for the state of union with the Primordial
Cause. Hence if the soul, on its first assumption of a human body and
sojourn on earth, fails to acquire that experience for which it
descended from heaven and becomes contaminated by that which is
polluting, it must reinhabit a body till it is able to ascend in a