12. “Those of your people who have been made to die shall live again. Those who have been slain around me shall live again. Awaken  from your sleep and sing the praises of God, you who dwell in the dust, because the dew that falls upon you is a dew of light, and because you shall destroy the earth and the kingdom of the giants.”(Is. 26:19)

13. This passage from Isaiah is also quite explicit: “Those of your people who have been made to die shall live again.” If the prophet had intended to speak of the spirit life, if he had wanted to say that those who had been made to die were not dead in spirit, he would have said: “live still,” and not “will live again.” In the sense of the spirit, these words would be a contradiction since they would imply an interruption in the life of the soul. In the sense of moral regeneration, however, they would be the negation of eternal punishment, since in principle they establish that all those who are dead will live again.

14.“But when a man has died once, when his body, separated from his spirit, has been consumed,  what does he become? Having died once, can he live again? In this war in which I find myself every day of my life, I wait for my transformation to come.” (Job 14:10, 14. Translation by Le Maistre de Sacy)

When a man dies, he loses all his strength and expires; afterward,  where is  he? If a man dies, will he live again? Will I wait all the days of my struggle until that one in which some kind of transformation  comes to me? (id. Protestant translation by Osterwald)

When  a man has died, he lives forever; the days of my earthly  existence  ending, I will wait, because to it I shall return. (id. Version of the Greek Church)

15.  The principle of the plurality of existences  is clearly expressed in these three versions. It cannot be assumed that Job wanted to speak of regeneration through the waters of baptism, which he of course did not know about. “But when a man has died once, could he live again?” The idea of dying once and living again implies dying and living again several times. The Greek Church version is even more explicit, if that is possible. “The days of my earthly  existence ending, I will wait, because to it I shall return,” which means, I shall return to earthly existence. This is as clear as if someone were to say: “I’m leaving my house, but I shall return to it.” “In this war in which I find myself every day of my life, I wait for my transformation  to come.”  Job obviously wanted to speak of the struggle he bore against the miseries of life. He awaits his transformation; meaning, he had resigned himself. In the Greek version, I will wait seems especially to apply to a new existence, “the days of my earthly existence ending,  I will wait, because to it I shall return.” Job seems to place himself after death in the interval that separates one existence from another and says that there he will await his return.

16. Hence, there is no doubt that under the name resurrection, the principle of reincarnation was one of the fundamental beliefs of the Jews; that it was confirmed by Jesus and the prophets formally, from which it follows that to deny reincarnation is to deny the words of Christ himself. Someday, his words will comprise an authority regarding this point – like many others – when they are meditated upon without preconceived ideas.

17. However, to this authority that arises from the religious point of view is added the philosophical point of view of the proofs that result from observing the facts. When one wants to go from the effects to the cause, reincarnation  emerges as an absolute necessity, a condition inherent to humanity; in other words, as a law of nature. It reveals itself by its results in a way that is material – so to speak – like a hidden motor reveals itself by the movement. Only the doctrine of reincarnation can tell human beings where they came from, where they are going and why they are on the earth, and justify all the anomalies and all the apparent injustices that life presents.20

Without the principle of the pre-existence of the soul and the plurality of existences, most of the maxims in the Gospel are unintelligible, and that is why they have given way to such contradictory interpretations. This principle is the key that must restore them to their true meaning.