The doctrine is thus described by Ovid, in the language of Dryden:
"What feels the body when the soul expires,
By time corrupted, or consumed by fires?
Nor dies the spirit, but new life repeats
Into other forms, and only changes seats.
Ev'n I, who these mysterious truths declare,
Was once Euphorbus in the Trojan war;
My name and lineage I remember well,
And how in fight by Spartan's King I fell.
In Argive Juno's fame I late beheld
My buckler hung on high, and own'd my former shield
Then death, so called, is but old matter dressed
In some new figure, and a varied vest.
Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies,
And here and there the unbodied spirit flies."
The Jews undoubtedly learned this doctrine after they had been subdued by, and become acquainted with other nations; and the writer of this story, whoever he may have been, was evidently endeavoring to strengthen the belief in this doctrine—he being an advocate of it—by inventing this story, and making Jacob a witness to the truth of it. Jacob would have been looked upon at the time the story was written (i. e., after the Babylonian captivity), as of great authority. We know that several writers of portions of the Old Testament have written for similar purposes. As an illustration, we may mention the book of Esther. This book was written for the purpose of explaining the origin of the festival of Purim, and to encourage the Israelites to adopt it. The writer, who was an advocate of the feast, lived long after the Babylonish captivity, and is quite unknown.[44:1]
The writer of the seventeenth chapter of Matthew has made Jesus a teacher of the doctrine of Transmigration.
The Lord had promised that he would send Elijah (Elias) the prophet, "before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord,"[44:2] and Jesus is made to say that he had already come, or, that his soul had transmigrated unto the body of John the Baptist, and they knew it not.[44:3]
And in Mark (viii. 27) we are told that Jesus asked his disciples, saying unto them; "Whom do men say that I am?" whereupon they answer: "Some say Elias; and others, one of the prophets;" or, in other words, that the soul of Elias, or one of the prophets, had transmigrated into the body of Jesus. In John (ix. 1, 2), we are told that Jesus and his disciples seeing a man "which was blind from his birth," the disciples asked him, saying; "Master, who did sin, this man (in some former state) or his parents." Being born blind, how else could he sin, unless in some former state? These passages result from the fact, which we have already noticed, that some of the Jewish and Christian sects believed in the doctrine of Metempsychosis.
According to some Jewish authors, Adam was re-produced in Noah, Elijah, and other Bible celebrities.[44:4]
The Rev. Mr. Faber says:
"Adam, and Enoch, and Noah, might in outward appearance be different men, but they were really the self-same divine persons who had been promised as the seed of the woman, successively animating various human bodies."[44:5]
We have stated as our belief that the vision which the writer of the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis has made Jacob to witness, was intended to strengthen the belief in the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, that he was simply seeing the souls of men ascending and descending from heaven on a ladder, during their transmigrations.