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The early Judeo-Christian writings discovered in 1945 along
with the amazing discovery of the Dead
Sea Scrolls in 1947 have given scholars a better picture of the beliefs
early Christians. The early Christians were Jews who followed Jesus'
teachings of obeying the law of God but did not renounce their Jewish
heritage and religion as Paul did. They were believers in the special
teachings of Jesus handed down directly from the twelve apostles but were
not given to the general public. These secret or "hidden"
teachings involve two forms of the concept of resurrection: (1) a
spiritual resurrection or spiritual rebirth by the Holy Spirit known as
becoming born again, and (2) a bodily resurrection or bodily
re-birth of a human spirit known as reincarnation. The champion of this
lost doctrine of the resurrection was the early Church Father Origen
(185-232 A.D.) who was the first theologian after Paul to develop a system
of theology around the teachings of Jesus. Unfortunately, Origen's
teachings on pre-existence and its corresponding principle called
reincarnation were declared heresy and condemned at the Synod of
Constantinople in 543 A.D. and was ratified by the Fifth
Ecumenical Council in 553 A.D. The following articles re-establish
reincarnation as the correct interpretation of "the resurrection of
the dead" as defined by Jesus and the Bible, early Judeo-Christian and
Church writings, and the history of early Christianity.
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