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In 3 Enoch, Metatron offers to show Ishmael souls awaiting birth. Rabbinic tradition in tractate Niddah also has a store of unborn souls, connecting human births with the time when that heavenly store will be empty.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
3 Enoch 43:1
Hebrew Book of Enoch
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
R. Ishmael said: Metatron said to me: Come and I will show you where are the spirits of the righteous that have been created and have returned, and the spirits of the righteous that have not yet been created. And he lifted me up to his side, took me by his hand and lifted me up near the Throne of Glory by the place of the Shekina; and he revealed the Throne of Glory to me, and he showed me the spirits that have been created and had returned: and they were flying above the Throne of Glory before the Holy One, blessed be He.
Niddah 13b:7
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
Rather, the baraita means that they marry minor girls who are not yet capable of bearing children, consequently emitting semen for naught. As Rabbi Yosei said: The Messiah, son of David, will not come until all the souls of the body have been finished, i.e., until all souls that are destined to inhabit physical bodies do so. As it is stated: “For the spirit that enwraps itself is from Me, and the souls that I have made” (Isaiah 57:16). The verse is interpreted as follows: The spirit, i.e., the souls about which it has been decreed by Me that they are to be born, if they are not born, they enwrap the Messiah and prevent him from coming.
Date: 450-550 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... i. "The storehouse of beings": Heb.
gup
habberivvdt.
This storehouse is mentioned in
b.Yeb 62a; 63b; b.AZ 5a: b.Nidd 13b. Rashi
explains the idea thus: "There is a treasure-house
Vdsdr] called gup, and at the time of creation all
souls destined to be born were formed and placed
there" (to b.AZ 5a). "Gup: A chamber like a
body [gup]; the name for the special place for
souls which are about to be born" (to b.Nidd
13b). "Gup: A curtain [pargdd] which forms a
partition between the Sekinah and the angels,
and there are placed spirits and souls created
since the six days of creation, which are to be
put into bodies yet to be created" (to b.Yeb
63b). When this ch. of 3En speaks of "souls
which have been created" and "souls which
have not yet been created" it cannot mean
creation in any absolute sense, but must refer to
the entry of the soul into the body. Cf. b.Hag
12b, quoted in n. b above; ...”
Philip S. Alexander
"3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch" in James H. Charlesworth (ed.) The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1
(p. 294) Doubleday, 1983
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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