Whenever Christian authors later to Justinian’s age mentioned the idea of pre-existence of souls, they felt it necessary to mention also the name of Origen and seized the opportunity to launch an attack on him. This however is not the case with earlier theologians, such as Gregory of Nyssa, or Cyril of Alexandria, even sixth century ones (such as deacon Olympiodorus of Alexandria, and the converted Aeneas of Gaza) who dismissed the of pre-xistence of souls. The open file which was kept against Origen was of course scrutinized right after his death, actually even during his lifetime. However, great inquisitors such as Epiphanius of Salamis focused their obloquy on other doctrinal issues (such as the resurrection of the body, as reported by Methodius of Olympus), rather than on the present one. My point is that whereas Origen advanced the doctrine of successive worlds, he could have not buttressed this on the notion of ‘the transmigrating soul’, simply because he was aware of the philosophical inconsistencies inherently involved in this. It is not fortuitous that Origen explicitly rebukes the idea of transmigration of pre-existent souls and mentions Pythagoreans and Plato by name as the fathers of it. His notion of rational creatures living throughout successive aeons should be examined on the basis of his doctrine of creation. Once the idea of incorporeal soul, indeed of any incorporeal substance, is consistently perused –which eminent Neoplatonists from Plotinus to Proclus and Simplicius did- the notion of any incorporeal ‘pre-existing’ and ‘transmigrating’ turns out to be incongruous with key-philosophical premises. Plato had taken up the idea of pre-existing souls from Pythagoreans, but since by and large he built on plagiarized (and not always assimilated) ideas from books he had purchased from the needy Pythagorean Philolaus (or, his relatives), his analyses are inconsistent, as indeed other ideas of his are, such as the notion of ‘matter’ (hyle), or the nature of Ideas.
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