Palingenesis

PALINGENESIS. - The word, from the Greek παλιγγενεσία, "rebirth", "renewal", as a technical term belongs to the philosophy of history (von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, II, Leipzig 1924, p. 110), although the idea of cyclical renewal (πάλιν γένεσις) is already found in pre-Platonic speculation (v. ORFISMO).

The Stoic concept of the cyclical renewal of the world is founded on the philosophy of Heraclitus, for whom fire as the seed of the universe was the cause of death and life of every being. P. as a biological term (Olympiodorus, in Plat. Phaedon., ed. Norvin, Leipzig 1913, p. 135, 28; Simplicius, Phys., ed. Diels, I, Berlin 1882, p. 379, 22) applied to the cosmos means the rebirth of the beginning from the end, in analogy with an organic process. The apocatastasis of the universe is therefore inherent in the idea of p. Cicero, De natura deorum, III, 118, translated the word p. with renovatio mundi. In this sense p. is in Mt. 19:28 a term for indicating the future world. The later Stoic philosophers, who maintained the idea of the eternity of the world (a Platonic-Peripatetic concept), attenuated the idea of its periodic dissolution and spoke only of periodic catastrophes (by means of fire and water) that strike the earth (Seneca, Nat. qu., III, 28), which allowed Jewish and Christian authors to give the name of p. also to the flood of the times of Noah (v., e.g., Philo, Vita Mos., II, 65). In the allegorical interpretation of myths, the gods who suffer (Dionysus, Osiris), identified with the great God of the cosmos, become in their passion symbols of the cyclical renewal of the world. In book XIII of the Corpus Hermeticum (ed. Nock-Festugière, II, Paris 1945, p. 200 ff.) the secret discourse on p. teaches the participation of the individual in the p. of the world. Some contact with this teaching is also had by the so-called "Liturgy of Mithras" (in K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae magicae, I, Leipzig 1928, p. 88 ff.). It is understandable that p. also becomes a term for the metempsychosis of souls. Varro, in Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII, 8, used the word p. for the soul that in a cycle of 440 years is united again with its original body. For Christians the p. is linked to the coming of the Holy Spirit in Baptism (v. Ep. ad Tit., 3:5), which carries us over to a new aeon. The term p. for signifying the renewal of an organism was applied not only to medicine, but also to social, political and cultural life (v. Flavius Josephus, Antiq., XI, 66 ed. Niese, "p. of the fatherland"), thus the renovatio, the rebirth "have become terms for a cultural and political renewal".

Erik Peterson