PALINGENESIA. — The word, from the Greek παλγγενοία, “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 (πύλλος γενέατος) is already found in pre-Platonic speculation (v. ORFISMO).
The Stoic concept of the cyclical renewal of the world is based on the philosophy of Erecito, for whom fire, as the seed of the universe, was the principle of death and life in 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, signifies 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. as renovatio mundi. In this sense p. is, in Mt. 19, 28, a term denoting the future world. The later Stoic philosophers, who maintained the idea of the eternity of the world (a Platonic-Peripatetic concept), softened the idea of its periodic dissolution and spoke only of periodic catastrophes (through fire and water) that affect the earth (Seneca, Nat. qu., III, 28); this made it possible for Jewish and Christian authors to give the name p. also to the Flood in the time of Noah (v. , e.g., Philo, Vita Mos., II, 65). In the allegorical interpretation of myths, the suffering gods (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 individual’s participation in the p. of the world. The so-called “Mithras Liturgy” also has some contact with this teaching (in K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae magicae, I, Leipzig 1928, p. 88 ff.). It is understandable that p. should also become a term for the metempsychosis of souls. Varro, cited by Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII, 8, used the word p. for the soul that, in a cycle of 440 years, is reunited with its original body. For Christians, p. is linked to the coming of the Holy Spirit in Baptism (v. Ep. ad Tit., 3, 5), which transports us into a new aeon. The term p., 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, 66ª ed., Niese, “p. of the homeland”); thus renovatio and rebirth “became terms for a cultural and political renewal.”