PALINGENESIA. - The word, from the Greek πλαγγ-γενεσάς, “rebirth,” “renewal,” as a technical term belongs to Stoic philosophy (von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, II, Leipzig 1924, p. 110), although the idea of cyclical renewal (κύκλος γενεσάς) is already found in pre-Platonic speculation (v. ORPHISM).
The Stoic concept of the cyclical renewal of the world is based on the philosophy of Heraclitus, according to which fire as the seed of the universe was the cause of death and life for every being. P. as a biological term (Olimpiodorus, 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 to an organic process. The apocatastasis of the universe is thus 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 to indicate the future world. 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 Noah’s time (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 sq.) the secret discourse on p. teaches the participation of the individual in the p. of the world. Some contact with this teaching is also found in the so-called “Liturgy of Mithras” (in K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae magicae, I, Leipzig 1928, p. 88 sq.). It is understandable that p. also becomes 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 to a new genesis. The term p. to signify 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 fatherland”), so that renovatio, rebirth, became terms for cultural and political renewal.”