Known Before Birth: A Philosophical Inquiry into Prophecy, Soul Memory, and the Path of Remembrance

I. Introduction: Beyond Piety and Logic

There comes a time when piety—if it is merely outward—no longer leads us home. Not because reverence is wrong, but because ritual without revelation becomes a shell. And logic, too, becomes a trap when it attempts to master mysteries meant to be walked with, not solved.

Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher who lived during the time of Christ, spoke directly to this tension. For Philo, piety was not about rule-keeping or surface devotion, but about the soul aligning with divine Reason—the Logos, the ordering principle of the cosmos and the very mind of God.

“Piety is the queen of the virtues... and leads the soul upward to the vision of the divine.” — Philo of Alexandria

In other words: True piety is not obedience to form, but union with the formless.

Philo also believed that the soul existed before birth, and that its journey on earth was a temporary exile from the divine:

“The soul came down from above, from the ether, from heaven, and was sown in the body as in a field.”

When piety becomes performance, and logic becomes law, we lose contact with this higher knowing. But when the soul remembers its source, it begins to rise again—upward, inward, and toward truth.

II. Scripture: We Were Known—And We Knew

“He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world…” — Ephesians 1:4

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…” — Jeremiah 1:5

“You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” — Psalm 139:13

These verses echo the same truth Philo perceived: we were not randomly created. We were known, formed, called—and if we go deeper—

WE KNEW.

Philo believed the soul, before its descent into the body, was familiar with divine realities. The spiritual journey, then, is not only about discovering God—but remembering Him.

So what if you agreed to come here? What if, in a moment outside of time, your soul saw the beauty, the sorrow, the vine and the thorns of the wilderness—and said yes?

This isn’t fantasy. This is soul memory.

And your soul did not come empty—it came inscribed.

III. Prophecy as Remembrance

When it comes to prophecy that is written, what is the reasoning for its occurrence? Is it the act of writing it, or the belief in the necessity of doing so that makes it real? Is prophecy something that happens because we believe it must?

If the prophecy is delivered via dream—and that dream comes well in advance, with no way of knowing the people or details involved—is this not proof? Or does the prophecy hinge on the path?

Does it happen to the version of you walking that road, but not to the one who turns?

And if so—could the prophecy be a test of intuition? A test of spiritual connectedness, of remembering your soul’s covenant?

One particular dream shows failure. I ask: Did I see that outcome because it is sealed—or because I didn’t yet choose to see otherwise? Could I have seen beyond it? Can I shift the outcome i did see by walking in deeper awareness?

This is the function of true prophecy—not prediction, but memory. Not doom, but divergence. A sacred fork in the road.

The Hebrew prophets understood this well. So did Philo.

Prophecy doesn’t trap you—it invites you. It shows what the soul already knew, and offers a path of return.

“When prophecy warns, it invites—not dooms.”

In the book of Jonah, Nineveh was given a prophecy of destruction. It never happened. Why? Because they returned. The future shifted, because they remembered.

Dream of failure may not be a judgment. It may be a soul’s knowing: “You saw this. You can still turn.”

IV. Abiding as Return

“Abide in me, and I in you…” — John 15:4

To abide is not to pass a test. It is to return—to the place where we were first known, and where we knew.

Where the Logos dwells within us, and we in it.

Philo taught that Sophia (wisdom) and Logos (divine reason) are the intermediaries between God and soul. To walk with God, then, is to walk in harmony with that divine memory. To abide is to be reordered—from chaos to cosmos, from amnesia to awareness.

V. Application: Why This Matters

When you receive dreams or insights, don’t dismiss them—ask if they are a return, not just a message. You may be awakening the sacred scroll within—the record of a journey your soul already agreed to take.

When prophecy warns, it invites—not dooms. It calls you back into alignment with the truth already woven into your being.

When your spirit stirs, you may be touching the Logos—the divine thread of memory you carried into this world.

And this:

Your soul is the scroll.

As Philo wrote, the soul impresses divine truth upon the body, like a scribe engraving wisdom into parchment. Paul echoes this in 2 Corinthians 3:3:

“You are a letter from Christ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Your body, too, is a scroll. Every ache, every joy, every dream and trembling—these are the lines of your sacred text.

You are not merely reading the revelation. You are becoming it.

VI. Conclusion: Remembering the Soul’s Covenant

We are not here to perform our way to heaven. We are here to remember what our soul once knew.

Philo believed the soul’s journey was a cycle—from God, through the body, and back again. Plato agreed: the soul drank from the river of forgetfulness before birth, but not all was lost.

“He has set eternity in the human heart.” — Ecclesiastes 3:11

Prophecy, scripture, dream, and inward stirring all point to the same truth:

You are not lost. You are remembering.

So let us walk not in piety of form, But in the piety of reunion— A life tuned to divine truth, Where what was written before time Begins to rise again Within us.