On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Casey Rousseau wrote: > >There's an old, old story (from Plato?) that souls waiting to be >incarnated know everything there is to know in heaven and on earth, >but that just before they are born, an angel presses a hot coal to >their lips, sealing in the knowledge and preventing them from sharing >it. > Sounds like a garbled version of a story from the Talmud (Niddah 30b): http://www.realdimensions.co.uk/d_hush.htm / Just before a baby is born it has a smooth upper lip without any indentation and then an angel enters the environment of the womb and shows the baby everything there is to know and learn on Earth. Then at the moment of birth, the angel appears to only the baby and the angel touches the infant's upper lip creating an indentation in the smooth unspoilt flesh. "Hush, don't tell what you know" the Angel says and the child forgets everything. / The angel was later construed to be Gabriel: http://www.uja.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=7630 / In the months before a Jewish child is born, it is visited in the womb by the Angel Gabriel. There, in the warmth and silence of the mother's body, the angel teaches the baby all of Jewish learning -- the Torah, the rituals, the holidays, the deepest truths of Jewish wisdom. The baby absorbs it all, just as it takes nourishment from its mother. But suddenly, as the baby is about to be thrust into the world to eat and breathe on its own, the angel presents it with a similar intellectual challenge. Right before birth, Gabriel strikes the child on the upper lip, and all the teachings are instantly forgotten." / And have you ever seen "The Prophecy"? :-) - the webpage below has a sound clip with Christopher Walken's delivery: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shuttle/6962/prophecy.htm Gabriel: You know how you got that dent in your top lip? Way back .. before you were born .. I told you a secret. Then I put my finger there .. and I said "Shhhhh". Oh, wait - the idea *is* in Plato (and since the Talmudic scholars were influenced by other schools of thought, perhaps it originates >from there rather than rising independantly). I think the angel part is more specifically from Jewish lore (did Plato posit the existence of angels?). http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=985&letter=S The Platonic theory that study is only recollection, because the soul knew everything before entering the world, is expressed in a hyperbolic fashion in the Talmud, where it is said that a light burns on the head of the embryo by means of which it sees from one end of the world to the other, but that at the moment of its appearance on earth an angel strikes it on the mouth, and everything is forgotten (Niddah. 30b). Incidentally, the bit about the coal reminds me of a different Jewish legend, where Moses as a baby in Egypt took Pharaoh's crown. Fearing that this was an omen of usurpation, Pharoah's seers put Moses before 2 plates, one with gold and one with glowing coals (and if he chose the gold, he'd be killed). Moses reached for the gold, but an angel intervened and directed his hand to the coals, which he then put in his mouth and burned his tongue.