preexistence of the soul

The purpose of this and succeeding posts is to introduce some of our early church fathers and, with some their lost contributions to the development of modern day Christianity, to recover their wisdom and show how the church might have looked had not their wisdom been "lost."
Simply because their wisdom does not appear in the present day Bible does not negate their value. Their contributions were negated by church politics more than anything. We are, IMO, all the lesser for the loss.

Having now come to the surface after a deep dive into a vast area of research, at the risk of oversimplification, I'll try to be as brief as I can.

I'll begin with Origen, a Greek philosopher (ca. 185-ca. 254), considered by many to have been one of two of the most important early Christian theologians, the other being Augustine. His great work, the Hexapla, is a synopsis of six versions of the Old Testament. He is said to have authored 6,000 manuscripts. It is important, for this discussion, to note that Ancient Greek belief systems of his time commonly accepted preexistence of the soul.