Chapter nine begins with the person who was blind from birth. Below Mr. LePar discusses this episode.
​Jerusalem – As he went along, he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, for him to have been born blind?" "Neither he nor his parents sinned." Jesus answered, "he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him. As long as the day lasts I must carry out the work of the one who sent me; the night will soon be here when no one can work. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world."

This man who was blind from birth must have been a well-known person in the area because the disciples knew all about him. It seems as though when they came upon him, they found the opportunity to put this problem to Jesus concerning people suffering from the time of birth. This was a problem that deeply concerned the Jewish people. The Jews connected suffering with sin. They worked on the assumption that wherever there was suffering there had to be sin. They believed that there had to be some separation from God, something more serious than the norm. So, the disciples asked Jesus, "Was his blindness due to his sins, or was it due to the sins of his parents?"

The question to be raised is, "How could blindness be due to his sins when he had been born with this blindness?" To this type of question, the Jewish theologians gave two answers. First, some of the theologians had a strange notion of what is referred to as "prenatal sin." They actually believed that a man could begin to sin while he was still in his mother's womb. Now, if you were to bring up two points of the argument, you would have this: At what time does evil influence or have sway over a man, from the formation of the embryo in the womb or from the moment of birth? At one time it was considered from the formation of the embryo, but that argument was dispelled with the idea that if evil influence began with the formation of the embryo, then the child would kick in the womb and break his way out of the womb. They literally thought that evil caused or influenced that soul or body in the embryonic stage. If that occurred, then the child would kick or fight its way out of the womb. So, this would be before normal birth could occur.

The Jewish theologians also found support for these thoughts that sin began at the moment of birth with the verse in Genesis 4:7 - NIV – "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it." The pivotal part of the verse is that "sin is crouching at your door." The meaning of this is that sin awaited man at the door of the womb and as soon as he was born, he became infected with this sin. This discussion from Jewish theological circles shows us their concept of "prenatal sin." All of this is concerning the discussion of sin in the embryonic stage.

Here is the second answer: In the time of Jesus, the Jewish people believed in the pre-existence of the soul. There was a period very early in the Jewish belief system where you can't say that they did not believe in the pre-existence of the soul, but they were undecided as to whether the soul existed before conception. Later, they believed that all souls existed before the creation of the world in the Garden of Eden. They made a definite stand on their belief once they began to become more aware of God. When God began to reveal Himself to them as a nation, then they began to formulate and believe in the pre-existence of the soul.