LECTURE 2
If you
recollect what was to a certain extent the climax and
principal goal of our last lecture, you will be able to place
before your souls how completely different the human entity
was as regards his innermost self before the Mystery of
Golgotha from what it was after that event. I did not try to
put general characteristics before you, but examples from
spiritual science, examples that showed us souls of olden
times and souls belonging to modern times, characteristic
examples by means of which we can see how certain souls of
former times appear again, transformed and metamorphosed. The
reason for such a great change will become evident only from
the study of the whole course of these lectures. But at
present one thing only may be pointed out by way of
introduction, which has often been referred to in our
lectures when they touched on similar subjects, namely, that
the full consciousness of the human ego, which it is the
mission of the earth planet to develop and bring to
expression, actually made its appearance only through the
Mystery of Golgotha.
It is not
perhaps quite accurate, though not far wrong, to say that if
we go very far back in evolution, human souls were not yet
truly individualized; they were still entangled in the
group-soul nature. This was particularly the case with the
more prominent among them, so we may say that such natures as
Hector or Empedocles were typical group-soul representatives
of their entire human community. Hector grew out of the soul
of Troy. He stands as an image of the group soul of the
Trojan people in a particular form, specialized but
nevertheless just as rooted in the group soul as Empedocles.
When they were reincarnated in the post-Christian era, they
had to face the necessity of experiencing the
ego-consciousness. This passing over from the group-soul
nature to the experience of the individual soul causes a
mighty leap forward. It causes souls so firmly embedded in
the group-soul nature as Hector to appear like Hamlet, i.e.
wavering and uncertain, as though incapable of dealing with
life. On the other hand it causes a soul like that of
Empedocles, when it reappears in post-Christian times as the
soul of the Faust of the sixteenth century, to become a kind
of adventurer who is brought into various situations from
which he was only with difficulty able to extricate himself,
and who is misunderstood by his contemporaries and even by
posterity.
Indeed, it
has often been emphasized that in developments such as those
here referred to, all that has taken place since the Mystery
of Golgotha is not particularly meaningful. As yet everything
is only at the beginning; only during the future evolution of
the earth will the great impulses that may be ascribed to
Christianity make themselves felt. Over and over again we
must emphasize the fact that Christianity is only at the
beginning of its great development. If we wish to play a part
in this great development, we must enter with understanding
into the ever increasing progress of the revelations and
impulses which originated with the founding of Christianity.
Above all we are required to learn something in the immediate
future; for it does not take much clairvoyance to see clearly
that if we wish for something definite to enable us to make a
good beginning in the direction of an advanced and
progressive understanding of Christianity, we must learn to
read the Bible in quite a new way. There are at present many
hindrances in the way, partly because of the fact that in
wide circles biblical study is still carried on in a sugary
and sentimental manner. The Bible is not made use of as a
book of knowledge, but as a book of common use for all kinds
of personal situations. If anyone has need of it for his own
personal encouragement, he will bury himself in one or the
other chapter of the Bible and allow it to work on him. This
seldom results in anything more than a personal relationship
to the Bible. On the other hand, the scholarship of the last
decades, indeed that of virtually the whole nineteenth
century, increased the difficulty of really understanding the
Bible by tearing it apart, declaring that the New Testament
is composed of all kinds of different things that were later
combined, and that the Old Testament also was composed of
many different parts which must have been brought together at
different times. According to this view, the Bible is made up
of mere fragments which may easily produce the impression of
an aggregate, presumably stitched together in the course of
time. This kind of scholarship has become popular; very many
people, for example, hold that the Old Testament is combined
out of many single parts. This opinion disturbs the serious
reading of the Bible that must come in the near future. When
such a serious way of reading the Bible is adopted, all that
is to be said about its secrets from the anthroposophical
viewpoint will be much better understood.
For example,
we must learn to take as a whole the Old Testament from the
beginning up to the point where the ordinary editions of the
Bible end. We must not let ourselves be led astray by all
that may be said against the unity of the Old Testament.
Then, if we do not merely read it in a one-sided way seeking
for personal edification, and do not read one part or another
from any particular point of view, but allow the Old
Testament, just as it is, to influence us as a whole,
combining our consideration of the contents with all that
must come into the world precisely from our anthroposophical
development of the last few years — if we unite all this
with a certain artistic spiritual feeling so that we
gradually come to see the artistic sequence, how the threads
interweave and are disentangled, not as if it had been
composed in an external kind of way, but with deep artistry,
then we shall gradually perceive what a mighty, inwardly
spiritual dramatic power lies in the whole structure and
composition of the Old Testament. Only then do we appreciate
the glorious tableau as a uniform whole, and we shall no
longer believe that one piece in the middle comes from one
source and one from another. We shall then perceive the
unitary spirit of the Bible. We shall see how from the first
day of creation the continuity of progress is under the
control of this unitary spirit from the time of the
patriarchs through the time of the judges, and through that
of the great Jewish prophets and kings until the whole soars
to a wonderful dramatic culmination in the book of the Maccabees
[ Note 6 ],
in the sons of
Mattathias, the brothers of Judas who fought against the king
of Antioch. In the whole there lives an inner dramatic force
that reaches a certain culminating point at the end. We shall
then feel that it is not a mere phrase when we say that a man
who is equipped with the occult method of observation is
seized by a peculiar feeling when he comes to the end of the
Old Testament and has in front of him the seven sons of the
Maccabean mother and the five sons of Mattathias. Five sons
of Mattathias, with the seven sons of the Maccabean mother
making the remarkable number twelve, a number we notice
everywhere when we are led into the secrets of evolution.
The number
twelve appears at the end of the Old Testament as the
culminating point of the whole dramatic presentation. First
this feeling comes upon us when the seven sons of the
Maccabees die a martyr's death, how one by one they rise up
and one by one are martyred. Observe the inner dramatic power
shown here, how the first victim only hints at what comes to
full expression in the seventh in his belief in the
immortality of the soul, how he hurls these words at the
king, “You reprobate, you refuse to hear anything about
the Awakener of my soul.”
(II Maccabees, Chap. 7.)
If we allow the
dramatic crescendo of power from son to son to affect us, we
shall see what forces are contained in the Bible. If we
compare the sugary sentimental method of study prevalent
hitherto with this dramatic, artistic penetration, the Bible
is of itself able to arouse religious ardor. Here, through
the Bible, art becomes religion. And then we begin to notice
very remarkable things. Most of you may perhaps remember, for
it happened in this very place, that when I gave here the
course on St. Luke's Gospel the whole magnificent figure of
Christ Jesus sprang forth from the fusion of the two souls,
the souls of the two Jesus children. The soul of the one was
none other than the soul of Zarathustra, the founder of
Zoroastrianism. You may still have before your spiritual eyes
the fact that in the Jesus boy described in the Gospel of St.
Matthew is the reincarnated Zarathustra.
What kind of
fact do we have here? We have the founder of Zoroastrianism,
the great initiate of antiquity, of the primeval Persian
civilization, who passed through human evolution up to a
certain point and appeared again among the ancient Hebrew
people. Through the soul of Zarathustra, we have a transition
from the ancient Persian to the element of the ancient Hebrew
people. Yes indeed, the external, that which takes place in
the history of the world and in human life, is really only
the manifestation, the externalization of inner spiritual
processes and of inner spiritual forces. What external
history relates can therefore be studied by considering it as
an expression of the inward and spiritual, of the facts which
move in the spiritual realm. Let us place before our souls
the fact that Zarathustra passed over from Persia into the
old Hebrew element. Now let us consider the Old Testament
— we really only need to study the headings of the
chapters. That the matter stands with Zarathustra as I then
related is the result of clairvoyant research: it results if
we follow his soul backward in time. Now let us contrast this
result not only with the way the Bible represents it, but
also with the results of external investigation.
The ancient
Hebrew people founded their kingdom in Palestine. That
original kingdom was divided. First it passed into Assyrian
captivity, then into the Babylonian. The ancient Hebrew
people were subjugated by the Persians. What does all this
mean? World historical facts do indeed have a meaning; they
correspond with inner processes, spiritual soul-processes.
Why did all this take place? Why were the ancient Hebrew
people guided in such a way that they passed over into the
Chaldean, into the Assyrian-Babylonian element, and were set
free again by Alexander the Great?
[ footnote 1 ]
To put it briefly, it is because this was merely the external
transition of Zarathustra from the Persian to the Jewish
element. The Jews brought him to themselves. They were guided
to him, even being subjugated by the Persian element, because
Zarathustra wanted to come to them. External history is a
wonderful counterpart of these processes, and anyone who
observes these things from the point of view of spiritual
science knows that external history was only the body for the
transition of the Zarathustra element from the old Persian
element, which at first actually included the old Hebrew
element. Then, when the latter had been sufficiently
permeated by the Persian element, it was lifted out of it
again by Alexander the Great. What then remained was the
milieu necessary for Zarathustra; it had passed over from one
people to another.
When we
glance over this whole age — we can naturally emphasize
only a few single points — we see it reaching its apex
in the old Hebrew history, through the period of the kings,
the prophets, the Babylonian captivity, and the Persian
conquest up to the time of the Maccabees. If then we really
wish to understand the Gospel of St. Mark, which is ushered
in by one of the prophetic sayings of Isaiah, we cannot fail
to be struck by the element of the Jewish prophets. Starting
from Elijah, who reincarnated as John the Baptist, we could
say that these prophets appear to us in their wonderful
grandeur. Let us leave out of consideration for the moment
Elijah and his reincarnation as the Baptist, and consider the
names of the intervening prophets. Here we must say that what
we have obtained from spiritual science allows us to observe
these Jewish prophets in a very special way. When we speak of
the great spiritual leaders of the earth in ancient times, to
whom do we refer? To the initiates, the initiated ones. We
know that these initiates attained their spiritual height
precisely because they went through the various stages of
consecration. They raised themselves stage by stage by means
of cognition to spiritual vision, and thus to union with the
true spiritual impulses in the world. In this way they were
able to embody in the life of the physical plane the impulses
they themselves received in the spiritual world. When we meet
with an initiate of the Persian, Indian, or Egyptian people
our first question is, “How did he ascend the ladder of
initiation within his own national environment? How did he
become a leader, and thus a spiritual guide of his
people?”
This question
is everywhere justifiable, except when we come to the
prophets. At the present time, there is certainly a sort of
theosophical tendency to mix everything together and speak
about the prophets in the same way as we speak of other
initiates. But nothing can be known by doing this. Let us
take the Bible (and recent historical research shows that the
Bible is a true and not an untrue document); consider the
prophets from Isaiah to Malachi, through Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and Daniel, and study what it relates of these figures. You
will find that you cannot bring these prophets into the
general scheme of initiation. Where does the Bible relate
that the Jewish prophets went through the same kind of
initiation as other initiates belonging to different peoples?
It is said they appeared when the voice of God stirred in
their souls, enabling them to see in a different way from
ordinary men, making it possible for them to make indications
as to the future course of the destiny of their people and
the future course of the world's history. Such indications
were wrung from the souls of the prophets with elemental
force. It is not related of them, in the same way as it is
related of other prophets, how they went through their
initiation. The spiritual vision of the Jewish prophets
seems, so to speak, to spring from their own genius, and this
they relate to their own people and to humanity. It was in
this same way that they avowed their prophesies and
acknowledged their prophetic gifts. Just consider how a
prophet, when he has something to announce, always makes a
point of proclaiming that God has communicated through some
mediator what is to happen — or else that it came to
him like a direct elemental truth. This gives rise to the
question, leaving Elijah and his reincarnation as the Baptist
out of consideration, “What position do these Jewish
prophetic figures occupy, who externally are placed side by
side with the initiates of other nations?” If you
investigate the souls of these prophets in the light of
spiritual science or occultism, you come to something very
remarkable. If you make the effort to compare what history
and religious tradition relate with what I am about to
communicate to you as the result of my spiritual
investigation, you will be able to verify this.
We find that
the souls of the Hebrew prophets are reincarnations of
initiates who had lived in other nations, and who had
attained certain stages of initiation. When we trace backward
one of these prophets, we arrive at some other people and
find an initiated soul who remained a long time with this
people. This soul then went through the portal of death and
was reincarnated in the Jewish people. If we wish to find the
earlier incarnations of the souls of Jeremiah, Isaiah,
Daniel, and so on, we must seek them among other peoples.
Trivially speaking, it is as though there were a gradual
assembling of the initiates of other peoples among the Jewish
people, where these initiates appear in the form of prophets.
This is why these prophets appear in such a way that their
gift of prophecy appears to proceed elementally from out of
their own inner being. It is a memory of what they acquired
here or there as initiates. All this emerges, but not always
in the harmonious form it had in earlier incarnations, for a
soul that had been incarnated in a Persian or Egyptian body
would first have to accustom itself to the bodily nature of
the Jewish people. Something of what was certainly in this
soul could not come forth in this incarnation. For it is not
always the case that what a man has formerly acquired
reappears in him as he progresses from incarnation to
incarnation. Indeed, through the difficulties caused by the
bodily nature, it may come forth in an inharmonious way, in a
chaotic manner.
Thus we see
that the Jewish prophets gave their people many spiritual
impulses, which are often disarrayed, but nonetheless
grandiose recollections of former incarnations. That is the
peculiarity to be observed in the Jewish prophets. Why is
this? It is because in fact the whole evolution of humanity
had to go through this passageway, so that what was achieved
in its parts over the whole world should be brought together
in one focal point, to be born again from out of the blood of
the people of the Old Testament. So we find in the history of
the old Hebrew people, as in that of no other, something that
may be found also in tribes but not in peoples that had
already become nations — a state of homogenity, the
emphasizing of the descent of the blood through the
generations. All that belongs to the world-historical mission
of the Old Testament people depends upon the continuity of
the stream of blood through the generations. Hence anyone who
had a full right to belong to the Jewish people was always
called a “son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,”
meaning a son of that element that first appeared in the
blood of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was in the blood that
flowed through this people that the elements of initiation of
other peoples were to reincarnate. Like rays of light coming
from different sides, streaming in and uniting in the center,
the incarnating rays of the various peoples were collected
together as in one central point in the blood of the old
Hebrew people. The psychical element of human evolution had
once to pass through that experience. It is extremely
important to keep these occult facts in mind, for only thus
can we understand how such a Gospel as that of St. Mark is
from its beginning based upon the element of the Old
Testament.
But now what
occurs at this gathering, as we might call it, of the
initiation elements of the various peoples in this one
center? We have yet to see why it took place. But if we now
take the whole dramatic progress of the Old Testament into
consideration, we shall see how the thought of immortality is
gradually developed in the Old Testament through the taking
up of the initiation elements of the different peoples and
how it appears at its very summit precisely in the sons of
the Maccabees. But we must now allow this to influence our
souls in its full original significance, enabling us to
envision the consciousness man then had of his connection
with the spiritual world. I wish to draw your attention to
one thing. Try to follow up the passages in the Old Testament
where reference is made to the divine element shining into
human life. How often it is related, for example in the Book of Tobit
(Tobit, Chapter 5),
when something or other is about to
happen — as when Tobit sends his son to carry out some
business or other — the archangel Raphael appears to him
in an apparently human form.
[ footnote 2 ]
In another passage other beings of the higher hierarchies
appear. Here we have the divine spiritual element playing
into the world of man in such a way that man sees the divine
spiritual element as something external, met with in the
outer world. In the Book of Tobit, Raphael confronts the
person he has to lead in just the same way as one man
encounters another when he approaches him externally. We
shall often see if we study the Old Testament that
connections with the spiritual world are regulated in this
manner, and very many passages in the Old Testament refer to
something of this kind. But as we proceed, we observe a great
dramatic progression, finally reaching the culminating point
of that progression in the martyrdom of the seven sons of the
Maccabees who speak out of their souls of a uniting, a
reawakening of their souls in the divine element. The inner
certainty of soul about their own inner immortality meets us
in the sons of the Maccabees and also in Judas and his
brothers who were to defend their people against the king of
Antioch. There is an increased inner understanding of the
divine spiritual element, and the dramatic progress becomes
ever greater as we follow the Old Testament from the
appearance of God to Moses in the burning bush, in which we
see God approaching man externally, to the inner certitude
springing up in the souls of the sons of the Maccabees, who
are convinced that if they die here they will be reawakened
in the kingdom of their God through what lives within
them.
This shows a
mighty progression, revealing an inner unity in the Old
Testament. Nothing is said at the beginning of the Old
Testament concerning the consciousness of being accepted by
God, of being taken away from the earth and being part of the
Divinity. Nor are we told whether this member of the human
soul that is taken up by God and embodied in the divine world
is really raised. But the whole progress was so guided that
the consciousness develops more and more, so that the human
soul through its very essence grows into the spiritual
element. From a state of passivity toward the God Yahweh or
Jehovah, there gradually comes into being an active inner
consciousness of the soul about its own nature. This
increases page by page all through the Old Testament, though
it was only by slow degrees that during its progress the
thought of immortality was born. Strange to say, the same
progress may also be observed in the succession of the
prophets. Just observe how the stories and predictions of
each successive prophet become more and more spiritual; here
again we find the dramatic element of a wonderful
intensification. The further we go back into the past, the
more do the stories told relate to the external. The more we
advance in time, the more we discover the inner force, the
inner certainty and feeling of unity with the divine
spiritual, referred to also by the prophets. Thus there is a
continual enhancement until the Old Testament leads on to the
beginning of the story of the New Testament, and the Gospel
of St. Mark is directly linked with all this.
For at the
very beginning, the Gospel tells us that it intends to
interpret the event of Christ Jesus entirely in the sense of
the old prophets, so that it is possible to understand the
appearance of Christ Jesus by keeping before us the words of
Malachi and Isaiah respectively, “Behold I send my
messenger before you who is to prepare the way. Hear how
there is a cry in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of
the Lord and make his paths level.’ ” Thus there
is a prevailing tone running through the history of the Old
Testament pointing to the appearance of Christ Jesus. It is
further related in St. Mark's Gospel — indeed we may
distinctly hear it in the words if we so desire. In the same
way that the ancient prophets spoke, so essentially does the
Baptist speak. How comprehensive and grandiose is this figure
of the Baptist if we interpret him in the way the ancient
prophets spoke of a divine messenger, of one who in the
solitude would show the path that Christ Jesus had to pursue
in cosmic evolution. Mark's Gospel then goes on to say,
“Thus does John the Baptist appear in the solitude and
proclaim baptism for the recognition of human
sinfulness.” For in this way should the words rightly
be translated. So it is said, “Direct your gaze to the
old prophetic nature, which has now entered into a new
relation with the Divinity and experienced a new belief in
immortality. And then behold the figure of the Baptist, how
he appeared and spoke of the kind of development through
which we may recognize the sinfulness of man.” Thus is
the Baptist directly referred to as a great figure.
But how about
the wonderful figure of Christ Jesus Himself? Nowhere else in
the world is He presented in so simple and at the same time
so grand and dramatic an ascending gradation as in Mark's
Gospel. Direct your spiritual gaze at this in the right way.
What are we told at the beginning of the Gospel? We are
particularly told to turn our attention to the figure of the
Baptist. You can understand him only when you take into
account the Jewish prophets, whose voice has become alive in
him. The whole Jewish nation went up to be baptized by him.
This means that there were many among them who recognized
that the old prophets spoke through John the Baptist. That is
stated at the beginning of the Gospel. We see John standing
before us, we hear the voice of the old prophets coming to
life in him, and we see the people going out to him and
recognizing him as a prophet come to life again. Let us
confine ourselves for the moment to the Mark Gospel. Now the
figure of Christ Jesus Himself appears. Let us now also leave
out of account the so-called baptism in the Jordan, and what
happens after that, including the temptation, and fix our
attention on the dramatic intensification we meet with in the
Mark Gospel.
After the
Baptist is introduced to us, and we are shown how the people
regard him and his mission, Christ Jesus is Himself
introduced. But in what manner? At first we are told only
that He is there, that He is recognized not only by men, but
He is also recognized by beings other than man. That is the
point to be borne in mind. Around Him are those who wish to
be healed from their demonic possession, those in whom demons
are active. Around Him stand men in whom not merely human
souls are living, but who are possessed by super-sensible
spirits who work through them. And in a significant passage
we are told that these spirits recognize Christ Jesus. Of the
Baptist we are told that men recognized him and went out to
be baptized by him. But Christ is recognized by the
super-sensible spirits, so that He has to command them not to
speak of Him. Beings from the super-sensible world recognize
Him, so it is said; that being is entering who is not only
recognized by men, but His appearance is recognized and
considered dangerous by super-sensible beings. That is the
glorious climax confronting us directly in the beginning of
the Gospel of Mark. On the one side is John the Baptist,
recognized and honored by men; and on the other He who is
recognized and feared by super-sensible beings — who
nevertheless have something to do with the earth — so
that they realize that now they must leave. Nowhere else is
such an upward dramatic progression presented with such
simplicity.
If we keep
this in sight, we feel certain things as necessary which
usually simply pass unobserved by human souls. Let me draw
your attention to a particular passage which, because of the
greatness and simplicity of Mark's Gospel, may best be
observed in this Gospel. Recall the passage in which the
choosing of the Twelve is spoken of at the beginning of the
Gospel, and how, when the naming is referred to, it is said
that He called two of His apostles the “sons of
thunder”
(Mark 3:17).
That is a fact that must not
pass unnoticed; we must pay attention to it if we wish to
understand the Gospel. Why does He call them “sons of
thunder?” Because He wishes to implant into them an
element that is not of the earth so that they may become His
servants. This element comes from outside the earth because
this is the Gospel that comes from the world of angels and
archangels. It is something new; it is no longer enough to
speak of man. He speaks now of a heavenly super-sensible
element, the ego, and it is necessary to emphasize this. He
calls them sons of thunder to show that those who are His
followers are related to the celestial element. The nearest
world connected with our own is the elemental world, through
which what plays into our world can first be explained.
Christ gives names to His disciples which indicate that our
world borders on a super-sensible one. He gives them names in
accordance with the characteristics of the elemental world.
It is just the same as when He calls Peter the “rock-man”
(Mark 3:16).
This again refers to the
super-sensible. Thus through the whole Gospel the entrance of
the angelic as an impulse from the spiritual world is
proclaimed.
In order to
understand this we only need to read correctly, and assume
that the Gospel is at the same time a book from which the
deepest wisdom can be drawn. All the progress that has been
made consists in this: souls are becoming individualized.
They are connected with the super-sensible world not only
indirectly through their group-soul nature, but they are also
connected with it through the element of the individual soul.
He who so stands before humanity that He is recognized by the
beings of earth and is also recognized by super-sensible
beings needs the best element of human nature to enable Him
to sink something of the super-sensible into the souls of
those who are to serve Him. He requires such men as have
themselves made the furthest progress in their souls
according to the old way. It is extremely interesting to
follow the soul-development of those whom Christ Jesus
gathered around Him; the Twelve whom He particularly called
to be His own, who, in all their simplicity, as we might say,
passed in the grandest way through the development which, as
I tried to show you yesterday, is gained by human souls in
widely varied incarnations.
A man must
first become accustomed to being a specific individuality.
This he cannot easily do when he is transferred from the
element of the nation in which his soul had taken root into a
condition of being dependent upon himself alone. The Twelve
were deeply rooted in a nationality which had constituted
itself in the grandest form. They stood there as if they were
naked souls, simple souls, when Christ found them again.
There had been a quite abnormal interval between their
incarnations. The gaze of Christ Jesus could rest upon the
Twelve, the reincarnated souls of those who had been the
seven sons of the Maccabean and the five sons of Mattathias,
Judas and his brothers; it was of these that the apostolate
was formed. They were thrown into the element of fishermen
and simple folk. But at a time when the Jewish element had
reached its culminating point they had been permeated by the
consciousness that this element was then at the peak of its
strength, but strength only — whereas, when the group
formed itself around Christ, this element appeared in
individualized form. We might conceive that someone who was a
complete unbeliever might look upon the appearance of the
seven and the five at the end of the Old Testament, and their
reappearance at the beginning of the New Testament, as
nothing but an artistic progression. If we take it as a
purely artistic composition, we may be moved by its
simplicity and the artistic greatness of the Bible, quite
apart from the fact that the Twelve are the five sons of
Mattathias and the seven sons of the Maccabean mother. And we
must learn to take the Bible also as a work of art. Then only
shall we develop a feeling for the artistic element in it,
and acquire a feeling for the realities from which it
springs.
Now perhaps
your attention may be called to something else. Among the
five sons of Mattathias is one who is already called Judas in
the Old Testament. He was the one who at that time fought
more bravely than all the others for his own people. In his
whole soul he was dedicated to his people, and it was he who
was successful in forming an alliance with the Romans against
King Antiochus of Syria
(I Maccabees, Chap. 8).
This Judas is the same
who later had to undergo the test of the betrayal, because he
who was most intimately bound up with the old specifically
Hebrew element, could not at once find the transition into
the Christian element, needing the severe testing of the
betrayal. Again, if we look at the purely artistic aspect,
how wonderfully do the two figures stand out: the grand
figure of the Judas in the last chapters of the Old Testament
and the Judas of the New Testament. It is remarkable that in
this symptomatic process, the Judas of the Old Testament
concluded an alliance with the Romans, prefiguring all that
happened later, namely the path that Christianity took
through the Roman Empire, so that it could enter into the
world. If I could add to this something that can also be
known but that cannot be given in a lecture to an audience as
large as this, you would see that it was precisely through a
later reincarnation of Judas that the fusion of the Roman
with the Christian element occurred. The reincarnated Judas
was the first who, as we might say, had the great success of
spreading Romanized Christianity in the world. The treaty
concluded by the Judas of the Old Testament with the Romans
was the prophetic foreshadowing of what was later
accomplished by another man, who is recognized by occultists
as the reincarnation of that Judas who had to go through the
severe soul-testing of the betrayal. What through his later
influence appears as Christianity within Romanism and
Romanism within Christianity is like a renewal of the
alliance concluded between the Old Testament Judas and the
Romans, but transferred into the spiritual.
When we have
such things as these before us, we gradually come to the
conclusion that, considered spiritually and leaving
everything else aside, human evolution is itself the greatest
work of art that has ever existed; only we must have the
vision to see it. Ought it therefore to be regarded as so
unreasonable to look at the human soul in this way? I think
if we contemplate one or the other of these dramas with their
clear raveling and unraveling, while lacking the capacity for
perceiving its structure, we shall see nothing but a sequence
of events following one after another. External history is
written somewhat in this way. Seen thus, human evolution does
not appear as a work of art; nothing emerges but a succession
of events. But mankind is now at a turning point when it must
interpret the inner progressive shaping of events, their
raveling and unraveling in the evolution of humanity. Then it
will appear that the evolution of humanity clearly and
distinctly shows how individual figures appear at definite
times and give impulses while entangling or unraveling the
plot. We only learn to understand how man is inserted into
human evolution when we come to know the course of history in
this way. But because it is all raised from the condition of
a mere joining together to that of an organism, and then to
more than an organism, everything must really be put in its
proper place and the distinctions made that in other domains
are taken for granted. It would not occur to any astronomer
to equate the sun to the other planets. He would as a matter
of course keep it separate and single it out as a separate
entity within the planetary system. In the same way, a man
who sees into human evolution places a “sun” as a
matter of course among the great leaders of humanity. Just as
it would be utter nonsense to speak of the sun of our
planetary system as being on a par with Venus, Jupiter, or
Mars, so it would be nonsense to speak of Christ in the same
way as the Boddhisattvas or other leaders of humanity. This
should be so obvious that the very idea of a reincarnation of
Christ would be ridiculous, and such an assertion could not
be made if things were simply looked at as they are. But it
is necessary really to go into the questions and grasp them
in their proper form, and not to accept the dogma of any
sectarian belief. When we speak of Christology in a true
cosmological sense, it is not necessary to show a preference
for the Christian above any other religion. That would be the
same as if some religion in its sacred writings stated that
the sun was the same as the other planets, and then someone
came along and said, “No, we must place the sun higher
than the other planets, and some people opposed this by
saying, “But this is favoritism toward the sun!”
This is not favoritism, it is only recognizing the truth.
So it is also
in the case of Christianity. It is simply a question of
recognizing the truth, a truth that every religion on the
earth today could accept if it chose to do so. If other
religions are in earnest in their tolerance for all other
religious creeds and do not use that tolerance as a pretense,
they will not object that the West has not adopted a national
god, but a God in whom no nationality plays a part, a God who
is a cosmic being. The Indians speak of their national gods.
As a matter of course their ideas differ from those of people
who have not adopted a Germanic national god, but accept as a
God a Being who was, to be sure, never incarnated in their
own land, but in a distant land and in a different nation. We
might perhaps speak of a Western-Christian principle in
opposition to an Indian-Eastern one, if we wished to put
Wotan above Krishna.
But that is not the case with Christ.
From the beginning He belonged to no nation but stood for the
truth of the most beautiful of the spiritual scientific
principles, “to recognize the truth without distinction
of color, race, nationality, etc.”
We must
acquire the capacity to look at these things objectively.
Only when we recognize the Gospels by recognizing what
underlies them shall we truly understand them. From what has
been said today about the Mark Gospel in its sublime
simplicity and its dramatic crescendo from the person of John
the Baptist to that of Christ Jesus, we can see what this
Gospel actually contains.
Footnotes:
1.
The Israelites in Babylon were of course allowed by Cyrus to
go home after his conquest of that city, and his Persian
successors followed the same policy
(II Chron. 36:22,
(II Chron. 36:22,
(Ezra 1.
See also the rest of the book of
Ezra,
Nehemiah,
and
Haggai,
especially for the rebuilding of the temple).
However, if the paragraph is taken as a whole, it seems
evident that Steiner was thinking of the general
dispersion of the Jews in the Hellenistic world in the
centuries following the conquests of Alexander, a
dispersion that in the end provided a suitable milieu for
the reborn Zarathustra. As far as is known to history,
Alexander himself did not play any significant part in
the liberation of the Jews. (Editorial note.)
2.
The reference is to the wonderful journey by Tobias, the son
of Tobit, who goes to a far land to bring back a wife
after he has freed her from a demon. He does this with
the aid of Raphael who also shows him how to cure his
father of blindness.
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