In the course of years, considerations have been brought forward in
the various groups in different lecture-cycles, for a great number of
the anthroposophical friends sitting here, on the John Gospel, the
Luke Gospel, the Matthew Gospel, and we have attempted in these
considerations, on the three gospels, to let appear before our
spiritual eye the great event of Palestine, the Mystery of Golgotha,
from three different sides, as it were, in three varying ways. And
perhaps these considerations have proved adapted to lay in our souls
the foundations for an ever-increasing valuation of this unique event.
We have already pointed out how the reason why we have four gospels is
to be sought essentially in the fact that the writers of the gospels,
as inspired occultists, wanted to represent this great event each from
his own side, just as one copies or photographs something external
from one standpoint. And if one takes photographs of a thing from
different sides, so through a combination of what results, through
bringing them together before the soul, one can come to the true
reality. Each of the evangelists really gives us opportunity to
consider the great event of Palestine from one special side. From a
side which we can call at the same time the opening of the highest
human, occult and other aims, and beside this highest human principle,
also taking into account the highest world principle from this
side it is the John Gospel which gives us an insight into the great
event of Palestine.
The Luke Gospel opens for us an insight into the secrets, which hover
round the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, of the Solomon and Nathan
Jesus, up to the moment where the great inspiration of Jesus of
Nazareth is replaced by the Christ.
The Matthew Gospel, for those who have heard the lecture-cycle on it,
or have read it later, has to show how from the people of ancient
Hebraism, from the folk-secrets of the Hebrew people, the physical
principle of life (as it were) was prepared, in which the
Christ-Principle should incarnate for three years.
In a certain connection it is again the Mark Gospel which can lead us
into the highest summits of the anthroposophical, Christian method of
observation, and through the Mark Gospel opportunity is given us to
look into many things which should be imparted to us through the
gospels, but are not brought near to us in such a way by the other
evangelists. And I have laid on myself the task of saying a few words
because opportunity offers itself today to speak of the Mark Gospel.
If we speak of this, we must be quite clear how necessary it is to
look into many things for which the superficial world of the present
has no real inclination. If one is to understand the Mark Gospel and
all its depths, one must become acquainted with the quite different
method of expression among men at the time when Christ Jesus walked on
earth. Do not take it amiss, if I attempt to say to you what I really
intend, through a distinct shading, a distinct twilight.
We express through speech what we want to say. And what lives in our
soul should in a certain way be made obvious in the words of speech.
In this method of expressing through speech what lives in our soul,
the various epochs of human development are very different from each
other. If we went back to the epoch of the old Hebrew evolution, to
that wonderful method of expression which was still possible in the
old Hebraic temple-speech, we should find quite another method of
clothing the secrets of our soul in words, than people today have any
idea of. When a word sounded in the old Hebraic speech only the
consonants were written, the vowels were then added then there
did not merely sound in this word what sounds in it today; a more or
less abstract idea... but a whole world. Because of this, the vowels
were not really written, because he who spoke gave out his most inner
being just through his way of vocalising, whereas in the consonants,
there lay more the description, the portraying of what is outside. One
can say that when, e.g., an ancient Hebrew drew a B
what corresponds today with our B he always
felt something like a portraying of external relationships, of
something which formed a warm, hut-like enclosure. The letter
B always evoked the picture of something which,
house-like, could surround a being. One could not utter the
B without that living in the soul. And if one vocalised an
A, one could not do it without something of strength, of
force, even of radiating power, living within it. Thus the soul lived
further. The soul-content worked outwards with the words, soared into
space and into other souls. Thus speech was then a far more living
affair. It entered far more into the secrets of existence than our
speech.
That is the light which I wanted to place before you. And the shadows
I must represent in contrast; that we in our time have become to a
high degree in this connection pedants. Our languages only express
abstractions, generalities. One does not even feel that any more.
Speech only expresses now pedantry, fundamentally. How should this be
different in an age when people even begin to manipulate it in
literary fashion long before they have a spiritual content; in an age
when such an infinite amount goes into the broad masses as print, when
each one thinks he must write something, when everything becomes an
object for writing. I have had to experience that even in the founding
of our society, authors turned up from curiosity, who had the
intention of being able to extract perhaps a novel out of the matter:
why should not forms exist there which one can have on tap and retail
in a public writing shop? Thus we must be quite clear that we have a
speech which has become abstract, empty, pedantic in contrast
to the way in which one formerly conceived it as something holy, to
which one felt the responsibility that GOD should speak from out of
it. Hence it is so infinitely difficult to squeeze into modern words
those great, tremendous facts, which are imparted to us and which
sound to us, for instance, in the gospels. Why should the man of today
not also believe that one can give everything in our speech? He cannot
understand that our speech says something empty with what even the
Greek speech still meant with a word. And if we read the Bible today,
we read something which, compared with its original content, has been
sifted once, twice, three times, but so sifted, that there remains not
the best but always the worst. Therefore it is naturally cheap in a
certain way to appeal to the modern words of the Bible. But we go
astray most of all if we appeal to the Bible in the case of the Mark
Gospel, as it lies before us today. In any case we must not do that.
Now you know that the Mark Gospel had in its first lines as its basis
the words which the translation by Weizsacker, regarded as
exceptionally good (but it is conceivable that what is regarded today
as so excellent, need not be so really), renders as follows: As
stands written in the prophet Isaiah; Behold, I send my messenger
before thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls
in the wilderness; prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his
paths.
Honest people must really say to themselves, if the Mark Gospel begins
thus in this Weizsacker: I do not understand a single word of it all.
Whoever will understand it must really resolve to do something.
Whoever goes sincerely to work, cannot understand anything when it is
said: Behold, I send my messenger before thee, who shall prepare
the way for thee; listen how it calls in the wilderness; prepare the
way of the lord; make straight his paths. For either a
triviality is uttered, or something is said which one cannot
understand. One must first bring together those ideas which make it
possible to understand such an utterance as that of Isaiah's here. For
Isaiah points to that great, mighty event, which should be the most
significant event in human evolution. What is he really pointing to?
Now from what we have already described, we can well indicate what
Isaiah predicted. We can indicate it by saying: In ancient times, man
had a kind of clairvoyance; he had the possibility of growing with his
soul-forces into the divine spiritual world. What really happened with
man when he grew thus into the divine spiritual world? Then it was the
case that when he grew into the divine spiritual world he ceased to
employ his Ego, so far as it was developed at that time. He used his
astral body, in which were those forces which were the forces of
vision, of seership, whereas all the forces rooted in the Ego were
gradually awakened through the perception of the physical world. It is
the Ego which employs the instruments of the senses. The ancient human
being, however, when he sought illumination about the world, employed
his astral body. The ancient human being saw, perceived in the astral
body. Further evolution consisted in this, that the transition was
found from the astral body to the use of the Ego. With reference to
this Ego, the Christ-Impulse had to be the most intense impulse. If,
now, the Christ is taken up into the Ego so that the phrase of Paul is
true, Not I, but the Christ in me, then the Ego has the
power of growing into the spiritual world through itself. Formerly,
only the astral body could do this.
Thus we have an evolution of humanity before us of which we can say:
Man employed his astral body as organ of knowledge, but he lost more
and more the possibility of developing an organ of knowledge in his
astral body. And the more one approached the Christ Event, that stage
of evolution arose of which man must say: My astral body has less and
less the possibility of looking into the spiritual world. Nothing
arose through its union with the spiritual world, and the Ego was not
yet forceful enough to get, from its side, any illumination from the
world. That was the age when the Christ drew near.
Now in the real evolution of mankind, it is a question of certain
great strides being gradually prepared, which then occur. This was the
case with the Christ-Impulse. But a transition had to exist. Things
could not so run their course that man saw how his astral body
gradually became dull towards the spiritual world, so that he would
have felt utter barrenness and desolation in himself, until the Ego
was kindled through the Christ-Impulse. Things could not take this
course. But in the case of a few it happened through an especial
influence from the spiritual world, they saw something already in the
astral body similar to the way one should later see and know through
the Ego: The egoity (Ego-hood) was, as it were, prepared in the astral
body. That was an anticipation of the egoity in the astral body. Man
indeed first became earthly man through the Ego and its development.
The astral body really belonged to the ancient moon. At that time, the
angel, the angel-man, was at the human stage. The angel was man on the
old moon. Man is man on the earth. We know that. On the old moon, it
was man's task to use his astral body. Everything else was only
preparation for the Ego-evolution. The beginning of our earth
evolution was a repetition of the moon evolution. For man could never
become fully man in the astral body; but on the moon, only the angel
could become man in the astral body. Therefore just as in the
earth-man the Christ lived in order to inspire the Ego so for
the preparation of this Ego-hood the possibility had to be given, that
from the angels of the moon from the moon-men, the angels
prophets were so inspired in their human astral body, that the
Ego could be prepared. There had thus to occur what a prophet could
have characterised in the following way: There will come in human
evolution a time when man will be ripe for the ego-evolution. In the
astral body only the angels of the moon have raised themselves to the
highest. But in order that man can be prepared for this egoity,
certain human beings must be so inspired on earth, through grace, in
exceptional conditions, that they work as angels, in spite of their
being human; that they are angels in human form.
Here we come to an important occult idea, without which you cannot
understand at all the evolution of humanity in the sense of occultism.
Externally uttered, it is naturally easy if one simply says that all
is Maya. Well, all right. But that is an abstraction. One must really
take it earnestly. Therefore one must be able to say: There stands a
man before me... that, however, is Maya! Who knows... is that, anyhow,
a man? Perhaps the human existence is but the external veil, employed
by quite another being than man is, just to bring about something
which cannot yet be effected by man. I have indicated something of
this in my Portal of Initiation.
In ancient times, such an event was actualised for humanity, when that
individuality who lived in Elias was reborn in John the Baptist, and
when, in the soul of John the Baptist, an angel entered for that
incarnation, and employed the corporality, and also the soul-nature of
John the Baptist, in order to effect what no human being would have
been able to bring about. In John lived an angel, an angel who had to
go before, and announce before, that which should live in Jesus of
Nazareth, in the widest sense, as true Ego-hood [Ichheit]. It is
extremely important to know that John the Baptist is a Maya
(illusion), and in him there lives an angel, a messenger. This stands
also in the Greek: Behold, I send my messenger = Angel.
The German alone thinks no more of this, that in the Greek
Angel stands in this place. Behold I send my angel
before him. And so there is indicated a deep world-mystery
which, preceded with the Baptist, was prophesied by Isaiah. He
characterises John the Baptist as a Maya, as an illusion, he who in
truth comprises the angel, who, as angel, has to announce what man
really should become through the reception of the Christ-Impulse
because the angel has to announce beforehand what man
only later has to become. And so, at this place, there should be said:
Behold, that which gives the egoity to the world, sends the
angel before thee, to whom the egoity should be given.
Now we pass to the third sentence. What does it signify? Here one must
call to mind the whole historic world-situation. How had things become
in the human breast, since the astral body had gradually lost the
power of stretching out its forces like tentacles, to look
clairvoyantly into the divine spiritual world? Formerly, when the
astral body was put in activity, it could see in the divine spiritual
world. This possibility disappeared more and more, and it became
dark in man. Man could formerly spread out his astral body over
all the beings of the divine spiritual world. Now he was alone in
himself alone is the same as eremos [Greek ernmos] That
which the soul was now, lived in the solitude. That also stands there
in the Greek text: Behold, how it appears, how it there speaks in the
solitude of the soul (or you could say in the wilderness of the
soul ) when the astral body could no more spread itself
out to the divine spiritual world. Give heed how it calls in thy
soul-wilderness, in thy soul-loneliness.
What is it that announces itself beforehand? Here we must be clear as
to the meaning of one quite definite word, when one uses it of
soul-phenomena, or of spiritual phenomena in general, above all in the
Hebrew, but also in the Greek: the word Kyrios. If one translates it
by the lord, as generally happens, then one is translating
truly absolute nonsense. What is meant by it? Everybody in ancient
times, who had such an utterance on his tongue, knew that something
was meant thereby which was connected with the soul-progress of the
human race. He knew, therefore, that the word Kyrios
pointed, indeed, to secrets of soul. We have in the soul, when we look
to the astral body, various forces. We usually call them thinking,
feeling, and willing. The soul thinks, feels, and wills. Those are the
three forces that work in the soul. But they are the serving forces of
the soul. As man progressed in evolution, these forces which formerly
were the lords, to whom man was given over (man had to wait
whether his thinking, feeling, willing was called) these single
soul forces became subject to the Kyrios, the Lord of the soul forces,
the I. Nothing else was understood by this word, when it
referred to the soul, than the I, though it no longer held
in the old sense: the divine spiritual thinks, feels, wills in me, but
I think, I feel, I will: The Lord makes itself
valid in the soul forces. Prepare yourselves, ye human souls, to go
such soul paths, that ye let the strong I awaken in
your souls: Kyrios, the Lord in your souls. Listen, how it calls
in the solitude of soul. Prepare the force or the direction of the
soul Lord, of the I. Make open his forces! Thus one must
translate it, approximately. Make its forces open, so that it
can come in, so that it is not the slave of thinking, feeling, and
willing. And if you translate these words: Behold, that
which is the ego, sends its angel before thee, who should give thee
the possibility to understand how it calls in the solitude of the
astral soul: prepare the directions of the I, make the forces open for
it, for the I, then you have a meaning in these significant
words of the prophet Isaiah; then you have an indication of the
greatest event in human evolution; thus you understand from this how
Isaiah speaks of John the Baptist, how he points out thereby that
man's soul-solitude longs for the approach of the Lord in the soul, of
the I. Then the words get force and weight. Thus, we must
grasp such words.
Why could John the Baptist be the bearer of the angel? He could be
this, because he had had a quite special initiation, The various
initiations are specialised. These initiations are not something
general; they are specialised. With those individualities who have a
quite special task, an initiation had to occur according to a quite
special kind of secret. Now for everything which happens at all in the
spiritual world, it is so provided that there is revealed in the
heavens, in the starry script what spiritual facts there are. One can
receive the sun-initiation, that means, enter the secrets of the
spiritual world, which is the world of Ahura Mazdao, for which the sun
is the external expression. But one can be initiated into the sun
secrets in a twelve-fold way, and each initiation is in a certain
connection a Sun-Initiation, but yet is differently constituted
with reference to the other eleven. According as man has this or the
other task for the whole of mankind, he receives a sun-initiation of
which one can say: This is a sun-initiation but such that one must
express by saying: The forces flow in so that the sun stands in the
sign of Cancer. That is different from the initiation one receives
which one must express by saying: The forces flow in as if the sun
stands in the sign of the Balance or Scales. They are the expressions
for different specialised initiations. And those individualities who
have such a high task, a high mission, as characterised here for John
the Baptist, they must be initiated in a quite special manner in a
special initiation, because only from this can they get the strong
force necessary to bring about this mission in the world, also, under
conditions in a quite one-sided way. And so, John the Baptist, in
order that he could become the bearer of the Angelos, had that
sun-initiation, which one can call the initiation from the sign of the
Waterman. As the sun stands in the sign of the Waterman, that is a
symbol for that kind of initiation which John the Baptist received, in
order to become the bearer of the angel, while he received the force
of the sun, as it flows down when it stands in the sign of the
Waterman, when it stands in such a relation to the other stars, that
one designates it with the expression: It stands in the sign of the
Waterman. That was the symbol that John had the Waterman-initiation.
The sign indeed received this name Waterman, because he who had the
Waterman-initiation received especially the power as a spiritual
initiate, of effecting in human beings what John effected as the
Waterman, as the Baptist: namely, to bring human beings to this, that
with the immersion in water, they got their etheric bodies so free,
that they came to such a self-knowledge, which made possible what was
the most important thing at the time. Human beings were immersed, and
the etheric body became free for a moment. Through the baptism in the
Jordan, man could feel the quite especial importance of the
world-historic epoch. Therefore John was initiated just in the Baptism
Initiation. And because one must express that symbolically, with the
flowing-down of the sunrays out of the sign in which the sun stands,
so one called this sign also the Waterman. Thus the name of the
human power is carried over.
Today a whole number of learned ignoramuses make the attempt to
interpret spiritual events by bringing down the heaven, as it were, to
the earth. They say: Now, that signifies the prominence of the sun.
All these learned people, who really do not know much, interpret human
events from out of the heavens. The reverse was the case. What lives
in man spiritually was carried over to the heavens, while one made use
of the heavens as a means of expression. So that John the Baptist
could say: I am he who baptises you with water. And that was the same
as if he had said: I am endowed with the initiation of the Waterman. I
baptise you with water, I am endowed with the initiation of the
Waterman. That was the word which John would have been able to say to
his intimate disciples. And just as the sun progresses in opposition
to its sense-path: if you proceed in opposition to Waterman, there
arises Virgin; then it passes to Balance. If we have initiation
in mind, we must consider the opposite path, on the other side: from
Waterman to Fishes. Thus John could say: Something will come that no
longer has to work as corresponds to the sun from out of the Waterman,
but as corresponds to the working of the sun from out of the Fishes.
One will come who will bring a higher baptism. When the spiritual sun
mounts higher, then there arises from the Waterman-baptism, the
baptism from spiritual water. The sun ascends in spirit from Waterman
to the Fishes: hence the well-known fish-symbol for the bearer of the
Christ, which is an ancient symbol. For just as in John through quite
special spiritual influences a Waterman initiation took place, so the
initiation, of which I have spoken here and there to you, which arose
through all mysteries in a secret way which transpired around Jesus, a
Fish-initiation a progression of the sun by one
constellation. That was what placed Jesus of Nazareth in his age, that
he was first subject to a Fish-initiation.
This is, one might say, sufficiently indicated to us in the gospel of
Mark. Yet such things can only be indicated in image form. Christ
Jesus draws together all those who are seeking fish. Therefore all his
first apostles are fishermen. And we can find obvious what I have said
the progress to the Fishes, when we are told: I have baptised
you with water. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. And as he
drew to the sea of Galilee that means, when the sun was so far
advanced, that one could see its counterpart from the Fishes
those are inspired who were called Simon, and Simon's brother, James,
and James' brother, fishers they are inspired in the
corresponding way. How can we understand all that? We cannot
understand it, unless we enter a little more closely into the means of
expression of that time.
Our modern means of expression is pedantic. If a man stands before us,
we say: there is a man. If a second stands before us, we say again:
there is a man. A third another one, etc. But we have merely
Maya before us. If a being has two legs, and a human countenance, then
in our pedantic way of expression we have but the one word: there is a
man. But what is a man for occultism? Nothing but Maya! Really, as he
stands there before us, man is nothing. He is about as much as
the rainbow which stands in the sky. How long is this anything? Only
so long as the necessary conditions are given between rain and
sunshine. If the sun and rain alter their relationship, it is gone. It
is just the same with man. He is only a streaming together of forces
of the macrocosm. We must seek the forces in heaven, here or there in
the macrocosm. There, where one assumes perhaps a man somewhere on the
earth, there is nothing for the occultist. But forces are streaming
from above down, from below up, and they intersect. And as the
peculiar constellation of rain and sunshine results in the rainbow, so
forces streaming out of the macrocosm from above and below result in a
phenomenon, and this appears as man. That is the man. Man is nothing
as he stands before us. In truth, he is a schema, a Maya, an illusion.
It is the cosmic forces which are real, which intersect there
where our eyes think they see a man. Just try and take this expression
earnestly: Man is nothing as he stands before us. He is but the shadow
of many forces. The being, however, who reveals itself in man, can
quite well be elsewhere, than at that point where this man is walking
on two legs. There are three men: The one is an ancient Persian, who
works at the plough in the old Persian agriculture. He looks like a
man in truth he is one of the souls, who are nourishing their
forces out of this or that world from below or above. The second is
perhaps an old Persian official. He is built through forces from
another world which intersect in him. If we will know him, we must
mount to these forces. All of you, as you are sitting here, are in
your reality quite somewhere else. Only the forces from your own real
being ray here.... Then stood a third Persian there, of whom one had
to say: He is really utter deception he is utterly a schema,
which stands there. What was there in reality? One must go up to the
sun, there are the forces which nourished this model. There above,
among the secrets of the sun, one finds that which one can call the
Gold Star Zarathustra; that sends the rays down, and here below
stands a model, which one calls Zarathustra. In truth, his being is
not there at all. That is the third.
Now it is important that in ancient times one was aware of what was
meant by such designations. One did not give names as one does today,
but one named people according to what lived in them, not according to
their external illusory appearance. We must be quite clear of this. So
that one should have been able to say: An ancient human being at the
time of Christ should have well understood when one pointed to John
the Baptist, and said: Here is the angel of God. One would only have
heeded that which had taken up the place. One spoke of the chief
matter, not of the subsidiary ones. Now let us assume the same mode of
expression was applied to Christ Jesus Himself. How must one have
spoken of Christ Jesus if one understood such things? No man at that
time would even have dreamt of naming that which then wandered over
the earth, this wandering body in flesh, the Christ Jesus; but
that was the sign, that what streamed down spiritually from out of the
sun, was caught up in this point in a quite special manner. If this
body, which was the body of Jesus, went from one place to another,
that was the rendering visible of the sun-force which went from one
place to another. This sun-force could also go alone. At times the
expression was so used, that Christ Jesus was in his home in the
flesh, but what was in him moved further, even without his body.
Especially in the John Gospel the expression is so used, that under
conditions, when this being moved purely spiritually, the writer of
the gospel speaks quite exactly as if this sun-force dwelt in a
fleshly body. Hence it is so important that the deeds of Christ Jesus
are always brought into connection with the physical sun, which is the
external expression for the spiritual world, which has been collected,
been caught up, at that point where the fleshly body wanders. If thus
the Christ Jesus heals, for instance, then it is the sun-force which
heals there. This must stand, however, at the right place in the
heavens. When evening was come, as the sun went down, they
brought to him all who were sick, diseased, etc. It is important
that one indicates that this healing power can flow down when the
external sun has set, when the sun only still works spiritually. And
as He needs a definite force in order to work, he had to take this out
of the spiritual sun, not out of the physical visible sun. And
early in the morning, while it was still dark, he arose and went
out. The path of the sun, and the sun-force is expressly
indicated to us: that this sun-force works, and that fundamentally
Jesus is only the external sign: that this path of the sun-force could
also be visible to the weak external eyes. And everywhere in the Mark
Gospel where we have mention of the Christ, the sun-force is meant,
which for that epoch of our earthly evolution was quite especially
active on that part of the earth called Palestine. And one could see
the sun-force. At this or that time, Christ went from this place
to that place. One could just as well say: At this time,
the spiritual force of the sun, as if gathered into a focus, went from
this to that place, And the body of Jesus was the external sign
which made visible to the eyes how the sun-force moved. The paths of
Jesus in Palestine were the paths of the sun-force come down to earth.
And if you draw the steps of Jesus as on a special map, then you have
a cosmic event; the working of the sun-force out of the macrocosm in
the land of Palestine. It is a question of this macrocosmic event. It
is especially the writer of the Mark Gospel who points this to us; the
writer of the Mark Gospel, who well knew that a body, which was the
vehicle of such a principle as the Christ-Principle, must be subdued
in a quite special way by his principle. It was the pointing to
that world which Zarathustra had so powerfully announced behind the
world of sense, the pointing to that world as it works into the human
world. And so now there was indicated through Christ Jesus how the
forces work on into the earth. Therefore a kind of repetition of the
Zarathustra-events must occur in that body which, as we have seen,
even if it was the body of the Nathan Jesus, was in a certain way
influenced by the Zarathustra Individuality.
Now let us hear the great, beautiful legends of Zarathustra. As his
mother gave him birth, the first wonder of Zarathustra showed itself
as the famous Zarathustra smile. The second wonder was when the king
of the district where Zarathustra was born, Durasrav, resolved to
murder Zarathustra, of whom the decadent magicians had said special
things. As the king appeared to stab the child, his arm was paralysed.
That was the second miracle after the birth of Zarathustra. And then,
the king who could not use his dagger against Zarathustra, had the
child taken among the wild beasts of the desert. That is the
expression for the fact that in earliest childhood, Zarathustra had to
see what man sees when he appears impure. Instead of the noble
group-souls, and the noble, higher spiritual beings, he sees the
outflow of his wild fantasy. That is the exposure in the desert to the
wild animals, among which Zarathustra remains unharmed. That is the
third miracle. The fourth was again a miracle among the wild animals,
etc. Always it was the good spirit of Ahura Mazdao who served
Zarathustra.
We find these wonders again in the Mark Gospel repeated: And
then the Spirit drove him into the wilderness (really it means
solitude) for forty days... and the angels ministered unto
him. Here we are shown that the body was prepared to take up, as
it were, in a focus, that which transpired in the macrocosm. What
happened with Zarathustra must happen again; being led to the wild
beasts.... This body took up what came in from out of the macrocosm.
The Mark Gospel already in its first lines places us within the
greatest cosmic connections. And I wanted to show you how basically,
if one but first understands the words in the right sense not
as in our modern pedantic speech, but as in the ancient speech, where
each word had living worlds behind it when one understands it
in the sense of this ancient speech, how then the Mark Gospel gets new
life, new force. But one must say: Our modern speech can only find
what was already laid in the words in these ancient speeches, after
much paraphrase. What we utter when we say: Man lives on the
earth and develops his ego. Man formerly lived on the moon, then it
was the angels who went through their human stage. All of that
lies behind, when it runs: Behold, I send my angel before
man. And the words are not to be understood, without the
presupposition of what is offered in spiritual science. And people in
the present should be sincere, and say of the words at the beginning
of the Mark Gospel: That is incomprehensible. Instead of doing this,
they stand there in petty pride and explain spiritual science as
fantasy, which puts all kinds of things into what they know in a
simple way. But these people of today do not know it at all. And today
one no longer has the principle that one had, for instance, in ancient
Persia, where from epoch to epoch, the ancient holy documents were
rewritten, in order to be clothed anew for each epoch. Thus the divine
spiritual word as Zend-Avesta was transformed, and again transformed,
and what exists today is the last form. Seven times the Persian Bible
was written anew. And anthroposophy should teach men how necessary it
is that books in which the holy secrets are written must be
transformed from age to age. For especially when one will preserve the
mighty style of old, one may not as it were attempt to remain as much
as possible with the old words. One cannot do it, one understands them
no more, but one must attempt to transform the ancient words into a
direct understanding of the present. We have tried this summer to do
that with Genesis.* You saw, then, how many of the words must be
transformed. You have perhaps today got a little idea of how the words
must also be transformed in the Gospel of Mark.
* Secrets of Creation. A series of lectures on the Book of Genesis delivered by the author at Munich, August, 1910, now out of print, but to be reprinted shortly in a second and revised edition.
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