The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Gospels

[ 1 ] What is to be subjected to historical consideration about the "life of Jesus" is contained in the Gospels. According to Harnack, one of those considered to be the greatest historical experts on the subject, everything that does not come from this source can be "conveniently written on a quarto page". But what kind of documents are these gospels? The fourth, the "Gospel of John", differs so much from the others that those who believe they have to take the path of historical investigation in this field come to the conclusion: "If John has the genuine tradition about the life of Jesus, then that of the first three Gospels (the Synoptics) is untenable; if the Synoptics are right, then the fourth Evangelist is to be rejected as a source" (Otto Schmiedel, Die Hauptprobleme der Leben Jesu-Forschung page 15). This is an assertion made from the point of view of the historian. Here, where the mystical content of the Gospels is concerned, this point of view can neither be accepted nor rejected. However, the following judgment must be pointed out: "Measured by the standard of conformity, inspiration and completeness, these writings leave much to be desired, and even measured by human standards, they suffer from not a few imperfections." This is the judgment of a Christian theologian (Harnack in "Wesen des Christentums"). For those who believe in the mystical origin of the Gospels, the inconsistencies are easily explained; for them there is also a harmony between the fourth Gospel and the first three. For all these writings cannot want to be mere historical traditions in the usual sense of the word. They did not (see page 101 f) want to give a historical biography. What they wanted to give was always already prefigured as the typical life of the Son of God in the mystery traditions. They did not draw from history, but from the mystery traditions. Of course, in the various mystery cult sites, these traditions were not identical to the point of literal agreement. After all, there was so much agreement that the Buddhists told the life of their god-man in almost exactly the same way as the evangelists of Christianity told theirs. But of course there were differences. One need only assume that the four evangelists drew from four different mystery traditions. It speaks for the outstanding personality of Jesus that he arouses the belief in four scribes belonging to different traditions that he is the one who corresponds to their type of initiate to such a perfect degree that they can relate to him as to a personality who lives the typical course of life outlined in their mysteries. Then, by the way, they described his life according to their mystery traditions. And if the first three evangelists (the Synoptics) tell similar stories, this does not prove more than that they drew from similar mystery traditions. The fourth evangelist imbued his writing with ideas reminiscent of the religious philosopher Philo. This again proves nothing other than that he emerged from the same mystical tradition that Philo was close to. - In the Gospels we are dealing with various elements. Firstly, with statements of fact which appear in such a way that they initially seem to claim to be historical facts. Secondly, with parables that only use the narrative of facts to symbolize a deeper truth. And thirdly, with teachings that are supposed to be the content of the Christian world view. There is no actual parable in the Gospel of John. It was drawn from a mystical school in which parables were not believed to be necessary. - However, the story of the cursing of the fig tree sheds a bright light on how historical deeds and parables behave in the first gospels. In Mark 11:11 ff we read: "And the Lord entered the temple at Jerusalem, and saw everything; and in the evening he went out to Bethany with the twelve. And the next day, as they were leaving Bethany, he was hungry. And he saw a fig tree afar off with leaves on it, so he went to see if he could find anything on it. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not yet time for figs. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Now therefore eat no fruit of thee for ever." Luke tells a parable in the same passage (13:6 f.): "And he told them this parable: A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then he said to the vinedresser, 'Look, I have come every year for three years looking for fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut it down. Why does it hinder the land?" It is a parable that symbolizes the worthlessness of the old teaching, which is represented in the unfruitful fig tree. Mark relates what is meant figuratively as a fact that appears to be historical. It may be assumed that facts in the Gospels are therefore not to be taken as historical at all, as if they were to be regarded only as facts of the sensory world, but as mystical; as experiences for the perception of which spiritual perception is necessary, and which come from various mystical traditions. But then there ceases to be a difference between the Gospel of John and the Synoptics. For the mystical interpretation, the historical investigation is not even considered. One or the other Gospel may have been written a few decades earlier or later: for the mystic they are all of equal historical value; the Gospel of John just as much as the others.

[ 2 ] And the "miracles": they do not offer the slightest difficulty to the mystical explanation. They are supposed to break through the physical laws of the world. They only do this as long as they are taken for events that are supposed to have taken place in the physical, in the transient, in such a way that ordinary sensory perception could have easily seen through them. But if they are experiences that can only be understood on a higher, spiritual level of existence, then it is self-evident that they cannot be understood from the laws of the physical order of nature.

[ 3 ] So first you have to read the Gospels properly, then you will know to what extent they want to tell us about the founder of Christianity. They want to tell in the style of mystery messages. They tell how a mystic tells of an initiate. Only they pass on the initiation as a unique peculiarity of a single individual. And they make the salvation of mankind dependent on people adhering to this peculiar initiate. What had come to the initiates was the "Kingdom of God". The Unique One has brought this kingdom to all those who wish to adhere to him. A personal matter for the individual has become a church matter for those who want to acknowledge Jesus as their Lord.

[ 4 ] One can understand that this has become so if one assumes that the mystery wisdom has been embedded in the Israelite popular religion. Christianity emerged from Judaism. We need not be astonished that we find, as it were, grafted on to Judaism the mystery beliefs that were common to Greek and Egyptian spiritual life. If one examines the popular religions, one finds different ideas about the spiritual. If one goes back everywhere to the deeper priestly wisdom, which emerges as the spiritual core of the various folk religions, one finds agreement everywhere. Plato knows himself to be in agreement with the Egyptian priestly wisdom in that he wants to explain the core of Greek wisdom in his philosophical world view. It is said of Pythagoras that he traveled to Egypt and India and that he studied with the sages of these countries. Personalities who lived around the time of the emergence of Christianity found so much agreement between the philosophical teachings of Plato and the deeper meaning of the Mosaic scriptures that they called Plato an Attic-speaking Moses.

[ 5 ] Mystery wisdom was therefore present everywhere. From Judaism it took on a form that it had to assume if it wanted to become a world religion. - Judaism awaited the Messiah. No wonder that the personality of a unique initiate could only be understood by the Jews in such a way that this one and only must be the Messiah. Indeed, from here even a special light falls on the fact that what had previously only been an individual matter in the mysteries became a matter for the people. The Jewish religion has always been a popular religion. The people saw themselves as a whole. Their Jao was the God of the whole people. If the Son was to be born, he could only become the Savior of the people again. Not the individual Myste could be redeemed for himself; the whole people had to be granted this redemption. Within the basic ideas of the Jewish religion it is therefore justified that one dies for all. - And it is certain that there were also mysteries within Judaism which could be carried from the darkness of the secret cult into the religion of the people. A developed mysticism existed alongside the priestly wisdom that clung to the external formulas of Pharisaism. As elsewhere, this mysterious mystical wisdom is also described here. When an initiate once recited such wisdom and his listeners suspected the secret meaning, they said: "O old man, what have you done? O that you had kept silent! You think you can sail the immense sea without sail or mast. What are you doing? Do you want to go up? You can't do that. Do you want to sink into the depths? There yawns before thee an immeasurable abyss." And the Kabbalists, from whom the above also comes, tell of four rabbis. Four rabbis sought the secret paths to the divine. The first died; the second lost his mind; the third wreaked tremendous havoc; and only the fourth, Rabbi Akiba, went in and out in peace.

[ 6 ] You can see that even in Judaism there was ground on which a unique initiate could develop. Such a person only had to say to himself: I do not want salvation to remain the preserve of a select few. I want all people to participate in this salvation. He had to carry out into all the world what the chosen ones had experienced in the temples of the Mysteries. He had to want to take it upon himself to be in the spirit of his community through his personality what the mystery cult used to be for those who had taken part in it. Certainly, he could not easily give the experiences of the Mysteries to his congregation. Nor could he want to. But he wanted to give everyone the certainty of what was seen as truth in the Mysteries. He wanted the life that flowed in the Mysteries to flow through the further historical development of humanity. In this way, he wanted to raise them to a higher level of existence. "Blessed are those who believe and do not see." He wanted to plant the certainty that there is a divine in the form of trust unshakeably in the hearts. He who stands on the outside and has this trust will certainly get further than he who stands without it. It must have weighed like a nightmare on Jesus' mind that among the outsiders there can be many who do not find the way. The gap between the initiates and the "people" should be less wide. Christianity should be a means by which everyone could find the way. If he is not ripe for it, he is at least not cut off from the possibility of participating in the mystery current in a certain unconsciousness. "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." Those who are not yet able to participate in the initiation should also be able to enjoy some of the fruits of the Mysteries from now on. From then on, the kingdom of God was not to be entirely dependent on "outward appearances", no, "it is not here or there; it is within you". He was less concerned with how far this or that person would get in the realm of the spirit; what mattered to him was that everyone had the conviction that there was such a spiritual realm. "Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." In other words, have faith in the divine: the time will come when you will find it.