The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Based on what we were able to explain yesterday, there is a significant difference between what might be called the knowledge of the spiritual world throughout the ages and that particular kind of knowledge of the divine-spiritual world which could be sought through the unique nature and organization of the Hebrew people specifically. We have pointed out that this Hebrew people, already in their forefather Abraham or Abram, received a very special constitution, which consisted in the fact that a physical instrument, a physical organ, was incorporated into the human organism in order, so to speak, to rise through the means of sensory perception—as far as possible—to a certain—not merely a sense, but a knowledge—of the divine-spiritual. Knowledge of the divine-spiritual has existed and exists everywhere and always. But this, so to speak, eternal knowledge of the divine-spiritual is attained through the path of mystery initiation, through the path of initiation in general. We must distinguish this—which can be attained through a particular human development, so to speak, by artificial means within the evolution of humanity—from that knowledge of the spiritual world which is the normal one for a given time, emerging, so to speak, as a special mission in human development. Thus, for the ancient Atlantean era, we could call an astral-clairvoyant perception of the divine-spiritual the normal one. For the times, however, in which the Hebrew people flourished, the normal—that is, the external, exoteric—knowledge of the spiritual world is that which comes about with the aid of a special physical organ through the power of cognition bound to such a physical organ. And we have already pointed out that the people of Abraham arrived at this knowledge in such a way that they felt, as it were, the divine existence fused with their own inner being. It was thus inner knowledge—the grasping of the divine in one’s innermost being—that had become possible through this organ.

[ 2 ] But this grasping of the divine-spiritual within through this insight did not immediately become possible to the extent that the individual human being could have said: I immerse myself in my own inner being; I seek to grasp this inner being as deeply as I possibly can, and then I find the drop of divine-spiritual existence that can give me an insight into the nature of what the outer world, too, experiences and is interwoven with in terms of the divine-spiritual. —It was not like that at first. This only came about through the appearance, through the revelation of Christ within the development of humanity. For the ancient Hebrew people, the possibility of experiencing the divine in the national spirit only arose when the individual felt himself to be a member of the entire people, not as a single individual. When he felt, through his blood, that he belonged to a flowing line of generations, then he felt the consciousness of God or Yahweh living in the national consciousness, in his blood. Therefore, if one wishes to describe it accurately in the spiritual-scientific sense, one cannot describe the God Yahweh by saying: He is the God of Abraham. That would only describe him inaccurately. Rather, one must say: He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; he is the being who flows from generation to generation, who reveals himself in the national consciousness through individual human beings.

[ 3 ] The difference—and the great advance—between the understanding of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and that of Christianity lies in the fact that Christian understanding recognizes within the individual human being the very same reality that ancient Hebrew understanding could only attain through immersion in the spirit of the people, in the spirit that flowed through the blood of generations. Thus Abraham could say: Insofar as I am promised to be the founder of a people that will spread through the generations descended from me, the God whom we acknowledge as the highest will live in the blood that flows through them; He reveals Himself to us in the consciousness of our people. — That became the norm.

[ 4 ] Throughout the ages, a higher understanding of the divine-spiritual has persisted: the knowledge of the mysteries. This is not dependent on those other, specific forms. During the time of the ancient Atlantean development, one could look into the divine-spiritual depths of existence through a certain astral-etheric clairvoyance; one could develop one’s inner self and attain a knowledge of the mysteries or oracles. And even in the era when Hebrew knowledge was the norm, one could ascend in certain places by perceiving the Divine not within the body, as the Abrahamites did, but outside the body; one could ascend to the Divine-Spiritual from the perspective of the Eternal, by raising one’s own Eternal to behold the Divine-Spiritual.

[ 5 ] You can easily imagine that one thing was essential for Abraham. He came to know the divine-spiritual in his own unique way, through a physical organ and through physical perception. In this way, he came to know the ruling God of the world. If he wanted to place himself actively within the overall path of evolution, then it was infinitely important for him to recognize that the God who reveals Himself in the collective consciousness is the same One who has been acknowledged in the Mysteries throughout the ages as the creative and active Deity. Thus, Abraham had to be able to identify his God with the God of the Mysteries. This was possible only under a very specific condition. Under a very specific condition, he had to be given the certainty that the same forces speak in the collective consciousness that speak in a higher way in the Mysteries. If we wish to understand this certainty, we must bring to mind a fact of human development.

[ 6 ] In my *Outline of Esoteric Science*, you can read that there were initiates in ancient Atlantis who were called oracle priests there; the name is not important. I have also pointed out that one of these great initiates was the leader of all Atlantean oracles, the Sun-initiate, in contrast to the subordinate oracle sites of Atlantis, which housed Mercury-, Mars-, and Jupiter-initiates, and so on. I have also pointed out that this great Sun-initiate, the leader of the Sun Oracle, was also the great leader of the significant cultural colony that moved from the West to the East, from Atlantis to the interior of Asia, in order to radiate from there and inaugurate the post-Atlantean culture. This great initiate, who was already such at that time, withdrew to mysterious sites in the interior of Asia. He first gave those great sages whom we call the holy Rishis the opportunity to be great teachers of their peoples. And it was he, this great, mysterious initiate, who also bestowed his initiation upon Zarathustra or Zoroaster.

[ 7 ] The initiation given to Zarathustra, however, was different from that given to the Indian rishis; for they had different tasks. The rishis were given an initiation such that, as it were of their own accord, as they further developed their inner selves, they were able to articulate the great mysteries of existence. Through this, they became the great leaders and teachers of the pre-Vedic, ancient Indian culture. There was something else for them as well, which, though produced by artificial means, was in this respect quite similar to the ancient Atlantean clairvoyance, which was distributed individually among the seven Rishis. Each of the seven Rishis had his own specific domain. Just as the various oracle sites had their own special domains, so each of the seven Rishis had his own special task. And a council spoke when each of the seven Rishis said what he knew of the primordial wisdom of the world. They had received this from the great Sun-initiate, who had transplanted the ancient Atlantean wisdom from the West to the East and had passed it on in a special way to those who were to become the bearers of post-Atlantean culture. In a different way, he gave it to Zarathustra, so that Zarathustra could speak as I have also indicated.

[ 8 ] The Rishis said: To reach the highest Divine-Spiritual, one must regard everything in the external world—everything that presents itself to the external senses—as Maya, or illusion; one must turn away from it and turn one’s gaze entirely inward: then a world different from the one before us opens up within us. — Thus, by turning away from the illusory world of Maya and developing one’s inner self to ascend into the divine-spiritual spheres—that was the teaching of the ancient Indian Rishis. Zoroaster was different. He did not turn away from what manifests externally. He did not say: The external is Maya or illusion, from which we must turn away. Rather, he said: This Maya or illusion is the revelation, the true garment of divine-spiritual existence. We must not turn away from it, but on the contrary, we must explore it. We must see in the body of sunlight the outer fabric within which Ahura Mazda weaves and lives!

[ 9 ] In a certain sense, then, Zarathustra’s standpoint was the opposite of that of the ancient Rishis. It is precisely this that has made post-Indian culture significant: it was meant to impress upon the outside world what human beings can attain through their spiritual efforts. And we have also seen how Zarathustra had transmitted the best he had to give, in the manner described, to Moses and Hermes. In order for the wisdom of Moses to bear fruit in the right way and to sprout as a seed, it had to be rooted in the folk tradition that traced its lineage back to its forefather Abraham. For Abraham had first developed within himself the capacity to acquire a consciousness of Yahweh. But he had to know that the God who could reveal Himself within him to the physical powers of cognition speaks with the same voice with which the eternal, all-pervading God of the Mysteries speaks, only that He revealed Himself in a limited way, namely, as Abraham was able to perceive Him.

[ 10 ] It is not readily possible for such a significant being as the great Atlantean Solar Initiate to speak immediately in a language that is understandable to those who live at any given time and have a special mission. An individuality as exalted as that of the great Solar Initiate, who leads an eternal existence in his individuality—of which it has rightly been said, to indicate the eternal nature of this individuality, that one should not mention his name or age, nor his father or mother— such a great guide of human existence can reveal himself only by assuming something through which he becomes akin to those to whom he can reveal himself. Thus, in order to give Abraham the appropriate enlightenment, the Teacher of the Rishis, the Teacher of Zarathustra, assumed a form in which he wore the etheric body that had been preserved by Abraham’s forefather, the very same etheric body that had already existed in Abraham’s forefather, in Shem, the son of Noah. This etheric body of Shem had been preserved, just as the etheric body of Zarathustra had been preserved for Moses, and the great initiate of the Sun Mystery made use of it in order to be able to reveal himself to Abraham in a comprehensible manner. This encounter between Abraham and the great initiate of the Sun Mystery is the encounter described to us in the Old Testament as Abraham’s meeting with the king, with the priest of the Most High God, with Melchizedek or Malek-Zadik, as he has come to be called (Genesis 14:18–20). This is an encounter of the greatest, of the most universal significance: this encounter of Abraham with the great initiate of the Sun Mystery, who—merely so as not to startle him, so to speak—revealed himself in the etheric body of Shem, the progenitor of the Semitic tribe. And the Bible points to something significant that is, unfortunately, all too little understood, namely, where, so to speak, that which Melchizedek is able to give to Abraham can come from. What can Melchizedek give to Abraham? He can give him the mystery of solar existence, which Abraham can, of course, understand only in his own way—the very same mystery that lies behind the Zarathustra revelation, to which Zarathustra first pointed prophetically.

[ 11 ] If we consider the fact that Zarathustra pointed out to his chosen disciples what lives spiritually behind the body of sunlight as Ahura Mazdao, saying: “Look, behind this lies something that is not yet united with the Earth, but which will one day pour into the Earth’s evolution and descend upon the Earth”—if we acknowledge that Zarathustra could only prophetically foreshadow the Sun Spirit, the Christ, of whom he said: He will come in a human body—then we must say that for the human being who was to prepare and later bring about the incarnation of the Christ on Earth, even greater depths of this solar mystery had to be revealed. This came about because Zarathustra’s teacher himself exerted an influence on Abraham during that encounter, bringing his influence, so to speak, from the same source from which the Christ influence then comes. This is symbolically hinted at again in the Bible when it is said: As Abraham goes to meet Melchizedek, this King of Salem, this priest of the highest of the gods, brings him bread and grape juice. “Bread and grape juice” are distributed once more later on: When the mystery of Christ is to be expressed to his followers at the institution of the Lord’s Supper, it is done through bread and grape juice! By emphasizing the similarity of the sacrifice in such a meaningful way, it is pointed out that it is the same source from which Melchizedek draws, and from which Christ draws.

[ 12 ] So an influence was to be exerted—one that would later descend to Earth—indirectly through Melchizedek. And this influence was to be exerted upon the great forerunner of the later event, upon Abraham. And the result of this encounter between Abraham and Melchizedek was that Abraham now sensed: what drives him, what he addresses by the name Yahweh or Jehovah as the highest he can conceive—this comes from the same source from which the consciousness of the Initiate, the highest earthly knowledge, also comes—from the highest God who interweaves and permeates all worlds. That was the consciousness that Abraham could now carry forward. - Another awareness dawned upon Abraham: the awareness that there is indeed something in the blood of the generations, flowing down through the people, that can truly be compared only to what can be beheld in the Mysteries, when the clairvoyant gaze turns out into the mysteries of existence and understands the language of the cosmos.

[ 13 ] I have already pointed out how, in the Mysteries, the secrets of the cosmos are expressed by speaking a language of the stars and using the secrets of the cosmos as a means of expression for what one wishes to convey. There were times when the Mystery teachers clothed what was to be expressed in such words and images that were drawn from the constellations of the stars. One saw, as it were, in the paths of the stars, in the positions of the stars relative to one another, the images through which one sought to express what the human being experiences spiritually when he or she rises up to the Divine-Spiritual.

[ 14 ] What, then, did the wisdom of the mysteries read in this celestial script? It read therein the mysteries of the divinity that weaves through and lives within the world. The orders of the stars were the visible expression of the divinity. One turned one’s gaze to the universe and said: There the divinity makes itself known! And how it makes itself known is described to us by the orders and harmonies of the stars. — Thus, for such a view of the world, the world-god expressed himself in the order of the stars.

[ 15 ] If this God of the world was to manifest himself in a particular way through the mission of the Hebrew people, he had to do so in accordance with the same order that is laid out in the cosmos through the paths of the stars. That is to say, through the blood of the generations—which contained the outward instrument of Yahweh’s revelations—a similar order had to be expressed as that expressed in the paths of the stars. In other words: In the descendants of Abraham there had to be something that, in the succession of generations and in blood kinship, was a mirror image of what the writing of the stars is in the cosmos. That is why Abraham received the promise: “Your descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky!”—This is the correct interpretation of the phrase that is usually rendered as “Your descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” which merely alludes to the multitude of descendants (Genesis 22:17). But it is not the multitude that is meant, but rather that such an order should prevail among the descendants as was perceived in the heavens in the language of the gods through the grouping of the stars. There one looked up upon an order such as is represented in the order of the zodiac. And in the position of the wandering stars, the planets, relative to the zodiac, those constellations were expressed in which one found the language to express the deeds of the gods as they weave through the universe. This firm bond, then, which is manifested in the zodiac and in the relationship of the planets to the twelve signs of the zodiac, had to find expression in the blood kinship among the descendants of Abraham.

[ 16 ] Thus, in the twelve sons of Jacob, in the twelve tribes of the Hebrew people, we find the images of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Just as the language of the gods is expressed in the twelve zodiacal images above, so Yahweh expresses himself in the blood of the Jewish people flowing down through the generations, which divided into the twelve tribes according to the twelve sons of Jacob. We designate that which is arranged within this constellation of the zodiac by the names of the planets: Venus, Mercury, the Moon, the Sun, and so on. And we have seen how that which unfolds over time in the course of the Hebrew people’s history as distinct phases can indeed, in a certain sense, be paralleled with the path of the planets through the zodiac: that we must draw a parallel between David, the royal singer, and Hermes or Mercury; that we may draw a parallel between the time of the Babylonian captivity—that is, the configuration that received a new impetus through the Yahweh revelation some six centuries before our era—and the name of Venus as a name within our planetary system. This was to be hinted at to Abraham. So that, for example, the way a personality like David fits into the tribal lineage parallels the way Mercury stands in relation to the zodiac. The tribe of Judah, for example, corresponds to the constellation of Leo, and David’s placement within the tribe of Judah would correspond in the history of the Hebrew people to what in the cosmos would be the covering of the constellation of Leo by Mercury. Thus one can read in all the details—in the line of descent, in the peculiar transmission of the royal or priestly office, in the struggles or victories of one tribe or another, in the entire Hebrew history—what the covering of the individual constellations out in outer space signifies. This was contained in the significant words: “Your descendants shall be ordered like the harmony of the stars in the heavens.”—We must simply not see in the documents, which are based on occultism, those trivialities that are so readily perceived in them, but we must assume that these documents possess infinite depth.

[ 17 ] We can indeed see how there is a clear order in this succession of generations, which is then described to us in the Gospel of Matthew. We see that this evangelist suggests to us how, in a very special way, the blood of that body was composed, a body that was first to receive the individuality of Zarathustra, so that this individuality of Zarathustra could bring about the revelation of the Christ on earth.

[ 18 ] So what had been achieved throughout the forty-two generations from Abraham to Joseph? What had been achieved was that, by the last in the line of generations, a blending of blood had come about, one that had taken place in accordance with the laws of the starry world and the sacred mysteries. And in this mixture of blood, which the individuality of Zarathustra needed in order to carry out the great work, there was an inner order, a harmony, that corresponded to one of the most beautiful, most significant orders of the starry system. Thus the mixture of blood that Zarathustra found was a reflection of the entire cosmos. This blood, formed over generations, was blended in the same way that the orders of the cosmos are arranged. All of this underlies that significant document which we now have before us, if I may say so, in a diluted form in the Gospel according to Matthew. This profound mystery of a people’s becoming as a reflection of a cosmic becoming underlies it.

[ 19 ] This is how those who first knew something of the great mystery of Christ felt. They already sensed in the blood flowing through this Matthew-Jesus of Nazareth a reflection of the cosmos, a reflection of that Spirit which reigns throughout the cosmos. They expressed this mystery by saying: In the blood in which the I—who was then Jesus of Nazareth—was to live, lived the Spirit of the entire cosmos. If, then, this physical body were to be born, it had to be an imprint of the Spirit of the entire cosmos, the Spirit that reigns in the world. - That was originally the formula: that the power underlying that mixture of blood, which became that of Zarathustra or Jesus of Nazareth, was the Spirit of our entire cosmos—precisely that Spirit which, after the separation of the Sun from our Earth, originally permeated with its brooding presence that which had emerged in the evolution of the world. From the Munich lectures already mentioned, we know: If we do not wish to translate the beginning of Genesis, the “Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve’et ha’aretz,” with the trivial words of today, which no longer correspond to the ancient meaning, but if we seek out the true meaning, then we must translate it as: “In that which had come over from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon stages of existence, the Elohim conceived in cosmic activity that which reveals itself outwardly, that which stirs within. And over that which stirs within, and through that which stirs, reigned the deep darkness; but spreading out into it, brooding over it, permeating it with warmth—much like the hen broods over the egg—was the creative Spirit of the Elohim, Ruach-Elohim.” What brooded there as Spirit is the very same, exactly the same, that which then brought about the orders that could be expressed in a certain way through the constellations of the stars. Thus the original initiates of the Christ Mystery felt that the mixing of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth was a reflection of what Ruach-Elohim was working through the existence of the world. And so they called the blood, which had been prepared in this way for the great event, “created by the Spirit of the world’s existence,” by the very same Spirit that is called Ruach in that significant description in Genesis, in the “Bereshit bara...”

[ 20 ] This sacred meaning, which is truly greater than any other, trivial meaning, underlies—as the higher meaning—what is called “the conception by the Holy Spirit of the Universe.” This underlies what is contained in the words: “And the mother of this child was filled with the power of this Spirit of the Universe” (Matt. 1:18). We need only sense the full magnitude of such a mystery, and we will then find that in this way of presenting the matter there lies something infinitely higher than in all that is exoterically given in the Conceptio immaculata, in the “Immaculate Conception.” One need only compare two things in the Bible with one another if one wishes to recognize the true intent of the Bible and move away from a trivial interpretation of the Immaculate Conception. The first is this: Why would the writer of the Gospel of Matthew list the entire line of generations from Abraham down to Joseph if he wanted to say that the birth of Jesus of Nazareth had nothing to do with this entire genealogy? He goes to great lengths to show how the bloodline runs from ‘Abraham down to Joseph,’ and then he is supposed to say that the blood of Jesus of Nazareth actually has nothing to do with this bloodline? And the other fact is that Ruach-Elohim, who is called the Holy Spirit in the Bible, is of the feminine gender in the Hebrew language, a feminine noun, which surely must also be taken into account in some way. — We will return to this later; for now I only wanted to evoke a sense of how vast the conceptual framework is that underlies this mystery at its very foundation.

[ 21 ] What took place at the beginning of our calendar, and what was known only to the sages who were truly initiated into the mysteries of the world's existence, was first expressed in Aramaic in the document that forms the basis of the Gospel of Matthew. And it is possible to prove—not only through occultism but also through purely philological research—that this document, which forms the basis of the Gospel of Matthew, already existed in the year 71. You can find the true genesis of the Gospels described in my book *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*. But if one proceeds with true precision, one can even demonstrate philologically that everything said about a later conception of the Gospel of Matthew is incorrect; for we can prove that as early as the year 71—that is, a relatively short time after the events in Palestine—an Aramaic original manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew was in existence. But since I am not here to present philological facts, but only those of the spiritual sciences, I will point out only one thing from Talmudic literature, which is fully attested by Jewish scholars.

[ 22 ] In Talmudic literature, we find a reference to Rabbi Gamaliel II being involved in an inheritance dispute with his sister, which arose because their father had been killed in a conflict with the Romans in the year 70. And we are told that Rabbi Gamaliel II stood before a judge at that time who, according to everything the Talmudic literature reports, was a half-Christian, a so-called Jewish Christian. Such people already existed in those judicial offices that had been established for the Jews by the Romans. Now something curious happened: Rabbi Gamaliel II was fighting with his sister over the inheritance, over his father’s estate. And before his judge, who already knew something of Christianity, he argued that according to the law in force among the Jews, only the son, but not the daughter, could inherit, and that the inheritance therefore belonged to him alone. The judge then rebuked him, saying that the Torah had indeed been set aside in the circles within which he served as judge, and since he sought justice and judgment from him, he would not judge merely according to the law of the Jews, but according to the law that had taken the place of the Torah. All this had taken place, as already mentioned, in the year 71, since Gamaliel’s father had perished in the persecution of the Jews in the year 70. Now Rabbi Gamaliel saw no other way out but to bribe the judge. So the bribed judge made a citation the next day, and it was one borrowed from the Aramaic original of the Gospel of Matthew. And what did the judge say? That Christ “did not come to break the Law of Moses, but to fulfill it!” (Matt. 5:17). In this way, he believed he could clear his conscience for bending the law by claiming that he was judging in the spirit of Christ when he awarded the inheritance to Gamaliel.

[ 23 ] From this we know that in the year 71 there existed a Christian document from which words were borrowed that are now contained in the Gospel of Matthew. We thus have this external indication—namely, that passage is cited in Aramaic—that this document, this Aramaic original of the Gospel of Matthew, was at least partially extant at that time. We will have to discuss what occult research has to say about this later. This should only be mentioned now to show: Even when one draws on external scholarship, one must not do what is so often done, namely, to compile everything that these gentlemen happen to be able to read, while, for example, disregarding Talmudic literature, which is extraordinarily significant for what can also be recognized exoterically about these matters.

[ 24 ] Thus we see that, even from an external perspective, we are on fairly solid ground if we date the Gospel of Matthew to a relatively early period. That alone, I would say, provides a certain external proof that the people involved in the composition of the Gospel of Matthew were not very far removed in time from the events in Palestine, so that it is thereby even exoterically established that one could not simply lie to people’s faces at that time and say that the Christ Jesus of whom we speak had not lived at the beginning of our era. For it was not even half a century later, so that one still had to speak to eyewitnesses and could not tell them things that had not taken place. These are matters that are exoterically important, and we mention them only as evidence for the exoteric aspect of the matter.

[ 25 ] We have thus seen how, through the mysteries of the cosmos, events were orchestrated in the course of human evolution to create, out of the—so to speak—filtered blood of the Hebrew people, who had absorbed the order of the universe itself, a body in which the great initiate Zarathustra would once again incarnate. For the Gospel of Matthew speaks of the Zarathustra individuality; and it is no other individuality than the Zarathustra individuality of which this Gospel speaks. Now we must not imagine that all this, which we draw forth, as it were, from the deepest mysteries of world evolution, took place so openly before everyone’s eyes. Even for contemporaries, it was shrouded in a deep mystery and comprehensible only to the very few initiates. It is therefore understandable that such profound silence reigns over everything that took place at that time as the greatest event in human evolution. And when historians today refer to their documents and say that these documents are silent about this event, this should not surprise us, but rather seem quite natural.

[ 26 ] Now that we have described how this greatest event in human evolution was prepared from the perspective of the Zarathustra tradition, we must now also consider other preparatory currents leading up to this great event. Much, very much happened in human evolution immediately before and also immediately after these events surrounding Christ had taken place. This event was, in fact, prepared long beforehand. Just as it was prepared from the outer side—through Zarathustra sending forth Moses and Hermes, and through Melchizedek, through the Sun Mystery itself, the outer shell of Jesus of Nazareth being prepared—so another was also prepared, as it were a side current of this great current; yet, even though it is only a side current, it nevertheless has something to do with the great main current that comes from Zarathustra. This side current is slowly preparing itself in those places that are indicated to us even by external history, in that our attention is drawn to certain sects that strove for a particular development of the soul, and which are described to us by Philo as the “Therapists.” The Therapists were members of a mysterious sect who sought to purify their souls through inner means, in order to bring forth what is defiled by external interaction and external knowledge, and thereby to rise into pure spiritual spheres. A branch of this sect of the Therapists, in which that side current was further developed, were the “Essene” or “Esseni” living in Asia. All these people—you can find a brief description of them in my *Christianity as a Mystical Fact*—who were united in these sects, shared a certain common spiritual guidance. A certain spiritual guidance was present among both the Therapeuts and the Essenes. And if we wish to become acquainted with this spiritual guidance in an exoteric sense, we must recall what we discussed last year in the lectures on the Gospel of Luke. We cited the mystery of Gautama Buddha, as it is also treated exoterically in the Eastern scriptures, and we said that whoever wishes to become a Buddha in the course of their development must first become a Bodhisattva. We explained how the one known in history as “Buddha” was also first a Bodhisattva and then became a Buddha. Until the twenty-ninth year of his physical life as the son of King Suddhodana, he was still a Bodhisattva, and it was only in the twenty-ninth year that he became a Buddha through his inner soul development. There are now a whole series of Bodhisattvas in the development of humanity; and that Bodhisattva who became a Buddha six centuries before our era is one of the Bodhisattvas who guide the development of humanity. Such an individuality, which ascends from the dignity of a Bodhisattva to the dignity of a Buddha, does not later incarnate again in a physical body on Earth. We have then seen how the Buddha manifested at the birth of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke by uniting with this Jesus—whom we called the Jesus of the Nathanic line—through his etheric body. And we have seen that this is a different Jesus than the one we first speak of in the Gospel of Matthew.

[ 27 ] In the attainment of Buddhahood by Suddhodana’s son, we see the culmination of an ancient process. In fact, this development, which reaches its conclusion with the attainment of Buddhahood by that Bodhisattva, belongs to the same current to which the sacred Rishis of India also belong; but this current reached a certain conclusion with the attainment of Buddhahood by that Bodhisattva. — When a Bodhisattva becomes a Buddha, his successor takes his place. This is also recounted in the ancient Indian legend, which states that the Bodhisattva who descended to attain Buddhahood as the son of King Suddhodana passed on the Bodhisattva’s crown to his successor in the spiritual realms before his final descent. So since those times there has been a successor to that Bodhisattva who became the Buddha at that time. And this new Bodhisattva, who now continued to work as a Bodhisattva, had a special task for the development of humanity. He had been entrusted with the specific task of spiritually guiding the movement that manifested itself in the Therapeutae and the Essenes, so that in that Bodhisattva, who became the Buddha’s successor, we recognize the spiritual leader of the Therapeutae and Essene communities. That is where his influence was at work. This Bodhisattva sent, so to speak, a special individual into the Essene communities to guide the Essenes under the reign of King Alexander Jannai—approximately 125 to 77 BCE. This special individual led the Essene communities about a century before the appearance of Christ Jesus on Earth. This personality is well known in occultism, but also in the external Talmudic literature.

[ 28 ] Thus, a century before our era, a century before the appearance of Christ on Earth, there was an individual who had nothing to do with the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke and nothing to do with the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew—a figure who served as a guide and leader in the Essene communities. This figure is well known in occultism as a sort of Essene precursor to Christianity; he is also known in Talmudic literature under the name Jesus, son of Pandira, Jeshu ben Pandira. This Jesus, son of Pandira, about whom malicious Jewish literature has spun all manner of fables—which have since been revived in more recent times—this figure, who was a noble and great personality, must not be confused, as some Talmudists do, with the Jesus of Nazareth of whom we speak. We also recognize this Essene precursor of Christianity in Jesus, the son of Pandira. And we know that this Jeshu ben Pandira was accused of blasphemy and heresy by those who saw blasphemy in the Essene teachings at that time, was first stoned, and, after being stoned, was hung on a tree to add shame to the punishment. This is an obscure fact, but one that also appears in Talmudic literature.

[ 29 ] In this Jeshu ben Pandira, we see a figure who stands under the protection of the Bodhisattva, who is the successor to that Bodhisattva who, as the son of King Suddhodana, later became the Buddha. This is quite clear. We can see a kind of preparation, a side current to the main Christian current, in that current which depends on the Buddha’s successor, the present Bodhisattva who will later become the Maitreya Buddha and who sent his messengers into the Essene communities; it manifested itself at that time in the missionary who brought about in the Essene communities what we will learn about in the next lecture.

[ 30 ] Thus, we must look for the name Jesus in the individual described in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; but we must also seek the name of Jesus a century before the beginning of our era in the Essene community, in that noble figure against whom everything the malicious Talmudic literature has found is slander—a figure who was accused of blasphemy and heresy, who was first stoned and then hung from a tree.