The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Bible and Wisdom I

[ 1 ] There is undoubtedly no document in our culture that has influenced the entire intellectual life in such a profound and intense way as the Bible. One would have to write a history—not of centuries, but of millennia—if one were to describe the Bible’s impact on humanity. And even if one were to set aside entirely the broad influence of this document, one would still find in the Bible something immeasurable in terms of its influence and effect on the depths of the human soul. Indeed, with regard to this latter point, it may perhaps be said that our present age in particular offers an extraordinary wealth of interesting material, for one could demonstrate that today it is not only those who, to a greater or lesser extent, stand on the foundation of the Bible who are deeply influenced by this document of humanity, but that even those who have turned away from the Bible—those who today believe themselves to be free from the Bible’s influences—even they, in a profoundly significant way, are still subject to these influences. For the Bible is truly not merely a document—although it is that to the highest degree, since it fills the soul with a wealth of ideas about the world and life, thus giving the soul a worldview—but the Bible has been, throughout the millennia, a powerful means of educating the soul. It has not only meant something—and still means something today—for the life of the imagination, but what is perhaps more important and essential is what we must describe as its effect on the life of feeling and emotion, and on the nature of one’s habits of thought. If we look closely, we must certainly admit in many cases today that the feelings and emotions—even of those who oppose the Bible—were first cultivated in their souls by the Bible.

[ 2 ] But anyone who takes even a brief look at the spiritual life of humanity—especially that of Western humanity and those connected to it—will notice what a tremendous shift has taken place with regard to humanity’s attitude, or at least that of a large part of humanity, toward the Bible.

[ 3 ] Those who today may still stand firmly grounded in the Bible might underestimate what it points to. They might say: Even if there are all sorts of people today who, for one reason or another, turn away from the Bible—who claim that the Bible can no longer be for humanity what it has been for millennia—this will likely be only a temporary phenomenon; we believe in the Bible; let those gentlemen who believe they stand on the ground of science say this or that, let this or that sound improbable to them—for us, the Bible is what matters! — If one were to look for it, one could find this view quite widespread among certain individuals, and it is only natural, for whoever is still able to draw the happiness of their soul, its security, and its strength from the Bible cannot, given their subjective disposition, weigh enough against the phenomena surrounding them that take the form of criticism and rejection of the Bible.

[ 4 ] Nevertheless, such a judgment would essentially be quite reckless. It would even be selfish in a certain sense, for when a person makes such a judgment, they tell themselves: The Bible gives me this or that; whether it gives the same to other people is of no concern to me. — Such a person fails to realize that humanity is, in essence, a whole, and that what initially lives within individuals—what is thought and felt by them—spills over into all of humanity and becomes common property. Anyone who says, “I do not want to hear what critics and scholars say about the Bible today; I do not care about that”—such a person judges only for himself and does not consider whether his descendants, or those who will come after him, might have the good fortune to derive such satisfaction from this document if criticism and scholarship set out to take this document away from humanity. The power of the authorities involved in the life of this document is great and strong. To insist on proceeding solely from the perspective of naive faith—the unshakable faith just described—is, in fact, to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to what is happening all around one. Today, one must listen to what might shake the prestige and significance of this document of humanity among our fellow human beings. The upheavals and revolutions that have taken place over the course of the last few centuries with regard to this document are truly immense.

[ 5 ] Just a few centuries ago, the Bible was regarded as possessing unquestionable authority; it was considered a sacred text of divine origin. This belief, this assumption, has long since been shaken and will continue to be shaken more and more by ever-new evidence. At first, it was not our modern science, nor was it contemporary natural science, that turned against the old view of the Bible. It was well over a hundred years ago that—we may use this expression, for we have explained it here on several occasions—the increasingly materialistic way of thinking began to view the Bible from a purely external standpoint. Let us first speak of the part of the Bible that we call the Old Testament. Like the New Testament, it was regarded for centuries as an inspiration from higher powers. It was regarded as having been written from a consciousness that could rise to a sphere of truth to which sensory consciousness could not ascend. The first thing that shook the belief that the Bible was written from a higher human consciousness—that it possessed an authority distinct from that of any human author—was the realization that when one reads the Bible, it turns out not to be a unified document. Let us take what the French physician Astruc said in the eighteenth century: It is said that people, under the influence of higher powers, wrote the chapters of the Bible that we call the Genesis account of creation; but when we read the Genesis account, we find that individual parts do not agree; we find that there are stylistic and factual contradictions; we must therefore assume that no single author—be it Moses or anyone else—wrote this document, for someone acting alone who describes events in sequence would not introduce internal contradictions into the narrative.

[ 6 ] I can only outline all these contradictions in general terms: It seems that ancient documents must have been taken from various sources and pieced together by various writers. This was, so to speak, an early work directed against the Bible.

[ 7 ] Now, setting aside the question of how things actually unfolded, let us characterize the spirit of this kind of opposition to the spiritual origin of the Bible. We see there how, right from the beginning, creation is unfolded in powerful, overwhelming imagery. It recounts the so-called six- to seven-day work of creation. It goes on to describe how humankind came into being within this creation, how humankind fell into sin, and how humankind continued to develop further and further from generation to generation. There one notices that in the first parts, in the first verses, a different term is chosen for the divine powers—for God—than is used from the fourth verse of the second chapter onward. One sees there that, in fact, these two terms—the term for the divine as “Elohim” and the term for the divine as “Yahweh” or “Jehovah”—alternate. This raises the question: Did the writer intend to refer to the divine with two different names? Where could this come from? It is said that the person or persons who ultimately compiled the document found ancient traditions or even ancient texts, which they pieced together to form a whole. One might have come from this tribe, the other from a different tribe, and these were combined. That, so to speak, is a rough outline of one theory that has gained traction. Building on this, one notices—as one goes further and further—that similar and other contradictions arise. Thus, people increasingly came to the point of separating the original documents into different pieces and tearing them apart. And if someone today wanted to compile a Bible—as has indeed happened—from the various pieces and fragments that people finally believed must have made up the original, if someone were to print in blue letters everything considered part of one document, in red letters what belongs to another, in green letters what belongs to a third, and so on, then a curious document would result. But it has already come into being—the so-called Rainbow Bible!

[ 8 ] This ancient, venerable document is, one might say, broken down into the individual fragments of which it consists and from which it is supposed to have been assembled. The Bible is, of course, a document, but it is believed that one can prove that it does not originate from Moses, but that parts of it even date from a relatively later period, from this or that priestly college, while other parts of the Bible are said to have been compiled from legends and myths gathered here and there from the religious views of this or that school. What has thus become a whole cannot be regarded as something that was brought into history through an elevation of the consciousness of the human soul, which is capable of looking into the spiritual worlds.

[ 9 ] Now, let no one think that these two lectures, which I am to deliver today and on Saturday, are intended in any way to diminish the diligence and zeal of the works I have just briefly outlined. Anyone familiar with the tools that have been used—as intellectual aids to tear the Bible into small pieces and explain it as such—will recognize the diligence, the zeal, and the scholarly skill behind the entire body of work. To those who understand it, these qualities reveal themselves as perhaps the most formidable achievement in the history of scholarship. Nothing comparable can be found, neither in terms of form nor in terms of the diligence of the research. If we now take a closer look at the consequences of this scholarly work carried out by modern theologians—that is, precisely by those who, by virtue of their profession, firmly believe they stand on Christian ground—we must conclude that it must lead to a completely different relationship with the Bible than has existed for centuries. If this research bears fruit, the Bible will no longer be able to be—it would take a great deal to justify this in detail—the Bible will no longer be able to be the document that comforts and uplifts people in the saddest circumstances of life.

[ 10 ] There is also another factor: namely, that for many people who have explored the field of scientific research—who have studied geology, the evolutionary history of animal and plant life, cultural history, anthropology, and so on—there is hardly any possibility left for them to make sense of what they read in the Bible. We must also be fair in this regard and not simply take the position of naive faith and say that it means nothing. It is often those who are most conscientious in their sense of truth and in their thirst for knowledge who say to themselves: When I see, through research grounded in solid evidence, how the Earth has evolved through geological periods, how we have certain hypotheses regarding this matter, how astronomy shows how the Earth developed from a high-temperature nebula into its present form, how the inanimate world evolved and, from this inanimate world, living beings emerged, how everything has gradually developed from the simplest to the most complex—human beings—how cultural forms have evolved into today’s complex forms; when we see what geology reveals—the immense periods of time required to shape the Earth before it had yet produced amphibians or mammals—when we take all this in and let it sink in — as numerous prominent figures tell us — what are we to make of it when the Bible tells us that the world is said to have been created in six to seven days? We cannot make sense of either the creation in six to seven days or anything else. What are we to make of the Flood, of Noah’s miraculous rescue, when we read that Noah brought so many animals into the ark, and so on? — This is why some people, endowed with dignity and a serious sense of truth, vigorously advocate that sharp and incisive opposition to the Bible that arises from today’s scientific standpoint, insofar as it seeks to expand into a worldview. All of this is present in our worldview. We cannot deny any of it.

[ 11 ] But this raises the question: Are all the factors that must be taken into account in relation to the Bible truly considered when either the first—the historical—or the second—the natural-historical—perspective is applied? It must be said that there is already a third perspective on the Bible today—a perspective that has developed out of that method of research and human outlook which is characterized in these lectures as spiritual science or anthroposophy. We will be addressing this perspective on the Bible today and the day after tomorrow. What kind of perspective is this? It is often said today that human beings should not rely on an external authority, but must approach the world and life without preconceptions and seek the truth; and people believe they are precisely targeting the Bible when they adopt such a perspective. Does this truly target the Bible? The spiritual-scientific or anthroposophical perspective on the Bible can certainly be compared to something that occurred several centuries ago with regard to another matter—albeit one of lesser significance—for humanity. We will be able to understand the spiritual-scientific perspective on the Bible most easily if we draw a comparison with the upheavals that took place regarding the view of the Earth.

[ 12 ] Throughout the Middle Ages, in all schools—both elementary and higher—what was taught regarding the external natural world drew upon ancient writings, specifically those of a great and formidable figure: the ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist Aristotle. So if you could go back with me to the centers of intellectual life in earlier times, you would find that what was taught in the old schools and places of learning was not what had been discovered in laboratories, but rather what was printed in Aristotle’s books. Aristotle was the authority, and his books were the Bible of natural science at that time. And wherever these subjects were taught, one taught only what Aristotle had already said about them. Then came the times when a new dawn broke regarding the view of nature—the new way of viewing nature pioneered by Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, and carried forward by all the others up to the present day. What was the driving force behind this dawn? Whereas previously Aristotle had been taken as a fixed point of departure, and people spoke of nature just as he had, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo now applied their own sense of observation and inquiry. They looked out into nature themselves and examined what life had to show them. Thus, they sought to describe and explain nature based on what they themselves had seen. In doing so, they came into conflict in some respects with what the strict followers of Aristotle taught.

[ 13 ] It is more than just an anecdote; it points to the profound truth of a process that took place back then, when it is recounted that a follower of Aristotle was urged to examine the human body—specifically, a corpse—for himself to see that it is not true that the nerves originate in the heart—as Aristotle teaches—but rather that they originate in the brain. The Aristotelian was persuaded to take a look. But then he said: When I look at this, it seems that nature would contradict Aristotle. But if nature contradicts Aristotle, then I do not believe nature, but Aristotle. — This is how natural science stood in opposition to tradition. The researcher’s observation was rejected in favor of what had been passed down and repeated as tradition over the centuries. When we read the writings of Giordano Bruno, we see the opposition to Aristotle emerging from the new spirit that describes and explains what human beings should see for themselves.

[ 14 ] Today, our perspective on the whole matter has changed once again. We view direct scientific observation differently, and we also view Aristotle differently. We know that much of what was read into his work during the Middle Ages was merely a misinterpretation of his writings. Aristotle, in the spirit of his time, was himself a researcher who looked directly into nature and conveyed what he understood. And if we understand Aristotle correctly, if we can engage with what he said, then he no longer appears to us to be in that contradiction—as he seemed to be at the time—with direct scientific observation. Then we can once again become his admirers, for precisely in the fact that nerves originate from the heart rather than the brain, it becomes clear that he meant something entirely different—namely, something that remains true even in our own time.

[ 15 ] In a very similar way, research in the humanities approaches not only these documents—the writings of Aristotle—but also the original Western document, the Bible. What took place in the sixteenth century and since then with regard to the observation and exploration of external nature is taking place again today with regard to the exploration of the spiritual foundations of the world. In the spirit of that research characterized in the last three lectures, humanity is once again seeking to penetrate those worlds that are not perceptible to the external senses, but which are perceptible to the higher-developed senses of the human being—the spiritual senses—through which we can see into the spiritual world just as we can see into the physical world through the physical senses. There is no need to elaborate further here, for it has already been stated on numerous occasions that human beings are capable of developing the powers within themselves not only to perceive sensory things, but also to perceive, between and beyond the sensory realm, a spiritual world—a spiritual world that is far more real than the sensory world. There was a good reason why humanity forgot the methods of spiritual research for a time. The great advances, the great conquests in the physical world, were made possible by the refinement of instruments, as was the case in recent centuries. But when one aspect of human nature expands, other abilities recede into the background. Thus we see how, in recent centuries, the scientific methods for investigating the external physical world have flourished. Never before have instruments been developed on such a magnificent scale to eavesdrop on nature’s secrets and explore its laws. The abilities related to this have been expanded and perfected to an immense degree, but the abilities through which human beings can look into the spiritual world have receded. And so it is not surprising that human beings have come to believe that the spiritual can also be explained from material, physical existence. |

[ 16 ] But in our time, we are on the threshold of a new era in which humanity is once again becoming aware that there are other instruments and tools besides those found in the physical and physiological laboratory, where they are used so effectively. However, we are dealing with an instrument that is fundamentally different from the others. We are dealing with the fundamental and primordial instrument that we must perceive within the human being itself. It is the human being whom we will come to know over the course of the winter through the methods of concentration and meditation. These are different methods that a person can apply to their soul, and through which they come to see the world in a completely different way than they did before. They may come to say to themselves: I am like a person born blind who has undergone an operation, who previously could not perceive the colors and light of the world. — But the moment has now come for them to see for themselves. He can now see that behind what the senses and the intellect perceive, there is something else. Now he looks into spiritual things; now he knows—not hypothetically, not through speculative philosophies—that the sensory and the material are merely a condensation of the spiritual, that what we see with the senses relates to the spiritual behind it in the same way that ice relates to water. Water is fluid, ice is solid, and someone who could not see the water but could see the ice would say: There is nothing around the ice. — So says the one who can see only with the senses: there is nothing within a wide radius but sensory phenomena, nothing but sensory events.

[ 17 ] But we must venture into this supersensible realm, into these supersensible processes; only then can we recognize and explain the spiritual. So anyone who has not developed spiritual ears and eyes sees nothing in the whole world but a condensation, like ice in water, and the primordial mother of substance—the spiritual, in which the sensory is merely embedded—does not appear to them. If a geologist were to show us, for example, the perspective of a person who could place a chair out into space and watch how the world has developed: the external, sensory view would be just as natural science describes it. Spiritual science has no objection to what natural science has to say in a positive sense. But it becomes clear to anyone who is properly versed in natural science that the spiritual existed before the physical first came into being. This reveals how progress was made possible only through the spiritual’s intervening influence, and that the spirit is most deeply involved in this development.

[ 18 ] Thus, this spiritual worldview movement points out to us that it is possible for human beings to make themselves instruments for exploring the important foundations of the world, and in this way our perspective ultimately comes to explore the spiritual origins and beginnings themselves. This is how spiritual science stands, independent of any document. It says: We do not, at first, conduct our research in a document. We do not, as was once done, conduct our research in the books of Aristotle; we conduct our research in the spiritual world. Let us consider it this way: What you learn as ordinary school geometry—Euclidean geometry—was first written down by Euclid, the great mathematician. We can take that as a document today and view it historically. But does anyone learning geometry in school today still study according to Euclid’s *Elements*? Today, people work, learn, and gain insight from the things themselves. If, for example, one constructs a triangle, the inner laws of the matter reveal themselves to the mind from the thing itself. With what you have gained in this way, you can then approach Euclid and recognize what he had already recorded in his textbook. In the same way, the scholar of the spiritual sciences investigates—independently of books, using only his own faculties—how the world has developed. And in this way, he discovers the development of the world, the development of the Earth in that time before the Earth crystallized into its present form. He investigates the spiritual processes and discovers how, at a certain point, our spirit begins its earthly existence; he shows how human beings appear as the first beings and did not evolve from lower creatures, but are the descendants of spiritual beings who were there first.

[ 19 ] We can go back to earlier times, when the spiritual foundations still existed. There we find human beings connected to these spiritual processes, and it was only later that the lower creatures evolved alongside them. Just as in evolution in general certain things are left behind while others develop, so too here the lower has branched off from the higher. The spiritual researcher knows that spiritual organs of perception can be developed through methods that the spiritual researcher is able to demonstrate.

[ 20 ] Thus, spiritual research teaches that the origin and evolution of the world are governed by laws that are independent of any written record, deriving solely from their own inherent laws—just as the study of mathematics today is not bound by the way it has developed throughout history.

[ 21 ] And just as the researcher has acquired knowledge from this wisdom, so he approaches the Bible; this is how he now views the Bible. And now it becomes clear to us why there are contradictions in the Bible, both from the perspective of historical-critical biblical scholarship and from the perspective of scientific research. Both perspectives stem from a single, major error that arose from the general belief that the truths of the Bible should be understood from the standpoint of physical, sensory perception and observation. It was thought that it was possible to approach the Bible with such standards. The findings of anthroposophical spiritual science were not yet available.

[ 22 ] We will now use specific examples to illustrate what has just been said. Spiritual science shows us that, in our exploration of earthly creation, we can only go so far using the methods of geology and so on, and that human development then seems to extend further back into the unknown. And why? No matter how much it may hope to do so, sensory science will never be able to trace human beings back to their origin, for the simple reason that sensory science can discover only what is sensory. But the soul and the spirit preceded the sensory aspect of the human being. Human beings were first soul and, even earlier, spirit, and they then descended into earthly existence. Only to the extent that physical life is involved in humanity’s descent into earthly existence can natural science show us this course of development. We cannot investigate the life of the soul with the ordinary powers of sensory observation. Geology, too, cannot offer us any guidance. It allows us to investigate what remains of sensibly perceptible matter. It can therefore only indicate what one would see if one could have placed a chair out into outer space and observed from there everything that has developed on Earth. Spiritual science does not address this. But in order to see human beings in the distant past as spiritual beings, one must have developed spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. Without these, the soul and spirit of the human being vanish from view. But with spiritual eyes, the physical vanishes, and the spiritual image emerges. However, this cannot be seen in the same way as the physical. One must acquire entirely different concepts of cognition if one wishes to go back to such primeval times. What one sees developing in human beings there, when they were first merely souls, does not manifest itself in sensory, concrete perceptions such as those offered by the external sensory world. It reveals itself to us in images. Through the development of the soul’s inner powers, our consciousness becomes what we call an image-consciousness, an imaginative consciousness. It is then a consciousness filled with images. We see, in a different state of consciousness, what took place back then—now in images. What takes place within the seer is pictorial.

[ 23 ] The remnant that still remains of the gift of clairvoyance is the dream. But it is chaotic. The vision of the trained seer is also present in such images, but these images correspond to reality. It is similar to how the physically-sensory person can distinguish whether their perceptions correspond to reality or are merely a fantasy. To anyone who wishes to cling to the statements, “The world is my perception” and “External things merely stimulate perception,” I would suggest the following: Let them have a piece of red-hot iron brought close to them and feel how it burns. Let them then have it removed and feel whether the mere perception still burns just as intensely. There is, in fact, something that distinguishes mere imagination from perception stimulated by an external object. One must therefore not say that the seer lives only in phantasms. He has simply developed in this realm to the point where he can distinguish between what is mere fantasy and what is an image of the reality of a spiritual-soul world. Thus, the images become the means of expression for a spiritual-soul world. When the seer looks back to times before sensory objects appeared to him, the true spiritual beings and events present themselves to his supersensory organs of perception. The spiritual researcher does not speak of forces that are abstractions, but of real entities. For him, spiritual phenomena become truths and entities, and for him, the spiritual world is once again populated by spiritual entities.

[ 24 ] Now imagine human beings in their prehistoric development, when a spiritual force intervened in their evolution, in their entire being—a force that differs, quite distinctly, from other spiritual beings that had intervened earlier. We can trace the human being’s spiritual-soul aspect—which is, after all, already supersensible—even further back; we can trace it back into even higher spheres. But then the spiritual researcher—when he enters these even higher spheres, where even higher beings dwell—must, when speaking of these beings, also speak of them as distinct from other beings.

[ 25 ] When the spiritual researcher turns to the beginning of the Bible, he sees that the images depicting the soul-spiritual realm in the development of the human being before he entered physical life are presented with marvelous fidelity. When the spiritual researcher finds his own inner imaginings reflected in these external texts, he can say to himself that he recognizes them as truth. When he then goes back to the times when human beings were still connected to the even higher spheres, he must choose a different name for these primordial beings, and he finds that the chapters preceding the fourth verse of the second chapter do indeed bear a different name for God. It is precisely in accordance with the findings of spiritual research that, beginning with the fourth verse of the second chapter, a new name for God appears in the description of the development of the primordial worlds. Thus, through spiritual research, we find ourselves in the same position as a scholar of geometry today. He can discover geometry on his own, and then he comes to appreciate the work of Euclid, who discovered the same thing. Thus we see this development in the wondrous images of the Old Testament, and now something most remarkable reveals itself to us. Light and clarity shine upon the text of the Bible in a way that could never have been achieved by the scientific critics.

[ 26 ] A researcher said: “What the Elohim did must come from a different source than what comes from Yahweh. If you want to apply this seriously, it’s strange. Let’s give it a try. Let’s imagine this Bible passage: “The serpent was more cunning than any of the wild animals that the Lord God had made, . and it said to the woman, ‘Didn’t God tell you, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’” If, instead of “Elohim” or “Yahweh,” it simply says “God,” then that is not a correct translation. It is strange. The original text reads: “The serpent was cunning… which Yahweh God had made.” And where it says, “Didn’t God tell you, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’,” the original text does not say “Yahweh” but rather “the Elohim.” Now the woman continues, always referring to “God.” And in the eighth verse it then says: “And they heard the voice of God, the Lord.” But the original text says: the voice of Yahweh-God. — Now we have reconstructed the story of the serpent in such a way that it becomes clear that those who used the names “Yahweh” or “Elohim” meant different entities by them. According to biblical critics, this stems from different traditions. And the passage “Didn’t God say to you, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden!’” comes from the Elohim tradition. — You see, the Bible is truly pieced together from scraps in such a way that even in the middle of sentences, the various traditions are combined.

[ 27 ] If you approach the Bible from the perspective of spiritual science, you will see that this is indeed how it must be. Starting with the fourth verse of the second chapter, it is stated that the creation of the world passes from the Elohim to Yahweh-God. He is thus the power that brings about the development of everything that occurs up to the Fall. Spiritual science shows you that Yahweh is the God who speaks into the innermost being of human beings—that which we call the “I,” the “I Am.” It is this entity—the “I Am” entity—that brings about everything described from the second chapter, verse four onward. This entity that now intervenes, Yahweh, is an entity that belongs to an earlier stage of development but has fallen away... [gap in the postscript]. That is why we speak of Yahweh-God. The serpent, however, knows nothing of Yahweh; it must therefore turn to that which is of its own substance, until the moment when what must occur through Yahweh actually occurs. It is not until the eighth verse of the third chapter that the name Yahweh appears again.

[ 28 ] Through spiritual research, one comes to realize that the Bible is a document in which nothing—absolutely nothing—is included by mere chance. A modern writer might ask: Why shouldn’t even this God take on a different name? — The ancient initiates did not employ the stylistic conventions of modern writers. Where precision and accuracy are required, one cannot speak in arbitrary stylistic forms. What is written and what is omitted has its significance. When the name Yahweh appears, and when it is omitted, this signifies something of the utmost importance. But one must adhere to the principle that the Bible must be read with the utmost precision. Read the Bible, if you have it! Read through the account of the six-day creation, and you will find—if you continue reading from the first verse of the second chapter until the Sabbath—that the passage “In the beginning, when the Lord God created the earth and the heavens” then appears. These verses are usually regarded as a reference to what precedes them, just as if the account of the seven-day work had been told and it were now added: “Thus was the seven-day work accomplished.” — “This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created,” and then it continues, “in the beginning, when God the Lord made the earth and the heavens” (Gen. 2:4).

[ 29 ] Anyone who studies the original text here will come to the following conclusion: The fourth verse of the second chapter does not refer to what precedes it, but to what follows; just as later—in the chapter following the Fall—“This is the genealogy of Adam” (Gen. 5:1) refers to what follows—to what comes afterward, to the next generation, to that which came into being from Adam. This is expressed in the same way as: What follows—“these are the generations of heaven and earth” (Gen. 2:4). In Hebrew, the same word is used for this as well. Anyone who reads carefully knows that from the words “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” up to the third verse of the second chapter, the spiritual world is described as it was created. Then, beginning with the fourth verse of the second chapter, it is stated: What is the offspring of heaven and earth is described in what follows. It is the most marvelous transition—once one understands it—from the six-day creation to what follows. Anyone who delves into these matters will find that there is perhaps no book as well-structured as the Bible, especially its oldest parts. The belief that one may approach the Bible without spiritual inquiry, that one can approach it based on external evidence—this has fragmented this work, which is so perfect and harmonious in itself, so that it appears to be composed of nothing but scraps and fragments.

[ 30 ] We must also pursue further the principle of reading carefully and the principle of possessing the Bible. One does not truly possess the Bible if one has only the text, which merely alludes to the specific points that matter. One must adopt the principle of engaging with the Bible. On the fourth day of the six-day creation, we are told how the sun and moon came into being, and how the sun and moon determine day and night (Gen. 1:14–18). But even before that, the Bible speaks of day and night (Gen. 1:5). From this, one can draw the conclusion: Day and night, which depend on the sun and moon (Gen. 1:14–18), cannot be the same as the day and night that do not depend on the sun and moon (Gen. 1:5). Here we can see a clear indication of where the Bible speaks of the physical solar day and the physical solar night. These arise from what we call the Earth’s revolution around the sun. But we can also see where the Bible points beyond this physical day toward what is in the supersensible, in the spiritual, where it elevates and expands it into the spiritual realm.

[ 31 ] Those who have been able to explore the Bible spiritually have always been able to say to themselves: If someone possesses the gift of clairvoyance, the gift of higher vision, and can discover the true meaning of the Bible, then it goes without saying that this meaning of the Bible also flowed from the gift of clairvoyance. If, by allowing the soul to enter a different spiritual state of mind, we can look into what is given to us in the powerful images of the Bible, then we know that the one who wrote it must also have been under the inspiration of the spiritual world. We may well say: The time is beginning when it should be increasingly understood that there are four levels on which one can view the Bible today.

[ 32 ] The first stage is that of naive faith. It accepts the Bible with unwavering certainty and is unaware of what are now cited as objections to the Bible.

[ 33 ] The second stage: These are the intelligent people, the biblical critics, who—either by examining internal contradictions or from a scientific standpoint—conclude that the Bible was the primitive collection of myths and legends of a humanity that had not yet embarked on scientific inquiry. They have moved beyond the Bible; they no longer need it. They attack it from a wide variety of angles and say: It was good for humanity in its infancy. But now humanity is growing beyond the Bible. — These are the intelligent people, the free thinkers.

[ 34 ] Then there is another stage: Human beings grow beyond this level of cleverness. People at this stage are indeed free thinkers as well, but they have outgrown this second perspective—that of the clever people; they see in the narratives of the Bible—the Old and New Testaments—at least symbolic and mythical expressions of inner spiritual experiences. They see what the human soul conceives of in an abstract way depicted in the Bible through symbols. Some freethinkers have been compelled to do this. They have had to transform the perspective of the freethinker into that of the mythical symbolist, the mythical portrayer.

[ 35 ] Then there is a fourth point of view. This is the one that has been described to you today as that of spiritual science. The day after tomorrow we will explore this spiritual-scientific point of view further. It again presents the spiritual facts in simple descriptions, though in the way these spiritual facts can be seen in the imaginations. These are the facts described in the Bible. Anyone who has had to abandon the naive viewpoint and, as a researcher, has become a rational person—perhaps a symbolist—can then arrive at the viewpoint held by the spiritual researcher, and can then become capable of taking the Bible literally again—literally in a new sense—namely, of truly understanding the words.

[ 36 ] For centuries, the Bible was not really criticized. Bible critics have been fighting their own figment of the imagination—what they have made of the Bible. Even today, those who oppose the Bible are still fighting their own figment of the imagination—what they believe they understand it to be; they do not touch the Bible at all. Thus, the Bible can be taken literally again, but one must understand the word correctly.

[ 37 ] There is a certain trend today that counters such a statement with the saying: “It is not the letter, but the spirit that must decide.” “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life,” and you identify it based on certain relationships between the letters.

[ 38 ] I wish we could restore the true biblical text to the world as soon as possible. The world would be astonished at what the original text contains. It would seem like something entirely new to humanity. One must not go around peddling the saying, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” It is usually the person’s own spirit in which the letters are reflected. This is especially true of the symbolist. If he is trivial, he puts trivial things into the symbols; if he is witty, he puts witty things into the symbols. It is with this saying as it is with Goethe’s maxim:

And as long as you don’t have that,
This: Die and Be Reborn!
You are but a gloomy guest
On this dark earth.

[ 39 ] This word suggests to us how human beings are to transcend sensory perception—and indeed, ordinary nature itself. Anyone who were to take this word as an instruction to tell themselves that the physical has no value has overlooked the fact that the spirit gradually develops out of the physical. So it is with the letter and the spirit. First one must have the letter, then be able to unravel it, and only then will one discover what the spirit is. Certainly, the letter kills, but in its death it creates the spirit, and this saying corresponds to the other: Whoever lacks this—this dying and becoming—remains merely a gloomy guest on the dark earth.

[ 40 ] Today I was able to draw your attention only in general terms to the critique of the Bible and to the perspectives that spiritual science will adopt with regard to the Bible. From the few hints that were offered today, one will at least be able to surmise that through the work of spiritual science, something like a “reconquest” of the Bible will be able to take place. Spiritual science is to find wisdom independently of the Bible. But it recognizes what has found its way into the Bible and what many people experience today in relation to it. Some parts have been able to edify people, but most of it no longer makes sense to them. It is only through spiritual science that people come to understand what is meant by this or that passage in the Bible. Yet there are still other passages that seem quite open to criticism, and one is led to say: The Bible contains passages that hold profound spiritual truths, but much has been incorporated into it that has been woven in as something inorganic. — If one goes further, one makes another discovery and finds that the fault lay with oneself—namely, that one had not progressed far enough to understand the matter. And one comes to say to oneself: Where one previously believed that the meaning of the Bible seemed untenable in the face of science, one now realizes: you understand one thing—that you must regard the Bible with trust and reverence; the other thing you simply do not yet understand. But the time will come when you will understand it, and you will find the vantage point from which you yourself can look into it.

[ 41 ] Spiritual science will lead to a proper understanding of the Bible. From the perspective of spiritual science, we have spoken today about the beginning of the Bible and about creation. Biblical scholarship is undergoing a crisis. Research in the humanities will come to its aid, and in the future, the ancient light of the Bible will shine upon humanity once again in a new form.