The Rudolf Steiner Archive

24. On the Book of Genesis

[ 1 ] At first, people came to know their religion through the scriptures, which they interpreted literally. Today, one is considered enlightened if one has moved beyond religious texts. With regard to the Old Testament, it has always been said that it is impossible to reconcile biblical concepts with an enlightened consciousness. People began to interpret Scripture figuratively; they still clung to the symbols. This understanding of biblical symbolism then led people to take the biblical spirit seriously to a certain extent. But even theologians today can hardly bring themselves to do anything other than treat the first chapters of the Old Testament merely as figurative representations. This can give rise to a rather comforting interpretation, but as a person progresses, they cannot remain with this view. It is a kind of evolutionary path: first moving away from the orthodox view, then from the figurative one, and transitioning to another view that is, in a certain sense, literal once more.

[ 2 ] However, to do this, we must learn to understand the language of the ancient wisdom teachings and recognize that the ancient teachers did not simply compose poetry or create figments of the imagination, but rather that they had a different conception of truth than we do today. They recorded the eternal truth in their teachings. This truth cannot be conveyed directly to every person, whereas sensory truth can indeed be conveyed to everyone.

[ 3 ] The great teachers of old had themselves undergone an inner development. Their vision was a spiritual one. They knew that what they saw in the spirit could not be seen by everyone around them. The peoples were still childlike in their understanding. Accordingly, the great truths had to be presented to them in a special form suited to their comprehension. Now all the great teachers approached humanity with the awareness that the soul is imperishable. It must be developed toward the truth. Moses, for example, knew that by building upon the people’s existing concepts, he was implanting something enduring into the soul, into the causal body. The materialistic thinker believes that the soul perishes at death. Moses, however, told himself: If I communicate the truth to people today in a certain form, it will have an effect on their souls. Later, they will be ready to recognize the truth in its true form. Moses knew that others would come later who would interpret what he taught. He prepared the form. What he prepared has passed through the incarnations of souls. He did not consider it right to tell people the ultimate form of truth right away.

[ 4 ] He himself had the Truth itself as his foundation. He expressed this in the seven days of creation. He shaped the Truth into a form that corresponded to people’s childlike understanding at that time. If he had spoken of the “cycles,” he would not have been understood. He therefore spoke of days, just as in ancient India one speaks of the days and nights of Brahma.

[ 5 ] On the Moon, human beings had a dreamlike consciousness. There, they had developed this dream consciousness to its highest level. Each of us had entered a kind of embryonic state there; in a dreamlike manner, we had perceived it there, absorbed it within ourselves, and developed it into a seed. These seeds slept their way from the Moon to Earth. Human beings who came to Earth were spiritual seeds. They had slept their way through a [Pralaya] into the earthly state.

[ 6 ] Now his destiny is to attain clear consciousness. He must pass through a long series of states. The first three rounds were a repetition of what he had experienced on earlier planets. Moses speaks of the rounds. During the first round, the human being is in the first elemental kingdom. The dream state gradually gives way to a state that human beings have now reached. The lunar human made no distinction between himself and other objects. For him, a dreamlike, pictorial reality existed in the same way that the external world exists for us in a dream. He did not perceive through the senses. In the first cycle on Earth, human beings were to develop the distinction between themselves and their world. Moses calls this the difference between heaven and earth. They were to recognize themselves as inhabitants of Earth alongside heaven. This is what happens in the first cycle of development.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. [Genesis 1–2]

[ 7 ] Human beings did not distinguish between themselves and individual objects. It was all still chaos. Then, after the first cycle, human beings passed through an intermediate state once more and entered the second cycle. By then, objects had already taken on more defined boundaries. They could already distinguish what was around them. It was no longer desolate and chaotic. He can distinguish between what is spiritual and what is an external object. Before, it was dark over the deep; the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Everything that was human was the water. All the human seeds together formed the waters. The Spirit of God hovered over the human seeds, which He called into being as forms. And there was light.

[ 8 ] Only when we perceive the outside world, when entities confront us, can they reveal themselves to us. And there was light.

God separated the light from the darkness; He made day and night. [Genesis 1:5]

[ 9 ] Man perceived the objects. And there was evening and morning—the first day. [Genesis 1:5]

[ 10 ] Next came the rupic sphere, the formed sphere, in which one could perceive existence. A distinction was to be made between the waters; each was to have its own Kama. Each individual human being was set apart by God’s act of establishing a boundary and separating the waters above and below the firmament. Into the individual human seeds, He implanted the capacity to distinguish between the spiritual and the physical. Two souls were implanted within man: the soul that looks upward, and the soul that looks toward the earthly realm, the one that lives in the earthly realm.

[ 11 ] In the third round, human beings enter the third elemental kingdom. More and more, the individual astral bodies of human beings began to take shape. Now the human being becomes independent. He emerges from the mother soil of the Universal Earth. He attains a plant-like existence. These are not the plants we know today. The human being himself was in a plant-like state. All the separated astral bodies gained the ability to bring forth astral beings from within themselves, just like a plant. During the third round, human beings were called to animal existence, but with a plant-like nature, because the animal had not yet developed the passion body. It did not yet have warm blood. This developed during the third round of the third elemental kingdom. The act of insemination indicates that fertilization had not yet taken place.

God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, so that the dry land may appear.” [Genesis 1:9]

[ 12 ] In the past, one could not see the astral body. Now it is becoming more distinct. The dryness of the earth simply signifies a particular, more solid form of existence that forms a boundary around itself. The gathering of waters signifies the general astral world in its entirety.

God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass and plants.” [Genesis 1:11]

[ 13 ] This was man. Among the Germanic peoples, too, man originated from the ash and elm trees; among the Persians, he likewise originated from a tree.

And he had his own seed with him [...]. [Genesis 1:11]

[ 14 ] means that each species carried its own seeds within itself and that there was no sexual reproduction.

[ 15 ] The fourth round is the one in which the physical human being, as he is now, prepares himself. The human being entered the mineral kingdom; he took on a body subject to chemical and physical laws. He will no longer have that body in the next round; instead, he will control his astral body just as he now controls his physical body. He will then have astral organs; he will be able to form his own organs as needed, once the astral body comes to control all that is physical. But now, in the fourth round, human beings can act only in accordance with the laws of the mineral world. We are enclosed in the physical, mineral body as if in a house. It was only because we ourselves became physical that the entire world became physical. Previously, he gained knowledge of the world around him through a kind of clairvoyance. With the fourth round, the entire world of sensory objects around him came into being. That is why Moses could say:

There shall be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and they shall serve as signs to mark seasons, days, and years. [Genesis 1:14]

[ 16 ] Kant says that space and time originate from human beings themselves. Moses had already said this back then. Everything that is perceptible to the senses came into being only when human beings became physical and mineral. Through the physical cycle, we make the mineral body ever more perfect and also develop our astral body. In the next cycle, the astral body will be as developed as the physical body is today. Human beings will then float as if in an airy realm. Then human beings will have become free beings; then they will truly have become animal beings. It is only then that animality will find expression in human beings. The astral body of human beings is referred to here in terms of animals, because the astral human moves freely in the astral world, just as whales move in water, birds in the air, and so on. — This is the fifth round or the fifth day.

[ 17 ] In the sixth round, the human Kama-Manas body is formed—the lower mental body—which we carry hidden within our physical shell today. In the sixth round, human beings will stand as human beings in the true sense of the word, no longer enclosed within a shell. At the same time as human beings, the higher animals will be formed. The Kama-Manas body will then attain the higher stage of animality.

God said, “Let us make humankind.” [Genesis 1:26]

[ 18 ] Only then will a person become what he is meant to be.

He created him male and female. [Genesis 1:27]

[ 19 ] Through sexuality, humankind evolves into a being that will be both male and female. The original text states: “He created humankind male and female.” Only now does humankind truly gain dominion over the animals. It does not receive power—magic—until the true human is liberated on the sixth day. - On the seventh day, humankind had become like God. In the seventh cycle, humankind is once again in the Arupa state; having become creative in itself, having become God itself—hence it is said:

God rested on the seventh day. [Genesis 2:2]

[ 20 ] The fourth cycle is the most important one for human life. In the past, human beings were less dense. Moses says:

He formed the solid parts of the earth. [corresponds to Genesis 2:7]

[ 21 ] He was surrounded by dust. He took on the laws of the mineral kingdom. He is formed from the dust of the earth, and the living soul is molded into him. When human beings in the Lemurian race acquired solid forms—a skeletal structure—sexuality also arose. This solidification went hand in hand with the division into the sexes. In the second chapter, Moses describes the human being—who later emerged in the Lemurian race—as possessing two sexes. This was taught in all the mysteries. It was not until the fourth cycle that plant and animal forms emerged as they are today. During the development of the human being, plants and animals split off from him. Before that, the lower animals had come into being. Warm-blooded animals did not emerge until the advent of humankind. Animals developed as a result of less-advanced human beings splitting off. Animals are decadent human natures. They no longer fit into today’s conditions. They are creatures that have remained stuck at earlier stages. The original animal forms split off first; only then did the two human sexes emerge.

[ 22 ] In the past, human beings directed all their productive power outward. In the past, human beings reproduced themselves from within themselves. When they lost the ability to penetrate dense matter, they used half of their productive power as a thinking organ.

[ 23 ] On the one hand, humans became sexual beings; on the other hand, they developed half of their productive power internally into an organ of thought. They now gained the ability to process the spirit with their brain. The spirit now inspired him. Simultaneously with the division into two sexes, thinking humanity emerged. He recognized good and evil. During this time, the spinal cord and the brain also developed.

[ 24 ] This is the serpent that arose within human beings themselves. They passed through the amphibian stage. This being was their own tempter. It began to develop as they first entered into sexual maturity. - The spinal cord and brain first developed in amphibians, and in humans during the amphibian-like stage.