The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] The facts underlying the Gospels—and particularly the Gospel of Luke—will become increasingly nuanced over the next few days. Therefore, I ask that you bear in mind—even more so than usual this time—that the lectures are a continuous series, that the content truly flows from one lecture to the next, and that it is impossible to understand a single lecture—or even several of them—unless you consider them in the context of the other lectures. This applies in particular to today’s and tomorrow’s lectures; and it also applies to the fact that you should wait until tomorrow to ask yourselves how the various points presented there relate to what has already been said in other lecture series that have touched on this topic.

[ 2 ] We concluded yesterday by saying that the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya revealed itself to our world at the moment described in the Gospel of Luke as the Annunciation to the shepherds. And we indicated yesterday that the rejuvenation of the Buddhist worldview—which flowed into Christianity and was thereby given to the world—came about because that astral womb, which separates from the developing human being upon reaching sexual maturity and which was thus connected to the child Jesus, was taken in by the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya, becoming one with it in the twelfth year of Jesus’ life. Therefore, from this moment on, we are now dealing with a specific being that is actually composed of the Nirmanakaya—the spiritual body of the Buddha—and that astral womb, which detached itself like an astral maternal shell from the child Jesus who had grown up to the age of twelve.

[ 3 ] Now we must ask ourselves the following question. In ordinary life, as a human being develops, this astral womb detaches itself; when the human being’s actual astral body is born, the astral maternal sheath dissolves into the general astral world. Just as this is the case for ordinary human beings in our cycle of development, this astral maternal sheath would not be suitable for being incorporated into such a high being as the Buddha was in his Nirmanakaya. There must therefore have been something quite special about this astral maternal sheath, which was cast off and, through its connection with the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya, rejuvenated the entire Buddhist tradition. In other words, there had to be a very special being within the child Jesus; a very special being had to be incarnated in this body of Jesus so that, during the first twelve years of life, those forces could radiate from it, which were then absorbed by the astral maternal sheath, enabling it to possess those rejuvenating forces to which we alluded yesterday. Thus, it could not have been an ordinary human being, but rather a very special being that grew within the child Jesus from birth to the age of twelve and was then able to radiate out into what was shed all the forces that brought about that rejuvenation.

[ 4 ] If we want to get an idea of how something like this could even be possible—that a child appears completely different to those around him than he does in his normal state—we can initially only approach the fact at hand by way of comparison. So I will use a comparison to illustrate to you what actually happened back then.

[ 5 ] If we follow the course of a human life as it develops from birth through the later stages of life—up to the ages of twenty, thirty, and forty—provided it proceeds normally, we can observe how the individual powers, which are initially latent in the embryonic stage and at birth, gradually come to the fore. The child grows physically, but the child also grows spiritually. Little by little, the child’s soul forces develop. — You can read about how this happens in my book The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science. — Try to visualize how the emotional and intellectual powers gradually emerge from the child; how, by the age of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one, certain powers are present that were not there before, or how the existing ones are present on a larger scale, and so on. So try to imagine how this happens in the normal course of human life, and now imagine we were to conduct a “life experiment”—we were to give a person who has just been born the opportunity not to develop quite so normally and averagely as is the case in our developmental cycle and as must also be the case in normal life, but rather we would artificially provide a person with the opportunity to take in—with a certain freshness—what another person normally learns, for example, from the age of twelve to eighteen, with a certain freshness—not allowing the soul to make it its own as it usually does, but rather allowing it to be seized by the soul with a special freshness, so that the soul does not assimilate it in the same way as other people do, but can act upon things creatively with a certain inventive power. And let us suppose we wanted to artificially make this person particularly productive. We would then not allow the child to grow up the way other children usually do.

[ 6 ] So we want to conduct a kind of hypothetical life experiment. However, I would like to explicitly note that this example is chosen purely hypothetically and is not meant to be carried out immediately; I am using it to make a comparative point, and it is not intended to be recommended as an educational ideal. — So, we wanted to shape a person into a particularly inventive mind—one that not only stimulates the ability to think but can also continue to be creative, developing these abilities into greater productivity as they grow older. Then, above all, we would have to protect such a child, starting from the age of six or seven, from learning in the same way that other children do—that is, from beginning to study the same school subjects as the other children do—but rather ensure that, from that time on, the child is taught as little as possible of what the other children are taught. We would have to keep the child engaged in childlike play as much as possible until the age of ten or eleven and teach them as little as possible of the school subjects, so that, if possible, they still cannot add at the age of nine and perhaps still read poorly at the age of eight. Then we would have to begin everything that a child would otherwise start at the age of six or seven only in the eighth or ninth year. By then, a person’s faculties have developed quite differently; and the soul does something entirely different with what is taught to it. Such a child would then retain the childlike powers—which are otherwise suppressed by normal schooling—until the age of ten or eleven, and would then approach the things taught to them with a much more fervent spiritual power, grasping them in an entirely different way. As a result, their abilities would be transformed into particularly productive ones. One would therefore have to keep a child in a childlike state for as long as possible; then the clairvoyant would notice that the astral sheath, which detaches at puberty, does in fact possess powers quite different from what is usually the case—that it possesses youthful, fresh powers. And this astral sheath would then be usable for a being such as, in our case, the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya. — Through such an experiment, one would not only achieve an extension of youth, but also ensure that certain childlike, youthful forces enter the astral maternal sheath and can then be utilized again in the world, so that a being descending from spiritual heights can nourish itself with these forces and rejuvenate itself.

[ 7 ] But people really shouldn’t try this experiment. It’s not an educational ideal. There are certain things that people must still leave to the gods, so to speak. The gods can do it; people are not yet able to carry it out properly. And if you hear somewhere that a certain individual—who was meant to have a fruitful influence in a particular field—appeared to lack talent for a long time, was considered stupid for many years, and only later “had a lightbulb moment,” then the gods have conducted this experiment, have preserved that person’s childlike nature beyond those years, and have enabled them to master what one normally learns earlier in life only at a later stage of life. This becomes particularly evident when bright children easily grasp what is told to them, and then, when they start school, show no real desire to learn anything there. That is when the gods conduct this life experiment with them, the one we have just discussed.

[ 8 ] Something similar, only on an infinitely larger scale, must have been the case with that child who grew up to be Jesus and who was then to provide the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya with such an infinitely fruitful astral maternal shell. And that was indeed the case. Here we come to a mysterious fact—one that everyone is free to believe or not to believe—but which can be presented today to prepared anthroposophists and which can also be verified. Examine all the facts available to you in the outer Gospel or in outer history, and you will find everything confirmed by the outer facts of the physical plane, provided you approach the facts correctly and refrain from jumping to conclusions. What the occultist says—and which are, in fact, facts revealed from the higher worlds—he presents to humanity as a pledge; and if he has obtained it from the correct sources, then he says: You may examine it as rigorously as you wish; if you examine it in the proper way, you will find it confirmed everywhere by what you can learn from written documents or other scientific facts in the physical world. — So, a child of a very special kind was to be born to that couple mentioned in the Gospel of Luke—a child who already possessed youthful vitality and childhood powers of a very special kind, and who retained them in the same strength with which he was born, fresh and healthy in every respect. That had to happen.

[ 9 ] Under normal circumstances, it would have been impossible to find a child—or even a pair of parents—in whom those childhood and youthful energies would have been present with such vitality as they must have been at that time. Throughout the vast expanse of humanity at that time, if one had considered only normal circumstances, one would not have been able to find anywhere the individuality and the parents necessary for such an incarnation—unless something quite special had been possible. We can understand what was possible there only if we recall various things we already know through our anthroposophical preparation.

[ 10 ] We know that humanity as we know it today traces its origins, through various epochs, back to a primordial humanity that we refer to as the humanity of the ancient Atlantean era; and this humanity, in turn, traces its origins back to a humanity that we refer to as the humanity of the Lemurian era. Spiritual science can reveal to us facts about the course of human development that are entirely different from those of external natural science, which can rely only on sensory facts. Spiritual science shows us that humanity has passed through a stage of Greco-Latin cultural development, which was preceded by the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Proto-Persian, and the ancient Indian cultural systems. This takes us back to that great, mighty catastrophe that once swept across our Earth and completely transformed its face. Before that, a vast continent existed in the regions where the Atlantic Ocean now lies: that was ancient Atlantis. And the regions now inhabited by the peoples of Europe, Asia, and Africa were, at that time, still largely covered by the sea. That great Atlantean catastrophe, which took place within the Earth’s water element, altered the face of the Earth. Humanity had previously been settled mainly in Atlantis. There it developed. These were people who were organized differently from people today. This has often been described. As the time of the Atlantean catastrophe approached, the great clairvoyant leaders and priests of humanity foresaw it, and so they guided the people eastward, and in part also westward. Those whom they guided westward became the ancestors of the later American peoples. Thus, we must seek the ancestors of our humanity among the ancient Atlanteans. — These people, who lived in Atlantis, were in turn the descendants of even earlier humans, who in turn looked quite different from the Atlanteans; they lived on a continent between present-day Asia, Africa, and Australia, in ancient Lemuria. You will find a detailed account of this in my forthcoming book The Secret Science; for now, I will therefore highlight only what I need from it.

[ 11 ] When we look back through the Akashic Records to the most ancient times, the Akashic Records, strangely enough, also provide us with wonderful evidence for everything we otherwise find in the biblical texts—and indeed, in religious texts in general. Only then do we learn to understand these religious texts correctly. For example, what a question it was for secular science: Is it really true what we read in the Bible about a “single human couple,” Adam and Eve, from whom all of humanity is said to have descended? This was a question that particularly preoccupied the scientific community in the mid-nineteenth century.

[ 12 ] To summarize what the Akashic Records tell us, we know that the Earth has a long prehistory, and that the Lemurian period was itself preceded by another epoch. We know that the Earth is the reincarnation of other planetary states: the ancient Moon, the ancient Sun, and the ancient Saturn. We also know that the Earth, as it gradually developed, was destined to add the “I”—the fourth member of the human being—to the three bodies that humanity had gradually developed during the Earth’s earlier incarnations: the physical body on Saturn, the etheric body on the Sun, and the astral body on the Moon. Everything that preceded the Lemurian epoch was merely a preparation for this earthly mission. Back then, during the Lemurian epoch, human beings developed in such a way that they became capable of forming the fourth member, the “I.” At that time, the first seed began to form in order to develop an “I” within the three members that human beings had gradually acquired. Therefore, we can say: Through those changes that took place on Earth, human beings were influenced in such a way that they could become bearers of an “I.” Before the Lemurian epoch, the Earth was also inhabited. Human beings existed on Earth in a completely different form. But these were human beings who were not yet bearers of an “I,” who had actually developed only what they had brought with them from Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon—namely, the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body; and we know what processes throughout the entire universe led to humanity being brought to this stage of maturity in its development.

[ 13 ] We know that at the beginning of our present evolution, the Earth was united with the Sun and the Moon, and that the Sun then separated first, leaving behind a planetary body that comprised what is now the Earth and the Moon. But we also know that if the Earth had remained united with the Moon, all human beings who were there would have been petrified, mummified, and transformed into a wooden state. To prevent this, everything that existed in the Moon—both substances and beings—had to be expelled first. As a result, the human form was saved from hardening; it became possible for human beings to assume their present form, and only after the Moon’s separation were they given the opportunity to become bearers of the “I.” But all of this did not happen all at once. We could say that the Sun first separated slowly from the Earth. Thus, while the Moon was still contained within the Earth, there existed a state that did not permit the further development of humanity. Physical matter became denser and denser, so that humanity actually began to harden. What were human souls at a lower level back then followed a path similar to that of the human soul today; they, too, went through incarnations—successive embodiments—in which the inner being leaves the outer body, passes through a spiritual world, and reappears in a new embodiment.

[ 14 ] But before the Moon had separated from the Earth, something quite extraordinary occurred—a difficult phase, so to speak, for the Earth’s further development. What happened was that certain human souls, having left their bodies, had entered the spiritual world and now wished to incarnate anew, only to find that the human substance down below was too hard, too rigid for them, so that they could not incarnate. A time arose in which souls wanted to come down to Earth again but found no way to incarnate because the earthly bodies were unsuitable for them. Only the strongest souls could overcome the matter and substance, which had become hardened in the meantime, in order to incarnate on Earth. The others had to return to the spiritual world; they could not come down. Such times existed before the separation of the Moon. But the number of those strong souls capable of mastering matter and populating the Earth grew fewer and fewer. Thus, before the Lemurian era, there was a time when the Earth became desolate over a vast expanse, and the number of people on Earth dwindled steadily because the souls who wished to descend could not find suitable bodies.

[ 15 ] What, then, happened to these souls who could not find bodies? They were transported to the other planets that had since formed from the shared substance. Thus, there were certain souls who were carried off to Saturn, others who were carried off to Jupiter, Mars, Venus, or Mercury; so that there was a period on Earth during which only the strongest souls could come to Earth during the great Earth winter. The weaker souls had to be taken into the care of the other planets belonging to our solar system.

[ 16 ] During the Lemurian epoch, there was in fact a time about which one can say—at least approximately—: There was a single human couple, a primary couple, who had retained the strength to subdue this unruly human substance and to incarnate on Earth, persevering, as it were, throughout the entire Earth period. But that was also the time when the Moon separated from the Earth. And through this separation of the Moon, it once again became possible for the human substance to refine itself and make itself suitable once more for receiving human souls that were weaker, so that the descendants of this one principal couple were again able to exist in a softer substance than those who had lived before the Moon’s separation. Then, little by little, all the souls that had been carried up to Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so on returned to Earth, and as the human race multiplied from that one original couple, the souls gradually returned to Earth from outer space and took form as the descendants of the first original couple.

[ 17 ] Thus the Earth was repopulated. And during the late Lemurian period and well into the Atlantean period, more and more souls descended—souls who had been waiting on other planets until the time was right once again to incarnate on Earth. Then they descended once more into an earthly body. In this way, the Earth was repopulated. And in this way arose the Atlantean population, which was guided by the Atlantean initiates in the Atlantean oracles. I have characterized these Atlantean oracles as follows.

[ 18 ] There were great oracular sites in ancient Atlantis. They were arranged in such a way that some could be called the Mars oracles, others the Jupiter oracles, the Saturn oracles, and so on. Such diverse oracular sites existed because people were, after all, different. For those human souls who had previously waited on Mars, instruction and guidance had to be provided in the Mars oracles; for those who had waited on Jupiter, in the Jupiter oracles; and so on. Only a select few could be instructed in the central, great Solar Oracle during the Atlantean era. These were the descendants closest to that principal couple who had survived the Earth crisis—that strong ancestral couple alluded to in the Bible under the names Adam and Eve. Here we glimpse through the Bible something that corresponds with the facts of the Akashic Records, so that the Bible proves true even where it presents what seems so improbable. And at the head of the great oracle, which exercised supreme oversight over the others and is called the Solar Oracle, stood the greatest of the Atlantean initiates, the great Solar Initiate, who was at the same time the Manu, the leader of the Atlantean people. He was the one who, as the Atlantean catastrophe drew near, had to take on the task of leading the people he deemed suitable eastward and establishing a starting point for post-Atlantean culture. Above all, however, among the various people whom this Initiate gathered directly around him, there were always those who descended as directly as possible from those ancestral souls who had survived the Earthly Winter—who were, so to speak, the direct descendants of Adam and Eve, the first primordial couple. They were especially cherished and nurtured in the presence of the Great Initiate of the Solar Oracle. Their entire instruction was directed and guided in such a way that, at the appropriate moments in human development, it was always possible to allow the right influences to flow out from the place presided over by the Initiate of the Solar Oracle, the great Manu.

[ 19 ] Let us suppose that, at some point in human development, it became necessary for culture to be rejuvenated—that, so to speak, what humanity had preserved as tradition for some time and which had grown old was given a new direction, and that a new cultural element was bestowed upon humanity. To this end, provisions had to be made directly at the site of the initiate of the Sun Oracle, and this was done in a variety of ways.

[ 20 ] In the early stages of post-Atlantean cultural development, people who had been prepared for this purpose were sent here and there to share, as a result of their careful education, whatever was needed by this or that people. At this oracle site, hidden away in a certain region of Asia, care was always taken to ensure that the individual cultures could be influenced in the appropriate manner.

[ 21 ] But then, five to six centuries after the appearance of the Great Buddha, a very special time had come. The need had arisen to rejuvenate Buddhism. What had been proclaimed by the Great Buddha as an ancient, mature worldview—a worldview at its highest pinnacle—was to be channeled through a fountain of youth so that it could present itself to humanity in a form as fresh as youth. Very special youthful forces had to be brought to humanity. These youthful forces were not, in fact, contained within any individual who had otherwise been active out in the world.

[ 22 ] Those who work for the world wear out their strength, and the wearing out of strength is precisely what it means to grow old. If we could go back in time, we would see how one culture after another arose: first the ancient Indian culture, then the proto-Persian, followed by the Egyptian-Chaldean, and so on, and we would see that there were always great, significant leaders of humanity. All of these leaders of humanity gave their best energies to advance the human race. The great holy Rishis devoted their best energies; Zarathustra, the founder of Persian culture, devoted his best energies; Hermes, Moses, and the leaders of Chaldean culture—they all devoted their best energies. In a certain sense, through what they were able to accomplish, they were all the right and best leaders and guides of their times. Let us take any figure from ancient India. This person had incarnated again and again, reappearing in this or that incarnation—in the Persian, Egyptian, and Chaldean cultural epochs—and as they reappeared, their soul had grown ever older, ever more mature; they had elevated themselves to ever more mature powers, but they had lost the fresh vitality of youth. One can mature, can accomplish tremendous things, once one has become an old soul that has worked on itself through many incarnations, but the soul has become an old soul. One can teach great things, accomplish much for humanity, but one has necessarily had to give up the freshness and vitality of youth once one has developed to such a level.

[ 23 ] Let us take, for example, one of the greatest figures who has influenced the course of human evolution: Zarathustra. It was he who, from the deepest depths of the spiritual world, was able to bring the great message of the Sun Spirit to his time; it was he who was able to point his people upward toward the great Spirit who later appeared as the Christ. It was he who said: “Ahura Mazdao is contained within the Sun; he will draw near to the Earth.” And he spoke great and significant words about him. Only the deepest spiritual insight, the highly developed clairvoyance of Zarathustra, could perceive that Being of whom the holy Rishis still said that Vishva Karman lay beyond their sphere—that Being whom he, Zarathustra, called Ahura Mazdao and whose significance for human development he proclaimed. An immensely mature spirit was already present within Zarathustra’s physical form even back when Zarathustra founded the Proto-Persian culture.

[ 24 ] We can imagine that this individuality, through its successive incarnations, has risen ever higher, become ever more mature, ever older—and ever more capable of making the greatest sacrifices for humanity. Those of you who have heard other lectures of mine will know how Zarathustra relinquished his astral body, which later came to life again in the leader of Egyptian culture, Hermes, and how he relinquished his etheric body to the leader of the ancient Hebrew people, Moses. All this can be done only if one has a powerfully developed soul. Then one can become an individuality as highly developed as Zarathustra, who appeared in Chaldea six hundred years before our era—at the time when the Buddha was active in India—and was able to work as the great teacher Nazarathos or Zarathas, who was also the teacher of Pythagoras. All of this was possible for that great soul who was the leader and founder of Persian culture. Up to this point, he had become more and more mature.

[ 25 ] But as you will see from all of this, this soul was unable to do what was now necessary to rejuvenate Buddhism. It was impossible for it to impart forces that were entirely fresh and youthful—forces that were to be characterized precisely by the fact that they developed during childhood until sexual maturity, so that they could then be imparted to the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya. The Zarathustra Entity could never have accomplished this, precisely because it had risen so high, had ascended so far, from incarnation to incarnation. Therefore, it would not have been possible for it to develop within a child at the beginning of our era in such a way as to make possible what had become necessary.

[ 26 ] So when we look around at all the individualities that unfolded at that time, we find nowhere a person who could have been born then and who had the strength to develop in such a way that, at the age of twelve, he could have contributed the fresh, youthful energies that were to rejuvenate Buddhism. We have just turned our attention to the great, unique Zarathustra individuality to mention something extraordinary, and we can say to ourselves: Even the Zarathustra individuality was unsuitable for animating the body of Jesus up to the time when the astral maternal sheath was shed so that it could unite with the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya. |

[ 27 ] So where did the great life-giving power of the body of Jesus come from? It came from the Great Mother Lodge of Humanity, which is guided by the Great Solar Initiate, the Manu. A great individual power—one that had been nurtured and cultivated in the Great Mother Lodge, in the Great Solar Oracle—was infused into the child born to the parents named Joseph and Mary in the Gospel of Luke. The best and strongest of those individualities was infused into this child. Which individuality?

[ 28 ] If we wish to understand the individuality that was imbued into the child Jesus at that time, we must go back a long way, to the time before the Luciferic influence on humanity, before that influence had extended into the astral bodies of human beings. This Luciferic influence approached humanity at the very time when the primordial human couple—the first human pair—populated the Earth. Although this first human pair was strong enough, so to speak, to overcome the human substance so that it could incarnate, it was not strong enough to resist the Luciferic influence. The Luciferic influence took hold, extending its effects even into the astral bodies of this primordial couple, and the result was that it was impossible to allow all the forces that were in Adam and Eve to flow down into their descendants through the blood of their descendants. The physical body had to be allowed to propagate itself through all the generations, but something of the etheric body was held back in the guidance of humanity. This was expressed precisely by saying: Human beings ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—that is, what came from the Luciferic influence—but it was also said: Now we must take away their ability to partake of the Tree of Life as well! In other words, a certain amount of the forces of the etheric body was withheld. These forces no longer flowed down to the descendants. Thus, there was within Adam a certain amount of forces that were taken from him after the Fall. This still innocent part of Adam was preserved in the great Mother Lodge of humanity, where it was cherished and nurtured. This was, so to speak, the Adam-soul, which had not yet been touched by human guilt, which had not yet become entangled in that through which humanity had fallen. These primal forces of Adam’s individuality were preserved. They were there, and they were now guided as a “provisional ‘I’” to the place where the child was born to Joseph and Mary, and in the first years, this infant Jesus possessed within himself the power of the original progenitor of humanity on Earth.

[ 29 ] Oh, this soul had remained very young. It had not passed through the various incarnations; it had been held back at a very primitive stage, just as we might artificially hold back a child in our hypothetical attempts at education. So who was it that lived on in the little child born to Joseph and Mary? The progenitor of humanity, the “old Adam” as a “new Adam.” Paul already knew this (1 Corinthians 15:45); it lies in what is hidden behind his words. And Luke, the author of the Gospel of Luke—who was a disciple of Paul—knew this as well. That is why Luke speaks of it in a very special way. He knew that something special was necessary to transmit this spiritual substance to humanity at all; he knew that a bloodline tracing back to Adam was necessary. That is why he provides a genealogy for Joseph that goes all the way back to Adam, who emerges directly from the spiritual world itself—and thus, in Luke’s terminology, descends from God; he is a “Son of God.” Luke traces the lineage all the way back to God (Luke 3:23–38).

[ 30 ] A profound mystery lies precisely in what we call the genealogy in Luke: that common blood had to flow down through the generations and be preserved in an unbroken line down to the last descendant, so that, when the time was fulfilled, the Spirit, too, could be passed down to the descendants. - Thus, this infinitely youthful spirit—this spirit untouched by all earthly fates, this young soul whose powers, if we were to seek them, would have to be sought in ancient Lemuria—was united with the body born to Joseph and Mary. This spirit alone was strong enough to radiate fully into the astral womb and, when that was shed, to bestow upon it the powers it needed to unite fruitfully with the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya.

[ 31 ] We may therefore ask: What does the Gospel of Luke actually describe to us when it begins to speak of Jesus of Nazareth? First, it describes a human being whose physical body, through bloodline, traces back to Adam—to the times when humanity was saved on Earth by a primary couple during the Earth’s desolation. And it goes on to describe—taking the perspective of reincarnation—the reincarnation of a soul that had waited the longest before its reincarnations. We find the Adam-soul before the Fall, the one that had waited the longest, reincarnated in the child Jesus. We may therefore say—as fantastic as it may sound to humanity today—that the individuality which was guided into the infant Jesus by the Great Mother Lodge of Humanity not only descended from the physically oldest lineages of humanity, but is also the reincarnation of the very first member of humanity. — Now we know who it was who was presented in the temple and shown to Simeon, who the “Son of God” was according to Luke. He is not speaking of the present-day human being, but testifies that this human being is the reincarnation of the one who was there before, who was there as the very oldest progenitor of all the lineages.

[ 32 ] If we summarize all of this, we must now say the following. In the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., the great Bodhisattva lived in India; his mission was to bring to humanity the truths that were to gradually arise within humanity itself. He provided the impetus for this. Through this, he became the Buddha at that time. Therefore, he does not reappear in a later earthly body that fully corresponds to his individuality. However, he does appear again in the Nirmanakaya, the body of transformations, but only up to the etheric-astral world. The shepherds, who for a moment become clairvoyant so that they may see what is announced to them, behold him there in the form of the angelic hosts. He bends over the child born to Joseph and Mary. And there is a purpose in his bending over this very child.

[ 33 ] What the great Buddha was able to bring to humanity had to be present in a mature form; it is difficult to understand, for it stands at significant spiritual heights. In order for it to bear fruit for all, a force that was entirely youthful and fresh had to flow into what the Buddha had attained up to that point. He had to draw this power up from the earth by lowering himself to the level of a human child, from whom he could absorb all the youthful forces emanating from the astral womb from which the child was being born. This human being was born to him through the bloodline—through the lineage—as a child whom he, who knew it best, could trace back to the progenitor of humanity, but whom he also traced back to the ancient-yet-young soul of humanity during the Lemurian epoch, and whom he could point to as the reincarnated new Adam. This child, whose soul was the mother soul of humanity—a soul that had been preserved in its youth throughout the epochs—lived in such a way that it radiated all its fresh powers into the astral body, which then detached itself, ascended, and united with the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya.

[ 34 ] But these are not all the facts that enable us to understand the wondrous mystery of Palestine; this is only one aspect. We now understand who was born in Bethlehem after Joseph and Mary traveled there from Nazareth, and to whom the shepherds were given the good news. But that is not all. During the time at the beginning of our calendar, many strange and significant events took place to bring about the greatest event in human development. To make clear what gradually led up to this great event, we must still consider the following.

[ 35 ] Among the ancient Hebrew people there was the house of David. Those whom we call the “Davidic houses” all traced their lineage back to their forefather David. As you can see from the Bible, David had two sons, Solomon and Nathan (2 Samuel 5:14). Two lineages—the Solomonic line and the Nathanic line—thus descend from David. Therefore, if we disregard the intermediate generations, we can say: At the time our calendar begins, the descendants of both the Solomonic line and the Nathanic line of the Davidic lineage are present in Palestine. And living as a descendant of the line we call the Nathanic line of the Davidic lineage is a man named Joseph in Nazareth. His wife is Mary. And in Bethlehem there lives a descendant of the Solomonic line of the House of David, who is also named Joseph. It is not at all surprising that there are two people from the House of David, both named Joseph, and that both are married to a woman named Mary, as the Bible calls her. We thus have two sets of parents in Palestine at the beginning of our calendar; both bear the names Joseph and Mary. One set of parents traces its ancestry back to the Solomonic line of the House of David—that is, to the “royal line”; the other set of parents, those in Nazareth, traces its ancestry back to the Nathanic line—that is, to the “priestly line.” This latter set of parents from the Nathanic line had the child I described to you yesterday and today. And this child provided an astral womb that could be taken up by the Buddha’s Nirmanakaya. This couple from the Nathanic line traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem—as Luke says—“for the census” (Luke 2:4–5) when the child was about to be born. This is described in the genealogy in the Gospel of Luke.

[ 36 ] The other set of parents, who did not originally live in Nazareth at all—one need only take the Gospels literally—lived in Bethlehem, as described to us by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:1). The Gospels always describe the truth—there’s no need to overanalyze them—and through anthroposophy, people will once again come to take the Gospels at face value. To this couple from the Solomonic line, a child is born who is also named Jesus. This child also possesses a powerful individuality within his physical body. But this child initially had a different task—the wisdom of the world runs deep—this child was not called to impart the fresh, youthful forces of the astral womb, but was called to bring to humanity that which can only be brought by a mature soul. This child was guided by all the forces involved guided in such a way that it could be the incarnation of that individuality which once taught Ahura Mazda in Persia, which once was able to surrender its astral body to Hermes and its etheric body to Moses, and which reappeared as the great teacher Pythagoras, as Zarathas or Nazarathos, the great teacher in ancient Chaldea: it is none other than the Zarathustra Individuality. The I-ness of Zarathustra was reincarnated in the child of whom the Evangelist Matthew tells us that he was born to a couple, Joseph and Mary, who descended from the royal line—the Solomonic line of the House of David—and who originally resided in Bethlehem.

[ 37 ] Thus, we find one part of the truth in Matthew and the other part in Luke. We must take both literally, for the truth of the world is complex. Now we know who was born of the priestly line of the House of David. But we also know that from the royal line was born that individual who once worked in Persia as Zarathustra and there established the magic of the ancient Persian Empire—the royal magic. Thus the two individualities lived side by side: the young Adam individuality in the child from the priestly line of the House of David, and the Zarathustra individuality in the child from the royal line of the House of David.

[ 38 ] How and why all this happened, and how events unfolded from there, will be continued tomorrow.