The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. The Mission of the Ancient Hebrew People

[ 1 ] In the last lecture, we already discussed our intention to reflect on the Gospels, and we explained why we now wish to focus on certain passages from the Gospel of Matthew. In a certain sense, it is the most human aspect of Christ Jesus that we encounter in this Gospel. On the other hand, it also provides a complete overview of the historical events that show how Christ Jesus grew out of humanity itself. Since this demonstrates how the greatest phenomenon in the development of the Earth grew out of history, it stands to reason that the deeper mysteries of humanity’s becoming may be revealed to us precisely in this Gospel.

[ 2 ] Once again today, I would like to make it clear that the matters discussed on this occasion are subtle, and that one can very easily cause serious harm to the spiritual science movement by presenting to the world, in any one-sided way, what pertains to these mysteries. Therefore, the utmost caution should be exercised in any communication regarding these matters. It would not even be too much to ask that everyone exercise patience and refrain from speaking about an image of Christ until they have come to understand it from all four perspectives presented in the four Gospels. A consideration of the Gospel of Luke already reveals how the two great pre-Christian spiritual currents—Zoroastrianism and that which reached its pre-Christian culmination in Buddhism—converged to flow into the great Christian stream of earthly spiritual life.

[ 3 ] The Gospel of Matthew is primarily concerned with an entirely different theme, namely, to show how that physicality in which the individuality of Zoroaster was incarnated grew out of the ancient Hebrew people. It sets out to show the role that the ancient Hebrew people played in the overall development of humanity. One might easily think that, if the individuality of Zoroaster was embodied in the Jesus of Bethlehem, then only the physical form would have been born out of the ancient Hebrew people—and that this would amount to nothing more than saying that Zoroaster was reborn in a physical form that grew out of the ancient Hebrew people. If one were to read such a nuance of feeling into this, it would result in a completely false picture of the truth.

[ 4 ] Such reflections should make it increasingly clear to us that an individuality such as that of Zarathustra requires physicality as an instrument. If any individuality were to descend to Earth from the highest of the worlds—from the most divine of the divine worlds—and incarnate in an unsuitable physical form, it could make nothing of that form other than what it is capable of serving as an instrument for. This subtle emotional nuance, which has just been mentioned, could easily give rise to all manner of misunderstandings. For a long time, the Theosophical Movement failed to understand that the human physical body is the temple of the soul. One must take into account what we have emphasized so often: that the human “I” dwells within three sheaths, each of which is older than the “I” itself. This “I” is an earthly being, the youngest among the human members. The astral body originated on the ancient Moon, and the etheric or life body on the ancient Sun; thus, it has undergone three stages of planetary evolution. The physical body is, in its own way, the most perfect part and has undergone four stages of planetary evolution. The physical body has been refined from eon to eon, so that today it is this perfect instrument in which the human “I” could develop, enabling human beings to gradually ascend once more to the heights of the spiritual. If the physical body were as imperfect as the astral body and the “I,” human evolution on Earth would not be possible.

[ 5 ] If you take this entirely seriously, you can no longer associate any false emotional nuance with the idea that Zoroaster was born of the Hebrew people. That people simply had to be exactly as it was if it was to provide the physical form for a being such as Zarathustra. If we imagine that this being, ever since the time when it was still a teacher of the ancient Persian people, has continued to develop to ever higher levels, then we must conclude that it was necessary to provide it with an instrument drawn from a people of a magnitude commensurate with its nature. An instrument suitable for it had to be created. Through Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, the gods have striven to shape the physical body of humankind in general. From this we may well conclude that the more intimate preparation of a human body required a great deal of spiritual-divine work in order to bring the human body into the specific form that served Zarathustra at that time.

[ 6 ] For this to be possible, the entire history of the ancient Hebrew people had to unfold exactly as it did. The Akashic Records show us that what is recorded in the Old Testament truly corresponds to historical facts. Everything among the ancient Hebrew people had to be arranged, so to speak, in such a way that it ultimately culminated in that one personality, Jesus of Bethlehem. But this required special arrangements. It was necessary to extract from the totality of the culture of the post-Atlantean era that which was most capable of developing within humanity the very forces that had to be developed so that humanity could replace the old clairvoyant abilities with something new. It was precisely the Hebrew people who were chosen to provide, first and foremost, a physical constitution organized down to the finest fibers of the brain in such a way that what we call knowledge of the world could come about without the influence of the old clairvoyance. That was to be the mission of this people. In the forefather of this people, Abraham, such an individuality was indeed chosen that his physical constitution served as a suitable instrument for judicious thinking. Everything that had previously been great and significant was still under the lingering influence of ancient clairvoyance. Now, however, a personality was to be chosen who possessed the most suitable brain—one that would not allow itself to be overwhelmed or swayed by clairvoyant imaginings and intuitions, but was called to view things purely through reason. This, however, required a specially constituted brain, and the individual possessing this brain had to be chosen. We see this in Abram or Abraham.

[ 7 ] And this also agrees with the observations in the Akashic Records, which state that the direction from which Abraham came was from beyond the Euphrates toward the west, initially toward Canaan. Abraham was brought, as the Bible says, from Ur in Chaldea. While echoes of the ancient, twilight-like clairvoyance still lingered in both Egyptian and Chaldean-Babylonian cultures, an individual was chosen from among the Chaldean people who no longer relied on that but rather on observations of phenomena in the external world. This was to usher in the culture whose fruits are still incorporated into our entire Western culture and civilization today. That combinatorial thinking—mathematical logic—was introduced by Abraham; well into the Middle Ages, he was regarded, in a certain sense, as a representative of arithmetic. The entire structure of his thinking was precisely one that viewed the world through the relationship of measure and number.

[ 8 ] A personality of this nature was well-suited to forge a living connection with the deity that was to reveal itself through the medium of the external world. All other deities besides Yahweh made themselves known within the human soul, and one had to awaken imagination, intuition, and so on within one’s soul in order to know anything about them. In ancient India, people looked outward, saw the sun rise, observed the various realms of the earth, the phenomena of the atmosphere, the sea, and so on; but all of this was regarded as a great illusion, as Maya, in which the Indian would have found nothing divine had he not first attained it through inner imagination and then subsequently related it to the phenomena of the external world. We must also conceive of Zoroaster in this way: he could not have pointed to the great solar being if the great being of Ahura Mazdao had not dawned upon him inwardly. But we see this particularly clearly in the Egyptian deities, who were drawn entirely from inner soul experiences and subsequently related to external things.

[ 9 ] All pre-Hebrew deities must be understood from this perspective. Yahweh, however, is the deity who looks upon one from the outside, approaches humanity from the outside, and reveals himself through wind and weather. When a person penetrates everything in the external world that exists in terms of number, measure, and weight, he draws closer to the God Yahweh. In earlier times, the path was the opposite. Brahma was first recognized within the soul, and only then did one move outward from there. Yahweh, however, is first recognized on the outside, and only then can he be found within oneself. This is the spiritual aspect of what is called “Yahweh’s covenant with Abraham.” This man was precisely the kind of person who could grasp and understand Yahweh. Abraham’s physical nature was such that he could understand Yahweh—or Jehovah—as the God who lives through and interweaves with the phenomena of the external world.

[ 10 ] The task now is to deduce the mission of an entire people from this distinctive trait of that one man, Abraham. It was necessary for Abraham’s spiritual constitution to be transmitted to others as well. However, this constitution is bound to the physical instruments; for everything that is to be manifested outwardly is bound to a very specific organization of the physical body. The ancient religions, built upon the foundation of twilight clairvoyance, did not need to place so much emphasis on whether the individual parts of the brain were shaped in one way or another; but the understanding of Jehovah was strictly bound to the constitution of the physical brain. Only through physical inheritance within a people united by blood ties could such qualities be transmitted.

[ 11 ] Something very special had to happen. Abraham had to have descendants who would continue to build upon that unique constitution of the physical body, which the gods had constructed up to that point and which was present in Abraham in its highest form. The building of the physical body now had to be taken up by human beings independently, so that what the gods had done up to that point could be continued; and this had to happen over many generations. A mind capable of understanding Yahweh had to be preserved through physical inheritance. Yahweh’s covenant with Abraham was also to be passed on to his descendants. This, however, required an immense surrender of Abraham’s individuality to Yahweh; for one gains the ability to develop a certain constitution more and more only when one uses it in the way it was created. If, for example, one wishes to make the hand particularly dexterous for a certain purpose, this can only happen by further developing it in the manner for which it was created. If one wished to develop the physical characteristics of the brain as that of one who comprehends Yahweh, this devotion to and comprehension of Yahweh had to reach the highest conceivable degree in Abraham.

[ 12 ] And that was indeed the case. The Bible tells us how this came to pass. Devotion reaches its peak when one sacrifices what one is meant to become in the future. Abraham was to sacrifice his son Isaac to Yahweh. In doing so, he would be sacrificing the entire Hebrew people and everything that he himself was and everything that was to be brought into the world through him. Abraham was the first to truly understand Jehovah. If he wanted to show complete devotion to Him, he had to surrender himself entirely to Him. By sacrificing his only son, he renounced any continuation of his lineage in the world.

[ 13 ] And he went so far in his devotion that he offered Isaac as a sacrifice; it was his will. And he gets Isaac back. What does that mean? It means something truly immense. He receives him back from Yahweh himself; that is, Abraham goes so far as not to pass on the mission he has by virtue of his own individuality to posterity through himself, but rather to receive it as a gift from Yahweh or Jehovah in his own son. Anyone who reflects on this will realize that here lies a fact of world history that sheds boundless light on the mysteries of humanity’s historical development.

[ 14 ] Now let us see how events unfold. Through Abraham’s devotion to Yahweh, it becomes possible for what the gods have created thus far to truly continue. What physical humanity is was born out of the universe. We know, after all, how human physicality on Earth is connected—in number, measure, and weight—to all the laws that govern the starry worlds. Human beings are born from the starry worlds; they carry within themselves the laws of the starry worlds. The laws of the stellar worlds had to be, so to speak, inscribed into the blood flowing down through the generations of the ancient Hebrew people from Abraham onward. Within the ancient Hebrew people, everything had to be ordered in such a way that the stream of lawfulness continued to flow—the stream that, from the cosmos, had ordered the human physical body according to number, measure, and weight in accordance with the order of the stars. We find this again in a saying that is so terribly distorted in the Bible. It states there that God wants to make the Israelites as numerous as the stars in the sky. What is meant, however, is that in the way they procreate and spread across the earth, He wants the laws—the numerical ratios—to prevail just as they do among the stars in the sky. The Hebrew people are to be ordered in their procreation according to the numerical harmony of the stars.

[ 15 ] We see how this happens. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. We also see how everything that flows down through the blood of the generations—as those belonging to the line of Esau are eliminated and the appropriate line is brought forth—how this continues to unfold. Jacob had twelve sons corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac, through which the sun travels in the sky to bring about the order of the stars. This is the inner law. Indeed, in the life and mode of procreation of the Hebrew people, we see a reflection of the numbers and measures that prevail in the heavens. Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac. In doing so, he once again accepted his entire mission from Yahweh. A ram or lamb was sacrificed in Isaac’s place. What does this mean?

[ 16 ] There lies something immensely profound here. That human physicality, which was meant to reproduce and to which were bound the abilities that enable an understanding of the world in terms of measure and number, according to mathematical logic, was to be preserved and accepted as a gift from Yahweh. But in order to possess it unadulterated by anything else, it was necessary to renounce all dim, ancient forms of clairvoyance; to renounce all manner of imaginings and intuitions; and to reject any influx of such revelations as existed in all other religions of antiquity, up to and including the Chaldean and Egyptian ones. Every gift from the spiritual world had to be renounced. The last gift from the spiritual world that remains when all the earlier ones have been obscured is represented in mystical symbolism by the ram. The two ram’s horns signify: the sacrifice of the two-petaled lotus flower. The final clairvoyant gift is sacrificed after the earlier ones have already been laid aside. In order to preserve the physical aspect within this organization in Isaac, the final clairvoyant ability—the Aries gift, the two-petaled lotus flower—is sacrificed here.

[ 17 ] Now, the people continue to live out their mission in such a way that precisely these “Abrahamic” abilities are passed down from generation to generation. The moment this clairvoyant gift reemerges atavistically—when someone once again gains insight into the spiritual worlds—a reaction sets in whereby that individual is initially ostracized and is not tolerated within the community. The antipathy toward this gift of the Ram manifests itself as hostility. This is evident in the case of Joseph. In his dreams, he had prophetic insights from the spiritual world. He is quite naturally cast out from among the people because what he possessed fell outside the actual mission of the Hebrew people. He is cast out by his brothers because an ancestral gift of clairvoyance reappears in him. That is why Joseph had to go to Egypt—because he fell outside the mission of his people.

[ 18 ] These things we are being told are so significant! Now let us see how, as it were, precisely through that figure—through whom is preserved in an ancient heirloom that which the ancient Hebrew people could only look back upon as something that existed before Abraham—how through this figure, through Joseph, what was so necessary for the development of the ancient Hebrew people and for the fulfillment of their mission is once again brought about. In a certain sense, the gate was closed to the ancient Hebrew people toward that world which had led, through the ancient, twilight-like clairvoyance, to the Indian and Persian religions. There, the gate was closed. People looked out into the world, organized it according to measure and number, and in the unity into which they organized everything, they beheld Yahweh or Jehovah. The only thing they still knew was that what they beheld outside—what confronted them in Yahweh as the Creator of worldly phenomena—was one and the same as human individuality. But no imaginative concepts, no inner experiences of their own arose within these ethnic communities regarding this. At that time—and I say this explicitly—there were no such experiences of their own. Therefore, they had to learn it from outside, that is, they had to learn it from a people who still had these experiences.

[ 19 ] Thus, the personality of Joseph forms the link between the ancient Hebrew people and the Egyptians—that is, the people from whom one could learn what the ancient Hebrew people no longer experienced firsthand. What one can bring together oneself today, having had one’s own inner experiences—the insights and experiences of the outer world and those of the inner imagination—had to be brought together by going to a people who still possessed these experiences to a high degree: the Egyptian people. One had to bring such inner abilities into harmony with what one had gained oneself through mathematical logic. But only a personality who possessed something of this kind of imagination could lead the way to this Egyptian people. Joseph was the right link because he himself still possessed such abilities. For he was able to serve the Egyptians because he was capable of two things: First, he possessed the ancient gift of clairvoyance from the time before Abraham. He could attune himself to what the ancient Egyptian people had attained through clairvoyance. But what this people lacked was mathematical logic; that is, they could not apply what they possessed as imagination to physical life. The pharaoh was therefore unable to organize things properly when something occurred that had not always been present before. One could have imaginative visions, but when a certain disorder arose, to think wisely, with precision and numerical clarity, and to organize the circumstances—this required a different ability that the Egyptians did not possess, and Joseph had it. Therefore, he was able to give the right advice at the Egyptian court. Thus, he was the ideal link between the Hebrew people and the Egyptians. Through this, he was able to bring about a situation in which the teachings of Yahweh or Jehovah—which until then had been like a summary of external reality, like a mathematical worldview—gained color and substance from the inner imagination that existed in Egypt.

[ 20 ] It was Moses who brought about this connection and harmony between the experiences of ancient Egypt and the insights into the interconnectedness of the world. Once that was accomplished, the people could be led back to process—in their own way—what they had experienced in Egypt, not merely what they had been told. For the very point was that this gift be preserved unmixed from other peoples, that the uniqueness of their bloodline remain unadulterated. Yet what the ancient peoples had been able to attain had to be preserved and brought over. Thus, the legacy from ancient times—the store of wisdom found among the Egyptian people—was incorporated by Moses into the ancient Hebrew people with their mathematical and logical abilities. But then the people had to be torn away again, for they were to bequeath what was possible as a new ability through the Abrahamic people alone.

[ 21 ] And so this people continued to live. Because they continually refined the prerequisites, and because the blood of this people increasingly aligned itself with these prerequisites—developing as it did over the course of generations—it became possible, at a specific point in time, for the physical form of the infant Jesus to emerge from the blood of this people, into which the personality of Zarathustra or Zoroaster could enter. To this end, this people had to be made strong and powerful.

[ 22 ] If we continue to trace, in the spirit of the Gospel of Matthew, the era of the judges and kings and the various fates of the ancient Hebrew people, we will see how even those circumstances—which show us this people often straying from the right path—were precisely what was necessary to bring about what ultimately came to pass. In particular, it was also necessary for the people to suffer the misfortune represented by their exile to Babylon. We shall see how the people’s distinctive character developed, and how the clash with the other aspect of the ancient tradition—which existed in Babylon—was necessary once the people were ready to be reunited with what they had left behind. That is one point. The other is that precisely at the time when the Hebrew people were reunited with the Babylonians, a great and mighty teacher from the East was teaching there, and that some of the finest among the Hebrew people were still able to stand in the light of this great teacher. This was the time when Zarathustra taught there as Nazarathos or Zaratos, in those regions to which the Jews had been led. Some of the finest prophets were still under his influence. There he was still able to accomplish as much with this people as one must do when the blood has already exerted a certain effect, and certain external influences must then come into play.

[ 23 ] It is almost as if one would not be far off the mark if one were to compare this entire process of development to the development of an individual human being as he or she gradually grows up. First, we have the child who is born. It grows up until the age of seven and is in the physical care of its parents. At this stage, it is primarily influences from the physical plane that must take effect. Then the development begins, initiated by the proper birth of the etheric body. This development is based on the formation of memory—that is, on ensuring that what can develop within the etheric body gains its strength in the proper way. In the third period, what might be called the following begins: the human being now enters into a relationship with the external world through his astral body; here he must acquire what might be called the capacity for judgment.

[ 24 ] In a certain sense, the ancient Hebrew people went through this process in a very unique way. First, they went through the initial period, from Abraham to the time of the first kings. This can be compared to the first period of an individual’s life up to the age of seven. During this time, everything is done that serves to consolidate one’s innate characteristics. Everything recounted there—Abraham’s journey, the formation of the twelve tribes, the establishment of the Mosaic law, and the perils in the wilderness—can be compared to what flows into a person on the physical plane during the first seven years of life. Then comes the second period: inner consolidation, the reign of the kings up to the Babylonian captivity. Then comes the influence of Chaldean culture and Eastern magus traditions on the Hebrew people. And the guiding force that, even back then—between 550 and 600 B.C.—infused this Eastern influence into the Hebrew people was, even then, the individuality of Zarathustra. And so he was already laying the groundwork back then to find a suitable physical form. Thus, over the generations, beginning with Abraham, the possibility and the conditions developed more and more for the suitable physical form to be born, which could then become the reincarnation of Zarathustra.

[ 25 ] The Gospel of Matthew, in particular, depicts this development with remarkable accuracy by dividing it into three parts. We have three sets of fourteen generations: fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen generations from David to the Babylonian Exile, and fourteen generations from the Babylonian Exile to Christ Jesus. That makes three times fourteen, or forty-two generations, as it were, showing that in the physical being of Jesus lies the essence of all that has been prepared from Abraham onward through the entire history of the ancient Hebrew people. And now a human being is to appear who, in his soul’s activity, expresses all the qualities that have been, so to speak, assembled through the succession of generations, and who unites them in his entire personality, in a single human being. The entire Hebrew development since Abraham was to be summed up in one human being. And this was to culminate in the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. How could this happen? It is possible only if the entire course of development is repeated in a spiritual sense. Zarathustra sets out, so to speak, from the place in Ur of the Chaldeans, spiritually emerging from the Mysteries, from whence Abraham came. The golden star first appears there, sets out from there, and the Magi from that place follow it. Spiritually, the same thing happens as physically happened through Abraham. The path that Abraham took is spiritually traversed by the star that the Magi follow: this is Zarathustra himself, incarnating, who walks the path that Abraham walked, and he descends upon the birthplace. This is the moment when the individuality of Zarathustra incarnates in the infant Jesus of Bethlehem. The Magi know this. They follow the star—that is, their great teacher Zarathustra—who is incarnating there.

[ 26 ] The point now is that the path must truly be continued, that the entire essence of the whole of Hebrew development is truly contained within the person of Jesus. Let us first consider that, in spirit, a sacrifice—the sacrifice of Isaac—is repeated; at least in spirit, it is repeated through the offering of the three Magi from the East: gold, frankincense, and myrrh were presented by them. At the same time, we see that something else occurs that recalls earlier events in the history of the ancient Hebrew people. The very birth of this child Jesus is connected to something that mirrors the fate of the ancient Hebrew people. There was a Joseph who inherited a legacy in dreams and who represents the link between the Hebrew and Egyptian peoples; now it is once again a Joseph who has dreams, and who is shown in a dream not only that Jesus will be born, but that he is to go to Egypt with Jesus.

[ 27 ] And now the path of Zarathustra continues in the body of the infant Jesus. Just as he followed the path that Abraham took on the physical plane from Ur in Chaldea to Canaan, so now he continues on the path to Egypt—and the infant Jesus is led back from Egypt, just as the Hebrew people were led back. Thus, in the appearance of the Jesus of Bethlehem—who was only later called the Nazarene—we see a repetition of the entire destiny of the ancient Hebrew people up to their return from Egypt to the Promised Land of Palestine. What unfolded over long, long centuries as the external history of the Hebrew people is now repeating itself in the destiny of that human being who embodies Zarathustra in the body of the Jesus of Bethlehem. In the spirit of the Gospel of Matthew, viewed on a grand scale, this is the mystery of human history itself. One cannot understand human history unless one understands the individual great guiding personalities—who have a special mission—in such a way that the entire course of development over the centuries is repeated in their individual destinies; that in a single incarnation they embody an essence of what has been created throughout history over the centuries. Christ Jesus, of course, had to take on much more, but the physical body first had to be specially prepared, and that could only be achieved through the arrangements described.

[ 28 ] What about the specific moment when that brief recapitulation of the entire history of the Hebrew people was to take place in the person of Jesus? What kind of moment in history is this? To answer this, consider the following developmental facts, which I have been trying to prepare in your imagination for years now. Consider this: Humanity emerged from an ancient stage of development in which everything that bound people together in love was tied to blood ties. People loved one another because they were connected by blood, and they married only within close blood ties. There was no other kind of love in ancient times. That is why love was bound to blood kinship. This is called “close kinship”; humanity originated from close kinship. Gradually, these individual groups became increasingly intermingled in various regions of the earth. We can observe among all peoples how it is regarded as a special event when men and women marry into another tribe, when the transition to “distant marriage” occurs. In all myths and legends—for example, in the “Gudrun Song”—this is characterized as a special event. It always made a special impression. Two currents are at work during this development of humanity. In this uniting through blood ties, the divine-spiritual principle has always been at work—the principle intended to bring humanity together, to make the whole of humanity one. Working against it was the Luciferic principle, which seeks to make every human being self-centered, to make the individual as powerful and great as possible. Both principles must be present in human nature; both forces must be at work in human development.

[ 29 ] Now, these two forces were at work throughout the course of human development: the divine-spiritual forces and the Luciferic forces that remained behind on the Moon, which sought to prevent human beings from losing themselves, but rather to make them entirely independent. These two forces were always at work in human development. As a result, the human “I”—which is, after all, a product of the Earth—was constantly torn back and forth. On the one hand, it was directed toward love of humanity; on the other, toward inner independence. Now, at a certain point in time, a kind of crisis arose regarding the interplay of these two forces. This crisis, this decisive moment in human history, occurred when, as a result of the actions of the Roman Empire, the peoples across a vast swath of the earth were thrown into complete disarray. It was indeed a decisive moment in human development—the moment when it would become clear what would become of the unresolved question of closeness and distance. People faced the danger of either losing their sense of self by remaining within their individual tribes or losing all connection with humanity and becoming merely isolated, independent, selfish individuals. So that moment had arrived.

[ 30 ] What had to happen at this point in time? Something very specific. The human “I” had to mature to the point of developing within itself what can only be called independence and freedom, and of freely unfolding from within itself a spiritual love that was no longer bound by blood ties. The “I” stood at a crossroads. It had to become completely unbound and fully conscious of itself. Thus, with the exception of the Eastern peoples, all of humanity in the ancient world stood before a new birth of the “I”—a birth through which this “I” was to arrive at the love born from within the “I” itself. The “I” was to develop love out of freedom, and freedom out of love. And, fundamentally speaking, only such a being is fully human. Only the one who develops such an “I” is a true human being. For the one who loves only because of blood ties is driven to love and merely expresses, on a higher level, what is also present on a lower level in the animal kingdom. Only in the moment we have just described has full humanization taken place. In that moment, the influence that made man truly human was to sweep across the earth.

[ 31 ] Remember what I have told you countless times: that human beings, by their very nature, consist of three parts—the physical body, which they share with minerals; the etheric body, which they share with plants; and the astral body, in which, essentially, love has also resided until now, and which they share with animals. Through his fully developed “I,” the human being is the crown of earthly creation. All other earthly beings have names that can be given to them from the outside; they are objects. The “I” has a name that it can give only to itself. In the “I,” the Divine speaks; in the “I,” earthly conditions no longer speak; in the “I,” the realm of the Spirit speaks. The Spirit from the heavens speaks when this “I” has fully come into its own. One could say that until now there have been three kingdoms: the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and a kingdom that, while standing apart from these, has not yet attained perfection—one that has not yet fully incorporated its entire super-earthly essence within itself. This realm—which consists in the incorporation into a single “I” of that which is found nowhere else on earth: the spiritual world and the realms of heaven—was called, in biblical terminology, the kingdom or kingdoms of heaven; in the Bible, it is usually translated as “Kingdom of God.”

[ 32 ] And the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing other than a rephrasing of the term “Kingdom of Man.” When we speak of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, we can cite, in the biblical sense, a fourth kingdom: the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Man, as we can say in the biblical sense, is the Kingdom of Heaven, so that those who, in the past, looked into the entire course of human development from a mystical perspective could say the following: Look back to times past; there, humanity was guided to become humanity; there, the Kingdom of Heaven was not yet on earth. Now the time has come when the Kingdom of Heaven is coming to Earth. — This is what the Forerunner of Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus himself said: “The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near,” and thereby they characterized their time in its deepest essence. But it was precisely into this time that the birth of Christ Jesus had to fall. He was to bring those forces to humanity through which the “I” could develop those qualities. Thus, the entire development of humanity is divided into two parts: a pre-Christian period, in which the Kingdom of Heaven was not yet on Earth, and a period in which the Kingdom of Heaven was on Earth—the human kingdom in its highest sense. The ancient Hebrew people were chosen to provide the physical form—the bodily veils—that had grown as an entity to receive the bearer of this Kingdom of Heaven.

[ 33 ] These are the mysteries that emerge when one considers events historically, building upon the Gospel of Matthew in a deeper sense. Thus, to the two currents we have described—the two contributions to Christianity that we have come to know, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism—we must add a third current: the ancient Hebrew current, the contribution of the ancient Hebrew people. We could now say the following: There were leaders such as the Buddha and Zarathustra. They wished to offer the sacrifices of their religious movements. And a temple had to be built. The temple could only be built by the ancient Hebrew people. This people built the temple of Jesus’ physical body. These first two movements were able to enter this temple. First, Zarathustra made his offering by incarnating into this body; later, the Buddha made his offering by infusing his Nirmanakaya into the other Jesus. Thus these two currents flow together.

[ 34 ] In order to offer you at least some thoughts that are, in a certain sense, fully formed, I have been able to provide you today only with very brief, abstract sketches of these profound mysteries. But in order to present fully formed thoughts, I have today characterized them in general terms schematically. We will continue this later to gain a picture of the mission of the ancient Hebrew people and of the very unique emergence of Christ Jesus from among this people. There we will see the unique way in which, out of history—out of the temporal course of development—a being of eternal significance, of imperishable duration, emerges. Thus it will gradually become clear how, out of a transient world, that which will endure for eternity could develop.