The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Anyone who picks up the Gospel of Luke and looks at the chapter in which the lineage of Jesus—as described there—is traced back to earlier generations will readily see that the intention of the author of the Gospel of Luke is consistent with what was said here yesterday. The point made yesterday was that, just as a divine force-entity was to permeate the physical body and etheric body of the Solomonic Jesus, so too was a divine force-entity to permeate the astral body and the “I” of that personality whom we know as the Nathanic Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. And it is clearly stated in the Gospel of Luke: this divine being of power is what it is because the line of descent flows in a straight line through all generations from that stage of humanity when the human being had not yet entered into an earthly, physical-sensory incarnation for the first time within earthly existence. We see, after all, how the Gospel of Luke traces the lineage of its Jesus back through, let us say, generations, all the way to Adam, all the way to God. But this means nothing other than that, if we wish to find that principle in the astral body and in the “I” of the Nathanic Jesus, we must ascend to a state of human existence in which that human being had not yet been taken up into a physical-sensory earthly incarnation, in which he had not yet descended from divine spiritual existence but was still in the bosom of those spiritual spheres within which we can describe the human being as belonging to God, as a divine being. In the spirit of the entire anthroposophical discourse, we must indeed point to this point in time during the ancient Lemurian era and establish it as the point at which the human being had not yet incarnated in the elements of earthly existence, but was still in a divine-spiritual sphere. The Gospel of Luke actually traces its Jesus all the way back to those times when human beings were still of a divine nature and had not yet been affected by what we call the Luciferic influence.

[ 2 ] In fact, those mysteries that led their students to the initiation we described yesterday—the knowledge of the great secrets of cosmic space—sought to lead human beings beyond all that is earthly, or rather, beyond what human beings have become through the earthly realm. They sought to teach how one can view the world when one does not view it through the instruments that humanity has possessed since the time when the Luciferic influence was able to take effect. How does the universe appear to clairvoyant perception when human beings free themselves from perception through the physical and etheric bodies, free themselves from everything earthly that can approach them—that was, at first, the great question for the students of the mysteries. In such a state, human beings naturally existed before entering an earthly incarnation and before becoming the “earthly Adam,” to speak specifically in the sense of the Bible and the Gospel of Luke. Thus, there are only two ways through which a human being can become what makes him a divine-spiritual human being: One is the high initiation of the Great Mysteries; the other cannot be realized at any arbitrary time on Earth, but existed at an elemental stage of human existence, before the descent of the divine human being in the Lemurian era to what the Bible calls the “earthly human being”; for “Adam” means “earthly human,” who is no longer of a divine-spiritual nature but has clothed himself in the earthly elements.

[ 3 ] However, one thing might stand out when we express something like this. Namely, that there are, after all, only seventy-seven—let’s say—generations or stages of existence, referred to as stages of inheritance. Even in the Gospel of Matthew, someone might find it striking that only forty-two generations are listed from Abraham to Christ, and they might calculate that the number of years usually assumed for a generation would not be enough to go all the way back to Abraham. Anyone who were to say this, however, would have to take into account that in the past, for ancient times—for the patriarchal era from Solomon and David onward—longer periods were rightly assumed for the duration of a generation than in later times. If we want to make even a reasonable sense of the historical data ourselves, we must not calculate for three generations—for example, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—based on what would now be the average for three generations, but rather we must set the duration for these three generations at approximately two hundred fifteen years. This is also confirmed by occult research. The fact that the duration of a generation in those ancient times must be assumed to be longer than it is today becomes even clearer when considering the generations from Adam down to Abraham. Looking at the succession of generations from Abraham onward, anyone can readily see that the individual generations were considered to be longer; for the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are always attributed with advanced ages when they fathered a son who was their heir. And while today we generally calculate thirty-three years for a generation, those who wrote the Gospel of Matthew were right to calculate seventy-five to eighty years—and even a longer number of years—for a generation in ancient times. But we must emphasize that in the Gospel of Matthew, the reference to Abraham refers to individual people. However, when we trace the line back from Abraham and consider the names listed in the Gospel of Luke, we are no longer referring to individual people. Here we must certainly recall something that is true, even if it may seem unbelievable to people’s materialistic mental images today.

[ 4 ] What we might call today our memory, our coherent consciousness—the recollection of the constancy of our inner being—extends, for the average person, only as far back as the early years of childhood. When modern people look back on their lives, they will find that their memories break off at some point. Some will remember more of their childhood, others less. But our memory today is entirely confined to the individual’s personal life; indeed, it does not even encompass the entirety of one’s personal life up to the day of birth. If we bring to mind what the soul’s faculties and the characteristics of human consciousness were like in ancient times, if we recall how, in the course of human evolution, we encounter periods in the past when a certain clairvoyant state was the norm for human consciousness, then we will no longer find it surprising that we can say of these relatively recent times—as spiritual research confirms—that the conditions of consciousness with regard to memory in ancient times were quite different from what they later became.

[ 5 ] So when we go back beyond the times referred to in the Bible as the time of Abraham, the entire state of the soul is somewhat different from what it was later on, and memory, in particular, is different. And if we go back even further from Abraham, into the Atlantean era and through it, we must say: Memory was something quite different back then. Above all, it was not merely a matter of recalling personal experiences from one’s own life, as we do today, but rather of remembering—through the act of birth—what one’s father, grandfather, and so on had experienced. Memory was something that flowed through the blood across a series of generations, and only later was it confined to specific periods and to the individual life.

[ 6 ] And when names are used to refer to earlier times—the naming conventions of ancient times would require a special study today—what is meant by such a name is something entirely different from what we associate with a name today. And what external philology has to say about this today is really just amateurish nonsense. The use of names used to be quite different. One could not have formed a mental image at all of names being linked to things or entities in such an external way as happens today. In ancient times, a name was something essential, something intrinsically connected to the being or thing, and it was meant to express the inner character of the being through its sound. Back then, the name was meant to be an echo of the essence in sound. Our modern age has no concept of this at all; otherwise, books such as Fritz Manthner’s Critique of Language—which magnificently takes into account all recent research and scholarly criticism of language from the past few years, but fails to consider what was the essential nature of language in ancient times—could not have come into being today. In ancient times, a name was by no means applied to an individual person in his or her personal life, but rather to that which was held together by memory, so that a person’s name was used for as long as the memory endured. Thus, for example, Noah is not a single individual; rather, the name Noah signifies that, at first, a particular individual remembers his own life and then, through the line of descent, the life of his father, his grandfather, and so on, for as long as memory endured. As far as the thread of memory extended, the same name was used for such a succession of people. Likewise, names such as Adam, Seth, or Enoch are names used to encompass as much as possible about individuals—as much as memory could retain in retrospect. So when it is said of ancient times that someone was named Enoch, this means: A new thread of memory arose in a personality who was the son of a previously named personality; he no longer remembered the earlier personalities. But this new thread of memory did not end with the death of the personality first named Enoch; rather, it was passed down from father to son, to grandson, and so on, until a new thread of memory arose again. And as long as this thread of memory persisted, the same name was used. Thus, various personalities across the generations are collectively designated by that name; for example, when speaking of Adam.

[ 7 ] In this sense, the Gospel of Luke naturally uses names; for it intends to say: We must trace that powerful presence of divine-spiritual existence—which was immersed into the “I” and the astral body of the Nathanic Jesus—all the way back to where the human being first ascended into an earthly incarnation. Thus, in the Gospel of Luke, we first have names for the individual personalities. But if we go back beyond Abraham, we enter a time when memory extends further back, and we truly group together under a single name that which is held together by memory—as it were, as a single “I”—through several personalities.

[ 8 ] This will make it easier for you to truly view the seventy-seven names listed in the Gospel of Luke as spanning very long periods of time—all the way back to the point where the essence that we can describe as the divine-spiritual essence of the human being first incarnated in a physical, sensory human body. The other thing that must be sought in this is the following: Whoever, in the great mysteries, attained through the seventy-seven stages the purification of their soul from everything that humanity had absorbed during its earthly existence, thereby attained that state which today is possible only when a human being becomes free of the physical body and can live in the astral body and the “I.” There he can pour himself out over that from which the Earth itself arose, over the surrounding cosmos, over our entire cosmic system. And that is how it should be. Then he has attained that divine-spiritual power-being which entered into the astral body and the “I” of the Nathanic Jesus.

[ 9 ] The Nathanic Jesus was meant to represent what human beings derive not from earthly but from heavenly conditions. Thus, the Gospel of Luke describes to us the divine-spiritual being that permeated and imbued the astral body and “I” of the Luke Jesus. And the Gospel of Matthew describes that divine-spiritual force-being which, on the one hand, worked within Abraham so that the inner organ for Yahweh consciousness could arise. And on the other hand, it is the same force-entity that worked through forty-two generations in the physical and etheric bodies, and which there synthesizes a line of inheritance spanning those forty-two generations.

[ 10 ] I mentioned yesterday that these teachings—namely, the teachings of the Gospel of Matthew regarding the origin of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth—were upheld and explained in those communities that we might call the “Therapists” and “Essene” communities, and that Jeshu ben Pandira was active as a great teacher among the Therapists and Essenes, whose task it was to prepare the way for the age of Christ Jesus. He had to prepare at least a few people for the fact that, upon the passing of a specific point in time—namely, forty-two generations after Abraham—the Hebrew people would, so to speak, be ready for the Zarathustra Individuality to incarnate in a descendant of the line of Abraham, in a descendant of the Solomonic line of the House of David. This had been taught in advance. Of course, in those days this involved mystical experience. At that time, this was not only taught in the Essene schools; there were also students in the Essene schools who actually passed through the forty-two stages, so that they could see clairvoyantly what that Being was like who had descended through the forty-two stages. The world was to be enlightened about this through appropriate teachings. It was the Essene’s responsibility to ensure that at least some people would have an understanding of what the Christ would be.

[ 11 ] We have already mentioned the peculiar path initially taken by that human individuality which incarnated in the blood whose composition is described in the Gospel of Matthew. We know that this original great teacher, known as Zarathustra or Zoroaster, taught in the East what we have considered at length—which made him particularly suited for this incarnation. We know that he initiated the Egyptian Hermes culture by sacrificing his astral body for this purpose, which was then imprinted upon Hermes. We also know that he sacrificed his etheric body of that time, which was preserved for Moses, and that Moses possessed within himself the etheric body of Zarathustra for his cultural creation. Zarathustra himself was later able to incarnate again in other astral and etheric bodies. Of particular interest to us, then, is the incarnation of Zarathustra in the 6th century B.C. as Zarathas or Nazarathos in ancient Chaldea, where he had as his disciples the Chaldean sages and magicians, and where, in particular, the wisest of the students of occultism came into contact with him during the Babylonian captivity. And throughout the entire six centuries that followed, the Chaldean mystery schools were imbued with the traditions, ceremonies, and rites that originated with Zarathustra in the person of Zarathas or Nazarathos. And all the generations of Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian, and other students of occultism who lived in those regions of Asia held the name of their great Master, Zarathustra—transformed into Zarathas or Nazarathos—in the highest esteem. And they eagerly awaited the next incarnation of their great teacher and guide, for they knew that he would reappear after six hundred years. The secret of this reappearance was known to them; it lived, so to speak, as something that shone upon them from the future.

[ 12 ] And as the time drew near when the blood for the new incarnation of Zarathustra was prepared, the three emissaries—the three wise magi from the East—set out. They knew that the revered name of Zarathustra itself would guide them, like a star, to the place where Zarathustra’s reincarnation was to take place. It was the essence of the great teacher himself that, as the “star,” led the three Magi to the birthplace of Jesus as described in the Gospel of Matthew. - This, too, can be substantiated even from an external, philological perspective: the word “star” was indeed used in ancient times as a name for human individuals. Not only does spiritual research—which tells us more clearly than anything else from its sources—that at that time the three Magi followed the star of Zoroaster, the “golden star” Zoroaster, which led them to the place where he intended to reincarnate—but also from the use of the word “star” for exalted human individuals—as I said, a fact that can also be substantiated philologically—it might become clear to many that the star that guided the Magi is to be understood as Zarathustra himself.

[ 13 ] Six centuries before our era, then, the Magi from the East were in the presence of that individual who incarnated as the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. And Zarathustra himself led the Magi there; they followed in his footsteps. For it was, so to speak, the path of Zarathustra—the star that guided the Magi as they journeyed to Palestine—that led the Magi on their way from the Eastern, Chaldean mysteries to Palestine, where Zarathustra was preparing for his next incarnation.

[ 14 ] This secret concerning the future incarnation of Zarathustra, Zarathas, or Nazarathos was also known in the Chaldean mysteries. But the mystery of the blood of the Hebrew people—which was to be suitable, when the appropriate time had come, for the new physical embodiment of Zarathustra—was taught by those who, in the Essene mysteries, were, so to speak, raised up through the forty-two steps.

[ 15 ] So, essentially, there were two kinds of people who initially knew something about the mystery of Jesus as described in the Gospel of Matthew. From the Zarathustra side—which pointed to the individuality destined to incarnate in Jewish blood—the Chaldean initiates knew of it; from the blood side, the outer side, the side of the body, the Essenes knew of it. It was thus already a teaching that had been taught for about a hundred years or more in the Essene schools—the teaching of this coming of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew, that Jesus who, in his entirety, was to fulfill all the conditions of which I have spoken, and then also others that we might characterize in the following way.

[ 16 ] After a long time, following many purifications and exercises of his soul, such an Essene disciple was led up through the forty-two stages to, so to speak, behold the mysteries of the physical body and the etheric body. The one who was to be born there, who was to incarnate into this bloodline, descended from above; he possessed the abilities that an Essene disciple could attain only after long and arduous trials through the forty-two stages. Of the one who descended, one had to say: He possessed from the very beginning the abilities to bring such aptitudes to fruition. — “They were born with him,” it was said in the Essene communities. But in essence, what was cultivated in the Essene communities in terms of exercises and purifications of the soul was the continuation of a kind of secret training that had also existed within Judaism since time immemorial.

[ 17 ] In Judaism, there has always been what was known as Naziritehood. This consisted of individual people—even before the emergence of the “Therapists” and “Essenes”—applying very specific methods of spiritual and physical development to themselves. In particular, the Nazirites followed a method consisting of a specific diet, which is still useful in certain respects today for those who wish to advance more rapidly in their spiritual development than is otherwise possible. In particular, they completely abstained from meat and wine. In doing so, they created the possibility of a certain degree of relief, because meat can indeed hinder the spiritual development of those who strive for spiritual growth. It is indeed true—and this is not meant as propaganda for vegetarianism—that abstaining from meat makes everything easier. When meat is eliminated from the diet, a person can become more resilient in the soul and prove more capable of overcoming the resistances and obstacles that arise from the physical and etheric bodies. The person then becomes more productive and better able to endure. But of course, this does not come about merely by abstaining from meat, but above all by strengthening one’s soul. If one merely abstains from meat, one merely alters one’s physical body; and if what is supposed to be present on the soul side—and which is supposed to permeate the body—is lacking, then abstaining from meat serves no particular purpose.

[ 18 ] So this Nazirite practice existed. The Essenes, however, continued it under much stricter rules; they added entirely different elements to it. They incorporated everything I told you about yesterday and the day before. In particular, they observed the strictest abstinence from meat. As a result, these people were able to learn relatively quickly to expand their memory and look back over forty-two generations, to peer into the mysteries of the Akashic Records. They became what one might call a bud on a branch, a bud on a tree, on a plant that winds its way through many generations. They were not merely something detached from the tree of humanity; they felt the threads that bound them to the tree of the rest of humanity. They were different from those who broke away from the trunk and whose memory was limited to the individual personality. Such people were also referred to within the Essene communities by a word intended to express “a living branch,” not a severed branch. These were people who felt themselves part of the succession of generations, who did not feel cut off from the Tree of Humanity. The disciples who, within Essene teachings, specifically followed this path—those who had passed through the forty-two stages—were called Nezer.

[ 19 ] Even among this class of Nezer, the one I mentioned yesterday as a teacher within the Essene communities had a faithful, special disciple: Jesus, son of Pandira. For this Jeshu ben Pandira, who is quite well known to occultists, had five disciples, each of whom took up a specific branch of Jeshu ben Pandira’s great collective teaching and then continued it on his own. These five disciples of Jeshu ben Pandira bore the following names: Mathai, Nakai; the third disciple, because he was specifically from the Nezer class, was actually named Nezer; then Boni and Thona. These five disciples of Jeshu ben Pandira—who, one century before our era, suffered martyrdom for blasphemy and heresy in the manner already described—carried on, so to speak, the great, comprehensive teaching of Jeshu ben Pandira in five different branches. In particular—as Spiritual Science teaches—after the death of Jeshu ben Pandira, the teaching concerning the preparation of the blood for the coming Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew was carried on by the disciple Mathai. And that teaching concerning the inner state of the soul, which was connected with the ancient Nazirite tradition as well as with the more recent Nezerite tradition, was continued by the other great disciple of Jeshu ben Pandira, Nezer. And Nezer was specifically chosen to found a small colony. There were quite a number of such Essene colonies in Palestine, and in each one a particular branch of Essenism was cultivated. The Nezerite tradition, which the disciple Nezer was specifically charged with continuing, was to be cultivated above all in that colony, which led a mysterious existence and was essentially just a small settlement at that time—the colony that later received the name Nazareth in the Bible. There in Nazareth—Nezereth—was an Essene colony established by Nezer, the disciple of Jeshu ben Pandira. There were people there—living in rather strict secrecy—who observed the ancient Nazirite tradition. Therefore, after those other events had taken place—which I have yet to discuss—and following the migration to Egypt and the return from there, there was nothing more natural for the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew than to be immersed in the atmosphere of this Nazirite tradition. This is also hinted at by the corresponding passage in the Gospel of Matthew following the return from Egypt: He was brought to the little town of Nazareth, “so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled: ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’” (Matt. 2:23). - This has been translated in a wide variety of ways, because the translators did not fully understand the meaning and no one really knew what was intended. This is what it meant: that there was an Essene colony here, where Jesus was to grow up at first.

[ 20 ] But now, before we go into the other details—and specifically the connections to the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke—let us briefly touch on a few points regarding the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. Everything described at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew traces back to the mysteries that Jeshu ben Pandira taught within the Essene movement, which were then passed on as a body of teachings by his disciple Mathai; indeed, even the very first mysteries of the Gospel of Matthew point us to this disciple, Mathai. Through everything that came, so to speak, from this side—which characterizes the Gospel of Matthew—the physical body and the etheric body of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew could be prepared, even though, of course, within the forty-two generations there were also influences on the astral body. But even though we have said that during the first fourteen generations the physical body, during the second fourteen generations the etheric body, and that for the third fourteen generations—beginning with the Babylonian Captivity—the astral body comes into play, we must nevertheless note that what was thus properly prepared for Zarathustra was usable for this powerful individuality only insofar as it consisted of the physical body and the etheric body.

[ 21 ] Now, remember how I have always told you that, in the course of his individual personal development from birth to the age of seven, a human being primarily develops the physical body; that during the next seven years, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, he particularly develops the etheric body; and only then does the free development of the astral body begin. The development of the physical and etheric bodies was to be brought to completion in the specific physical and etheric bodies that had been prepared by the generations beginning with Abraham, and was to be lived through by Zarathustra in his new incarnation. But then, when he had reached the end of the development of the etheric body, what had been prepared for him was no longer sufficient, and he now had to proceed to the development of the astral body.

[ 22 ] And now the mighty and wondrous event takes place, without an understanding of which we cannot grasp the entire great mystery of Christ Jesus. The Zarathustra individuality developed during his boyhood within the physical and etheric bodies of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew until the age of twelve; for with this individuality and due to the climate, the stage that we would describe in our regions as corresponding to the fourteenth or fifteenth year occurred somewhat earlier. By the age of twelve, everything that could be achieved in the correspondingly prepared physical and etheric bodies of the Solomonic line had been accomplished. And then, in fact, the Zarathustra individuality left this physical and etheric body—which is first mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew—and passed over into the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. For we already know from the lectures on the Gospel of Luke that the account of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, as Luke recounts it (Luke 2:42–50), actually refers to the following: At the moment when the boy Jesus of the Gospel of Luke suddenly appears before his parents in such a way that they cannot understand him at all—when he is a completely different person—the Zarathustra individuality, which until then had undergone its development within the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomonic Jesus, had taken up residence within him. Such things occur in life, however difficult they may be to believe today given the nature of the layman’s materialistic worldview. The transition of an individuality from one body to another does occur. And something of this nature took place at that time, when the Zarathustra individuality left its original body and passed over into the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, in whom the astral body and the bearer of the “I” had now been specially prepared.

[ 23 ] Thus, from the age of twelve onward, Zarathustra was able to continue his development within the specially prepared astral body and “I” of the Nathanic Jesus. This is depicted for us in such a magnificent way in the Gospel of Luke, where attention is drawn to the astonishing fact that the twelve-year-old Jesus sits among the scribes in the temple and says things that sound quite strange. How was the Jesus of the Nathanic line able to do this? He was able to do so because, at that moment, the Zarathustra individuality had “entered” him. Zarathustra had not spoken through this boy—who had been brought to Jerusalem at that time—until he was twelve; therefore, the change in his character was so profound that his parents did not recognize him when they found him sitting among the scribes.

[ 24 ] So we are dealing with two sets of parents, both named Joseph and Mary—names that were common at the time; but to draw any conclusions from the names Joseph and Mary based on how we understand names today is something that contradicts any genuine research—and with two boys named Jesus. The Gospel of Matthew’s genealogy tells us about one of them, Jesus of the Solomonic line of the House of David. The other boy, Jesus of the Nathanic line, is the son of a completely different pair of parents, and the Gospel of Luke tells us about him. The two boys grow up side by side and are raised together until they are twelve years old. You can find this in the Gospels. The Gospel speaks the truth throughout. And as long as people were not supposed to learn the truth—or as long as people did not want to hear the truth—the Gospels were withheld from them. One need only understand the Gospels; they speak the truth.

[ 25 ] The Jesus of the Nathanic line grows up with a tremendous depth of inner life. He was not very adept at acquiring external wisdom and knowledge. Yet he possessed a virtually boundless depth of feeling and a virtually boundless capacity for love, because his etheric body was animated by that power which flowed down from the time when humanity had not yet descended into earthly incarnation, when it still led a divine existence. That divine existence lived within him as a boundless capacity for love. Thus, this boy was ill-suited for what human beings have acquired through their incarnations by means of the physical body; on the other hand, he was profoundly and immensely imbued with the warmth of love in regard to his soul, in regard to his inner being. He was so deeply inward that something occurred which, to those who knew of it, pointed to the great inner depth of this boy. What human beings otherwise kindle only in the outer world, the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was able to do, in a certain sense, from the very beginning: he spoke certain words immediately after his birth that were understandable to those around him. Thus he was great in all that was inner, yet unskilled in all that had to be attained on earth itself through the generations of humanity. And should not his parents have been utterly astonished when, within this physical form that had grown so much, a boy suddenly revealed himself to them—a boy imbued with all that constitutes external wisdom, all that must be acquired through external tools? This sudden, momentous transformation was possible because, at that very moment, the Zarathustra individuality had passed from the Solomonic Jesus-child to this Jesus of the Nathanic line. Zarathustra, Zarathas, spoke through this boy at the moment described to us, when his parents were searching for him in the Temple.

[ 26 ] Zarathustra had, of course, acquired all those abilities that can be acquired through the use of the instruments of the physical body and the etheric body. He had had to choose the bloodline of the Solomonic line and the physicality prepared through it, because that is where the powerful forces were present and developed to the highest degree. From this physical constitution, he took what he could acquire, and he now combined this with what originated from that inner essence that came from the figure of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, which descended from a time when the human being was not yet in an earthly incarnation. These two things now united into one. We now have a being before us. And, I might add, our attention is now drawn to something special: Not only did the parents of Luke’s Jesus perceive a special change—finding something they could not have anticipated—but this change is also evident outwardly. Why is it that, when the boy Jesus is found by his parents among the scribes in the temple, it is specifically stated: “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth … And Jesus grew in physical stature, in noble character, and in wisdom”? (Luke 2:51–52.) Why are these three qualities mentioned? Because they were three qualities that were particularly suited to him now that the Zarathustra individuality was within him.

[ 27 ] I would like to point out explicitly that these three words are usually translated in common Bibles as: “And Jesus increased in wisdom, age, and grace before God and man.” I would like to know whether one really needs a Gospel to say that a twelve-year-old boy is growing in age? You will even find in Weizsäcker’s translation: “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man.” But that is not what is meant at all; rather, what is meant is that there was now an individuality within the Nathanic Jesus-child that was not, as before, merely inner—that did not manifest itself outwardly—but which, having developed within a fully formed physical body, now also manifested itself in outward physical beauty. Furthermore, what is particularly cultivated in the etheric body—the habits one acquires and develops through life within the etheric body—was not present earlier in the Nathanic Jesus. In him, a powerful predisposition toward the capacity for love emerged, and this could now be built upon. But this predisposition was present all at once; it could not force its way into established habits. Now, however, the other individuality was present, one that possessed within itself the forces derived from the growth of the physical body and the etheric body; and now habits could also manifest outwardly and flow into the etheric body. This is the second aspect in which the boy Jesus grew. The third, “in wisdom,” is already somewhat more self-evident. The Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was not wise; he was a being capable of love to the highest degree. But the increase in wisdom was brought about by the Zarathustra individuality entering into him.

[ 28 ] I already mentioned when discussing the Gospel of Luke that it is quite possible for a being who has been forsaken by his individual soul and retains only the three bodies—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—since these remain behind—to continue living for a time. But what remained of the Solomonic Jesus wasted away and, in fact, died soon afterward. This means that the actual Jesus boy of the first chapters of the Gospel of Matthew died relatively soon after his twelfth year. So, at first, we do not have one Jesus boy, but two; but then these two become one.

[ 29 ] Sometimes documents from ancient times contain very strange statements, which, however, must be understood—and they can only be understood if one knows the relevant facts. We will discuss in more detail how the two boys meet; for now, only one thing needs to be mentioned.

[ 30 ] In the so-called “Egyptian Gospel” there is a curious passage that was already regarded as highly heretical in the early centuries, because Christian circles did not want to hear the truth about it, or did not want to allow it to come to light. ‘But there is something that has been preserved as an apocryphal Gospel, and in it it is said, “Salvation will appear in the world when the two become one and the outer becomes like the inner.” This sentence is an accurate expression of the reality I have just described to you based on occult facts. Salvation depends on the two becoming one. And they became one when, in the twelfth year, the Zarathustra individuality passed into the Nathanic Jesus, and the inner became the outer. The soul force of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke was something powerfully inner. But this inner nature became an outer reality when the Zarathustra individuality—which had developed in connection with the outer, the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomonic Jesus—penetrated this inner nature and, as it were, permeated it with the forces that had developed in connection with the physical and etheric bodies. Thus a powerful force penetrated the physical and etheric bodies of the Nathanic Jesus from within, so that the outer form could now become an expression of the inner, that inner essence which had previously remained purely inner before the young Jesus of Luke had been permeated by the Zarathustra individuality. — Thus the two had become one.

[ 31 ] We have now traced Zarathustra from his birth as the child Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew up to his twelfth year, when he left behind his original body and assumed the physical form of the Nathanic Jesus, which he then continued to develop, developing it to such an extent that he was later truly able to sacrifice it at a certain level—along with his three bodies—to receive that being we then designate as the Christ.