Nativity, Page 2

Overview

I start with the assumption that the Incarnation is part of a divine plan, orchestrated from the highest ramparts of heaven. The earthly births of which we are told are brought about by the action of the Divine Wisdom, Sophia, the procreative Holy Virgin, acting as an original creation by the Father (Prov 8,22; cf. fn 23 of “Three Bodies” and related text)), in union with the Holy Spirit as the creative activity of the descending Christ. All the Hierarchies were involved in this agency. The Bible can be seen to be literally true throughout if one comes to understand that it is not all to be taken in the mundane vernacular of ordinary prose, and that allegory, metaphor, poetry, all the literary arsenal, are equally tools to be employed. The important thing in the writing is not whether its account was literally true in the vulgar mode, as mere earthly phenomena, but rather whether it was true in its ultimately more real and lasting spiritual meaning. Ideally, and often, it was true in both, at least in the sense that its earthly connection was clear. But seldom will the deepest meaning be attained through a strictly earthly understanding of the words, for the Evangelists wrote of what they saw with eyes of spirit.

From the very first of its development, humanity has been involved in a materialization process whereby it has descended from intimate communion with its spiritual creators to an ever denser form. At the beginning the human being had no sense of Individuality, of separateness, but over long periods of evolution took on increasing density and personality at the expense of its primeval spiritual perception which faded in the passage downward. Only late in the process did the human being become “Adam,” that is, hard or solid. Only at about that time did the human being begin to divide into sexes and, as spiritual perception and memory faded, to enter into the process of reincarnation. But still, the human being was a tribal creature, who functioned as part of a group Ego, and whose incredible memory was effected by blood relationship. Over time, the Ego, or the “I Am,” entered more and more into separate human beings, and was ultimately expressed to Moses on Sinai: “I Am the I Am” (see “I AM”). Yet the Ego (I Am) was the youngest member of the human being, immature, with many struggles ahead of it, and gripped by the Luciferic influence from having eaten of the “tree of knowledge.” As its knowledge or intellect increased, the human being’s connection with the spiritual world diminished to the point where such connection existed no longer, so that between lives human beings languished in the gloom of “Sheol” instead of in the bosom of the Father and his Hosts. Isaiah perceived the encroaching loss, crying out, “How long, O Lord?” (Is 6,9-13; see also “Fading Splendor”). But later he saw and prophesied of the One who was descending and would one day incarnate as the Savior of all humanity. Without this, humanity would sink on endlessly downward into the abyss of hardness and bestiality (Rev 13,11-18). The prophets (and finally Evangelist John) could see that the Christ was the truest form of “I Am,” and that only by taking that form into oneself could the human being and all creation reascend to the spirit by a transformed retracing of the descent. The Christ Spirit, having descended from the highest heavens to the Sun, was in the process of descending to incarnate. And it was the divine plan that by the spilling of his Blood in sacrifice, the Earth would then become a Sun, growing in its heavenly brilliance as not only humanity, but all creation, was gradually infused by the power of that Blood.

To bring this about, special people were called upon throughout time. In the transition from prehistoric Atlantis to prehistoric Aryan time, Noah and his son Shem were involved. Later, Abraham and the patriarchs, then Moses and David. It was necessary that this people be kept pure for the development of the appropriate human sheaths (the three “bodies,” physical, etheric and astral) to receive the Christ Spirit. Unsullied blood descent was vital to this goal. The people of Israel were chosen for the spiritual task, then more particularly those of David.

And here we come to one of Steiner’s truly unique understandings, probably the most difficult one for modern Christians to comprehend. Traditional scholarship has had great difficulty in reconciling the two Nativity accounts because it has assumed that they were two accounts of the same birth. But they were not. There were two Jesus boys born to two different sets of parents.

It is with David, one millennium before the Incarnation, that the division that brought this about occurred. The masculine, kingly line of the Matthew child came through the Davidic blood of Solomon (Mt 1,6), while the feminine, priestly line of the Luke child came through Nathan (Lk 3,31). Earthly history is simply a mirror of what had already occurred in the spiritual world, and it is important to know that while the blood line was being thus developed in Israel, other spiritual forces were working simultaneously in other nationalities to develop the sheaths. In particular, Steiner tells of the role of the Individualities of the prehistoric Zarathustra in Ancient Persia and of the historic Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama) in India. The former figures powerfully into the Solomon Jesus child of Matthew’s Gospel and the latter into the Nathan Jesus child of Luke’s Gospel.

The names given to the father, mother and child are identical in both accounts. We may take these names as implying the spiritual roles being filled, but probably they were actually such, particularly the infants’. The tendency still existed in that day to take a name indicative of one’s inner nature. Thus, just as Simon became Peter, Saul became Paul and Lazarus became John, so too would the mother of Jesus become Mary and the father Joseph, whatever their earlier names might have been.¹ It should be noted that Steiner made no suggestion other than that Joseph, Mary and Jesus were the names of the persons in both accounts, but he obviously could not delve into everything. Here note must be taken, however, of something that will mean more to the reader as the remainder of this volume is considered. In the preeminent Gospel of John no mention is anywhere made of the name of two very important persons, Zebedee John and the Mother of Jesus. The reason for the former will become clear in “Peter, James and John” herein. And the reasons for the latter may include the fact that, as Steiner said, the surviving Mother of Jesus, the Solomon Mary of Matthew’s Gospel, according to John’s Gospel (Jn 19,25) had a sister named “Mary”; see GSJ, Lect. 9, p. 149 and also 1 ABD 1066, “Clopas,” saying, “Although the phrases ‘the sister of his mother’ and ‘the Mary of Clopas,’ seem to refer to separate individuals, the ambiguity of the Gk makes it quite possible that only 3 women are present.” The literal ambiguity of vs 25 is also recognized by 9 NIB 831; 29A AB 904-906 (Raymond E. Brown); and INTPN, John, p. 211. In each of the last two references (AB and INTPN), the possibility of there having been two, three or four women is recognized. Perhaps when the soul of the Nathan Mary entered the surviving Solomon Mary at the Baptism of Jesus, as discussed later in this essay, the latter was then called Mary, just as the Beloved Disciple, Lazarus, was called John after his initiation by Jesus. Thus Mary may have taken, like John, a new “Name” indicative of character though the name was also held by another.

The different lineages from David to Jesus are shown in I-39. The two lineages from Abraham to David comprise an identical fourteen generations if the Arni-Admin twosome in Luke is really one as scholarship seems to suggest.²

Let us look then at the two births.