Where and How Does One Find the Spirit?

GA 57 — 12 November 1908, Berlin

The Bible and Wisdom I

There is undoubtedly no document in our culture that has had such a profound and intense impact on intellectual life as the Bible. To describe the Bible's influence on humanity, one would have to write a history spanning not centuries, but millennia. And even if one were to disregard the broad influence of this document, one would still find in the Bible an immeasurable influence and effect on the depths of the human soul. Indeed, with regard to the latter point of view, it may be said that our present age offers an extraordinary amount of interesting material, for it could be shown that today not only those who stand on the ground of the Bible to a lesser or greater extent are deeply influenced by this document of humanity, but that even those who have turned away from the Bible, who today believe themselves to be free from the influences of the Bible, that even these, profoundly significant, are still subject to these influences. For the Bible is truly not only a document, although it is that to the highest degree, since it fills the soul with a sum of mental images about the world and life, thus giving the soul a worldview, but the Bible has been, for thousands of years, a powerful means of educating souls. It has not only meant something for the life of mental images, and still means something today, but what we must call its effect on the life of feelings and emotions, on the nature of habits of thought, is perhaps more important and essential. If we look closely, we must certainly admit today that the feelings and emotions of even those who oppose the Bible were first brought about in their souls by the Bible.

But anyone who takes even a brief look at the spiritual life of humanity, especially that of our Western civilization and those connected with it, will notice what a tremendous change has taken place in the attitude of humanity, or at least a large part of humanity, toward the Bible.

Those who today still stand on the ground of the Bible in a completely unshakable manner might perhaps underestimate what is being pointed out here. They might say: Even if there are some people today who turn away from the Bible for this or that reason, who claim that the Bible can no longer be for humanity what it has been for millennia, this will probably only be a temporary phenomenon; we believe in the Bible; let those who believe they stand on the basis of science say this or that, let this or that sound improbable to them—the Bible is valid for us! - If one wanted to, one could find this opinion very widespread among certain personalities, and it is only natural, for those who are still able to draw the happiness of their soul, the security and strength of their soul from the Bible, cannot, according to their subjective nature, weigh enough against those phenomena that exist around them as criticism and rejection of the Bible.

Nevertheless, such a judgment would be quite reckless, when you get right down to it. It would even be selfish in a way, because when a person makes such a judgment, they are saying to themselves: The Bible gives me this or that; whether it gives other people the same thing is none of my concern. Such a person does not pay attention to the fact that humanity is basically a whole, and that what initially lives in individuals, is thought and felt by individuals, flows down into the whole of humanity and becomes common property. Those who say, “I don't want to hear what critics and scholars say about the Bible today, I don't care about that,” are only judging for themselves and are not thinking about whether their descendants, those who will follow them, will also have the good fortune to derive such satisfaction from this document when critics and scholars set out to take this document away from humanity. The power of the authorities involved in the life of this document is great and strong. It actually means turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to what is going on around you if you want to proceed only from the point of view of naive faith, of unwavering faith, as just characterized. Today, we must listen to what can shake the reputation and significance of this document of humanity among our fellow human beings. The upheavals and revolutions that have taken place over the last few centuries with regard to this document are quite tremendous.

Just a few centuries ago, the Bible was regarded as something that enjoyed unconditional authority; it was considered a work of writing of higher divine origin. This belief, this assumption, has long been shaken and will be shaken more and more by ever new reasons. Initially, it was not our modern science, not contemporary natural science, that turned against the old view of the Bible. More than a hundred years ago, the more materialistic way of thinking began to view the Bible from a purely external point of view. Let us first talk about the part of the Bible that we call the Old Testament. Like the New Testament, it was regarded for centuries as an inspiration from higher powers. It was regarded as written from a consciousness that could rise to a sphere of truth to which the sensory consciousness could not rise. The first thing that shook the belief that the Bible was written from a higher human consciousness, that it had an authority different from that of any human writer, was the realization that when one reads the Bible, it turns out that it is not a uniform document. Let us take what the French physician Astruc said in the eighteenth century: It is said that, under the influence of higher powers, people wrote the chapters of the Bible that we call the story of Moses' creation; but when we read the story of creation, we find that individual parts do not agree with each other; we find that there are stylistic and factual contradictions; we must therefore assume that this document was not written by a single author, be it Moses or anyone else, because someone who, as an individual, describes the circumstances one after the other would not introduce internal contradictions into the matter.

I can only outline all these contradictions in spirit: Old documents must have been taken from various sources and combined by various writers. That was, so to speak, the first thing that was directed against the Bible.

Now, apart from how things actually happened, let us characterize the spirit of this kind of opposition to the spiritual origin of the Bible. One sees how, right at the beginning, creation is unfolded in powerful, overwhelming images. In it, the so-called six to seven days of work are recounted. It goes on to tell how man came into being within this creation, how he fell into sin, how he developed further and further from generation to generation. One notices that in the first parts, in the first verses, a different term is chosen for the divine powers, for God, than from the fourth verse of the second chapter onwards. One sees there that these two terms, the term for the divine as Elohim and the term for the divine as Yahweh or Jehovah, actually alternate. One must ask oneself: Should a writer have referred to the divine with two different names? Where could this come from? One might say that the person or persons who finally compiled the document found old traditions or even old documents, which they combined and made into a whole. One may have come from this tribe, the other from another tribe, and these were then combined. That is, so to speak, the outline of one theory that has gained acceptance. Starting from this, one notices, going further and further, that similar and also other contradictions arise. Thus, one came more and more to divide the original documents into different pieces and tear them apart. And if someone today wanted to compile a Bible, as has indeed been done, from the various pieces and fragments that were finally believed to be its components, if someone printed in blue letters everything that is considered to belong to one document, in red letters what belongs to another, in green letters what belongs to a third, and so on, then a strange document would be created. But it has already been created—the so-called Rainbow Bible!

The ancient, venerable document is there, one might say, broken down into individual pieces, of which it is composed and from which it is to be assembled. The Bible is, of course, a document, but it is believed that it can be proven that it does not originate from Moses, but that parts of it even date from a relatively later period, from this or that priestly college, while other parts of the Bible are said to have been compiled from legends and myths that were gathered here and there from the religious views of this or that school. What has become a whole in this way cannot be regarded as something that has been brought into history through an elevation of the consciousness of the human soul, which can look into the spiritual worlds.

Now, no one should believe that these two lectures, which I am to give today and on Saturday, are intended in any way to belittle the diligence and industriousness of the work I have just briefly outlined. Anyone who is familiar with the things that have been used as spiritual aids, tearing the Bible into small pieces and explaining them as small pieces, will see the diligence, zeal, and research skills of the entire work. To those who understand, they appear as perhaps the most powerful thing that has ever been achieved in science. Nothing similar can be found in terms of form or diligence in research. If we now take a closer look at the consequences of this research work carried out by modern theologians, i.e., precisely those who, by virtue of their profession, firmly believe that they stand on the ground of Christianity, we must say to ourselves: it must lead to a completely different relationship with the Bible than has existed for centuries. If this research bears fruit, the Bible will no longer be able to be — it would take a lot to justify this in detail — the Bible would no longer be able to be the document that comforts and uplifts people in the saddest matters of life.

There is something else, namely that for many people who have looked around in the field of scientific research, who have looked around in geology, in the evolutionary history of animal and plant life, who have looked around in cultural history, in anthropology, and so on, there is hardly any possibility left for these people to think anything about what they read in the Bible. One must also be fair in this regard and not simply stand on the ground of naive faith and say that it has no meaning. It is often those who are most conscientious in their sense of truth, in their thirst for knowledge, who say to themselves: When I see, through research based on solid ground, how the earth has developed through geological periods, how we have certain hypotheses for this, how astronomy shows how the earth developed from a nebula of higher temperature to its present form, how the inanimate developed and from this inanimate the living entity, how gradually everything developed from the simple to the most complex, the human being, how cultural forms rose to today's complex forms, when we see what geology shows, what enormous periods of time were necessary to preserve the earth when it had not yet produced amphibians or mammals, when we survey all this and let it sink in — as numerous personalities tell us — what are we to do when the Bible tells us that the world was created in six to seven days? We cannot do anything with the creation in six to seven days, nor with anything else. What can we do with the Flood, with the miraculous rescue of Noah, when we read that Noah brought so many animals into the ark, and so on? — Thus it happens that some people endowed with dignity and a serious sense of truth energetically advocate that sharp and spirited opposition to the Bible which results from today's scientific point of view, insofar as it seeks to expand into a worldview. All of this is present in our worldview. We cannot deny any of it.

But now the question arises: Have all the things that need to be taken into account with regard to the Bible really been taken into account when either the first, the historical, or the second, the natural-historical, point of view is asserted? It must be said that today there is already a third point of view regarding the Bible, a point of view that has developed from the real research method and human perspective characterized in these lectures as Spiritual Science or anthroposophy. We will deal with this point of view regarding the Bible today and the day after tomorrow. What is this point of view? It is often said today that human beings should not rely on external authority, but should approach the world and life without preconceptions and seek the truth, and it is believed that this perspective is particularly applicable to the Bible. But is this really the case? The spiritual-scientific or anthroposophical perspective on the Bible can definitely be compared to something that happened to humanity several centuries ago in relation to something else, albeit less significant. We can most easily understand the spiritual scientific viewpoint of the Bible if we compare it with the upheavals that took place in relation to the view of the earth.

Throughout the Middle Ages, in all schools, lower and higher, what was taught about the external world was based on ancient writings, albeit the writings of a great and powerful personality, the writings of the ancient Greek philosopher and natural scientist Aristotle. So if you could go back with me to the places of intellectual life in earlier times, you would find that what was taught in the old schools and places of learning was not what had been discovered in laboratories, but what was printed in Aristotle's books. Aristotle was the authority, and his books were the bible of natural science at that time. And wherever lectures were given, only what Aristotle had already said about things was taught. Then came the times when a new dawn broke in relation to the view of nature, the new way of viewing nature by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and all the others up to the present day. What was the fundamental spirit of this dawn? Whereas Aristotle had previously been taken as a fixed starting point, and people spoke about nature as he had spoken, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo now applied their own powers of observation and research. They looked out into nature themselves and examined what life could show them. They wanted to describe and explain nature according to what they themselves had seen. This led to some contradictions with what the strict followers of Aristotle taught.

It is more than a mere anecdote; it describes the profound truth of a process that took place at that time, when it is said that a believer in Aristotle was asked to look at the human body, at a corpse, to see for himself that it is not true that the nerves originate in the heart—as Aristotle teaches—but that they originate in the brain. The believer in Aristotle allowed himself to be persuaded to look at it. But then he said: When I look at it, it seems that nature contradicts Aristotle. But if nature contradicts Aristotle, I do not believe nature, but Aristotle. — This was how natural science stood in opposition to tradition. The researcher's view was rejected in favor of what had been passed down and repeated as tradition for centuries. When we read the writings of Giordano Bruno, we see the opposition to Aristotle arising from the new spirit that tells and explains what man himself should see.

Today, we have a different view of the whole matter. We have a different view of direct scientific observation and also of Aristotle. We know that much of what was read from him in the Middle Ages was only a misunderstanding of his writings. Aristotle, in the spirit of his time, was himself a researcher who looked directly into nature and reproduced what he understood to be true. And if we understand Aristotle correctly, if we can respond to what he said, then he no longer appears to us to be in contradiction, as he seemed to be at the time, to direct scientific observation. Then we can once again become his admirers, for it is precisely in the fact that the nerves originate in the heart rather than the brain that it becomes apparent that he meant something quite different, something that is still true even in our time.

In a very similar way, spiritual scientific research relates not only to these documents — the writings of Aristotle — but also to the original document of the Western world, the Bible. What took place in the sixteenth century and since then with regard to the observation and study of external nature is now happening again with regard to the study of the spiritual foundations of the world. Out of the spirit of that research which has been characterized in the last three lectures, humanity is seeking once again to penetrate those worlds which cannot be perceived with the outer senses, but which can be perceived by the higher developed senses of the human being, by the spiritual senses of the human being, through which we can see into the spiritual world just as we can see into the physical world through the physical senses. There is no need to elaborate further here, because it has already been said many times that human beings are capable of developing the powers within themselves to perceive not only sensory things, but also a spiritual world between and behind the sensory world, a spiritual world that is much more real than the sensory world. There was a good reason why humanity forgot the methods of spiritual research for a while. The great advances, the great conquests in the physical world were made by perfecting the instruments, as was the case in recent centuries. But when one aspect of human nature increases, other abilities recede into the background. Thus, we see how scientific methods for the external physical world of facts have flourished in recent centuries. Never before have so many instruments been found to unlock the secrets of nature and explore its laws. The abilities related to this have been greatly enhanced and perfected, but the abilities through which human beings can see into the spiritual world have receded. And so it is not surprising that human beings have come to believe that the spiritual can also be explained from material, physical existence.

But in the present age we are on the threshold of an epoch in which humanity will once again become aware that there are other instruments and tools than those in the physical and physiological laboratory, where they are used so excellently. However, we are dealing with an instrument that is fundamentally different from the others. We are dealing with the fundamental and primordial instrument that we must see in human beings themselves. It is human beings that we will get to know over the course of the winter through the methods of concentration and meditation. These are other methods that human beings can apply to their souls, and through which they come to see their environment in a completely different way than they saw it before. They may come to say to themselves: I am like a blind person who has undergone an operation and who was previously able to deny the colors and light of the world. But now the moment has come when they themselves can see. They can now see that behind what the senses and the intellect perceive, there is something else. Now he sees into spiritual things; now he knows, not hypothetically, not through speculative philosophies, that the sensual, the material, is only a condensation of the spiritual, that what we see with our senses relates to the spiritual behind it in the same way that ice relates to water. Water is thin, ice is solid, and someone who could not see water but could see ice would say: there is nothing around the ice. So someone who can only see with their senses says that there is nothing in the wider world but sensory processes, nothing but sensory events.

But we must advance into this supersensible realm, into these supersensible events, then we can also recognize and explain the spiritual. So anyone who has not developed spiritual ears and eyes sees nothing in the whole world but a condensation, like ice in water, and the primordial mother of substance, the spiritual, in which the sensual is only embedded, does not appear to them. When the geologist shows us how a person might sit in a chair in outer space and watch the world develop, the external sensory view would be as described by natural science. Spiritual science has no objection to what natural science has to say in a positive sense. But it is clear to anyone who has a proper understanding of natural science that the spiritual existed before the physical first came into being. It shows how progress was only possible because the spiritual intervened, and that the spirit is most involved in development.

This spiritual worldview thus points out to us that it is possible for human beings to make themselves instruments for researching the important foundations of the world, and so our view finally comes to explore the spiritual origins and beginnings themselves. This is how Spiritual Science stands, independent of any document. It says: We do not initially research in a document. We do not research, as was once done, in the books of Aristotle; we research in the spiritual world. We take the following position: What you learn as ordinary school geometry, Euclidean geometry, was written down in its earliest beginnings by Euclid, the great mathematician. Today, we can take this as a document and understand it historically. But does anyone learning geometry in school today still learn from Euclid's elementary book? Today, we work, learn, and recognize things from the things themselves. For example, when we construct a triangle, the inner laws of the thing itself reveal themselves to the mind. With what you have gained in this way, you can then approach Euclid and recognize what he has already recorded in his textbook. In the same way, the Spiritual Science researcher, independent of books, researches how the world has developed solely through his organs. And in this way he finds the development of the world, the development of the earth in that time before the earth crystallized into its present form. He researches the spiritual processes and discovers how, at a certain point, our spirit begins its earthly existence; he shows how man first appeared and did not develop from subordinate creatures, but as a descendant of spiritual beings that were there first.

We can go back to earlier times, when the spiritual origins still existed. There we find human beings linked to these spiritual processes, and only later do the lower creatures develop into human beings. Just as in development in general certain things remain behind and others evolve, so here too the lower has branched off from the higher, has departed. The spiritual researcher knows that spiritual organs of research can be developed through methods that the spiritual researcher is able to demonstrate.

Thus, spiritual research teaches the origin and development of the world according to laws that are independent of any document, based solely on their own laws, just as today's study of mathematics is not bound by how it has developed in the course of history.

And just as the researcher has acquired knowledge from this wisdom, so he approaches the Bible, so he now looks at the Bible. And now it becomes clear to us why there are contradictions in the Bible, both from the point of view of historical-critical Bible research and from the point of view of scientific research. Both points of view stem from a single great error, which arose from the general belief that the truths of the Bible should be understood from the standpoint of physical sensory perception and observation. It was thought that it was possible to approach the Bible with such standards. The research results of anthroposophical Spiritual Science were not yet available.

Let us now illustrate what has just been said with a few examples. Spiritual Science shows us that when we investigate earthly creation using the methods of geology and so on, we can only get so far, and that the development of humanity then seems to go back further into the unknown. And why? No matter how much it may hope to do so, sensory science will never be able to trace human beings back to their origins, because sensory science can only find what is sensory. But the soul and spirit preceded the sensory in human beings. Human beings were first soul and, even earlier, spirit, and then they descended into earthly existence. Only insofar as physical life is involved in man's descent into earthly existence can natural science show us this course of development. We cannot explore soul life with the ordinary powers of sensory observation. Nor can geology offer us any guidance. It offers us the exploration of what remains of sensually perceptible matter. It can therefore only indicate what one would see if one could place a chair in outer space and see from there everything that has developed on earth. Spiritual Science does not go into this. But in order to see human beings in the distant past as spiritual beings, one must have developed spiritual eyes and spiritual ears. Without them, the soul and spirit of human beings disappear from view. But with spiritual eyes, the sensory disappears and the spiritual image arises. However, this cannot be seen in the same way as the sensory. One must acquire completely different concepts of cognition if one wants to go back to such primeval times. What we see developing in human beings when they were first souls is not revealed in sensory perceptions of objects as offered by the external sensory world. It is revealed to us in images. Through the development of the inner powers of the soul, our consciousness becomes what we call an image consciousness, an imaginative consciousness. Consciousness is then filled with images. In a different state of consciousness, we now see what took place at that time in images. What goes on inside the seer is pictorial.

The rudiment that still remains of the gift of clairvoyance is the dream. But it is chaotic. The vision of the trained seer is also present in such mental images, but these mental images correspond to reality. It is similar to how the physical-sensory human being can distinguish whether his mental images correspond to reality or are only a fantasy. Anyone who wants to stick with the statement, “The world is my mental image” and “External things only stimulate the mental image,” I would ask to consider having a piece of red-hot iron brought close to them and feeling how it burns. They should then have it taken away and feel whether the mere mental image still burns. There is something that distinguishes mere mental image from perception stimulated by external objects. Therefore, one cannot say that the seer lives only in fantasies. He has developed in this field in such a way that he can distinguish between what is mere fantasy and what is an image of the reality of a spiritual-soul world. In this way, the images become the means of expression for a spiritual-soul world. When the seer looks back to times before sensory objects present themselves to him, the true spiritual beings and events present themselves to his supersensible organs of perception. The spiritual researcher does not speak of forces that are abstractions, but of real beings. For him, spiritual phenomena become truths and beings, and for him, the spiritual world is populated again with spiritual beings.

Now form a mental image of human beings in their prehistoric development, when a spiritual force intervened in their evolution, in their entire form, and this spiritual force differed, very precisely differed, from other beings that had intervened earlier. We can trace the spiritual-soul nature of the human being, which is already supersensible, even further back; we can trace it back to even higher spheres. But then, when the spiritual researcher enters these even higher spheres, where even higher beings live, he must also speak of these beings as different beings when he speaks of them.

When the spiritual researcher approaches the beginning of the Bible, he sees that the images are given with wonderful fidelity, depicting the soul-spiritual in the development of the human being before he entered physical life. When the spiritual researcher finds his own inner imaginings reflected in external documents, he can say to himself that he recognizes them as truth. When he now goes back to the times when human beings were still connected to the higher spheres, he must choose a different name for these fundamental beings, and he finds that the chapters preceding the fourth verse of the second chapter do indeed have a different name for God. It corresponds exactly with the results of spiritual research that from the fourth verse of the second chapter onwards, a new name for God appears in the description of the development of the primordial worlds. Thus, with spiritual research, we find ourselves in the same position as a connoisseur of geometry today. He can discover geometry within himself, and then he appreciates the work of Euclid, who discovered the same thing. Thus we see the development in the wonderful images of the Old Testament, and now something most remarkable reveals itself to us. Light and brightness shine upon the text of the Bible in a way that could not shine upon the scientific critics.

One researcher said: What the Elohim did must come from a different source than what comes from Yahweh. If one wants to apply this seriously, then it is strange. Let's try it once. Let's form in our minds this mental image of this passage from the Bible: "The serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, . and he said to the woman, Didn't God tell you, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?“ If instead of ”Elohim“ or ‘Yahweh’ it only says ”God,“ then it is not translated correctly. It is strange. The original text says: ”The serpent was cunning... whom Yahweh God had made.“ And where it says, ”Didn't God tell you: ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden,’“ the original text does not say ‘Yahweh’ but ”the Elohim.“ Now the woman continues, always speaking of ”God.“ And in the eighth verse it says, ”And they heard the voice of God, the Lord." But the original text says: the voice of Yahweh God. — Now we have pieced together the story of the serpent in such a way that it becomes clear that those who used the names “Yahweh” or ‘Elohim’ meant different beings. According to biblical critics, this stems from different traditions. And the passage "Did not God say to you, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden’?" — You see, the Bible is really pieced together from scraps in such a way that even in the middle of sentences, the different traditions are combined.

If you approach the Bible with spiritual-scientific research, you will see that this is how it must be. From the fourth verse of the second chapter onwards, there is talk of the creation of the world passing from the Elohim to Yahweh God. He is therefore the power that brings about everything that happens up to the Fall. Spiritual Science shows you that Yahweh is the God who speaks into the innermost being of human beings, what we have as the I, the I-am. It is this being, the I-am-being, that brings about everything that is said from the second chapter, fourth verse onwards. This being, Yahweh, who now intervenes, is a being who belongs to an earlier development but has fallen away... [gap in the transcript]. That is why there is talk of Yahweh God. But the serpent knows nothing of Yahweh, so it must turn to what is of its own substance until the moment when what must come through Yahweh comes to pass. Only in the eighth verse of the third chapter does the name Yahweh appear again.

Thus, through spiritual research, one gains the awareness that the Bible is a document in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is merely coincidental. A modern writer may say to himself: Why should not even this God take on another name? — The ancient initiates did not use the stylistic forms of modern writers. When one has to speak precisely and accurately, one cannot use any stylistic form one likes. What is written and what is omitted has its meaning. When the name Yahweh appears, and when it is omitted, it means something very significant. But one must apply the principle that the Bible must be read with the utmost precision. Read the Bible if you have it! Read through the six-day work, and you will find, if you continue reading after the first verse of the second chapter until the Sabbath, that then comes the passage “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” These verses are usually interpreted as a reference to what preceded them, as if the seven-day work had been recounted and now it was said: So it was done, the seven-day work. — “This is the origin of heaven and earth when they were created,” and then it continues “in the beginning when God the Lord made the earth and the heavens” (Genesis 2:4).

Anyone who studies the original text here will come to the following conclusion: The fourth verse of the second chapter does not refer to what precedes it, but to what follows it; just as later — in the chapter after the Fall — “This is the generation of Adam” (Genesis 5:1) refers to what follows, to what comes after, to the next generation, to what came from Adam. This is said in the same way as: What follows, “these are the generations of heaven and earth” (Genesis 2:4). In Hebrew, the same word is used for this. Anyone who reads carefully knows that from the words “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” to the third verse of the second chapter, the spiritual world is described as it was created. Then, from the fourth verse of the second chapter onwards, it is said: That which is the offspring of heaven and earth is described in what follows. It is the most wonderful transition, if one understands the matter, from the six days of creation to what follows. Anyone who engages with these things will find that there is perhaps no book as well-combined as the Bible, especially its oldest parts. The belief that one can approach the Bible without spiritual research, that one can approach it with external documents, has dissolved this work, which is so perfect and harmonious in itself, so that it appears to be composed of nothing but rags and fragments.

One must also pursue the principle of reading carefully and the principle of having the Bible. One does not have the Bible if one only has the wording that merely hints at the individual points that are important. One must have the principle of engaging with the Bible. On the fourth day of the six-day work, we are told how the sun and moon came into being, how the sun and moon determine day and night (Genesis 1:14-18). But even before that, the Bible speaks of day and night (Genesis 1:5). One can draw the conclusion that day and night, which depend on the sun and moon (Genesis 1:14–18), cannot be meant by the day and night that do not depend on the sun and moon (Genesis 1:5). Here we can see a clear indication of where the Bible speaks of the sensory day and night of the sun. These arise from what we call the rotation of the earth around the sun. But we can see where the Bible points beyond this sensory day to what is supersensible, spiritual, where it elevates and expands it into the spiritual realm.

Those who were able to explore the Bible spiritually were always able to say to themselves: If someone has the gift of clairvoyance, the gift of higher vision, and can find the meaning of the Bible in reality, then it is self-evident that this meaning of the Bible also flowed from the gift of clairvoyance. If, by placing the soul in a different spiritual mood, we can look into what is given to us in the powerful images of the Bible, then we know that the one who wrote it must also have been under the inspiration of the spiritual world. We may well say: The time is beginning when it should be increasingly understood that there are four stages in which the Bible can be viewed today.

The first stage is that of naive belief. It accepts the Bible with unwavering certainty and has no inkling of what has been cited today as objections to the Bible.

The second level: These are the clever people, the Bible critics, who, either through researching internal contradictions or from a scientific point of view, find that the Bible was the primitive collection of sayings and legends of a humanity that was not yet engaged in research. They have moved beyond the Bible, they no longer need it, they attack it from various angles and say: It was good for childlike humanity. But now humanity is growing beyond the Bible. — These are the intelligent people, the free thinkers.

Then there is another stage: Man grows beyond this cleverness. The people at this stage are also free thinkers, but they have outgrown this second point of view, that of the clever people; they see in the stories of the Bible — of the Old and New Testaments — at least symbolic and mythical expressions of inner soul experiences. They see what the human soul forms as a mental image in an abstract way, represented in symbols in the Bible. Some free thinkers have been forced to do this. They have had to transform the viewpoint of the free thinker into that of the mythical symbolist, the mythical representer.

Then there is a fourth point of view. This is the one that has been characterized for you today as that of Spiritual Science. The day after tomorrow we will pursue this spiritual scientific point of view further. It again shows the spiritual facts in simple descriptions, but in such a way that one can see these spiritual facts in the imagination. These are the facts described in the Bible. Those who have had to abandon the naive standpoint and, as researchers, have become intelligent people, perhaps symbolists, can then arrive at the standpoint of the spiritual researcher and become capable of taking the Bible literally again, literally in a new sense, namely, of truly understanding the words.

For centuries, the Bible was not actually criticized. Bible critics fought against their own fantasy creation, what they had made of the Bible. So today there are still fighters against the Bible; they fight against their own fantasy creation, against what they believe they understand of it; they do not touch the Bible at all. So the Bible can be taken literally again, but one must understand the word correctly.

Today there is a certain trend that counters such a word with the statement: It is not the letter, but the spirit that must decide. “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life,” and you name it from certain relationships between the letters.

I wish we could bring the true letter of the Bible back to the world as soon as possible. The world would be amazed at what the original text contains. It would seem like something completely new to humanity. One should not go around peddling the saying: The letter kills, the spirit gives life. It is usually the gentlemen's own spirit that is reflected in the letters. This is especially true of symbolists. If they are trivial, they put trivial things into symbols; if they are witty, they put witty things into symbols. This saying is like Goethe's saying:

And as long as you do not have this,
This: Die and become!
You are but a dull guest
On the dark earth.

This saying suggests to us how man should transcend sensual perception, indeed ordinary nature itself. Anyone who would take this saying as an instruction that the physical has no value has overlooked the fact that the spirit gradually develops out of the physical. It is the same with the letter and the spirit. First one must have the letter, then be able to unravel it, and then one will find what the spirit is. Certainly, the letter kills, but in its death it creates the spirit, and this saying corresponds to the other: Whoever does not have this dying and becoming remains only a gloomy guest on the dark earth.

Only in principle could I draw your attention today to the critique of the Bible and to the points of view that Spiritual Science will take towards the Bible. From the few hints that have been given today, one can at least guess that through the work of Spiritual Science something like a reconquest of the Bible will be possible. Spiritual Science should find wisdom independently of the Bible. But it recognizes what has flowed into this Bible and what many people experience today in relation to the Bible. Some things have been able to edify people, but most of it no longer makes sense to them. Only through Spiritual Science do people come to understand what is said about this and that in the Bible. But then there are other passages that seem quite questionable, and one comes to the point of view of saying: There are passages in the Bible that contain profound spiritual truths, but some things have flowed into it that have been incorporated as something inorganic. — If one goes further, one makes another discovery and finds that it was one's own fault, namely that one was not far enough along to understand the matter. And one comes to say to oneself: Where you used to believe that the meaning of the Bible seemed untenable in relation to science, you now realize: you understand that you must regard the Bible with trust and reverence; you do not yet understand the other part. But the time will come when you will understand it, and you will find the point of view from which you yourself can see into it.

Spiritual Science will lead to a correct appreciation of the Bible. From the spiritual scientific point of view, we have spoken today about the beginning of the Bible, about creation. Biblical research is going through a crisis. Spiritual scientific research will meet it halfway, and in the future the old light of the Bible will shine again on humanity in a new form.