{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 124/1911-01-16/p034","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"If a man of the modern age were to encounter a figure such as Orpheus, he would simply say: he is the son of such-and-such a father and such-and-such a mother—and science might possibly look for inherited characteristics. There is, for example, a bulky tome in which all the hereditary characteristics of Goethe's families are set forth in an endeavour to present him as the sum-total of those characteristics. That is by no means how people thought in the days of Orpheus. The man of flesh and his physical attributes were not what really mattered to them. The essential qualities were those that enabled Orpheus to be the leader and organiser of pre-Christian Greek culture—certainly not the physical brain or nervous system. The essential thing was the fact that he had within him—in his own field of experience—a quality derived from the supersensible world and united with the material-physical element provided by his personality. The eyes of the Greeks were directed, not to the physical figure of Orpheus descending from father and mother, perhaps also from grandfather and grandmother; this figure was more or less unessential, being merely the outer expression, the sheath. The essential element was what had descended from a supersensible source and had united with a material entity on the physical plane. Hence a Greek would have said to himself: When Orpheus is before me, the fact that he descends from a father and a mother need hardly be taken into account; what is of importance is that his soul-qualities, which have made him what he is, stem from the supersensible, from a supersensible reality which has never hitherto had anything to do with the physical plane; a physical-material element has here been able to unite with the supersensible reality in his personality.—And because the Greeks regarded a purely supersensible quality as the hallmark of Orpheus, they said he was the offspring of a Muse, the son of Calliope, not of a physical mother but of a supersensible reality which had never had any previous connection with the physical and material.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"VI. The Son of God and the Son of Man. The Sacrifice of Orpheus","site_heading":null,"date":"1911-01-16","location":null,"word_count":344,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/124/1911-01-16/p034","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"E. H. Goddard and Dorothy S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1985","book_title":"Background to the Gospel of St. Mark","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA124/English/RSP1985/19110116p02.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["English"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"de","edition":"original","edition_basis":null,"is_original":true,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/124/1911-01-16/p034"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/124/1911-01-16/p034","paragraph_aligned":true}],"record":{"record_type":"unknown","scope":"volume","note":"How this text was taken down (shorthand transcript, listeners' notes or manuscript) is not on record here. Unknown is not an assurance of a stenogram: check the edition's own notes before resting an argument on one word.","evidence":null,"evidence_translation":null,"evidence_source":null},"other_renderings":{"loci":[{"locus":"GA 124/1911-01-16_02","ga":"124","lecture":"1911-01-16_02","kind":"renderings","relation":"another translation or transcription of the same lecture"}],"note":"The same lecture is also served at the loci listed, each with how it relates to this one. They are ONE witness, not independent attestations: quote the rendering you fetched, and do not cite another as corroborating it. Wording differs between translations, so a quotation found in one need not occur in the other."},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1911-01-16","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 124/1911-01-16/p029","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/124/1911-01-16/p029"}],"bead_confidence":"high","pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false,"length_check":{"de_words":495,"en_words":481,"ratio":0.97,"partial":false},"correspondence":"established","note":"English passage numbering is edition-relative, so the same number need not name the same paragraph in the German. The German original passage(s) above are the edition-invariant anchor — fetch them (lang='de') to verify wording before quoting across editions."},"paired_german":{"status":"paired","german":[{"locus":"GA 124/1911-01-16/p029","passage_number":29,"text":"So dachten die Menschen eines noch gar nicht weit zurückliegenden Zeitalters nicht. Aber weil die Wissenschafter und Forscher der Gegenwart nicht wissen, daß die Menschen früher anders dachten und in ihren Worten und Bezeichnungen ganz anderes darinnen hatten, kommen sie auch zu ganz anderen Auslegungen der alten Mitteilungen. Da wird uns zum Beispiel berichtet von einem griechischen Sänger, Orpheus. Ich erwähne ihn deshalb, weil er in einer gewissen Weise dem Zeitalter angehört, das dem christlichen unmittelbar voranging. Orpheus war der, welcher die griechischen Mysterien eingerichtet hat. Der griechische Zeitraum ist der vierte innerhalb unserer nachatlantischen Kultur, so daß gleichsam durch die Kultur des Orpheus vorbereitet wurde, was der Menschheit später durch das Christus-Ereignis gegeben worden ist. Für Griechenland ist also Orpheus dieser große Vorbereiter. Was würde nun ein moderner Mensch sagen, wenn ihm solch ein Mensch entgegentreten würde, wie Orpheus es war? Er würde sagen: Es ist der Sohn dieses Vaters und der Sohn jener Mutter -, ja die moderne Wissenschaft wird vielleicht sogar nach den vererbten Merkmalen forschen. Es gibt heute schon ein dickes Buch, das die sämtlichen vererbten Merkmale aus den Goetheschen Familien zeigt und so Goethe summieren möchte aus den vererbten Merkmalen. So hat man zur Zeit des Orpheus nicht gedacht, hat nicht als das Wesentliche den äußeren fleischlichen Menschen und dessen Eigenschaften angesehen, sondern man hat als das Wesentliche in Orpheus dasjenige angesehen, wodurch er der Inaugurator, der eigentliche Führer der vorchristlichen griechischen Kultur hat werden können, und man war sich klar, daß das, was als physisches Gehirn, als Nervensystem in ihm lebte, nicht das Wesentliche ist. Als wesentlich betrachtete man vielmehr, daß er in sich trug ein Element - in dem, was er erlebte —, das unmittelbar aus den übersinnlichen Welten herstammte und das sich dann durch ihn auf dem Schauplatz, der durch seine Persönlichkeit gegeben war, traf mit einem sinnlich-physischen Element. Der Grieche sah in der Persönlichkeit des Orpheus nicht das Fleischliche, das abstammt von Vater und Mutter, vielleicht auch von Großvater und Großmutter; das war ihm ziemlich unwesentlich, das war ihm nur der äußere Ausdruck, die Schale. Das Wesentliche war ihm, was abstammte von einem Übersinnlichen und zusammentraf mit einem Sinnlichen auf dem physischen Plan. Daher sagte sich der Grieche: Wenn ich den Orpheus vor mir habe, kommt das kaum in Betracht, daß er von einem Vater und einer Mutter abstammt; aber das kommt in Betracht, daß sein Seelenhaftes, wodurch er etwas geworden ist, abstammt von einem Übersinnlichen, das nie mit dem physischen Plan etwas zu tun gehabt hat, und daß auf dieses Übersinnliche in seiner Persönlichkeit durch das, was die Menschen schon damals waren, ein Sinnlich-Physisches einwirken und sich mit diesem Übersinnlichen verbinden konnte. Und weil die Griechen in Orpheus als Wesentliches ein rein übersinnliches Element sahen, deshalb sagten sie von ihm: er stammt ab von einer Muse. Er war der Sohn einer Muse, Kalliope; er war nicht etwa bloß der Sohn einer fleischlichen Mutter, sondern eines übersinnlichen Elementes, das nie einen Zusammenhang hatte mit dem Sinnlichen.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"word_count":495,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/124/1911-01-16/p029"}],"english":["GA 124/1911-01-16/p033","GA 124/1911-01-16/p034"],"method":"length","confidence":"high","correspondence":"established","length_check":{"de_words":495,"en_words":481,"ratio":0.97,"partial":false},"pairing_state":"proposed","verified":false},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":0.95,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":6274,"original_word_count":6604,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"E. H. Goddard and Dorothy S. Osmond","identified_edition":"RSP1985","book_title":"Background to the Gospel of St. Mark","publisher":"Rudolf Steiner Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA124/English/RSP1985/19110116p02.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line","publisher_note":"The publisher is inferred from the edition code in this lecture's source URL, not stated by the source page. The translator IS verified for this lecture: its own source names the translator (evidence: the lecture's page, rsarchive's lecture list, or the cover of the book it was published in), and that page's text was matched against this unit (see match_score and source_url). Cite the translator with confidence; attribute the publisher only as probable."},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 124/1911-01-16/p029"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"high","note":"Every load-bearing name in the German counterpart appears in this English passage. That is a check on NAMES only: a translation can keep every name and still reverse who acts on whom, change a number, or soften a claim. Read the German for anything you intend to rest an argument on."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}