VIII. The Christ Impulse as Living Reality II

Jeshu ben Pandira was not spared from the hard fate he himself predicted; he was stoned, and his corpse was suspended on a cross. The original chronicle was preserved in the hands of a few of his adherents, in deep secrecy. We can best follow what happened to it later on when the great Church father Jerome[^2] himself says that he had received the document of the Matthew Gospel from a Christian sect. The original record was held at that time in the secret keeping of a small circle and through certain circumstances came into the hands of Jerome. He was charged by his bishop with the task of translating it. Jerome himself narrates this; but he says at the same time that because of the form and manner of the transcription, it should not pass into the hands of the outside world. He wanted to translate it in such a way that its secrets would remain secret—and he says, furthermore, that he himself does not understand it. The nature of what came into existence in this way was such that one man could express it in one way and another in a different way in secular language. And this is how it has come down to posterity. In reality, therefore, the world does not yet possess the Gospels in their true form. There is every reason and justification then for spiritual research today, in shedding new light upon the Gospels, to go back to the Akashic Record, because there and there only are they to be found in their original form.