{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 143/1912-04-16/p008","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"To ponder *a priori* on what may have taken place in Palestine at the beginning of our era, this would never have occurred to the Gospel-readers of earlier centuries, and still does not occur to many Gospel-readers of today. Those who begin to test, in the Gospels, what may have taken place before the eyes of the inhabitants of Palestine at the beginning of our era lose confidence in the historical character of the events of Palestine. The men of earlier times did not read in this way. They read in such a way that they allowed a picture to work on their souls; for instance, the picture of the Samaritan woman at the well, or of Christ imparting the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples. The question of external physical reality never occurred to them. How their hearts warmed, how their feelings swelled in the presence of these great and powerful pictures—this was to them the main thing. What formed itself in their hearts, what force, what life-meaning they gained through these pictures—this was the main thing. They felt that spiritual lifeblood and strength flowed to them from these pictures. When they let these pictures work on their souls, they felt strong; they felt that, without these pictures, they would be weak. And then they felt living, personal connections with what is recounted in the Gospels, and the question of historical reality occurred to them no further. The Gospels were themselves *reality*, they were present as force, and one did not need to ask whence they came; one knew that men had written them not with earthly means, but with impulses from the spiritual worlds. I do not assert that one must feel in this way today (what one must do depends on the development of mankind), but I assert that men felt in this way through centuries.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"I. The Path through the Gospels and The Path of Inner Experience","site_heading":null,"date":"1912-04-16","location":null,"word_count":310,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/143/1912-04-16/p008","alignment_confidence":"medium","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"Norman MacBeth","identified_edition":"AP1942","book_title":"The Three Paths of the Soul to Christ","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA143/English/AP1942/19120416p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row","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/143/1912-04-16/p008"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/143/1912-04-16/p008","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},"german_anchor":{"de_prefix":"1912-04-16","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 143/1912-04-16/p007","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/143/1912-04-16/p007"}],"bead_confidence":"medium","length_check":{"de_words":447,"en_words":463,"ratio":1.04,"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."},"witness_completeness":{"ratio":1.03,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":6192,"original_word_count":5997,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"Norman MacBeth","identified_edition":"AP1942","book_title":"The Three Paths of the Soul to Christ","publisher":"Anthroposophic Press","publisher_inferred":true,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA143/English/AP1942/19120416p01.html","evidence":"lecture_list_row","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 143/1912-04-16/p007"],"missing_from_translation":[],"present_only_in_translation":[],"bead_confidence":"medium","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."}}