{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 157a/1915-12-19/p029","lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"text":"But this thought was not immediately taken up in the way I have just described it, approached with a certain kind of sacred modesty, with great seriousness and awareness of the significance of the event that lived in the feeling. No indeed! In many areas it began by simply placing a manger in some kind of side altar in this or that church. (This was still the case in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it goes back to still earlier times.) A manger was placed there, and therefore a stall, in which were placed an ox and an ass, as well as the Child and two dolls representing Joseph and Mary. At first they used a very naive sculptural technique, but then it was desired to bring more life to the figures. This came first from the side of the clergy. Thus priests dressed themselves up, one as Joseph, the other as Mary, and they then represented these figures. They played these roles instead of using the dolls. In the earliest times they even presented the scene in Latin, because in the old churches, if the performance was to present a deep meaning it was considered important that those who saw or listened *understand* as little as possible, that they only see the outer mimicry.","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"A Christmas Thought and the Secret of the Ego","site_heading":null,"date":"1915-12-19","location":null,"word_count":216,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157a/1915-12-19/p029","alignment_confidence":"high","alignment_reason":"beads:length","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":{"scope":"unit","status":"established","translator":"G. Karnow and A. Wulsin","identified_edition":"Singles","book_title":"Festivals of the Seasons","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA157a/English/Singles/19151219p02.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"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/157a/1915-12-19/p029"},{"lang":"en","edition":"English","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/157a/1915-12-19/p029","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 157a/1915-12-19_02","ga":"157a","lecture":"1915-12-19_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":"1915-12-19","de_passages":[{"locus":"GA 157a/1915-12-19/p020","url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/de/ga/157a/1915-12-19/p020"}],"bead_confidence":"high","length_check":{"de_words":509,"en_words":528,"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":1.05,"band":"comparable","note":null,"word_count":8474,"original_word_count":8044,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"scope":"unit","status":"recorded","translator":"G. Karnow and A. Wulsin","identified_edition":"Singles","book_title":"Festivals of the Seasons","publisher":null,"publisher_inferred":false,"match_score":1.0,"source_url":"https://www.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA157a/English/Singles/19151219p02.html","evidence":"lecture_page_line"},"entity_parity":{"status":"ok","checked_against":["GA 157a/1915-12-19/p020"],"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."}}