Seventeenth Lecture

Now, you will understand that these circumstances must be so if you consider the following: Especially about the Mystery of Golgotha and everything connected with it, was spoken of as something secret in the first centuries of Christianity. You know how they dealt with mystery wisdom in ancient times. This mystery wisdom was not something that was taken directly onto the streets, but was considered something that was only given to someone who had been properly prepared with the whole person in the right way. Thus, even in the remnants of mystery wisdom, in which Christianity first appeared before the most intimate of its adherents in the first Christian centuries, the mystery of Golgotha itself was also taught. However, they did not proceed with all the facts in the way that today in external science, where one proceeds according to the so-called historical sources, but rather, great value was placed on determining the day of Jesus' death not from a historical source but from stellar wisdom, thus saying: at this and that stellar constellation, the death of Jesus occurs. Such was the form.