The Bible and Wisdom II

The fact that Spiritual Science is capable of exploring the deeper wisdom and truths of the biblical documents, and thereby has the opportunity to read what is written in these documents in the correct sense, was indicated in a few strokes in yesterday's lecture. And it was intended to show in broad strokes how, in contrast to the Old Testament, such a correct penetration into the deeper meaning of the Bible is possible in a quite unexpected way and can lead many people to a rediscovery of this document for humanity. What could be said in this last lecture about the position of our modern age, its research, its criticism, its worldview in relation to the Old Testament, can be said in exactly the same way in relation to the New Testament. Here, too, we are again in a position to point out how, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a criticism began which frayed, dissected, and, so to speak, cut to pieces the Gospel, another document that has had such enormous significance for countless people throughout the centuries, and attacked its authority at its root. It would take a long story to draw attention to this biblical criticism of the New Testament in detail. How could it be otherwise, since that time, after the invention of printing, when the Bible became available to everyone and materialistic thinking gained the upper hand! How could it be otherwise, when it became increasingly clear to people that there were contradictions in the Gospels?