The Bible and Wisdom II

Let us mention only the most important features. Moses finds himself face to face with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At the same time, God gives him the task of leading the people out of Egypt, bringing them to a certain greatness and a certain way of life. When Moses then asks for something with which he can justify himself before the people, so that he can say who he is and who sent him, God reveals his name: “I am who I am.” No one who is not able to understand the whole meaning and essence of ancient naming can understand this word. Ancient names are not the same as today's names. Ancient names were intended to express the essence of the personality, the essence of the one who stands before us. In “I am that I am,” the essence of the God who stood before Moses and who calls himself “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” had to be expressed in a very specific way. Why does he call himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Behind this lies a mystery that needs to be unraveled. We can only unravel it if we approach it with the tools of Spiritual Science. We will have to emphasize again and again in various places that human beings consist of the different members of their being, that what we call the physical body is only one part of the human being, that we have higher members beyond this, which are supersensible, which are the actual foundations, the creative principles. We must add to the physical body the etheric or life body, then the astral body, and as the fourth member, the I-bearer. The physical body is shared by human beings with seemingly lifeless beings, with minerals; the etheric body with plants and all living beings; the astral body with animal beings, with those that can have passions and desires. Through the ego, human beings rise above all the sensory beings that surround them. These are the four real members of the human being, which Spiritual Science has always recognized.