14. Philo and the Intellectual Currents of His Time: The Therapeutae and Essenes
GA 87/1902-02-08/p040
·1902-02-08
·
English
HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Auch wenn die Mitschrift noch nicht die später übliche Genauigkeit aufweist» (Even though the transcript does not yet have the accuracy usual later). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 87), which calls the cycle the earliest of which a listener's transcript exists. The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.
There are all sorts of external reasons why it can be maintained that [the Gospel of John] is a later product. But basically the whole tenor, the whole presentation of the Gospel, shows that it grew directly out of the deepest conception of Christianity. This is also shown by the very modest way in which John [concludes the Gospel by saying that he was present at these things, that he was, so to speak, an ear and eye witness, but that he is not interested in communicating what he personally experienced, what was apparent, but the deeper core, that is, what was taught in the Essene community. Therefore, we can understand the matter in such a way that we find an esoteric Christianity centuries before Christ and that we have the exoteric interpretation of it in the Gospel of John.
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