17. The Idea of Christ in Egyptian Spiritual Life
GA 87/1902-03-01/p033
·1902-03-01
·
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.
First of all, there are no historical, external indications. The same basis led to the birth of a Buddha so many hundreds of years ago and the same basis later led to the birth of a Christ. We must be clear about the fact that the entire Jewish spiritual life grew out of the Egyptian spiritual life. If you follow the first chapters of Genesis and the commandments in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, you will find the same striking correspondence between Buddha and Jesus that I mentioned the other day. He will find in the first five chapters of Genesis what was common practice in the Egyptian priestly world. But we must be clear about the way in which Genesis came to the Jews and how it was propagated by them.
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