21. Gnosis and the Apocalypse
GA 87/1902-03-29/p023
·1902-03-29
·
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.
The Church Fathers - in their standpoint against the Gnostics - are almost on the same [standpoint]. Their endeavor was to blur what came over from the "old", and yet we can still find all the teachings expressed in symbolism, in the new church, which should be and wants to be "universal". In essence, the Apocalypse represents this replacement of the former, of the mysteries by the general communion of saints. The Apocalypse is nothing other than the paraphrase of the one sentence: The mystery is to become popular. Nothing else is to be achieved than that in the idea of the one-time original initiation - in the repetition of the mass action - it is pointed out again and again that everyone should walk the path and that he will find it when he is ripe for it.
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