XLV. Occult Research on the Gospels

GA 90a/1904-07-18/p009 ·1904-07-18 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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: «Frühe Vortragsreihen und Einzelvorträge für Mitglieder in Berlin 1903–1904 nach ausführlichen und z.T. fragmentarischen Mitschriften.» (Early lecture series and single lectures for members in Berlin 1903-1904, from detailed and in part fragmentary listeners' transcripts.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 90a); the description calls them "Hörermitschriften", and the served text carries the note-taker's gap marker "[Lücke in der Mitschrift]". The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

I have entitled my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. The title was not chosen at random. Every word is important. It is not merely the mystical content that is to be expounded. Rather, the aim is to show that the facts of the Gospel of John are indeed mystical facts, but that they are therefore also historical facts. Christianity is not to be shown as mystical, as a mystical concept, but as a fact that can be explained mystically, but is historically real. Those who were struck by the thyrsus can be led to the archetypes of what the books tell. Here we are tying in with something that I said last time in relation to the historical-critical research of the gospels. I said that the critics have accepted that the Gospel of Mark, although written much later, was not written by contemporaries. At the same time, I said that the writer of the Gospel of Mark does not describe the places where the events took place, and that the events and localities seem to be completely indifferent to him. I also said that what Mark links as facts is a kind of poetic composition, so that the chronological sequence cannot be decisive either. Therefore, the criticism admits of two things: that we cannot infer anything from the sequence of events and nothing from localities and places.

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Cite: GA 90a/1904-07-18/p009 · edition English