XLV. Occult Research on the Gospels
GA 90a/1904-07-18/p037
·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.
This is not pantheism, nor a vague concept of God, nor a denial of God, but a concept as exalted as it can be. It is still preserved in one term, in 'pontifex maximus', the bridge-maker, the priest. And why is that? Because he had to be a more developed person, one whose inner self was already one step [higher] than the others, a person who had reached a higher level of development. Those who know how to research can historically prove that the ancient gods of the Greeks were originally humans, people who lived originally and were imagined to have worked their way up to a higher level of divinity. It was the same with the Persians. They also had beings like the devas and angels, which were gradually different, but which led one step further – up.
Read this passage in another edition
ENEnglish