The Gospel of Matthew. Lecture 1 of 12.
Rudolf Steiner, Berne, Switzerland, September 1, 1910:
This is the third occasion on which I
have had the opportunity of speaking in Switzerland of the greatest event in the
history of the Earth and of man. The first time was at Basle, when I spoke from
the aspect of this event presented in the Gospel of John; the second was in
accordance with descriptions of the event given by Luke; and now, the third
time, the impulse for what I have to say will come from the Gospel of
Matthew.
I have often
pointed out how important it is that accounts of this event are preserved in
four documents apparently so different from one another. But what gives
opportunity for so much adverse criticism from the side of the materialistic
thought of the present day is precisely what strikes us as important according
to our anthroposophical outlook. No one should permit himself to describe any
fact or being that has been viewed only from one point. A man may photograph a
tree from one side, but the result cannot be regarded as a true replica of the
tree. If, however, he photographs it from four sides, he can, by comparing the
four pictures, form a comprehensive idea of the appearance of the tree. If this
is true as regards ordinary external things, how should one suppose that an
event comprising in itself such a sum of occurrences — the fullest measure of
all the things essential to human existence — can be really grasped if described
only from one side? Contradictions between the Gospels are only apparent; the
explanation of them lies in the fact that each writer knew he was capable of
describing one side only of this mighty event. By recognizing this fact, and by
comparing the different accounts, it is possible gradually to gain a complete
picture.
Let us us then
approach this, the greatest event in earthly evolution, with patience, and with
confidence in the four descriptions given in the New Testament, trusting that we
may be able to enrich our knowledge of it through them.
It is customary
to begin by giving an historical account of the origin of the Gospels. It will,
however, give us the best result if what is to be said of the origin of the
Matthew Gospel is said toward the end of the course, for as is natural, and as
other sciences show, the comprehension of a thing should precede its history. No
one, for instance, can usefully approach the history of arithmetic who has no
knowledge of arithmetic. In other cases it is universal to place historical
descriptions at the end of a study; where this is not done, the arrangement
contradicts the natural needs of human knowledge. Thus an attempt will be made
here, first, to prove the contents of the Gospel of Matthew, and afterwards to
examine its historical origin.
When we allow
the Gospels to affect us, even externally, we are soon aware of something
distinctive in the way each is expressed, and this feeling is intensified when
we keep in mind the lectures previously given on the Gospels of John and Luke.
In seeking to understand the mighty communications of the Gospel of John we
feel overpowered by its spiritual grandeur, and must confess that in this Gospel
— because it tells of the highest attainable by human wisdom—we find the highest
to which human understanding can gradually attain. In it man seems to raise his
eyes to a summit of world existence and say to himself: ‘However small I may be
as man, the Gospel of John permits me to divine that something has entered my
soul with which I am united, and which overcomes me with a feeling of the
infinite.’ The spiritual greatness of a cosmic being with whom humanity is
related sinks into the human soul when we speak of the Gospel of John.
Recall your
feelings on reading what was said concerning the Gospel of Luke; what filled
your soul then was something quite different.
In the Gospel of
John it is chiefly the revelation of spiritual greatness that arouses longing in
the receptive human soul, and fills it as with a breath of magic; in the the
Gospel of Luke we encounter an inwardness of soul nature, the intensity of the
power of love and of sacrifice in the world when these are experienced by the
human heart. John describes the being of Christ Jesus in its spiritual grandeur.
Luke shows us this being in its immeasurable capacity of sacrifice, and gives us
some idea of the nature of that force which as sacrificial love pulsates through
the world in the way other forces do, permeating the whole evolution of the
world and all the deeds of men.
We live mainly
in the element of feeling when we let the influence of the Gospel of Luke
work in us; and it is the element of understanding, speaking of the
ultimate ends and aims of knowledge, that meets us in the Gospel of John. John
speaks more to our understanding, Luke to our hearts. This can be felt from the
Gospels themselves, but it is also our endeavor to give out what we are able to
add to these documents through the revelation of spiritual science. Those to
whom these Gospels are only words have not by any means heard all that can be
heard. There was a profound difference both in language and style between the
cycle of lectures on the Gospels of John and that of Luke. These must again be
different when we approach the Gospel of Matthew.
In the Gospel of
Luke it is as if all that ever existed in the evolution of mankind as human
love were seen to be concentrated within the being who at the beginning of our
era is called Christ Jesus.
To merely
external perception the Gospel of Matthew appears more many-sided than the other
two, even more many-sided than the three others, but when we come to consider
the Gospel of Mark we shall find that unlike the others it is in a certain sense
one-sided.
The Gospel of
John reveals the greatness of the wisdom of Christ Jesus; the Gospel of
Luke, the power of His love; the Gospel of Mark, mainly the power of the
creative forces and the splendor permeating universal space. From this
Gospel we divine something stupendous in the outpouring of the cosmic forces
which seem to rush toward us from all directions of space.
While that which
breathes from Luke fills the soul with inward warmth, and that which springs
from John fills it with hope, that which emerges from the Gospel of Mark is the
overwhelming power and splendor of the cosmic forces before which the soul
feels almost shattered. All three elements are present in the Gospel of Matthew
— the deep warmth of the love element, the hopeful reaching forth of the
understanding, and the majestic greatness of the universe. But in a certain
sense they are present in a weaker form and therefore seem to be more closely
related to humanity than is the case in the other Gospels. Whereas we might be
overwhelmed so that we almost prostrate ourselves before the love, the wisdom,
and the greatness of the other three, we feel more able to stand erect before
the Gospel of Matthew, even to approach and place ourselves alongside of it. We
are nowhere shattered by the Matthew Gospel, although it also brings something
of that which in the other three Gospels can work shatteringly. It is,
therefore, the most human document of them all, and more than the others it
presents Christ Jesus as man. It is in a sense a commentary on the others, and
by making clear what is too great for human understanding in the other Gospels,
it throws a remarkable light upon them.
Let us take what
is now to be said as referring more to the style of the different Gospels. The
Gospel of Luke tells how the highest degree of love and sacrifice was reached in
the being to whom we give the name of Christ Jesus, how this flowed out into the
world and into men, and how for the salvation of men a human outpouring came
down from out the primeval ages of earthly development, and it describes this
same stream up to the earliest beginnings of man.
In the Gospel of
John we are shown how man can look with his wisdom and knowledge to a beginning,
and also to a goal, to which this understanding can attain; we are shown this
from the very beginning of the Gospel, for here the description of Christ Jesus
points to the creative Logos itself. The most exalted spiritual conception our
minds can reach is defined in the opening sentences of this Gospel. It is
otherwise in the Gospel of Matthew. The Gospel of Matthew treats of the man,
Jesus of Nazareth; it refers at the very beginning to the origin of his lineage,
showing how he sprang from a definite point in history. It traces the line of
descent in a certain people. It shows how all the qualities we find in Jesus had
been concentrated within the race of Abraham; how for three times fourteen
generations the best it had to give had flowed in the blood of this people, to
prepare it for the perfect flowering of the highest human powers in one human
individual.
While John
points to the eternal quality of the Logos, and Luke to the immensity of human
evolution, taking us back to its very beginning — the Gospel of Matthew tells us
of a man, Jesus of Nazareth, who belonged to a people able to trace the descent
of its qualities through three times fourteen generations — to Abraham, the
founder of the race.
It is only
possible to hint here at what is necessary before any real understanding of what
the Gospel of Mark seeks to explain can be reached. This is, that we must learn
in a certain way to know the cosmic forces streaming through the whole course of
the world's development. For in this Gospel, Christ Jesus is presented to us as
an essence from the cosmos working within a human agency; an essence of that
which previously had dwelt in the infinity of space as cosmic force. Mark seeks
to describe the acts of Christ as an extract of cosmic activity; to him the
divine man, Christ Jesus, walking on the Earth, is a quintessence of the
Sun force in its boundless activity. Thus it is stellar forces working through a
human agency which Mark describes.
In a certain
way, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew touches also upon this stellar
activity, for, at the very beginning, when describing the birth of Jesus of
Nazareth he leads us to a point where we are shown that cosmic facts are
connected with the birth of a man; this is, when he speaks of the star guiding
the three Magi to the birthplace of Jesus.
But he does not
describe a cosmic activity as is done in the Gospel of Mark; he does not demand
that we raise our eyes to this cosmic activity; he shows us three men — the Magi
— and the effect these cosmic events had upon them. We can turn to these three
men and divine their feelings. Thus, if we would rise to what is cosmic, Matthew
directs our gaze not to boundless space, but to man, to the action of the
cosmos in human hearts.
These hints
should only be accepted as showing the difference in style of the Gospels. The
main characteristic of each Gospel is that it gives a description from a
different point of view, and each has its own special manner and method of
describing this, the greatest event in human and earthly evolution.
The most
important facts at the commencement of the Gospel of Matthew concern the near
blood-relations of Jesus of Nazareth. We are told how the physical person of
Jesus was created; and how the qualities of a whole people, since its originator
Abraham, were contained as an extract in one human being, Jesus of Nazareth.
Therefore it had to be shown how the blood of Jesus reached back by way of the
generations to the Father of the Hebrew people; and how on this account the
nature of this people — that for which they particularly stood in regard to
human and earthly evolution — was concentrated within the physical personality
of Jesus of Nazareth. It is necessary, therefore, in order to understand the
point of view of the writer of the Gospel, to know something of the nature of
the Hebrew people, and to be able to answer the question: ‘What was it that the
Hebrew people, by virtue of their special character, were able to impart to
mankind?’ External materialistic history gives little attention to the facts
emphasized here. The fact that no one people in human evolution has the same
task as another, that each has its own special mission, is hardly noticed; to
those who understand human evolution, however, this is all-important. All
peoples, down even to physical details, are formed in accordance with their
destiny. Thus the bodies of any one race reveal a certain construction in their
physical as well as in their etheric and astral sheaths; and the way these
interpenetrate one another produces the most appropriate instrument for that
people's contribution to humanity.
The question can
now be modified to: ‘What was the special contribution of the Hebrew people to
humanity, and how was this built into the physical body of Jesus of
Nazareth?’
To understand
correctly the answer to this question it will be necessary to enter more exactly
into the whole evolution of mankind, already dealt with in an Outline
of Occult Science, and in other courses of lectures. It is well to take
the Atlantean catastrophe as a starting point. The Atlanteans journeyed from the
west towards the east; one principal stream passed through Europe to the regions
around the Caspian Sea in Asia; the other on a more southerly course, through the
Africa of today. A kind of union of these two wanderings took place in yonder
Asia, as when two floods meet and form a kind of whirlpool.
The thing that
chiefly interests us is the whole soul formation and point of view of these
peoples, or at least the main part of those who journeyed from ancient Atlantis
to the East.
The whole
attitude of soul of these people of the first post-Atlantean age was quite
different from that of the men of today. They possessed a more clairvoyant
perception of their environment than was later the case. To a certain extent
they could perceive the spirit. What today is perceived by physical sight was
then seen in a more spiritual manner. Yet it is important to note that their
clairvoyance differed again in certain respects from that of the more ancient
Atlanteans when this development was at its height. During the bloom of their
development the Atlanteans had been able to see into the spiritual world in a
very pure way, and to receive spiritual revelations as an impulse for good. The
greater their capacity for perception, the greater the impulse for good they
received through it; the less they were able to perceive, the less the impulse
for good they received. The changes that took place on the Earth during the last
third of the Atlantean period, and at the opening of the post-Atlantean age,
were associated with a weakening of this clairvoyant faculty. The perception of
what was good gradually diminished, until it was only retained in a high degree
by those who underwent a special training in the schools of initiation. For the
majority, clairvoyant perception became at last too weak to perceive the good,
and saw instead what was bad — the tempting and misleading forces of existence.
There was indeed, in certain regions peopled by these post-Atlantean races, a
form of clairvoyance that was by no means good; it was clairvoyance that was
really itself a form of temptation.
With the decline
of clairvoyant power was associated the gradual development or blossoming of
sense perception as is normal for the men of today. The things that were seen
by the men of early post-Atlantean times with ordinary eyes and are also seen by
the men of today were not then in the least misleading, because the
soul forces now open to temptation did not as yet exist. The vision of external
objects which gives men so much enjoyment today, even if it is misleading, was
not felt by the post-Atlantean to be a temptation. On the other hand, he was led
into temptation by the inherited tendencies of the old clairvoyance. The good
side of the spiritual world he hardly saw any more, but the deceptive and
misleading forces of Lucifer and Ahriman worked on him with great power. Thus he
beheld the forces and powers which tempted and deceived — the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic forces — by the power of the old inherited forces of clairvoyance. The
outcome of this was that the leaders and guides of human evolution, who received
from the Mysteries the wisdom by which they were able to guide men, undertook,
in spite of this fact, to lead them ever more and more toward understanding and
goodness.
Now, the people
who had spread eastward after the great Atlantean catastrophe were at very
different stages of evolution; the farther east we go, the more moral and more
highly spiritual was their evolution. External perception worked on them
educatively with ever greater clearness: it was like the opening of a new world,
revealing as it did the vastness and splendor of the external world of the
senses. This increased the farther east they traveled, and was more especially
noticeable in those who dwelt north of the India of today toward the Caspian
Sea, as far as the Oxus and Jaxartes. Here in this central region of Asia a
people settled who provided the material for many nationalities, which then
spread in all directions, as well as of that people often mentioned by us in
regard to their spiritual worldview: the ancient Indian race.
In this
settlement in central Asia even soon after the Atlantean catastrophe, and indeed
partly during the catastrophe itself, the sense for external actuality became
very strongly developed. At the same time, however, among those who incarnated
in this part of the world there was still a living recollection of what they had
experienced in Atlantis. This recollection was strongest among those who then
journeyed down to India. On the one hand they had a great and real
understanding for the splendor of the external world, while on the other hand
they were a people in whom the remembrance of the old spiritual powers of
perception of Atlantean times was most strongly developed. Therefore there arose
in them an intense desire for the spiritual world which they remembered, and it
was comparatively easy for them to gaze again into this world. Compared to the
reality of the spiritual world, they felt that what the external world presented
was illusion, maya. Therefore, there was an inclination among these people to
undervalue the sense world and to do everything possible that by training — that
is, by yoga — their souls might again be raised to what in the age of Atlantis
they had received directly from the spiritual world.
To undervalue
the external world and treat it as illusion, and so to develop the impulse to
penetrate to what was spiritual, was less marked among the peoples who remained
in the north of India. The position of this community was tragic. The endowments
of the Indian peoples consisted in the fact that they could go through a yoga
training with comparative ease, and by this means could again enter into the
realms in which they had dwelt during the Atlantean Age. It was easy for them to
overcome what they regarded as illusion. They overcame it through knowledge. The
height of knowledge for them consisted in the conviction: ‘This world of the
senses is illusion, is maya; but when I take trouble to develop my soul, I can
attain to a world that is behind the world of the senses.' Thus the Indian
overcame, through an inner process, what he regarded as illusion, and this
conquest was the object of his desire.
It was different
with regard to the northern peoples named by history, in a narrow sense, Aryans.
These were the Persians, Medes, Bactrians, and others. In them the power of
external sight was strongly developed, also the power of the intellect; but the
inward urge to develop themselves through yoga and thus attain what the
Atlantean had lost, was not specially strong in them. The living memory of the
past was not so keen in these northern peoples that they should set themselves
to overcome the illusion of the world through knowledge. These northern people
had not the same soul nature as the Indian. The Iranians, Persians, or Medes
felt what we can express in modern language as follows: If once we dwelt as men
in a spiritual world, perceiving spiritual realities, and now find ourselves in
a physical world which we see with our eyes and understand by means of the
intellect bound to our brain, the cause of this is not to be sought in man
alone; what has to be overcome cannot be overcome only in man's inner nature.
The Iranian felt: It is not only in man that a change has taken place;
everything in Nature, everything on Earth, was also changed at the descent of
man. It was therefore not enough for man simply to say: All this is maya, is
illusion — let us raise ourselves to the spiritual world! We shall then certainly
have changed ourselves, but not all that has become changed in the world around
us.’ So the Iranian did not say: ‘Around me is maya on every side — I will rise
above this maya, will overcome it in myself, and so attain to spiritual worlds.’
No, he said: ‘Man belongs to the world around him; he is but a part of it.
Therefore if that which is divine in him, and which descended with him from
spiritual heights, is to be changed, then not only man must be changed back
again, but everything that surrounds him must also be changed back to what it
was.’ This feeling gave this people a special impulse to enter energetically
into the task of transforming and changing the world. While the Indian said:
‘The world has changed, deteriorated; what we now behold is maya,’ the people of
the north said: ‘Certainly the world has come down, but we must so change it
that it is made into something spiritual once more!’
Contemplation
and wisdom were the fundamental characteristics of the Indian people; they had
no further interest in the world, which they regarded as maya, or illusion.
Activity, energy, and the desire to transform and work upon external nature was
what characterized the Iranians and the other northern peoples. They said: ‘What
we see around us has come down from divinity, and the mission of humanity is to
lead it back to this divinity once more.’
This tendency,
which was already perceptible in the Iranian people, was raised to its highest
form and inspired with the greatest energy through the spiritual leaders who
proceeded from the Mysteries.
What took place
east and south of the Caspian Sea can only be fully understood, even externally,
when it is compared with what took place to the north, that is, in the regions
we today call Siberia and Russia, and the regions extending even into Europe.
Here a people dwelt who had preserved to a great extent their ancient
clairvoyance, men who, in a certain sense, held the balance between the old and
the new, between the old spiritual perception and the new sense perception
associated with rational thought. Many of them were still capable of looking
directly into the spiritual world; but for the majority, indeed for the greater
part of humanity, spiritual perception had deteriorated to a lower astral
clairvoyance. This had a certain consequence for human evolution. (The men who
had this kind of clairvoyance were of a quite distinct type; through it they
acquired a distinctive character. Their environment urged them to demand the
necessities of life from Nature with the minimum of exertion. They did not doubt
the existence of spiritual beings in what they beheld, for they perceived them
as man today perceives plants and animals; and in the existence in which these
divine beings had placed them they demanded provision for themselves without
much personal effort. Much could be said regarding the outward expression of the
mental attitude in the peoples endowed with this astral clairvoyance. At this
time, which it is now important for us to consider, most of those who were
endowed with a clairvoyance that had fallen into decadence were nomadic
peoples, people without a settled dwelling place, wandering shepherds careless
of earthly possessions, and ready to destroy anything if its destruction might
serve their needs. Such people were not suited to raise the level of culture, to
conserve the gifts of Nature, or cultivate the Earth.
Hence arose the
greatest opposition that has existed in post-Atlantean civilization, the great
opposition between these more northern people and the Iranians. A longing arose
in the Iranians to take hold of their environment and to live a settled life; to
satisfy their human needs by work, and transform Nature by their human spiritual
forces. Immediately to the north of them wandered the people who were on what
one might call familiar terms with the spiritual beings, who disliked labor,
and were not interested in advancing the culture of the physical world. This is
perhaps the greatest difference that external history has to show in early
post-Atlantean times, and is purely the result of a difference in
soul development. The contrast is recognized in history, the great contrast
between Iranian and Turanian; but the cause is not known. Here we now have the
causes.
The Turanians in
the north toward Siberia, who had inherited a lower astral clairvoyance, had no
desire to establish external civilization, and their passive disposition,
influenced by many priests who practiced magic, led them frequently to occupy
themselves with lower magic, and even black magic. To the south, the Iranians,
with an inclination to influence the sense world by their human spiritual force,
were working in a primitive way at the beginnings of civilization.
This is the
great contrast between Iranians and Turanians. These facts are expressed in a
beautiful myth: the legend of Djemjid. Djemjid was a king who led his people
from the north toward Iran, and who received from the God whom he called Ahura
Mazdao a golden dagger, by means of which he was to fulfill his mission on
Earth.
In this golden
dagger of King Djemjid, who tried to educate his people beyond the mass of the
backward Turanians, we have to recognize the gift of an impulse toward a
knowledge connected with man's external force, a knowledge that sought to
redeem his decadent powers and permeate them with spiritual forces that can be
acquired by him on the physical plane. This golden dagger has, like a plough,
turned the earth over, has transformed it into arable land, has brought about
the earliest and most primitive inventions, and has been the impulse for all the
attainments of civilization of which man is so proud. The golden dagger received
by King Djemjid from Ahura Mazdao was something of very great importance. It
represents a force given to man by which he can manipulate and transform
external nature.
The giver of the
golden dagger was the same being who inspired Zarathustra, or Zoroaster, or
Zerdutsch, the great leader of the Iranians. It was he who in primeval times,
soon after the Atlantean catastrophe, poured out upon this people the treasures
he drew from the Holy Mysteries, that they might be induced to use the forces of
the human spirit upon external culture, thus giving to those who had lost the
Atlantean clairvoyant vision a new outlook and a new hope of the spiritual
world. He opened out a new path to these people. He pointed toward the sunlight
as the external body of a high spiritual being, and to distinguish it from the
small human aura, he called it the 'Great Aura': Ahura Mazdao. In his teaching he
indicated that this as-yet-remote being would one day descend to Earth in order
to unite with its substance, and that this would be a historical event
affecting the whole future of mankind. Thus in speaking of Ahura Mazdao,
Zarathustra referred to the being known later in history as the Christ. Such was
the mighty mission of Zarathustra.
To the new
post-Atlantean humanity, who had lost touch with divinity, he revealed the way
of return to what was spiritual. He gave them the hope, through power poured
down to them on the physical plane, of yet attaining to spirituality. The
ancient Indian could attain to spirituality in a certain way through
yoga training, but a new way was to be opened for men by Zarathustra.
Now, Zarathustra
had an important patron or protector — but I must emphasize that in speaking
here of Zarathustra I do not refer to the man of that name who lived in the time
of Darius, but to an individuality who was placed, even by the Greeks, about
5000 years before the Trojan War. This Zarathustra of those far-off times had a
protector who may be described by the name that became customary later: that of
Guschtasb.
In Zarathustra
we have, therefore, a mighty priestly nature, one who pointed the way to the
great Sun Spirit, Ahura Mazdao, the being who is to guide humanity back from the
externally physical to the spiritual plane. And in Guschtasb we have a kingly
nature, one capable of doing all that was necessary in the external world to
spread abroad the mighty inspirations of Zarathustra.
It was therefore
inevitable that these inspirations and intentions should bring the Iranians into
conflict with the people dwelling to the north — the Turanians. And actually
through this conflict arose one of the greatest wars that have ever been fought,
of which external history records rery little, since it falls in primeval ages.
It lasted not for tens but for hundreds of years, and from it arose a certain
attitude that persisted for a long time in central Asia: an attitude which must
be expressed somewhat as follows.
The Iranians —
the people who followed Zarathustra — would have expressed this attitude in the
following way: ‘All around us, wherever we look, we see a world that has most
surely come down from what is divinely spiritual, but all we now see has
declined from its former high estate. We must acknowledge that the animal,
plant, and mineral worlds were formerly more noble than they are now, that they
have fallen into decadence. Man, however, has the hope of leading these back
again to what they were.’ Let as try and translate this feeling that dwelt in
the typical Iranian into our language. Speaking as a teacher to his pupils he
might say: ‘Look at everything around you — formerly this was of a spiritual
nature; it has now fallen into decadence. Take, for instance, the wolf. The
animal that is in the wolf you see, as a creature of the sense world, has
declined from what it once was. Formerly it did not show bad qualities; but you,
when you have developed good qualities and have acquired spiritual power, will
be able to tame this animal; you will be able to implant your own qualities in
it, and tame it, making of the wolf a dog to serve you.’ In the wolf and in the
dog there are two natures which correspond to two great tendencies in the world.
Here are two opposing forces. On the one side are those who employ their
spiritual forces to work upon the world, who were able to tame animals and raise
them to a higher stage; on the other, those who instead of using their powers
for this purpose leave the animals to sink lower and lower. The one can be seen
in the following mood: ‘If I leave Nature as she is, then she will sink lower
and ever lower; and everything will be wild and savage. But I can raise my
spiritual eyes to a good power, whom I acknowledge, and this good power then
helps me, and I can then lead up again what is deteriorating. This power to whom
I can look up can give me hope for further development'. The Iranian identified
this power with Ahura Mazdao, and he said to himself: ‘Everything a man can do
to ennoble the forces of Nature, to elevate them, can be done, if he will attach
himself to Ahura Mazdao, to the power of Ormuzd. Ormuzd is an ascending stream.
But if a man leaves Nature as she is, then everything becomes a wilderness and
reverts to savagery. This comes from Ahriman.’ Add now the following mood
developed in the Iranian regions: ‘To the north of us many people are going
about; they are in the service of Ahriman. They are Ahriman's people, who only
roam about gathering what Nature offers them; they will not raise a hand toward
the spiritualization of Nature. But we wish to unite ourselves with Ormuzd,
Ahura Mazdao.’
So a duality was
felt at that time to be rising in the world. Thus it was that the Iranians, the
Zarathustra men, felt, and they expressed these feelings in laws or rules. They
wished to arrange their life so that eternal law gave, in its expression, the
impulse upward. That was the external result of Zarathustrianism. Here we see
the contrast between Iran and Turan.
The profound
difference between the Turanians and Iranians explains the war between
Ardschasb, king of Turania, and Guschtasb, king of Irania, the protector of
Zarathustra, of which occult history gives so many and such precise
accounts.
The most
important fact to be grasped in this connection is the wonderful and widespread
influence of Zarathustra on the soul-life of mankind.
I had in the
first place to describe the nature, the whole milieu, within which Zarathustra
was placed; for you are aware that the individual who incarnated in the blood
which passed from Abraham through three times fourteen generations, and who
appears in the Gospel of Matthew as Jesus of Nazareth, was the Zarathustra
individuality. He is met with here for the first time in post-Atlantean times,
and we are faced with the question: ‘Why was the blood which flowed through the
generations from Abraham in Asia Minor best suited for the subsequent return of
Zarathustra in bodily form?’ For one of the subsequent incarnations of
Zarathustra is that of Jesus of Nazareth. Before this question is asked it was
necessary to ask and answer another regarding his special essence, the essence
which found expression in this blood. In Zarathustra this special essence which
incarnated in the blood of the Hebrew people is to be found.
In the next
lecture we will explain why it must be precisely from this blood, from this
race, that Zarathustra drew his bodily nature.
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