The Nativity of Jesus. 

The nativity of Jesus is described in only two of the four Gospels, namely Luke and Matthew.  But they tell quite different stories about two different families, with different genealogies of Joseph.  These differences are mainly overlooked because of one powerful, but confusing, similarity – the names in each case are the same: Father Joseph, Mother Mary, Baby Jesus.

Over a seven year period Rudolf Steiner gave  many (120) lectures in many cities around Europe to help people understand the inner meaning and substance of the Gospel stories.

 The Matthew Gospel (1:1-16) tells us that the father Joseph is descended from Abraham via King David and his son Solomon through 42 generations to Joseph, son of Jacob, whereas Joseph in the Luke Gospel (3:23-38) traces his lineage back via his father Heli, through 42 generations to Solomon’s brother, Nathan, son of King David, back to Abraham and right back to Adam, son of God.

In the Luke Gospel, Joseph is an old, poor carpenter, citizen of Nazareth in Gallilee, betrothed to a young Mary who is told in a dream by the Angel Gabriel that she will give birth to the ‘Son of God’. One winter, they have to travel to Bethlehem in Judea, the city of King David’s birth for a Roman census (because Joseph was a descendent of David). 

The journey to Bethlehem is about 150 km (equivalent distance from Napier to Woodville) – so it is several days walk, even with a donkey.  They are required to pay tax to Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor.   It is midwinter and Joseph can only find shelter in a stable where his young wife gives birth to a child that she has to lay in a manger of hay next to ox and ass. Rudolf Steiner explains that the ego of this child came from the archangelic realm and had not had a previous human incarnation (so, in this sense, this is a ‘virgin’ or first birth).  Joseph is the earthly father, hence his genealogy is given. The Luke family is visited in the stable by three 'hearty' local shepherds who witness the ‘nirmanakaya of Buddha’ in their dreams hovering over the new-born child [GA114-L5] informing them of the saviour’s birth.  This visit is traditionally celebrated on 25 December, 3 days after the Winter solstice.

After paying tax the family return to Nazareth.

In the Matthew Gospel, Joseph, a carpenter, and Mary, his wife, are citizens of Bethlehem in Judea – that is they have a house there.

When their first child, a boy, whom they name Jesus, is born they are visited by 'wise men' or Magi.  Later documents reveal that the three Magi are representatives of humanity, one named Melchior - from Europe, Caspar - from Asia and Balthazar - from Africa.  Rudolf Steiner reveals that they are astrologers able to read in the stars (astral world) about the impending birth of the reincarnating Zarathustra, (the founder, several millennia before, of the Ancient Persian civilisation), whom they had served in a previous incarnation.  Zarathustra had recognised the approaching Spirit of the Sun , whom he called Ahura Mazdao, who would become the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth when he was baptised by John the Baptist in the Jordan when Jesus was 30 years old.

The visit of the 3 Magi is celebrated on Epiphany, 6 January,** 12 days after the Luke nativity.

The three Magi bring kingly gifts of gold (symbol of thinking), frankincense (symbol of the piety which pervades man as feeling) and myrrh (symbol of the power of will) to the young boy.  On their journey, they visit King Herod (the Great) in Jerusalem (which is very close [5 km] to Bethlehem).  Herod, (nearing the end of his life, suffering kidney illness, so concerned with conspiracy against him that he had had his wife and 3 adult sons executed) was most alarmed to now hear of a recently born “King of the Jews”, so he asks them to inform him where this child lives once they have found him so he too can pay "homage".  However, the Magi are warned in a dream by an angel not to go back to Herod; and Joseph is also warned in a dream to escape with his family to Egypt to avoid tragedy.  The tragedy was the order by Herod to have all boys under the age of 2 in Bethlehem to be slaughtered. One legend, not in the Bible, was that one of Herod’s own children was killed in this massacre!  The Matthew family flee south to Egypt, but after a while they return, not to Bethlehem, but to Nazareth where they have further children.  They get to know the family of the Luke Gospel.  In due course the families merge when the Matthew Joseph and the Luke Mary die. 

When the boys are about 12, the Matthew Jesus dies and passes over his worldly capacities and wisdom to the Luke Jesus who up until then had been a simple,very loving child showing great depths of feeling.  We are told (Luke 2:41-52) that the parents are surprised when they find Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem, after Passover, conversing in a learned way with the priests and elders. 

Nothing more is said about Jesus’s life until his baptism by John in the Jordan when he is about 30 years old.  Three years later Jesus Christ is crucified on Golgotha.  His Spirit does not return to the Sun but unites itself with the Earth ‘for all time’.

Rudolf Steiner tells us, in his lectures, that all this happened to provide a special bodily organisation, into which the Christ could descend, on Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan by John. 

Two streams of humanity unite into one: "one most significant fusion of the spiritual streams in humanity."   "... so you should not be surprised to find such complicated facts connected with a happening as momentous as the fusion of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism." [GA114-L5]

Zarathustra [Star of Splendour] directed his gaze to the outer world offering sublime teachings relating to the Cosmos, in order that mankind should be enlightened about the world out of which they are born.  Hence those who were his pupils "might rightly be called, not only great ‘Magi’, great ‘Initiates’, but also ‘Kings’, that is to say, men versed in the art of establishing social order in the external world."

Buddha's gaze was directed inwards giving deeply penetrating teachings concerning Compassion and LOVE and the ennoblement of man's inner nature through the Eightfold Path. 

A key Christiam teaching is: "Love one another.  Love {agape} God and your neighbour as yourself."  [that is: the Overcoming of Egotism or selfishness.]

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**Note: Dates at that time were complicated as there was not a single calendar. Regions had their own calendars.  Many, but not all, Roman dates were given as after the founding of Rome (c.747BCE).  Others were related to various significant events.

A calendar using the birth of Jesus as a basis was only formed 5 centuries later - a long time after these events for anyone to accurately coordinate events from the different calendars.  In any case, the Gospels themselves were written many years after the death of Christ [AD33].

The basis was that Year 1 AD [Anno Domini] was to start a week after the Luke Jesus birth.  There is no Year 0 AD!

However, we have the anomaly that the death of Herod is now said to be 4BCE, but the Matthew Gospel asserts he was still alive when Jesus was still alive.  Rudolf Steiner says (GA114 L5) that the Luke Jesus was born 'months' after the Matthew Jesus and after the massacre and Herod's own death.

RB

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(Last week ended with: By spiritual measures such as this, the continuity of awareness of the Christ-impulse was maintained until the closing centuries of the Age of Darkness.  These centuries were marked by the industrial revolution and by the advent of the punched card system and steam technology.  By then the Powers of Opposition had attained such supremacy in outer life that, in the eighteenth century, the Gods were obliged to hand over the remainder of the material Earth evolution to Ahriman.  Jehovah had been defeated.  Darwin proclaimed that men descended from apes, and scientific thinking was dominated by atomism, by the reduction of all the different forces to mere waves, and by the heady perspectives of the sub-physical realm of electromagnetism.  As for the church: religious life had become more and more superficial, theologians began to regard Christ as no more than human — the "simple man of Nazareth" — and finally to doubt that he was a real historical person at all.  Humanity was losing all connection with the Christ-impulse.)   

continued from last week

Human thinking is an active — often destructive — force in the spiritual world.  Through the agnosticism, the atheism and the crass materialism of the last century of Kali Yuga, Christ was crucified again in the etheric world.  Such was the inauspicious situation when the great Archangel Michael assumed his regency {1879}— a regency, moreover, that was severely compromised by the fact that the preceding Archangel, Gabriel, refused to step down, and the Archangel Oriphiél, who was ordained to follow Michael, began to exercise a premature influence on earthly life. 

Then came the end of Kali {dark} Yuga and the dawn of the Age of Light.  What a strange, dramatic image this entry into the Age of Light offers to the gaze of the spirit! How wonderful and terrible the vistas that lay open before humanity! The world of Nature, the old evolution issuing from the Father God, is dying.  Beside it, on the one hand, we see the light-filled, spiritual creation of a new cosmos by Christ, and a path leading into a future in which the human being can develop his spiritual potential to the full.  On the other hand we see Lucifer and Ahriman doing their utmost to draw humanity back into the past, into their abnormal Old Moon world of the Eighth Sphere, a development whereby man will lose his humanity and be made into a perfect machine. 

We have already traced the events of the first four decades of the Age of Light: the catastrophe of the Great War, the initial defeat of the Michaél Movement on Earth and the loss of natural etheric clairvoyance.  Tragic though these events were — they were a terrible setback for humanity — they must not blind us to the fact that human beings are still free to choose whether they will actively seek to be part of the new cosmos that has been developing since the Mystery of Golgotha two thousand years ago, or whether they will follow another path.  The Mystery of Golgotha had been renewed.  Christ is risen again from a second crucifixion and He is come among us.  He is very close at hand, ready to help and guide and comfort all those who turn to Him.  Before we speak concretely of the path leading to Him, let us picture to ourselves the experience of Christ newly risen in the etheric realm, as it was intended for humanity in the nineteen-thirties, and inform ourselves of the consequences it would have had. 

The etheric vision of Christ

This was by far the greatest experience that the new clairvoyance was to bring — the most sublime experience possible for modern humanity: the perception of the risen Christ in the etheric world.  It was to be the same tremendous experience as Saint Paul had had on the road to Damascus.  It would have utterly transformed the lives of those human beings who were able to have that vision.  Christianity would no longer be a religion for them: they would no longer have to believe, for they would know.  And as more and more human beings rose to this vision of Christ and spoke of it, a mighty impulse would have gone out from them into the world, just as an impulse went out from the first Christians after the first Mystery of Golgotha.  An impulse of that kind would have enabled humanity to overcome materialism.  Yet these human beings who would have perceived Christ as an etheric figure would only have been able to grasp what they were seeing if they had been prepared for it through spiritual science:

"Just as there were human beings in whom the "I"-consciousness had reached its highest point at the time when Jesus Christ was there, so will there be human beings in our time who can not only see with their physical eyes, but who will experience in a natural fashion what is reaching down out of the spirit in such a way that soul-spiritual faculties will emerge in their souls and they will enter the etheric realm.  And if they are able to understand this new world they are seeing, that will be their good fortune.  There is a truth, a truth that is important for our souls: the truth that Christ Jesus said, "I am with you always even unto the end of Earth evolution".  He is here.  Since that time he has been here in the environment of the Earth.  And when man's spiritual eyes are opened they will see Him, just as Paul saw Him in the event outside Damascus.  This is something that will happen in about 1933; He will be perceived as an etheric Being, as a Being who, indeed, does not descend as far as physical existence, but who can be seen in His etheric body, since a certain number of human beings will then ascend to the etheric.  But these human beings will remain ignorant if they have not been prepared by spiritual science for what they will see.  In this sense we are living in a period of transition, because we are developing towards a new kind of seeing. 

The responsibility for preparing human beings for that great moment rests upon spiritual science — to prepare them for the moment when Christ will appear, not in the flesh, for he appeared in the flesh once only, but as He is now And He will come again in the form in which those whose eyes are opened will see Him, in the world that is perceptible only to clairvoyant vision.  Human beings will ascend to Him.  This is what the return of Christ will be: human beings will reach up to the sphere in which Christ is to be found.  But they would be left standing there, not understanding what they were seeing, if they had not been prepared for this great moment by spiritual science." 
[GA130. "The Etherisation of the Blood"]

Spiritual vision is possible only if the human being possesses the necessary organs of perception.  The ascension to etheric vision requires, of course, that the organs in question, the lotus flowers, be developed and capable of operating, at least to a certain extent.  The preparation that was needed, and that was to be conferred by spiritual science upon the younger generation {born in the Age of Light}, was a training that would enable their latent, natural, clairvoyant faculties to unfold when the important moment came.  It was also a teaching about what they would perceive when their spiritual eyes were opened.  Without that preparation they would not understand what they were seeing.  

(Emberson, Paul [2014], “From Gondishapur to Silicon Valley” pp 935 to 938)