From Jesus of Nazareth to Jesus Christ

It is the child that emerged in Luke’s Gospel at twelve years of age when the two became one that is now properly called “Jesus of Nazareth” until the time of his baptism at thirty years of age. For then an event awesome beyond words took place. At this moment, as John submersed Jesus of Nazareth in the River Jordan, the Zarathustra Individuality sacrificed itself, departing to make way for the Christ Spirit to enter, as Isaiah had foretold, into a servant human being. Every Gospel portrays this as a dove descending from heaven upon Jesus, and the synoptic Gospels all say that on this day Jesus was declared from the heavens to be the Son of God. This is when the Incarnation was consummated, though it remained until the Crucifixion for that Spirit to penetrate all the way into the very bones of Jesus, having only “lit upon him” to begin with. It was then said that these bones were not to be broken.

So it is at his baptism that the one who became Jesus of Nazareth at twelve years of age becomes, in the above manner, Jesus Christ.

We may now understand why it is that Luke places his genealogy after the baptism, immediately after, while Matthew places it before the earthly birth. For not until the Christ Spirit actually entered at baptism was the Incarnation consummated, the Son of God was born on Earth, and that birth could only be understood by a genealogy that went all the way back to the event of Adam’s birth.

With that thought, let us contemplate a point seldom noticed. To establish Bethlehem as the birthplace of the messiah, Matthew quotes from the fifth chapter of Micah:

And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will govern my people Israel.

But he leaves off the last part of the prophecy which reads, “whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.” We have seen how the ancient soul of Zarathustra was in Matthew’s mind. While the Nathan Jesus child of Luke’s Gospel was, as we have seen, in certain respects even more ancient, it was the soul of Zarathustra that lived in Jesus of Nazareth and sacrificed itself for the Christ. Moreover, the Nathan child had only a provisional Ego, and while old in a spiritual sense, in earthly terms it was very young. And the Christ did not enter in Bethlehem but at the River Jordan. So both the prophet and the Evangelist must have had a human soul in mind, the ancient servant-being, Zarathustra.