The Solomon Jesus Child of Matthew's Gospel

With this, let us look first at the birth in Matthew’s Gospel. Steiner calls the child there “Solomon Jesus,” because its ancestry is through David’s son Solomon.

The lineage of the Matthew child is traced through forty-two generations from Abraham to Jesus. These are carefully divided into three groups of fourteen generations each. The deep wisdom involved in this arrangement came from a prehistoric Zarathustra of ancient Persia, about 5,000 B.C., who had seen the descending Christ in the Sun’s aura. This wisdom was preserved in the ancient mystery schools. Finally it came through the esoteric instruction of the Essenes’ “True Teacher,” Jeschu ben Pandira, about 100 BC, who taught how it was necessary to perfect what had been given to Abraham in its first rudiments so that a threefold human body would be able to receive the highly advanced human Ego of Zarathustra, who would later sacrifice himself to the entry of the great Sun Spirit, the Christ. To receive Zarathustra, it was necessary that there be three successive cycles of fourteen generations to perfect through heredity first the physical, then the etheric and finally the astral body.

Steiner tells us that heredity works in such a way that the qualities transmitted do not pass from one human being to his nearest descendant in the immediately following generation; the salient qualities and attributes cannot be transmitted directly from father to son, from mother to daughter, but only from father to grandson—thus to the second generation, then the fourth, and so on. Thus, fourteen generations were necessary to have seven hereditary steps for the perfection of each of the three bodies. The physical body was perfected in the first fourteen generations, the etheric in the second, and the astral in the third.

The Individuality (Ego or soul) of the great Zarathustra was intimately involved in the preparation of the Solomon Jesus child. In prehistoric Persia, Zarathustra had given a precious gift to humanity. This most precious gift was knowledge of the outer world, of the mysteries of the Cosmos received into the human astral body in thinking, feeling and willing. Zarathustra had imparted this mighty truth to his pupils, particularly to the two among them who can be said to have been his most intimate disciples and were incarnated later on as Hermes (founder of the Egyptian culture) and Moses. (Much more is said about this in The Burning Bush.) The Zarathustra Individuality continued to develop through successive incarnations, and it could be said that he was the one who above all others had seen most clearly and deeply into the spirituality of the Macrocosm. And with the birth of the Matthew Jesus child, it was time for Zarathustra’s great gift to be given again to humanity, in a rejuvenated form. To this end, the Zarathustra Individuality reincarnated, for a time, in the prepared physical body of the Solomon Jesus child of the kingly line, such line being significant because it has to do with knowledge of the outer world.

The name Zarathustra, later also known as Zoroaster (or Nazarathos), means the great lustrous or shining star. Not only is the etheric body, reflecting the human head and four limbs, shaped like a star, but in Zarathustra’s case, he was the one who had seen the Ahura Mazdao (the Great Aura), or Christ, sojourning in the Sun, had predicted his future Incarnation on Earth, and was thus himself, as the ultimate vehicle of the Christ, also known by a similar name. The knowledge of all of this existed in those initiated from the time of Zarathustra, and these were known as Magi, or kings by virtue of the magical nature of their abilities in regard to ruling humanity (recalling that the authorities in all fields were the initiated priests in ancient times). These initiates were able to see in the etheric world the descent of their master, Zarathustra, into incarnation in Bethlehem, and this is the “star” that brought them there.

And so we see the immense significance of Matthew’s genealogy as an essential part of the Nativity account. But one further point seems critical if we are to appreciate certain things about Matthew’s Gospel. Regarding this Gospel, Steiner speaks again of Jeschu Ben Pandira as the great Teacher of the Essenes. This teacher had five pupils each of whom took over a special branch of his general teaching. The names of these five pupils were: Mathai, Nakai, Netzer, Boni and Thona. Jeschu himself suffered martyrdom on account of alleged blasphemy and heresy, a hundred years BC, but these five propagated his teachings in five different sections. The teaching reflected in Matthew’s genealogy was propagated especially by Mathai, and it is from his name that the title of this Gospel derives.

On the other hand, the special concern of the pupil Netzer was the founding of a little colony which led a secluded existence and which then in the Bible received the name “Nazareth.” There in Nazareth—Netzereth—an Essene colony was established for those whose lives were dedicated to the ancient Nazirite order who lived here in fairly strict seclusion. Hence after the flight to Egypt and the return, nothing was more natural than that the Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel should be brought into the atmosphere of Netzerism. It was for this reason that Matthew spoke of the prophecy being fulfilled to the effect that “He shall be called a Nazarene.” No such prophecy exists in the Old Testament. The Evangelist must surely then have considered Jeschu Ben Pandira to have been a prophet, and have aimed his Gospel at the Essenes themselves. The Essenic connections of Matthew’s Gospel have been seen also by non-anthroposophical writers in recent times.

This then is the background for understanding the significance of the three appearances of the angel to Joseph to announce, first, the marvelous spiritual happenings that he was to implement by fathering Zarathustra’s incarnation in the Solomon Jesus child, whose conception was thus also by virtue of the Holy Virgin (Sophia, Divine Wisdom) in the spiritual world; second, the flight into Egypt; and third, the return to Nazareth. We will return later to the matter of the virginity of the two Marys and the puzzlement of the Solomon Joseph.