The Nativity, Page 12

Epilogue:

Only a few items remain to be touched upon.

First, to revisit Matthew’s Solomon Jesus account, such remarkable parallels exist between it and the wanderings of the Hebrew people that it compels me to conclude that it was intentional, especially considering Matthew’s “fulfillment” outlook. Steiner points to these parallels in GOSP. Abraham was chosen “to be the first human being to survey the outer physical world and to discover the unity in it.” He was “the father of arithmetic, . . . his physical brain having at some time undergone a sort of chiselling.” A nation (a “chosen people”) had to be founded, based upon heredity, that was able to make the transition from ancient clairvoyance to thinking with the human brain, “to a logical grasp of the phenomena of the outer world.” This was beautifully expressed in the words, “‘Thy descendants shall be arranged according to the same order as the stars,’ which has been carelessly translated in the Bible: ‘Thy children shall be as the sand of the sea’” (cf. Gen 15,5 with Gen 22,17 and 26,4, Deut 1,10, etc.).²⁷ To this end, reliance upon the ancient clairvoyance was ruthlessly stamped out.²⁸ This is vividly shown at the outset, first by the sacrifice of the Ram²⁹ (Isaac), a symbol of clairvoyance, and then by the expulsion from the “twelve” of Joseph, who went to (the ancient clairvoyance of) Egypt. Abraham journeyed from Chaldea to Canaan, then to Egypt because of famine (lack of clairvoyance—he went to get assistance from the outside for the lack within him) and back to Canaan. A similar journey occurred in connection with “famine” during the Joseph era. Then Moses had to attain to the gifts of ancient Egypt to provide a missing element to his people. What led Jacob to return to Egypt was Joseph’s dream. What led the Bethlehem Jesus boy to Egypt was a dream of another Joseph. Matthew has the Magi also coming from Chaldea, then the dream of Joseph and the flight into Egypt, and back to Nazareth, thus retracing the pattern followed twice before; first when Abraham divided from Chaldea, then when Israel divided from Egypt, and now when the Christ stream divides from its earthly mold in the “chosen people” (see “Fission”; see also “Egypt” herein).

Second, probably no part of the Nativity accounts has so offended the modern thinking person as that of the Virgin Birth, the Immaculate Conception and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. It is probably fair to say that it has driven humanity into at least three camps, those who reject it as preposterous, those who hold to the “literal truth” of the scripture as a matter of “faith” (implying a dichotomy between thinking and believing), and those torn by both sentiments who occupy some noncommittal middle ground. For the first time since humanity has been able to read the Bible for itself rather than relying upon the exposition of hierarchical clergy, Steiner’s account of the Nativity reconciles all of these positions. Given an anthroposophical grasp of spiritual reality, it was literally a Virgin Birth and an Immaculate Conception, not because there was no physical union between the Josephs and the Marys but because of how the union came about and how the being of the primeval unspoiled soul of the Nathan Mary remained unspoiled throughout, her etheric body governing the nature of her physical body so as to either retain or restore her virginity. It was further “immaculate” in that she was not, because of her state of consciousness, subject to the same experience from union as in the case of other “fallen” human beings. The Solomon Mary is shown to have become a virgin when the Christ entered Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism, for then the soul of the Nathan Mary indwelt that of the Solomon Mary, transforming her bodies. While Steiner apparently never said so, there is also a mysterious implication in Mt 1,25, in that Joseph “knew her not until she had borne a son.” Such “knowing” bears a firm resemblance to the infection of the astral body in Gen 3,7 (“they knew that they were naked”; see I-23). In this sense, even the Solomon Mary may have remained virginal until after Jesus’ birth when she conceived other children. This Mary, however, did not carry the primeval soul of the Nathan Mary at that time, so it seems possible that Matthew was telescoping into his abbreviated metaphor the result of what happened at the Baptism. In any event, anthroposophy now makes it possible to comprehend the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.

But there is another appealing possibility that would explain both the “virginity” of the Solomon Mary as well as Joseph’s perplexity with her condition as Mt 1,18-25 sets them out. For this I am indebted to my friend Robert Powell’s exposition on the Solomon Mary in CLC. As indicated in ^{fn 17} (and the Nativity Appendix below), his CLC takes into account the visions of the illiterate nun Anne Catherine Emmerich. He shows their remarkable accuracy on items that are verifiable but far beyond the knowledge of all but the most scholarly students of Jewish calendrical events. At the same time he recognizes the inferiority of her visions to Steiner’s Intuition (high knowledge of the spiritual world), including her failure to observe that two Jesus children were born. Because of this failure, she dismissed one of her visions indicating that “the annunciation to the Solomon Mary [took place] in the Temple, and not knowing of the two Marys, rejected this vision because of the annunciation to the Nathan Mary in Nazareth that took place later” (CLC, p. 131).

Emmerich’s visions had included the fact that Mary had from a very young age been a “temple virgin,” and still was at the time of her conception while still a “young woman” (a proper rendition of the Hebrew in Is 7,14, as RSV indicates). According to Emmerich, both the finding of a worthy prospective husband for, and then his betrothal to, this special temple virgin had been under the auspices of the temple’s high priesthood. The very name “Joseph” indicates the clairvoyance of initiation, as with the patriarchal Joseph who was initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries. Here Powell infers from Emmerich’s account the unique temple relationship of both Joseph and Mary, the appearance of the angel, and Joseph’s later puzzlement, that in fact the betrothed couple had gone through the “temple sleep” under the guidance of its priesthood and conception had occurred during that time (see CLC, pp. 132-133; see also “Mysteries” and “Three Days’ Journey” herein). There is something powerfully compelling about this in light of Mt 1,24-25, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son.” It is said that Joseph had been told by an angel in a “dream” of Jesus’ divine conception (Mt 1,20), but the dream could have been a part of the initiation process. Steiner shows us that dreams in that day belonged (or could still belong) to the waking (i.e., fully conscious during “sleep”) state while today they belong in the unreliable realm of sleep; see The Teachings of Christ, The Resurrected/Reflections on the Mystery of Golgotha (TCR), p. 3. Sensations pertaining to the body, such as are involved in the act of impregnation, would presumably not, however, intrude upon consciousness during the deathlike “temple sleep,” save perhaps in terms of spiritual ecstasy, as in The Song of Solomon (Song).