The Nativity, Page 8

How the Solomon Jesus and Nathan Jesus Became One:

The “Nathan” family was from Nazareth all along, and we have seen how the “Solomon” family, originally from Bethlehem, went to Egypt and then returned to reside in Nazareth, all clearly in accordance with the scriptural account (hitherto deemed one of the many Nativity “inconsistencies”). Steiner says (GSL, Lect. 5), “The parents were in friendly relationship and the children grew up as near neighbors until they were about twelve years old.”¹⁷ Although no precise difference in age of the two boys is established, in GSL, Lect. 5, immediately after stating that the two births “were separated by a period of a few months,” Steiner says, “Has the thought never struck you that those who read about the Bethlehem massacre must ask themselves: How could there have been a John?”¹⁸ Had there not been two Jesus children, with both John and the Nathan child born after the slaughter, John could not have survived unless something took him out of “the region,” a very significant fact which presumably would not have been omitted from the account. And is not the very existence of this (ignored) circumstance evidence of both 1. the truth of the birth of two Jesus children rather than only one, and 2. the intention of one or both of the Evangelists to confirm such fact by so distinguishing their births? In reflecting upon this, it should be remembered that twentieth-century discoveries have revealed the expectation, at least among the esoteric Essenes to whom Matthew’s Gospel was directed, of two messiahs, one kingly and one priestly, as elsewhere herein shown; further, Luke clearly knows of the First and Second Adam, traces his child back to Adam rather than merely to Abraham, and stresses the parental astonishment at the twelve-year-old in the temple, the only event recorded by either Gospel between Nativity and Baptism. Luke’s knowledge is further clearly shown in Lk 3,23 when he says of the thirty-year-old Jesus that he was “the son (as was supposed) of Joseph.”

In any event, when the Nathan Jesus was twelve years old, we are given the unique account of the twelve-year-old Jesus (Lk 2,41-51). The parents returned a day’s journey without Jesus “supposing him to be in the company.” Only “after three days” (see “Three Days”) did they find him sitting in the temple confounding the savants and “amazing” all who heard him, but most especially “astonishing” his parents. No parent would be so surprised with a child they had lived with, nurtured, and presumably taught, for twelve years unless there had come over the child a dramatic change. However earthly historical the account, it is the spiritual drama of the change that causes this to be the only event given in the entire Bible of the thirty-year interval between Birth and Baptism of the person the entire Bible is focused upon. What happened to give it such significance?

Steiner goes to the “Akashic” Chronicle to give us the facts, which he says “are by no means simple.” From GSL, the last part of Lect. 5:

What had happened on this occasion may also happen in a different way elsewhere in the world. At a certain stage of development some individuality may need conditions differing from those that were present at the beginning of his life. Hence it repeatedly happens that someone lives to a certain age and then suddenly falls into a state of deathlike unconsciousness. A transformation takes place: his own Ego leaves him and another Ego passes into his bodily constitution. Such a change occurs in other cases too; it is a phenomenon known to every occultist. In the case of the twelve-year-old Jesus, the following happened. The Zarathustra-Ego which had lived hitherto in the body of the [Solomon] Jesus ... in order to reach the highest level of his epoch, left that body and passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus who then appeared as one transformed. His parents did not recognize him; nor did they understand his words, for now the Zarathustra-Ego was speaking out of the Nathan Jesus. This was the time when the Nirmanakaya of Buddha united with the cast-off astral sheath and when the Zarathustra-Ego passed into him. . . .¹⁹

The transferring of the Zarathustra Ego from the Solomon child into the Nathan child is a key event. Steiner elaborates on it in JTC, Lect. 8:

When the innermost part of human nature, together with the most intensive powers of sympathy and love, had become manifest through the unsullied human substance which had been preserved until the birth of the Nathan Jesus, and when the astral body had permeated itself with the forces of Gautama Buddha, there was present in this child what we may call the most intimate inwardness of man. And then into this bodily nature there entered the individuality who above all others had seen most clearly and deeply into the spirituality of the Macrocosm. By this means the bodily instrument, the entire organism, of the Nathan Jesus was so transformed that it could be the vehicle capable of receiving into itself the Christ-extract of the Macrocosm. If this bodily nature had not been permeated by the Zarathustra-Individuality up to the thirtieth year, the eyes would not have been able to endure the substance of the Christ from the thirtieth year up to the Mystery of Golgotha; the hands would not have been capable of being permeated with the substance of the Christ in the thirtieth year. To be able to receive the Christ, this bodily nature had to be prepared, expanded, through the individuality of Zarathustra.²⁰