Three Bodies, Page 10

Scriptures Readily Suggestive of “Three Bodies” (continued)

26. Gen 11-50: There are three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, representing the physical, etheric and astral natures. The original seed came from Abraham, the physical body. Isaac was offered as a sacrifice to God who gave him back to the people (Heb 11,19), thereby granting them life, the etheric body. Jacob is the very picture of the cunning astral body. In Gospel of St. Mark (GSMk), Lect. 6, p. 111, Steiner says, “In truth the sequence of the generations of the Old Testament peoples is analogous to the life of an individual human being.” A schematic of his presentation is given in I-68. Steiner equates the bodily aspect of the Hebrew people to these three patriarchs and the soul to the prophets.

27. Gen 21,25-26; 26,17-22: Four wells (or series of wells) were the subject of controversy between Abraham and/or Isaac and the Philistines. Isaac’s servants dug the last three of these, naming them, successively, as Esek (“contention”), Stinah (“enmity”) and Reheboth (“broad places” or “room”). A well is a place for securing a vital for physical life and is an esoteric metaphor for what is vital for spiritual life, namely, “living water,” best seen in Jn 4,1-42. The progression of wells, and the nuances of difference between their successive scenarios and names, suggests the progression from the physical body from Abraham up through the Ego in the final well dug by Isaac. The three bodies are thus inherent in the accounts.

28. Gen 27-32: (See Tomberg’s Anthroposophical Studies of the Old Testament [ASOT], Chap. 4, Part 3, pp. 57-64.) In Jacob’s threefold spiritual victory, he contended with:

(a) Esau for his birthright, as father of the twelve tribes;
(b) Laban for his wife, Rachel; and finally the
(c) Angel at Jabbok for his “Name,” Israel.

The relationship of birthright to the physical body, marriage to the Life or etheric body, and angel and “Name” to the astral body, metaphorically speaking, seems obvious. Notably, the angel never gave him its higher “Name,” the “I Am.”

29. Gen 30,36; Ex 3,18; 5,3; 8,27; Num 10,33; 33,8 and Jon 3,3: Three Biblical personalities are said to have experienced a “Three Days’ Journey,” namely, Jacob (Gen), Moses (Ex and Num) and Jonah (Jon), which may thus be tabulated:

30. Ex 1 and 2 K 17,1-6; 25,1-11: There were three “captivities” in the history of the Hebrew people, Egyptian (Ex 1), Assyrian (2 K 17,1-6) and Babylonian (2 K 25,1-11). These may be taken to equate to the three bodies progressively as follows:

The Ego, the “I Am,” i.e., the Christ, the true Israel, could not enter until Israel’s three bodies had first undergone these progressive stages of development.

31. Deut 16,16: “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God at the place which he will choose; at the feast of unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths” (emphasis added). This passage prescribes the three appointed feasts each year, as is also done in Lev 23. Anthroposophy permits us to see these clearly as symbols for the human being’s three bodies, as follows:

“Bread” is a Biblical symbol for the physical. Jesus uses it at the last supper to describe his physical body, and the fact that it is “unleavened” indicates that it is the earthly and not the heavenly state to be attained when the physical has been transformed into atma (see Mt 13,33). The Feast of Weeks (i.e., Pentecost, or “fifty”) is a period of “rest” (Lev 23,21) following seven cycles of seven (Lev 23,15-16; Deut 16,9). The etheric nature of this feast is shown by the “Fire” which settled upon the heads of the disciples in Acts 2,3. “Fire” is the point of contact between the spiritual and etheric worlds. Finally, the Feast of Booths elevates to the astral by the Biblical symbol of the Tabernacle (“booth” = “tabernacle”). Later, as the wanderings ceased, the temporary, itinerant shelter of the Lord (the “I Am”) came to be called the “temple,” but the meaning is here interchangeable. See “Temple.” We need not otherwise here belabor that its meaning is the highest component of the three human bodies, namely, the astral body. The Temple to be “measured” at the approach of the last “Trumpet” in Rev 11 is the astral body, the vehicle of the “I Am,” and it is the astral body that is to be worked upon most directly by the human being during Earth evolution. Even the etheric body will be laid aside at the time of the “Second Death,” i.e., at the expiration of the last of the seven Conditions of Form of Earth evolution (see I-1). So the Temple that must be perfected and “measured” (Rev 11,1) is the astral body. Thus, we see that the scheme of the human being’s development, like that of the temple, is a pattern reflected on Earth by these three Feasts (cf. Heb 8,5 and “As Above, So Below”).

32. 2 K 9,35: Regarding Jezebel we read, “But when they went to bury her, they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands.” It is submitted that these represent the following:

Skull = Physical body
Feet = Etheric body
Hands = Astral body

The solid bones of the head are demonstrably physical, and the skull is the sign of the death of the physical. As to the astral, see “Washing of Hands,” which refers to Background to the Gospel of St. Mark (BKM), Lect. 7, pp. 120-123, where Steiner, citing relevant scriptures, equates this act with coming into contact with the spirit, the astral being the most spiritual of the three bodies. Consider also Lk 24,39-40, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have” (my emphasis). See also Jn 13,2-8, and then especially Jn 13,9. And then, most significantly, consider Jn 20,12, commented upon by Steiner in The Gospel of St. John (GSJ), Lect. 12, p. 187, as follows:

We are told that Mary Magdalene was led to the grave, that the body had disappeared and that she saw there two spiritual forms. These two spiritual forces are always to be seen when a corpse is present for a certain time after death. On the one side is to be seen the astral body, and on the other, what gradually separates from it as ether body, then passing over into the cosmic ether. Wholly apart from the physical body are two spiritual forms present which belong to the spiritual world.

Then the disciples went away again unto their own home. But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping; and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting.. . .

Steiner’s quote stopped in the middle of the sentence just short of what, for our purposes, is also a most significant clause, “sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet.” In the case of Jezebel, there were no angels, just the feet and hands, the unredeemed physical symbols of the two spiritual bodies. It should be noted that Lk 24,4 also says that “two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.”