Creation and Apocalypse, Page Three

Our objective in discussing the "creation" here is not to look in detail at substantive content nor apply exegesis in the normal sense. Rather it is to reform our entire approach to understanding what the biblical message of creation says—to provide an adequate conceptual framework, one that will enable in us a more truthful imagination of what took, and is still taking, place in humanity's journey. It is only such a framework that can then be fleshed out by the several most profound biblical terms that follow. So steeped has humanity become in the various prevailing modes of interpretation, and in the conflicts that rage between them, that the essence of these most sacred biblical terms and concepts has fled the awareness of today's religions.¹⁸

One who reflects deeply upon the most sacred and profound human writings must surely see that the spiritual path leading to life will not be one quickly or easily discerned by those in positions of worldly authority, including not only the voices of "scientific authority" but also those pronouncing rules and interpretations from pulpits, seminaries, chairs or councils of institutionalized religion, the modern Sanhedrins. In essence, the path to the spiritual world will never be apparent to the majority, else prophecy would always have been superfluous. All those in power have to do to kill the prophets is ostracize them as a cult, as Rome did the early Christians. The deepest writings have always declared that few would find the path (Mt 7,13-14), the key of David (Rev 3,7), the stone the builders rejected (Mt 21,42; Mk 12,10; Lk 20,17; Acts 4,11; 1 Pet 2,7), the pearl of great price (Mt 13,45-46), the Rosetta stone, the chosen Cinderella whom alone the glass slipper fits. And that philosophers' stone, if you will, is so elusive precisely because it cannot be easily described in so many words, especially those reduced to writing, codified, graven in matter. It is rather more like the wind's origin that lies beyond our perception (Jn 3,6-8), like what causes the prophet in one age to throw aside the graven images (writings) of an earlier age (Mt 5,21-47; Mt 12,1-8; Mk 2,23-28; Lk 6,1-5).

During most of the second millennium, the time was not right for the highest initiates to reveal, in any broad sense, what they had perceived in the spiritual worlds. Muffled voices came from the mystic and even the devout medium, but it was not until the prophet, Rudolf Steiner, began to lecture at the opening of the twentieth century that the time and messenger were both right to disclose in comprehendible images what is experienced by the soul in the highest spiritual worlds. I have already written at some length why the time was then right.¹⁹ What now needs to happen is for humanity to see if the glass slipper fits these revelations. When that is done, passages of scripture that have long confounded theological pundits will come brilliantly into the light.

Only since the beginning of the present Cultural Era²⁰ with the Renaissance has humanity begun to direct its attention to a meaning applicable to our time, and only during more recent centuries to an increasingly critical analysis of these sacred accounts. And thus far that analysis has been able to see only form of, and not substance in, the ancient account, both canonical and pagan (but including also a large portion of the pseudepigraphal and apocryphal writings).

Probably the highest of the initiates, prior to Steiner, was one who lived before the Renaissance, Christian Rosenkreutz, known to modern scholarship only by errant legend.²¹ In spite of the fact historians know little of Christian Rosenkreutz, he must have planted spiritual seeds in human evolution on the cusp of the Cultural Age of the Consciousness Soul that was to begin with the Renaissance ("rebirth") in 1414. Something of divine insight (intelligence) visited those outstanding personalities who marked the birth of the Consciousness Soul. The famous sculpture by Michelangelo of Moses portrays him with the stub of two horns just above the hairline of his forehead. These were symbols of the ancient spiritual vision ("fading splendor") he still retained, whereby the ancient brain, in what must henceforth be developed in the pituitary gland (lotus flower, Job 40,21-22), received divine communication.²²,²³

Probably no one thing was more responsible for launching the historical search and the documentary hypothesis, as they apply to the Old Testament, than the notice taken of the apparent difference between the creation story in Gen 1-2,4a (the seven "days" of creation) and that in Gen 2,4b-3,24 (the descent of the lower kingdoms, sexual division of the human being, and temptation and Fall in the Garden of Eden). They have been taken to be two different interpretations or traditions of the same events, and thus perversions or modifications of what Moses originally taught. To modern sensate comprehension, this development is understandable, but it is not spiritually accurate according to the insights given by Rudolf Steiner, which indicate only a single account of creation, in the order set out in Genesis 1 through 3—and not two separate stories of the same creation.

Steiner gives one simple approach to solving this puzzle in the question and answer period following his lecture of January 19, 1905, The Idea of God (TIG):

The division of Creation into two parts can be understood if we learn to distinguish the human being without any sex . . . i.e., the spiritual astral man. . . . Then a revolution took place: the sexless spiritual man became a physical bi-sexual being, and for this reason it is necessary to speak of a double Creation.

This original androgynous human being is what Christ meant in his comment about divorce when, referring to Gen 1,27 and 5,1-2, he said, "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female . . . " (Mt 19,4; Mk 10,6; italics mine). This primeval unity is what lies behind the oneness ("one flesh") of marriage, the event in the fallen state that symbolizes the prior unity to be regained in the reascent of humanity back into the spiritual world whence it came.²⁴

We shall briefly explore how this division came about. But let us first note that, once biblical scholars "discovered" this seeming discrepancy in the two accounts, it became fashionable for them to then find other "parallel or duplicate accounts." A concise listing of what it apparently considers the most significant of these can be found (at p. 8) in the "Introduction to the Pentateuch" in the NJB, as follows:

Accounts
Story	First	Subsequent
Creation	Gen 1-2,4a	Gen 2,4b-3,24
Cain/Kenan genealogies	Gen 4,17 et seq.	Gen 5,12-17
Flood	Two Interwoven in Gen 6-8
Covenant with Abraham	Gen 15	Gen 17
Dismissals of Hagar	Gen 16	Gen 21
Misfortunes of patriarchal wife	Gen 12,10-20	Gen 20; 26,1-11
Stories about Joseph and brothers	Interwoven in Genesis
Calling of Moses	Ex 3,1-4,17	Ex 6,2-7,7
Water miracles at Meribah	Ex 17,1-7	Num 20,1-13
Decalogue texts	Ex 20,1-17	Deut 5,6-21
Liturgical calendars	Ex 23,14-19	Ex 34,18-23; Lev 23; Deut 16, 1-16

While the last two examples seem clearly to stem from different elaborations of the same event, many if not all of the others can be seen to be not duplicates but either consecutive events or continuations in which the second account gives a meaning not fully spelled out in the first. Though any superficial reading would immediately suggest that Gen 5 duplicates Gen 4, I show at length in The Burning Bush how this is not the case.²⁵ We saw at the first of this essay that there was a reason, in the "flood" story (Gen 6-8), for the difference between the animal accounts (Gen 6,19-22 and Gen 7,1-3).²⁶ And it was shown in The Burning Bush that a different purpose was served by the three accounts of patriarchal wife misfortune.²⁷

One who sees the Bible's creation account in the light of anthroposophy must surely come away with a renewed sense of respect and awe for its precise spiritual accuracy. And the same growing realization applies to the rest of the canon. Anthroposophy is thus virtually a resurrection of the power to believe in the Bible story literally, when its allegorical meaning is shown by Steiner's direct spiritual perception, offering hope for reconciliation between those who hold to its literal truth and those who spurn it because it flies in the face of sensate comprehension. It may be unreasonable to expect this immediate result, but persons of reasonable and unprejudiced intellect and goodwill must begin to see the spiritual realities expressed. And when this is done, the foundation will be laid for Christianity to begin to appeal to those of other ancient religious persuasions who rightly see the materialistic limitations and absence of intuition that have pervaded biblical interpretation for the last two millennia, especially since the seventeenth century. Until then, Christian doctrinal "evangelism" in our time is probably more harmful than helpful, at least for a major segment of humanity.

In looking at the creation accounts it will now be helpful to incorporate the "Overview" from Vol. 1, The Burning Bush. Ideally, the serious student will then carefully inspect the contents of Outline of Esoteric Science (OES).²⁸ And my own experience suggests that comprehension will be difficult without the aid of the "Charts and Tabulations" in Vol. 1, particularly the earlier items. In other words, some basic anthroposophical knowledge must be assimilated to be able to comprehend the true story of the creation as set forth in Genesis. It may be objected that the study is demanding, but no real effort in this regard, however seemingly fruitless, will be lost to the soul.

As critical analysis began to observe the apparent duplication of accounts, it saw support in the two different names for God in the Genesis account, and from that derived the first two so-called documents, the older Yahwist (Y) account in Gen 2,4b-3,24 and the later Elohist (E) in Gen 1-2,4a. But there is no support for a hypothesis of two documents, for the God referred to in the two accounts is different. And an understanding of this also eliminates the duality in the calling of Moses listed above. To understand this the student should look again at "I AM" and "Bush" in The Burning Bush. It is absolutely essential that one learn what Paul gave to Dionysius the Areopagite about the hierarchies and their positions and functions between the Trinity and humanity. They are summarized in I-6, and their activities are extensively detailed in the OES account of creation.

We are not, in the Genesis 1-3 creation account, dealing at any time directly with God the Father, for creation and the evolution of the human being were far advanced from the time when the Word went out during the Ancient Saturn evolutionary Condition of Consciousness. Already, by Gen 1,1-2, three Conditions of Consciousness had come and gone in the creative process, those represented by Saturday, Sunday and Monday (the Old Saturn, Sun and Moon "planetary" evolutions), as well as the first two Evolutionary Epochs of Earth evolution. See I-1 through I-3. The physical, etheric and astral human bodies already had their foundations laid (I-14).

Not the Father God acting directly, but rather the plural (seven; e.g., see "our" in Gen 1,26) Elohim (see I-6) are involved. They reflect the will of the Father and serve as his agents, but they are the hierarchy in charge at this relatively late stage of creation (see I-16). Steiner appropriately labels them "Spirits of Form," for they take up the matter of lack of form in Gen 1,2 in order to carry out the formative process.

Then in proper sequence each formation that took place among the earthly creatures in Gen 1 is said to be "according to its kind" (Gen 1,11,12,21,24,25), by which is meant that physical form was given to all its creatures which were to harden prematurely (due to failures in earlier Conditions of Consciousness)—they were thus not the forerunners of the human being but rather the by-products of the higher evolution of humans, who came first into spiritual being but last into hardened form, an archetypal instance of the reverberating scriptural phrase, "the last will be first, and the first last." But as of Gen 2,4b-5, as clearly stated there, none of those things created were yet actually reduced to mineral-physical form. All were still etheric, though the order of their later appearance in mineral-physical form is basically as set out in Gen 1.

For the reduction to mineral-physical form to take place on Earth, the Moon had first to separate from the Earth, an event that occurred during the Lemurian Epoch. At that time, the Elohim who had been the formative agents withdrew from the Earth. All but the Eloha Yahweh went to the more spiritualized Sun (the Sun sphere²⁹) whereas Yahweh sacrificially went to the more proximate region to the Earth, the Moon (the Moon sphere), from which he could direct the formative process. It is this Eloha Yahweh who becomes the singular "LORD God" in the translations available today. Thus, he first appears alone in Gen 2,4b to carry on the process of densification into mineral-physical form.

When the Deuteronomist reduced Moses' laws to writing, of prime importance to Israel was the Shema (Deut 6,4), "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord." It had to be thus, for Israel was "chosen" by Yahweh to create the form of receptacle, through the pure blood line, that would serve as the human vehicle of the incarnating Christ at the "right time."³⁰ Yahweh was thus necessarily a jealous God. But he was still a hierarchical agent of the Father and the Word, Christ, who reigned supreme over all. When Christ spoke of his Father, he spoke not of the divine spiritual servant Yahweh, but of the one Father from whom the creative Word went out at the very beginning. The Bible is witness to the existence, otherwise seemingly contrary to Deut 6,4, of numerous "gods" between the Father (or the Trinity) and the human being (see Mt 26,53, the "twelve legions of angels," and the related discussion in The Burning Bush, pp. 220-221). Indeed, even human beings are recognized as incipient "gods" by both the Psalmist and Christ (Jn 10,33-36; Ps 82,6) and thus are, though as yet unperfected, the tenth rank in the hierarchies (see I-18)