Moses
Jews may be shocked and offended by Steiner's depiction of Moses, and non-Jews will probably be, at least, surprised by this depiction. According to Steiner, Moses was a student of Zarathustra, and he was an Egyptian initiate. And he worked in the service of Christ, the Sun God.
“Zarathustra had two pupils whom he did not instruct for the purpose of sending them out to teach the Persians. They were pupils such as are always to be found with the great Initiates and who prepare in quietude for their missions, refraining, to begin with, from going out into the world to teach.
“These two pupils, in later incarnations, were: Hermes, the great Teacher of the Egyptians, and Moses.” — Rudolf Steiner, “A Chapter of Occult History” (ANTHROPOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Vol. 4, No. 1), a lecture, GA 108.
“The Old Testament lends itself to a great deal of controversy, for the events there have grown dim. But it will be clear to anyone who does not want to wrangle, that the Old Testament faithfully describes the significant process of the penetration of the Ego into the entire nature and being of man. Anyone who from the point of view of Spiritual Science, reads of the call to Moses at the Burning Bush will understand that in reality Moses was then raised into the Spiritual world. When God appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush, Moses asked: ‘Who shall I say to the people hath sent me?’ God said: ‘Tell them that One Who can say “I am” hath sent thee.’ And if we follow up the whole process of the incorporation of the Ego, step by step, then the Bible illuminates what is found in Spiritual Science independently.” — Rudolf Steiner, “The Bible and Wisdom” (Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1941), a lecture, GA 68.
Steiner places great importance on this. He claims that what was revealed to Moses was the essential Anthroposophical doctrine that the highest human invisible body — our link with divinity — is the "Ego Body" carrying the "I" or "Ego."
“Although Christ appeared only later, He was always present in the spiritual sphere of the earth. Already in the ancient Oracles of Atlantis, the priests of those Oracles spoke of the ‘Spirit of the Sun’, of Christ. In the old Indian epoch of civilization the Holy Rishis spoke of ‘Vishva Karman’; Zarathustra in ancient Persia spoke of ‘Ahura Mazdao’, Hermes of ‘Osiris’; and Moses spoke of the Power which, being eternal, brings about the harmonization of the temporal and natural, the Power living in the ‘Ehjeh asher Ehjeh’ (I am the I AM) as the harbinger of Christ. All spoke of the Christ.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE DEED OF CHRIST AND THE OPPOSING SPIRITUAL POWERS (Steiner Book Centre, 1954), lecture 1, GA 107.*
The Biblical Moses.
[By Gustave Doré.]
“How did the Lord — Christ — appear to the Jewish people? We are told that by day it was in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire — and by His dividing the waters for their safety...and many other things we can read in the Old Testament. In phenomena of cloud and fire, in the air, in the elemental events of nature He was active, but never once did it occur to the ancient Jews to say to themselves: That which appears in the pillar of cloud and in the pillar of fire, that which worked wonders such as the parting of the waters, appears also in its purest original form in the human soul. Why did this never occur to the ancient Jews? Because, owing to the course taken by human evolution, the soul of man had lost the power to feel its deepest being within itself. Thus the Jewish soul could look into nature; it could allow the glory of the phenomena of the elements to work upon it; everywhere it could divine the existence of its God and Lord; but directly within itself, as the Jewish soul then was, it could not find Him.
“There in the Old Testament we have the Christ ... Now let us turn from the Jews to the heathen. Did the heathen have Christ? Is it Christian to say of the heathen that they also had Christ? The heathen had their Mysteries. Those initiated in the Mysteries were brought to the point where their souls passed out of their bodies; the tie connecting body and soul was loosened; and when the soul was outside the body, it perceived in the spiritual world the secrets of existence. Much was connected with these Mysteries; much varied knowledge came to the candidates for Initiation in the Mysteries. But when we investigate what was the highest that the disciple of the Mysteries could receive into himself, we find that it consisted in the fact that outside the body he was placed before the Christ. As Moses was placed before Christ, so in the Mysteries was the disciple placed with his soul, outside his body, before Christ.” — Rudolf Steiner, CHRIST AND THE HUMAN SOUL (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972), lecture 1, GA 155.
“The task of the Hebrew people was to propagate in the direct line of heredity the qualities that were intrinsically their own, and everything that was an ancient heritage, ancient wisdom, had to be imparted to them from without. Hence they had to go to Egypt in order to receive what could be given to them there. Moses was able to impart this to his people because he was an Egyptian initiate. But he certainly could not have done so had he possessed wisdom merely in its Egyptian form. It would be erroneous to imagine that the ancient Egyptian wisdom could be simply grafted on to what flowed down from Abraham. This would not have been compatible with the intrinsic character of the Hebrew people and would have produced an abortive form of culture. Moses brought with him to the wisdom he acquired from his Egyptian initiation something of a quite different nature. Hence he could not simply impart to the Israelites what came from the Egyptian initiation. His first real gift to them was made after the revelation on Sinai, and made outside Egypt.” — Rudolf Steiner, DEEPER SECRETS OF HUMAN HISTORY IN THE LIGHT OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. MATTHEW (ANTHROPOSOPhical Publishing Co., 1957), lecture 3, GA 117.
“Christ has not only come once, but only once in personal form; His last coming was in Jesus Christ. In ancient times He worked also through the Prophets. Christ Himself indicates this in the Gospel of John, where He says that those who did not believe Moses and the Prophets would not believe Him either, for Moses and the Prophets spoke of Him, not indeed as already on earth, but as one whom they foretold. In this sense Christ has a certain story in earthly evolution. If we go back to the ancient Mysteries we find everywhere the story of Christ and His descent. Let us for a few minutes consider the European Mysteries. We find in all of them a certain tragic feature. If one transports oneself into these ancient Mysteries one always finds that the teachers told their pupils: 'You may raise yourselves to divine heights, and receive a high degree of initiation, but there is something you cannot yet know fully, something for which you must wait and which we can only indicate: this is the coming of Christ.'
“They always spoke of Christ in the northern Mysteries as 'He who would come'; they knew Him everywhere, but not as One already on the earth. The Initiates in Asia and Egypt also knew Him as the approaching Christ. 'One day,' they said, 'He will appear.' They knew also that the olden Mysteries could not lead men to the highest stage of development. This idea has been preserved symbolically, only too much stress must not be laid on such things; they must be accepted generally, partly as truth and partly as allegory, and not be outlined too sharply. Some echo of this tragic feature regarding the ancient Gods and the waiting for the Christ has survived. The glory of the old Gods was to disappear before the glory of Christ.
“This is found even in the most recent legends of the Teutonic gods, where something remarkable is ascribed to Siegfried — he was invulnerable and had the strength of an Initiate according to the European Mysteries; he was, however, vulnerable in one spot. He was wounded in this spot, and thus met his death. In what place was he vulnerable? The place on which later the cross was laid on Him for Whom they were looking with such expectation. The place where Siegfried was vulnerable was covered by the cross in the journey to Golgotha. This legend contains a last memory of that tragic feature which passes through all the ancient European Mysteries. But in those other Mysteries into which Moses was initiated, from which the Old Testament has proceeded, and which Moses implanted in his people so far as seemed possible to him, this strange feature in human evolution is often referred to.“ — Rudolf Steiner, UNIVERSE, EARTH AND MAN (H. Collison, 1931), chapter 9, GA 105.
* “After baptism, a man not only was aware of his oneness with the spiritual world, but he recognized the particular spiritual world which was approaching the earth. He knew that what now pervaded the earth was identical with what had revealed itself to Moses as ehjeh asher ehjeh in the burning bush and in the fire on Sinai; and he knew that the word Jahve or Jehovah, or ehjeh asher ehjeh, or I am the I AM, was the true expression of that spiritual world.” — Rudolf Steiner, THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN (Anthroposophic Press, 1948) lecture 6, GA 112.
Compare that with the relevant Biblical verses:
"And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?
"And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.
"And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?
"And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
"And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations." — Exodus 3:11-14, King James Version.
Steiner made much of this passage, yet he misinterpreted it. Moses asks God his name. God answers “ehjeh ascher ehjeh”, meaning Jehovah (or Yahweh or Yhyh), the unchanging God, the Creator, whose nature has yet to be fully revealed. God does not say what Steiner claims, that “I AM” (or “I”) is the “true expression of the spiritual world” — and God does not say that man has an invisible “I” that is a piece of God the I AM.
Here is an explication of Exodus 3:13-14:
“13: Not having been raised among his own people, Moses (like Pharaoh in [Exodus] 5.2) is ignorant of the God’s name and fears he will lack credibility with them [the Hebrew people]. He is told God’s name, which the people evidently knew already ... 14: God’s proper name, disclosed in the next verse, is Yhyh (spelled ‘yod-heh-vav-heh’ in Heb[rew]; in ancient times the “vav” was pronounced ‘w’). But here God first tells Moses its meaning: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, probably best translated as “I Will Be What I Will Be,” meaning “My nature will become evident from My actions.” ... He answers Moses’ question about what to say to the people: ‘Tell them: "Ehyeh" ("I Will Be," a shorter form of the explanation) sent me.’ This explanation derives from the verb ‘h-v-h,’ a variant form of ‘h-y’h,’ ‘to be.’” — THE JEWISH STUDY BIBLE (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 111.
Here is another explication, similar to what we have just seen (and distinctly different from Steiner’s position):
“The revelation of the divine name to Moses is a very special moment in the story ... To prepare Moses to understand the meaning of the name, God first reveals that this is the same God known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob [Exodus 3:6] ... It then comes to the moment in verse 13 when Moses asks for God’s identity more clearly. The text gives several versions of the divine name: 'I am who am,' 'I am,' and 'He who is' (or better, ‘He who has causes to be’). The one certain thing is that all of these come from the same verb in Hebrew, hayah, the verb ‘to be.’ It is not usual to use the verb in this way. So, on the one hand, God refuses to give a regular name, but hides his real identity behind claims that he simply exists. And, on the other hand, the name suggests that God exists for something specific; in this case, for the salvation of Israel.” — THE CATHOLIC STUDY BIBLE (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 119.
Further explication, clarifying Yahweh's identity as the Creator:
"The Israelite deity goes by the names of El/Elohim (a common Semitic noun for 'god') and Yahweh. There is universal agreement that Yahweh is derived from the verb 'to be,' but scholars differ over whether the verb underlying the name is noncausative (see Exod. 3.14) or causative, 'the one who causes to come into being,' that is, a reference to the deity's role as creator; the latter seems preferable." — THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE BIBLE (Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 334.
— Compiled by Roger Rawlings
