Deeper Secrets of Human History
in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew
GA 117
Appendix II
Note on two Jesus Children
Rudolf Steiner explained the great difficulty of reconciling the Incarnation accounts in St. Matthew and St. Luke, by revealing that they each refer to a separate Jesus-child, born, as the Gospels assert, from different Davidic lines. How these children grew up together, and how their beings were finally united as the being of Jesus of Nazareth, is related by Dr. Steiner in the lecture-courses entitled The Gospel of St. Luke, The Gospel of St. Matthew, From Jesus to Christ, and others. It is a mystery which it is impossible to treat adequately in a note. These present lectures, however, show us the detailed, age-long provision by the spiritual powers, of the physical organism which could be the vehicle of the incarnating Christ. While they treat mostly of the purely physical preparation through the Hebrew race, they also speak of the spiritual inheritance through Zarathustra, and the soul-bestowal of Buddha. It is the harmonising of these three " sheaths " of past inheritance in one being that is explained by the revelation of the fact of these two children, a mystery of which there are only a few uncomprehended traces in the Gospels. It is a mystery of great importance, which can only be apprehended by patient, unprejudiced study.
