Old Testament 103
MOSES AND THE BURNING BUSH

Surely no word or phrase is less understood, nor more critical to comprehension of the Bible story of Moses and the Burning Bush, than "I Am." Scripturally, we first encounter it in Ex 3 where God reveals to Moses that "I AM" is His Name. One cannot understand the Mystery of Christ and Golgotha without first coming to see that his passage discloses the Mosaic equivalent of the maxim that contemporaneously graced the portal through which every candidate for initiation into the ancient Mysteries had to pass, namely, "Know Thyself." As can be seen by a careful examination of Exodus, Moses himself had been initiated into the Mysteries of Egypt. This course will initiate the student into the deep wisdom of Exodus and its relationship to Christ and His extreme relevance in the world today.

For each course an experienced mentor is provided through email. Following each lecture/guide are questions for you to begin a discourse with your mentor.

Old Testament 104
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

The Ten Commandments are interpreted by the great majority of people today as if they were legal ordinances, that is, like the laws of any modern state. It is conceded, of course, that the laws of the Ten Commandments are more extensive and general, and have a validity independent of their time and place. They are thus held to be more universal, but people are still conscious of them as having the same effect or objective as any modern legislation. So seen, however, they do not contain the actual vital nerve that lives in them. This is borne out by the fact that all translations presently available have unconsciously incorporated an essentially superficial explanation that is not at all in the spirit of their original meaning.

In these lectures Rudolf Steiner translates these laws into the deep meaning they can convey today. He shows how Christ took the place, for those who truly understand Christianity, of the impulses that served as a preparation in the Old Testament.

For each course an experienced mentor is provided through email. Following each lecture/guide are questions for you to begin a discourse with your mentor.

Old Testament 105 and 106
KINGS AND PROPHETS

In this course Emil Bock undertakes the stupendous task of rekindling the universal significance of the Biblical kings and prophets for us today. David, Solomon, Elijah and many others appear not just as obscure figures important to the history of a small nation - at best examples of moral uprightness and devotion - but as the embodiment of the stages of the path leading the soul to an experience of Christ.

Bock leads us to understand that in the first half of the last pre-Christian millennium it was among the Israelite-Jewish people that the true pulse of the age was beating. For a while the life and endeavors of all humankind was concentrated in a brightly illumined center of world history charged with apocalyptic mysteries.

These lectures will introduce the history of the Israelites as being guided from above by the spirit of Christ actively preparing his own incarnation through them. The attainment of a new human consciousness, which flashes up in Moses, was destined to take a decisive step forward in prophets such as Isaiah who experienced the death of ancient visions and the rebirth of new powers of perception such as are awakening in human kind today.

For each course an experienced mentor is provided through email. Following each lecture/guide are questions for you to begin a discourse with your mentor.

Old Testament 107
THE PSALMS

The Book of Psalms is the most wonderful expression and result of the stage which King David embodied in the history of humanity. Approximately four hundred years earlier, young Pharaoh Amenophis IV, Akhenaten, far ahead of his time, had composed psalms: his radiant hymns to the sun. However, they lacked any expression of the praying soul's quite personal emotions. Simultaneously with David's royal reign, Homer, his great contemporary, composed his immortal epics on the Grecian coast. But even though a great human soul offered up the colors and nuances of its inner being, the Homeric songs are really composed more by gods than a man. By contrast, the Psalms of the Old Testament are already personal poetry through and through. Just as the 'Song of the Bow', David's song of lamentation over Saul and Jonathan, was born out of personal suffering, so all the Psalms have originated from a concrete experience.

The religious and poetic expression in which David clothed the pain and relief of his own personal conflicts of soul nevertheless is of universal validity in every instance. David experienced archetypal destinies. In his suffering and trials, in his elevations and inklings of salvation, he absolved the paths which henceforth had to be undergone by all humans who struggle to attain to a spiritual self, everywhere and at all times.

These lectures by Emil Bock, Rudolf Frieling and Valentin Tomberg will enrich every student who strives for the divine amidst the earthly.

For each course an experienced mentor is provided through email. Following each lecture/guide are questions for you to begin a discourse with your mentor.

Old Testament 108
THE BOOK OF JOB AND THE DRAGON MYTH

Job had refused his wife's plea that he curse God and die. The Lord's self-revelation enables Job to have renewed faith in the purpose and meaning of physical life on earth. Before his mystical vision of the Lord, Job had made a statement of faith that elevated him from his friends, "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth," (19:25) and "yet in my flesh shall I see God." (19:26)

What Job is so sure about is that a time will come when the physical world and the human body with all its suffering will be reconciled with an understanding of Divinity and Justice. It is the fall into matter, the physical plane, that separates us from this understanding; when our attention is limited to the external world, we become blind to the inner reality of our false beliefs and attitudes. Job looks to the day when this process of descent into matter will be reversed.

The Bible is an organic whole. This is apparent when we see how the climax of apocalyptic imagery at the end of the New Testament - Michael's fight with the dragon - is prefigured in the Old Testament. Many traces of the old mythological picture thinking occur in the more poetic writings such as in the Book of Job. Two monsters are described at the end of the book, Behemoth and Leviathan. What is the meaning of this imagery and how does it apply to us today?

Rudolf Frieling and Edward R. Smith bring us tremendous illumination in their spiritual research on this vast and important subject, giving us preparation for our age and the ages to come.

For each course an experienced mentor is provided through email. Following each lecture/guide are questions for you to begin a discourse with your mentor.