The beginning of our Era was set by the monk Dionysius the Exiguous, the year 540 in Rome, starting from the birth of Christ on December 25 of the year 753 of the founding of Rome, being 754 the 1st of the so-called Christian Era.
There are many who claim that the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, has no historical foundation. There are also doubts about the existence in those days of the city of Nazareth, saying that this nickname would not be toponymic, but that it was named for belonging to the community of the Nazarenes, nesorayya in Hebrew, dedicated to the spiritual search, taking into account a prophecy that says: "It will be called Nazoreo" [i]
However, there are many written testimonies that mention Jesus of Nazareth. For example, already in the s. III of our Era Origen, a writer born in Alexandria in 185 who died in Tire in 254, speaks of "the cave in which Jesus was born."
[i] Cited by Mario Satz in his work: Jesus the Nazarene, Therapist and Cabalist. Miraguano Editions
Tertullian, Christian apologist, died in the s. III, mentions the "census ordered by Augustus" which includes the genealogy of Jesus.
Flavio Josefo, Roman historian of the first century of our Era, in his work "Jewish Antiquities" writes that "in this time Jesus lived, an exceptional man, if we can call him man, because he did prodigious things. He won many among the Jews and the Greeks. This was the Christ. ”
Suetonio, a Latin historian who died in 140, author of "The Twelve Caesars, " mentions Jesus of Nazareth, known as Christ, who "led the Jews mutiny against Rome."
Tacitus, the great Roman historian, died in the year 119, author of all the Stories and Annals of the Empire, mentions the death of Jesus in the time of Pontius Pilate.
Without counting the numerous Apocryphal Gospels about his life and miracles, the 4 Gospels called Canonicals give us all series of information about his birth, place and dates, not always coincidental, that served Dionysus to establish the beginning of our Era.
It is still curious that the entire western world has taken into consideration the humble birth of a child, in a cave, to establish “the Time” of our contemporary history. At least he would be interested in asking himself: who could that child be, born in Bethlehem of Judea? And who are his parents, his grandparents? Where did it come from? What did his life, or his deeds, mean so that it was taken into account when setting the beginning of an entire Cultural Era?
The Old and the New Testament
The tradition of our Judeo-Christian roots refers us to the Bible as a source for the knowledge of the origin of Humanity. In our materialistic culture, it is surprising that its beginning has to do with something of a religious, spiritual type, related to what is known in the Bible as Genesis, Book of the Creation of the World and of Humanity, where the “ principle ”of our planet Earth and of the humanity that populates it since“ then ”.
Starting with the first two human beings, represented by Adam and Eve, and their offspring, Cain, Abel and Set, their first “children, ” which will multiply very prolifically, through Noah and the Universal Flood, which ended with An ancient civilization to begin the new order of the world (Gen. IX) comes to Abraham, the most recognized of the Postdiluvian Patriarchs, who begins what we know as the chosen race. the chosen people, by God.
Chosen for what? What possible mission was entrusted to this people? Certainly something important that demanded the purity of his blood, as would be demonstrated by the consanguineous unions of such numerous offspring. (Goethe also knew the importance of blood, that special fluent fluid with which Faust has to sign his contract with Mephisperfeles)
On the other hand, the entire later account of Genesis is sown with struggles, ambitions, disagreements, exodus from the different tribes, marriages, descendants, invasions, slavery, injustices. An endless story that begins in Abraham's own family who, married to Sara, and having no offspring, because she is sterile, instigated by his wife, already in middle age, has a son with one of his slaves, the Egyptian Hagar, mother of Ishmael. And a few years later, as a gift from Jav h, Sara in turn becomes pregnant with her elderly husband, giving birth to another son, whom they will call Isaac.
(It is very curious the semantic origin of this name, which has the same root, in Hebrew, as risa, because according to the Bible when Jav h told him to Abraham that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the sky (Gen. XV, 5) when he told Sara, this one laughed, he knew Going sterile and in middle age When Isaac was born, she said again: God has given me what to laugh at. Gen. XXI, 6)
These two sons of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, will be the representatives of the two peoples who still today fight for the land that Jav h distributed among them at the time of your birth. Palestinians and Israel. Brothers of father (and also, because we are all children of the Highest [1]) but enemies. Together with Christians they form:
The three cultures of the Book
The Arabs consider Ishmael the origin of their people, of their nation. The Muslims, followers of the Koran, are ruled in the time by the H gira, which begins on July 16 of the year 622, the day of Muhammad's escape to Mecca. His years are lunar, 354 days, or less.
The Israelis follow the Tor h, the Book of the Teachings, compilation of the Pentateuch, the 5 Books that make up the Old Testament, and the Christians add to them, the 4 Gospels, or the Good News brought by Jesus the Christ, who make up the New Testament.
Tradition attributes the synoptic or canonical Gospels, the only ones accepted by the ecclesiastical Institution, to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Matthew begins his story with the Genealogy from Jesus, starting from Abraham, to David, passing through the captivity of the Hebrew people in Babylon, to reach Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus was born, called the Christ and says: “Born Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea, In the time of King Herod, magicians who came from the East appeared before him asking: Where is the king of the Jews born? Well, we saw his star in the East and we have come to worship him. ” (Mt. 2, 1) According to the chronology of Dionysus, Herod died the year 4 BC. It is important to take into account the fact that some "Wizards", oriental astrologers, knew, because a star was speaking to them , of an event so special that it set them on their way to Judea: the birth of a child.
Lucas, a doctor of pagan origin, born in Antioquia, a follower of Paul, writes his story starting with a Prologue in which he states that there have been many who have tried to narrate what they had transmitted those who witnessed the facts related to Jesus, and that he, after having investigated with great “diligence” all from its origins, decides to write the results of his investigations, as implying that his data are quite reliable. (In fact Dionisio is based on the exact dates that Luke mentions to establish the beginning of the Christian Era)
And it begins by recounting the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner (of what? Surely something that will happen and that should be important, ). Continue with the Annunciation to Mary, by the angel Gabriel, (Lk. 1, 26) that a son will give birth, whom Jesus will name, who “will be great and will be called Son of the Most High… and will reign over the house of Jacob (grandson of Abraham and son of Isaac and Rebekah) to whom Javéh changes Jacob's name to Israel.
For the materialistic thinking of our day, all this is still a fable, something symbolic, without any empirical basis. But for a thought without pre-judgments it is possible to think that so many writings have to refer to “something” that is worthwhile, at least, to take into consideration. A correct attitude would be, to begin with, to take into account that Humanity has evolved a lot since it has knowledge of it, of its beginnings, and that it is not acceptable to prosecute it with the same elements with which we prejudge contemporary events. This mistake is constantly made by Anthropology, and is considered an empirical "science." In the beginning, the relationship of men with the "gods" was normal and commonplace - proof of this are the Myths and Legends of all the people who mention them - and of course primitive Humanity had far away rational thinking, whose First scuba diving can only be seen in the Greece of the IV-V centuries a. of C.
And Lucas continues to say: (2, 1) “… in those days an edict of Cesar Augusto came out so that everyone could be registered. This is the first census made as Cirino governor of Syria, ”(which was from 1 or 2 until 6 A.D.) Everyone had to go to their city to register. "Joseph also went up from Nazareth, his city of Galilee, to Bethlehem, the city of David to whose line he belonged, with his wife Mary who was pregnant" And it happened that being there it was time for Mary to give birth and gave birth to his firstborn, in a "manger", because there was no room in the accommodation. Only the shepherds went to worship him, who slept in the open keeping their flocks, to whom an angel of the Lord appeared, to announce that "they had been born a Savior, who is the Christ."
Luke continues his story telling the procedures that Jesus has to go through, according to the Law, such as circumcision and presentation in the Temple, then returning to Galilee, to Nazareth where he continued to grow until at age 12, on the occasion from the feast of Passover, everyone goes up to Jerusalem to fulfill the Law and, on their way back, the parents realize that Jesus is not in the caravan. They turn, look for him and finally find him, at 3 days, in the Temple of Jerusalem, talking with the Doctors of the Law, who were "stupefied by his wisdom, and his answers" (Luke 2:46) and only with 12 years. His parents were also surprised
And then, Luke continues: (3, 1) “In the year 15 of the reign of Tiberius Cesar, being Pontius Pilate governor of Judea, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, in the Jordan, at which time the sky from which a voice that said: " You are my son, I have fathered you today." (3.22)
And Luke adds, (3, 21-22 et seq.) "Jesus had at the beginning, about thirty years." Tiberius had succeeded Augustus the year 14 AD. C. If Pilate was governor of Judea, in the year 15 of the reign of Tiberius, adding 14 + 15 we reach the age of "about thirty years" that Luke awards Jesus.
But this date does not coincide with that mentioned by Matthew, knowing that Herod dies the year 4 a. of C. (The Church describes Dionysius as an error in this data, and 20 centuries later they remain in that “error”) In addition, according to Matthew, Herod, concerned with the reason for the visit of the Magi from the East, orders to kill all the children under 2 years of age, fearing that what they said about the birth of the King of the Jews is true, a role he wanted for himself. Lucas does not mention at all this event, so important.
Luke who also mentions, then, the genealogy of Jesus, makes her ascend from this child to "Adam, son of God."
The Jewish Tradition awaited the coming of the Messiah who, for some, would belong to the priestly caste and, for others, to that of the Kings of Israel. There we should look for the difference between the two Evangelists by giving more importance to one or the other in their respective genealogies of Jesus.
Between the two Gospels there seems to be an accumulation of contradictions: Matthew speaks of Herod, of some Magi from the East who are going to look for the child at “ his house ” (which he suggests that they lived in Bethlehem), about the killing of children under two years, of the flight to Egypt that Joseph has to undertake with Mary and the child, warned by " an angel in dreams" of the danger they were facing for that reason.
Lucas, on the other hand, is very clear about the date of birth, as we have seen; that the family lived in Nazareth, that it is Mary who receives the visit of an "angel", while Matthew speaks of the various "angel" notices to Joseph. Luke does not mention the Magi, but the shepherds, nor the flight to Egypt because of the grave danger they were facing if they remained in Bethlehem, which is surprising that Luke did not mention.
As for the date of December 25, an important fact is found in the cameo of Dioscorides (imperial piece of the treasures of Vienna) and mentioned by Pliny, in which Augustus appears - as king of the world - under a "rosette" with the figure of the zodiac sign Capricorn that governs the period between December 22 and January 22, and Tiberius, descending from a car, two of the characters that are part of the story of Jesus. Without going any further, Tiberius had to intuit that the eclipse that followed the crucifixion of Jesus, which he would contemplate with his astrologer from his refuge in Capri, had to be something "miraculous" since it could not be explained as a natural phenomenon, because he proposed to the Senate to include Christ in the Roman Pantheon as one of its gods. [2]
On December 25, the date of the winter solstice does not appear in the Bible in relation to the birth of Jesus, but for many ancient cultures that date was related to the God of the Sun: Jesus This is a solar spirit, as Zoroaster was. The Romans celebrated parties in honor of Apollo such as the undefeated Sun, the Helios of the Greeks. Germans celebrated on December 26 the birth of Frey, the Norse god of the Sun, rain and fertility.
The Mexicans celebrated during the winter the holidays in honor of the God of the Sun and of war. The Incas, the birth of INTI, the solar God.
In an anonymous Treaty on solstices and equinoxes, it is said that our Lord was conceived on the 8th of April's calendar around March 25, and nine months later It will be on December 25.
The early Christians celebrated the Epiphany more, (from the Greek epi, which means, above, later, and phaino, manifestation of something material or spiritual, in any case something extraordinary and surprising), which the Catholic Church continues to celebrate as the `` Adoration of the Magi '', the wedding of Can an and, most importantly in my opinion n, the baptism in the Jordan, during which, according to Luke, the birth of the son of God took place , in the words of a voice from Heaven . From December 25 to January 6, the passage of Jesus (the Man) to Christ takes place symbolically, a cosmic entity that will live in the body of Jesus for the next three years of his life.
The Two Children Jesus
We owe Rudolf Steiner, founder of Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, one of the most coherent explanations regarding the `` apparent '' contradictions between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which cease to be when study his theory in an unprejudiced way:
Each one of the Evangelists is writing the biography of a different child, that at a given time, very special, at 12 years (of Luke's child) they become one only, by means of a hidden process that takes place during three days, in the Temple of Jerusalem. (In the Mysteries of Antiquity the initiation took place for three days.)
Both children descend from the house of David: the one mentioned by Matthew, who lived in Bethlehem and received the visit of the Magi guided by the "star", belonged to the royal line that passes through Solomon, and that of the Gospel of Luke, which He was born in Bethlehem on the occasion of the registration of his parents, who lived in Nazareth, belonged to the priestly caste called Natánico, of Natán, son of David.
The two are born in Bethlehem, but with a difference of 5 or 6 years. The two return to live in Nazareth, that of Lucas because there he returns with his parents after serving in Bethlehem with the census and that of Matthew because after spending time in Egypt, fleeing the slaughter of the innocents decreed by Herod, they return to Nazareth following the advice of the "angel" who indicates this to Joseph, so that the prophecy that Jesus would be "called Nazoreo" would be fulfilled.
The two grow up together: the oldest full of wisdom and maturity and the smallest as if he had never set foot on Earth before. (Apocryphal Gospel of Children) To understand this enigma, the Law of Reincarnation and Karma must be taken into account. The Solomonic child (Matthew's) carried in his higher Self the Zoroaster Self that, through successive reincarnations, introduced into the child Jesus all the attributes of the utmost wisdom in such a way that he could show - in the passage of the Temple and its I meet with the doctors of the Law - "knowledge that is normally impossible for children." [3]
On the other hand, the native child (Luke's) “was not able to accommodate what human civilization had created on Earth.” His soul had never incarnated before, therefore he was not contaminated by any kind of Karma, his goodness It was infinite, like his naivety and innocence. It was as if he wasn't from this world. For example, he could "swing in a beam of light that was reflected in the wall of his home's yard." [4]
The Solomon child has brothers and sisters.
The native child is an only child.
In the passage of the Gospel of Luke: "Jesus in the Temple with the doctors" takes place, according to Steiner, the transfer of the Zoroaster Self that inhabited the Solomonic child, the candid child, the Nathan, so that from then on only Jesus lived with the attributes of maximum wisdom and maximum goodness. Once again Luke is very explicit and points out: (2.52) "Jesus progressed in wisdom, stature and grace before God and before men." As a consequence of this fact the Jesus of Matthew has to die, because you cannot live without the individuality that the I provides. Dionysius, then, leaves the birth date of the child Jesus of Luke, who survived. [5]
For the mentality of our day it may seem difficult to represent the transposition of an I into another being, even if the I of man is an exclusively spiritual substance. On the other hand, it is accepted as "possible" the "possession by evil entities" in certain circumstances, for example in schizophrenia. Nor is the case of the Siamese brothers too surprising, the physical union of two creatures, one of which, when they share vital organs, generally has to die in the act of separation, in order for the other to survive.
It would be interesting to remember, again, that we are talking about a “cosmic plan, ” far from the earthly meaning that we could give, whose preparation begins with Abraham and his offspring, and the children of his children, until they reach the events that end in Golgotha and in the Resurrection of Christ Jesus to fulfill his promise: "I will remain with you until the end of time." St. Paul in his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians anticipates what many will be thinking now and says: (15.32) “ But someone will say: How do the dead rise? … What you sow doesn't revive if it doesn't die. ” (15, 20) Christ rose from the dead as firstfruits of those who slept.
It should not be forgotten that the figure of Jesus represents "all Humanity", the Christ being the state to which we would all be called to arrive in our evolution: the union of wisdom with love, goodness, authentic brotherhood, facing to the wars, hatreds and enmities that from "the beginning" and to this day accompany us to get away from our true "purpose."
For many, all of the above will not cease to be a mere theory but, as Stephen W. Hawking says, [6] the American scientist, “a theory is good as long as it satisfies two requirements: 1st - You must accurately describe a wide set of observations (which in this case Steiner fully meets) and 2nd - Must be able to positively predict the results of future observations. ” This future observation, unprejudiced, without prejudice, should not be an act of Faith but that it will be replaced by "the vision of Christ", or what is the same, by an inner experience of the above-mentioned facts. That was the case of Saul, the persecutor of the Christians, who on his way to Damascus literally had that vision that made him change completely, until he became Paul, the Apostle, the defender of Christ, after having "seen" and understood.
Applying the uncertainty principle, Hawking [7] goes on to say that "you cannot predict future events with accuracy if you cannot even measure the present state of the Universe accurately."
Rudolf Steiner, (1861-1925) scientific-spiritual had the ability to penetrate the deep secrets of the past and, to some extent, predict future events that, some, have already been fulfilled, without going any further and for example. nowadays, the disease of the “crazy” cows from eating feed with human proteins, being herbivorous animals, not to mention the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia, or the horrors of the Third Reich, for example
Artistic Testimonials
In the testimonies of the historical events of Humanity, in addition to the written documents we have the works of the artists who, through their imagination, have left us on record of such events. In the fact that concerns us, especially since the fifteenth century, there are many paintings, as well as sculptures, which reflect the enigma of " the two Jesus children " that the Church has simplified by calling the one who seems older, San Juanito . Of course, there are also many paintings with three children! Who would be the third?
From Rafael, Lorenzo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Correggio, Juan de Juanes, El Greco, Luini, to name only the most famous; to the fresco of Borgognone in the Church of San Ambrose in Milan, where he beautifully portrays the passage of the Temple, with Jesus among the doctors in the center and on the left side, the Mother with the other child, leaving . [8] The Prado Museum, in Madrid, for example, is a clear exponent of these and many more works that attest to the fact that the authors had the momento inspiration n something that had happened fifteen centuries before. Throughout Europe you can find traces of this enigma in its Cathedrals, Churches and Museums. Those who have eyes to see, who look.
Before an agnostic world that drowns in vulgarity, in the degradation of its own metaphysical tradition and proving that the Messiah did not fulfill, socially, the promise of peace, security and love for which he should come, and when he observes that many speak of Him and few really listen to him [9] all of the above can really make sense.
Since the origin of civilization, people have sought a knowledge of the world, and today we continue to ask ourselves: Why are we here? where we come from? And where are we going? As Hawking asks, [10] to quote a scientist, nothing spiritualist by the way, although he is able to write; One year you could imagine that God created the universe at the time of the big bang, but it would make no sense to assume that the universe had been created before the big bang. A expanding universe does not exclude the existence of a creator! [11] to add later: We are rational beings, free to observe the universe as we please and to extract logical deductions from what we see.
The importance of the subject, for Humanity, is endorsed by the fact that it represents the `` beginning of the Christian Era '' by which both spiritualists and materialists are governed, with the exception of the Muslim world .
Maria Isabel Garc a Polo
[1] Psalm 82.6
[2] For more information see: Letter from Tiberius to Pilate. Ev. APPENDICES BAC
[3] De Hes sa Cristo . Rudolf Steiner Ed Rudolf Steiner.
[4] Gospel of Children. Apocryphal Gospels. BAC
[5] " The two children Jesus." R. Giudicissi and M. Gª Polo . Anthroposophical essays. Ed. Rudolf Steiner
[6]
[7] History of Time. Critical Editorial.
[8] For more information consult: The two children Jesus. Op.cit.
[9] Jesus the Nazarene, Therapist and Cabalist. Mario Satz Miraguano Editions
[10] Op.cit.
[11] SW Hawking, op.cit.
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