The Fifth Gospel

Seven lectures given in Oslo, 1st-6th October 1913 and Cologne, 17th and 18th December, 1913. In these lectures Rudolf Steiner was able to impart information never previously known in the life of Jesus before the Baptism and the life of Christ after the Baptism. After an intense inner struggle to arrive at the truth, Steiner's spiritual research enabled him to describe events such as Jesus in the Essene community, of the conversation between Jesus and Mary at Cana and of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. Steiner spoke of the difficulties of divulging such information and that if he had followed his own inclination he would have wished not to speak of them. But he emphasized that despite "...the disinclination of men today to accept facts such as those of which we have been speaking, it was essential that knowledge of such facts should now flow into the Earth evolution. ...The souls to whom they are now communicated will most surely need them for the work they are called upon to do for the life of soul and spirit during the further course of human evolution."