Steiner reads Hagar and Sinai as one word, the great stone: the Law returned to Israel from without, through what Abraham's line had cast out in Ishmael.
Hagar and Sinai in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's reading of the two biblical names as one and the same word, meaning the stone mountain, the great stone, presented in Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew (GA 117, Berlin, 1909). Hagar, the Egyptian bondwoman, bore Abraham's son Ishmael, and into Ishmael an ancient inherited element was thrust out of the Hebrew line so that Isaac's descendants could develop clean outward-directed cognition. What was cast out returned from outside: Moses met the Ishmaelite descendants of Hagar in the desert, and through their initiates the revelation of Sinai became intelligible to Israel, so the Mosaic Law arrived as commandment given from without rather than inspiration arising in the blood. Steiner notes that Paul confirms the identity in Galatians, calling the Sinai covenant something to be outgrown in Christ, a key for modern esoteric Bible study.
Hagar and Sinai name a single insight at the heart of Steiner's Matthew lectures: the bondwoman and the mountain of the Law share one Hebrew word, the great stone. The Law of Moses therefore did not rise from the inner faculties of Abraham's chosen line. It came back to Israel from outside, through the outcast branch of Ishmael, as commandment received rather than inspiration born.
In Steiner's Own Words
Nor are such things disclosed by the Akasha Chronicle alone; they stand in the Bible itself. Compare the words of the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians (IV, 24, 25). What I have told you here is confirmed by St. Paul. He too says that the word Hagar or Agar is identical with Sinai and indicates that what was given on Sinai is a covenant which must be outgrown by those who, through the development of the essential qualities of Abraham in the successive generations, are now to realise what has come into the world through Christ.
What it Means Today
Steiner gave this reading in Berlin in 1909, and its afterlife runs through The Christian Community, the movement for religious renewal founded in 1922 with his counsel. Its co-founder Emil Bock (1895-1959), who led the movement after Friedrich Rittelmeyer's death in 1938, spent decades retelling the Hebrew Bible as the biography of a changing human consciousness. In the Old Testament studies published in English by Floris Books, among them Genesis, Moses, and Kings and Prophets, Bock works with the same figure Steiner traces in GA 117: what a people casts out of its bloodline returns to meet it from outside as destiny. His portrait of Moses shows the future lawgiver schooled in desert country settled by descendants of the expelled Ishmael line before he returns carrying a Law that Israel can only receive as commandment from without.
For priests and study groups of The Christian Community this is working equipment rather than antiquarian exegesis: it grounds their reading of Galatians, where Paul's contrast between the son of the bondwoman and the son of the free woman marks the passage from inherited religion to the freed Ego. Thalira synthesis: Hagar and Sinai names the lawful pattern by which a community's rejected inheritance returns as its sternest teacher, commandment from the stone standing in for inspiration in the blood, until the Ego matures enough to receive the spirit directly.
Where to Read More
- Deeper Secrets of Human History in the Light of the Gospel of St. Matthew, GA 117
- Find GA 117 at SteinerBooks
- Find Emil Bock's Moses at SteinerBooks
- Earthing and Grounding: Walking Barefoot for Health and Spirit
- Pineal Gland and the Third Eye: Science and Tradition
- Thoughtforms and Egregores: How to Create and Work With Them