Steiner's reading of the ancient Hebrew Jahve-religion as a Moon-religion that reflected the coming Christ, as moonlight reflects the light of the Sun.
The Moon Religion of Jahve in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's reading of the ancient Hebrew religion of Jahve, or Jehovah, as a Moon-religion that reflected the coming Christ, just as the Full Moon reflects the light of the Sun. In his lecture of 13 March 1911 in Berlin, published in Background to the Gospel of St. Mark (GA 124), Steiner calls Jahve an indirect revelation of the same Being whom Christ revealed directly. The Hebrew Moon-religion was thus the preparation for the Christian Sun-religion, the night-time reflection of a light not yet risen. Steiner placed this reflection within his picture of history as overlapping cosmic streams, and traced the Moon-religion's post-Christian return in the religion of the Crescent, the Arabism that carried Egyptian and Chaldean wisdom into medieval Europe. The term belongs to Steiner's esoteric Christology and to his account of Jahve himself.
The Moon Religion of Jahve is Rudolf Steiner's name for the ancient Hebrew worship of Jahve, or Jehovah, understood as a religion of reflected light. Just as the Full Moon returns sunlight to the night, the religion of Jahve returned the light of the still-unborn Christ to humanity, preparing the later Christian Sun-religion. Steiner set this picture out in his lectures on the Gospel of St. Mark.
In Steiner's Own Words
If we think of Christ as symbolised by the direct sunlight, we may liken Jahve to sunlight reflected by the Moon and that would represent the exact sense in which the two ideas should be understood. Those who are to some extent conversant with this subject regard the transition from a temporary reflection of Christ in Jahve into Christ Himself just as they think of the difference between sunlight and moonlight: Jahve is an indirect and Christ a direct revelation of the same Being.
What it Means Today
Steiner's Sun-and-Moon image has an exact analogue in the calendars the two religions actually keep. Ancient Hebrew worship of Jahve was timed by the Moon. Each new month opened with Rosh Chodesh, the sighting of the new crescent, and Passover still falls on the fourteenth of Nisan at the full moon, the bright reflected light Steiner pointed to. Early Christianity reoriented its sacred year toward the Sun. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, the bishops detached Easter from the Jewish lunar reckoning and fixed it to the spring equinox, a solar anchor, producing the computus that medieval mathematicians such as the Venerable Bede in his work De temporum ratione of 725 CE laboured to calculate. The calendar history records, in plain liturgical fact, the shift from a Moon-timed faith to a Sun-timed one. Islam then carried the lunar measure forward, keeping a purely lunar calendar whose emblem is the Crescent, exactly the post-Christian re-emergence Steiner described. Thalira synthesis: the move from a lunar to a solar calendar is not merely an administrative reform but the outer signature of an inner change, the same reflected light learning to shine as its own source.
Where to Read More
- Background to the Gospel of St. Mark, GA 124
- Find at SteinerBooks [THALIRA_BLOG_LINKS_PLACEHOLDER]