The Fifth Gospel lectures by Rudolf Steiner describe events in the life of Jesus that are not recorded in the traditional four biblical Gospels.

From his clairvoyant reading of the Akashic Record – the cosmic memory of all events, actions, and thoughts – Rudolf Steiner was able to speak of aspects of the life of Jesus Christ that are not contained in the four biblical Gospels. The original four gospels having also come by way of spiritual revelation, this research can truly be spoken of as a “fifth gospel”.

After an intense inner struggle to verify the exact nature of these events, and checking the results of his research, Steiner describes many detailed episodes from the Akashic Record. He speaks of some of Jesus’ more profound and deeply moving experiences in young adulthood prior to the Baptism, including details  on his relationship with the community of the Essenes, Jesus’ clairvoyant experiences of the now decadent pagan and Jewish religious practices and his painful awareness of the spiritual estrangement of humanity through the loss of direct experience of the spiritual world.  He also describes how ordinary people experienced this unique young man in his travels as a journeyman carpenter and the profound effect he had on people wherever he went. These moving descriptions bring the reader much closer to the very human element of Jesus and depict the crisis of humanity in such a deeply felt way, that his further descriptions of the Incarnation at the Baptism by John convey incisively the importance of the Mystery of Golgotha for humanity.

Steiner states that divulging such spiritual research is intensely difficult owing to the prevailing prejudices of our time, but that “it was absolutely essential that knowledge of such facts should be brought to Earth evolution at the present time.”

This edition has been retranslated and features six lectures that have never before been published in English.

See also:

• According to Matthew
• The Gospel of St. Mark
• Background to the Gospel of St. Mark
• According to Luke
• The Gospel of John
• The Gospel of St. John and Its Relation to the Other Gospels