The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

0 the gospel of hellas
fructifying the soul with the content of the world. Autos is the word for self, “I.”
The Greeks, like the Romans, did not yet use the word “I” as a personal pronoun.
Yet in autos we have the objective nature of the I, as revealed by the cosmos
from without, not yet the inner voice of the daimon or conscience within the
soul. “Know thyself ” was an Apollonian challenge and the double vowel au
which is in the word autos was considered in the mysteries as corresponding to
the sun. Thus Gnothi s’auton, this Delphic word of the sun-god, Apollo, helped
to enkindle the light of self-knowledge.
“Ariston metron” (“The best of all is measure”) was a saying of Kleobulus,
one of the seven sages of Hellas. Aristos means the best in the sense of beautiful
and good. The vowels themselves reveal harmony, following as they do the
sequence of the alphabet A-I-O. In aristokratos (aristo, best; kratos, force) the
ideal of balance and equilibrium is revealed.
This sentence, “Ariston metron,” may be said to express the character of the
whole of the Greek tongue. For the desire for measure lived within those who
spoke thinking and thought speaking, a desire for equilibrium and moderation
so fundamental that these qualities became embodied in the language itself.
Thus, Greek was peculiarly well adapted to express the interplay between
spirit and nature, which accounts for the fact that most of the New Testament
was originally written in this tongue. The cosmopolitan language of Hellenism,
the Koine, was the most suitable seedbed for that spirituality through which
the sacredness of the events of Palestine could be expressed in words without
losing the life and the soul of their content.
In no other language, for instance, was the saying of Christ more apparent
from the wording itself than in the Greek original: “I am the resurrection and the
life” (“Ego eimi he anastasis kai he zoe,” Saint John 2:25). Anastasis (resurrection)
is derived from anistemi (to get up), a word of the Dionysian class of verbs
emphasizing the will in rising, raising. Anastasis is full of the alpha vowel of
awe and wonder, those portals of the soul to the higher world. Zoe is life and
light. There was an ancient inscription in which the words zoe (life) and phos
(light) were encircled by the omega which the words equally shared. Zoe as life
and light revealed the Apollonian gifts to the world. Anastasis was the gift of
Dionysus, through whom we have the erect walking and moving, speaking and