[GohJHM9k]

dear ewhaz,
i think it is the interpretation of the bible that is problematic. wanted to pass on this from matherne review on smith's "david's question":
http://www.doyletics.com
"the final term to be dealt with before the title question "what is man?" is blood. what is this red liquid that flows in our arteries and veins, this "life's blood" which we know that we can not live without? smith's chapter blood spans almost one hundred pages, which is what he means when he suggests we "pause and reflect deeply" in the quoted passage below. one can only read the entire corpus of steiner's written work to get more information than that which smith has extracted for us on the subject of "blood" in his penultimate chapter. certainly reading the brief summary of his material on blood in this review will not suffice.

[page 317] because warm blood, like the fire it nurtures, is, in a very real sense, where heaven and earth meet -- the agent of the soul, the patron of the heart, the altar upon which the soul and the christ are wed -- we dare not deal with it too lightly and miss its immense significance. we would be presumptuous to believe we here lay bare all of its wonderful mysteries. but rudolf steiner has made available such a wealth of insight on the subject that we must not be remiss in our undertaking out of the desire for an unjustifiable brevity. so let us here pause and reflect deeply." ....

also,
"how have things changed for humanity since the mystery of golgotha during which the blood of the living christ flowed into the earth to remain there in etherized form for all time? it has become possible for "the activity of the etheric blood of christ to flow together with the streaming from below upward, from heart to head." but this union of flowing does not happen automatically, it requires conscious cooperation by the individual. [the passage below is from reappearance of christ in the etheric by rudolf steiner.]....

smith ends the blood chapter by explaining how the second coming of christ -- when "he will come again in glory," a clear reference to a re-appearance in a glorified or etheric body -- has occurred already in the 20th century, to those who have "unfolded true understanding".

[page 389] we have now reached the moment in time when the etheric christ enters into the life of the earth and will become visible, at first to a small number of people, through a natural clairvoyance. then in the course of the next 3,000 years, he will become visible to greater and greater numbers of people."

i did find the "blood" chapter especially worthwhile.
http://www.bibleandanthroposophy.com

what you wrote about jesus having been a good teacher, reminds me of words c.s. lewis wrote:
"but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. he has not left that open to us. he did not intend to."
fr "mere christianity".
can echo what matherne shared:
"if i may paraphrase slightly what smith said in his preamble to blood on page 317 (see above), "we would be presumptuous to believe that we here lay bare all of the mysteries of the world." in this review, we have looked briefly at only some of the points that smith raised, clarified, and annotated in his research into david's question of "what is man?" if someone wishes to pause and reflect deeply into the matters i have raised here, certainly a complete study of smith's book is a minimum investment of time and money that one should make. if someone would take a personal meditative journey into the bible to investigate "what is man?", smith's book would certainly be a useful roadmap to take along on that journey."
gained a much better understanding of what it might mean to be "washed in the blood of the lamb". nina