One of the wonderful experiences of my Waldorf teacher training was in a comfy living room, with a group of friends, reading aloud Rudolf Steiner’s Fifth Gospel transcripts, round-robin style, a paragraph at a time. We read a chapter each night over the 12 Days of Christmas. If you've done this, maybe you also felt the pull to draw closer to this material. I certainly did. The object of the present volume is to increase enjoyment for fans of the original lecture transcripts and for use in read-aloud study groups over end-of-year holidays. Dr. Steiner’s aim was to update the biography of Jesus of Nazareth, in light of the expanded psychological understanding of karma and reincarnation flourishing in the West between 1880 and 1920. The imaginative capacity of humankind, our increased ability to process metaphor, demonstrated by Depth Psychology and Carl Jung, made possible this portrait of Jesus of Nazareth and what he transformed into. RS's Fifth Gospel remains the most psychologically astute portrait of Jesus of Nazareth this author is aware of. An unexpected function of this material is it can support people who have lost the thread of connection with their own internal Christ spark, our immortal-eternal soul. Steiner’s Fifth Gospel is an opportunity to pick up the thread of their own connection again. RS’s ideas can be very healing to many conventional ideas about Jesus of Nazareth. What Steiner found in the Akashic Records, regarding the life of Jesus of Nazareth, was a series of “story book images.” These are apparently quite closely and faithfully approximated by both children's Sunday School images of the life of Christ; and also by, traditional stained glass windows of the Stations of the Cross. If you know him, you won't be surprised to hear Steiner dove into and behind these images to penetrate their inner reality; and then, articulate it in modern langauge for modern minds. Steiner's verbatim lecture transcripts of his investigations were published in a book called The Fifth Gospel, but his basic clairvoyant research was never compiled nor edited; nor, was any attention paid to building a mood. Several additional unpublished lecture transcripts, in typescript form, including RS’s own lecture notes exist and may still be available to public from specialized libraries. ALL these are here collated into a single chronological narrative in Rudolf Steiner's Fifth Gospel In Story Form. Supporting and bridging material to the narrative is drawn from Emil Bock’s The Three Years to fill in some gaps. Topics include: Inner experience of the disciples at Pentecost. The two Jesus children, tradition of and evidence for. Contribution of the Buddha to the Luke Jesus child. The shepherds see the astral body of Buddha. PS: If you respond to this book, the rest of Emil Bock's books may also be of interest.