The Urantia Book, also known as The Urantia Papers or The Fifth Revelation, is a spiritual, theological and philosophical book about God, man, religion, philosophy and destiny. It was written between 1922 and 1939 and first published in the United States in 1955 by the Urantia Foundation, a non-profit foundation created expressly to disseminate the work. The text itself indicates that it has been written directly by celestial creatures — who occasionally speak in the first person at the end of some documents — using a sleeping human being as a way of contact.
Origin
The word Urantia comes from The Urantia Book, and is the name given to our planet Earth in it. Urantian are therefore all the inhabitants of our planet, although sometimes there are those who mistakenly use this term to refer to a reader of the book or to some movement inspired by it.
The Urantia Book was published without the name of a human author. In the early 1920s Dr. William S. Sadler, a prestigious Chicago psychiatrist, coordinated a forum that "as time passed, became a cosmopolitan gathering consisting of professional men and women —doctors, lawyers, dentists, ministers, teachers— together with individuals from all walks of life. Farmers, housewives, secretaries, office workers, and common laborers". [1] This forum generated the contact commission that received the Urantia documents.
The Urantia Foundation, formed from that forum, published The Urantia Book for the first time in 1955 in the United States and in English; since then the book has been translated into German, Korean, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Swedish [2] and translations into Chinese, Czech, Persian, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese and Urdu are underway. [3] In a 2001 court decision, upheld on appeal in 2003, the Foundation lost copyright to the English edition [4] so the text of the original edition is, since then, in the public domain. Full copies of the book are available free of charge on the Internet in digital format, in all languages for which translations have already been completed. [5] The publication, translation and defense of the copyright of the translations still corresponds to Urantia Foundation based in Chicago (Illinois, United States).
At present the International Urantia Association (AIU) and the Urantia Fellowship (Urantia Brotherhood) are dedicated to coordinating groups of readers around the world. The Urantia Fellowship always operated independently of Urantia Foundation but the AIU depended on it until 2004 and today it defines itself as interdependent of Urantia Foundation. Neither of these organizations nor the International Urantia Association or the Urantia Fellowship, nor the Urantia Foundation, makes any interpretation of the text, they only limit themselves to coordinating and promoting the groups of readers the first and translate, distribute and ensure the integrity of the text the second.
Revelation
The Urantia Book is a heavenly revelation, more exactly the fifth revelation that marks an epoch in the history of the planet, which is why it is also often called The fifth Revelation. The other revelations that have marked an epoch in planetary evolution are the following:[6]
- The first revelation was half a million years ago, after the appearance of the six colored races, when the Planetary Prince of Urantia, called Caligastia, founded a city in the Middle East —called Dalamatia— for the purpose of instructing primitive man in agriculture, manufacturing and above all, in the religious truth of the existence of a single God origin of all that exists. For three hundred thousand years it worked perfectly, but with Lucifer's rebellion and Caligastia's adherence to his cause the plan was interrupted and many of the social advances achieved were reversed by subsequent confusion. [7]
- The second revelation took place thirty-seven thousand years ago when Adam and Eve, two beings of the order of the Material Sons, arrived on Urantia and settled in an area called Eden, with the mission of improving genetic quality of the human races through their interbreeding with their progeny and culturally uplifting the human race with an expanded revelation of religious truth. This did not come to fruition because one hundred and seventeen years after her arrival Eve fell into the error of procreating with a human, contravening the divine indication that only her progeny could proceed in this way once she had reached one million individuals. This error of Eve, and the unconditional decision of Adam to accompany his consort in any destination that corresponded to him due to his error, caused both of them to lose their condition of immortality and that four centuries after the fault they died of old age. [8]
- The third revelation was made by Machiventa Melchizedek who appeared in Palestine about four thousand years ago with the purpose of keeping monotheism alive because it was going backwards all over the planet and he agreed with Abraham that if he and his descendants kept faith in a monotheistic god, an envoy from on high would be born from his people. [9]
- The fourth revelation was made by Jesus of Nazareth with the dual purpose of revealing the personality of God to man —acting on each occasion as God himself would have acted if he had been here— and of revealing to the universe the personality of a human creature consecrated to fulfill the will of God. [10]
- The fifth revelation is The Urantia Book properly.
Content
The book is divided into a prologue and four parts:
- Foreword
Detailed description of the terms and concepts that are used throughout the book; some concepts are redefined in a very concrete way to specify their meaning throughout the book —e.g. God: Personal manifestation of the deity; Divinity: Measure of similarity to deity; Deity: Creator and sustaining entity of the universe—, others need a complete definition because they originate from The Urantia Book —e.g.: Absonite, Trioity, Majeston, Mota, Morontia, etc.—
- Part One: The central universe and the superuniverses
This first part describes the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, the Paradise Trinity, the Isle of Paradise, the highest personalities of the universal administration, the central universe of Havona and the superuniverses, the orders of spiritual ministers —the seraphic hosts of the Central Universe and the Superuniverses— and the Corps of the Finality, among other subjects.
- Second Part: The local universe
It is described the formation and creation of the local universe, the Sons of God of the Local Universes, the Mother Spirit of the Local Universe, the implantation of life —the Life Carriers—, the seraphic hosts of the Local Universes, the planetary Adams and Eves, the inhabited worlds, the planetary epochs, the Lucifer rebellion and the universal Unity, among other topics.
- Part Three: The History of Urantia
It describes the history of planet Earth from before the solar system was formed to the time of Jesus of Nazareth, includes a geological, sociological and cultural analysis of evolution. Some titles are: The Origin of Urantia, The Establishment of Life on Urantia, The First Human Family, The Evolutionary Races of Color, The Overcontrol of Evolution, The Planetary Rebellion, Primitive Human Institutions, Development of the State, The Default of Adam and Eve, The Midway Creatures, The evolution of marriage, The origins of Worship, The evolution of the God Concept Among the Hebrews, Deity and reality, Origin and Nature of Thought Adjusters, Personality Survival and The Supreme Being, among others.
- Part Four: The Life and Teachings of Jesus
Complete and detailed account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings, from before he was born to after he died, year by year. This story occupies a third of the total pages of the book, the three previous parts make up the conceptual framework where the life of Jesus must be interpreted. It includes titles such as: Birth and Infancy of Jesus, The Adolescent Years, The Transition Years, John the Baptist, Baptism and the Forty Days, The Twelve Apostles, The Mount of Transfiguration, The Resurrection of Lazarus, The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus, The Crucifixion, The Time of the Tomb, The Resurrection, Morontia Appearances of Jesus, Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth and The Faith of Jesus, among others.
Papers
To access the papers, you can search one of these indexes:
References
- ↑ Urantia Foundation - History of the Urantia movement
- ↑ Urantia Foundation - Translations completed
- ↑ Urantia Foundation - Translations in process
- ↑ Michael Foundation, Inc. v. Urantia Foundation v. Harry McMullan, III (US Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit March 11, 2003) (in English)
- ↑ Urantia Foundation - Translations of Urantia Book
- ↑ UB 92:4.1
- ↑ UB 66
- ↑ UB 74
- ↑ UB 93
- ↑ UB 120