© 2002 Jean Royer
© 2002 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
[Warning: This reflection cannot be considered as an attack on the Foundation, but rather as a historical regret in line with the remark made in 1942 by the revelation commission to the contact commission which said: You have not done enough to protect your name…] Jean Royer
Ah! If only the Revelation Commission and the Foundation that came after had known Zamenhof, or at least had read his ‘Fundamento’, that might have saved us a lot of trouble. What connection can be established between the basis of an artificial language and The Urantia Book? Without doubt more than it seems at first glance.
Before the first Esperanto Congress, which was to be held in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1905, Zamenhof wanted to give away the language he had invented to future users, much like the midwayers gave away revelation to humans. However, he had already become aware that a certain number of people would want to distinguish themselves by bringing what they considered to be ‘improvements’, much like, even before the publication of the Blue Book, a certain number of people sought to introduce certain notions that were dear to them and that they considered rejected by Bill Sadler. This is why, subject to approval by the Congress, Zamenhof proposed his Fundamento (the basis of the language) with an introduction of only 6 pages, in which he wrote that “no person, no society had the right to make the slightest arbitrarily change.” “The Fundamento must remain rigorously intangible.” Doesn’t this remind you of the Foundation’s duty to keep the text of the Urantia Book “inviolate”? But where Zamenhof has a stroke of genius is that he adds: “even with its errors.” Indeed, from that time on he was aware that some of the translations he had given, in five languages, were erroneous. It was indeed his own work, but he refused to modify the original text, already published for several years, so as not to open the door to other more or less unwelcome changes. This in no way prevents the development and progression of the language, but everyone can know the original version at any time. If such a precaution had been taken by the Foundation, we would have today the original version of The Urantia Book, certainly with some minor imperfections, but above all, no one could attempt to make the slightest change to the original version and certainly not to publish, in English, a truncated book.
But we can’t rewrite history, can we?
Jean Royer