Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 19:12:34 -0500 
To: FreeUrantia@cuenet.com, UBtalk@Utalk.org 
From: "Larry Mullins" <LAWRENCEOFDENVER@worldnet.att.net> 
Cc: mlt@linkzone.com, Keeler <rkeeler@allwest.net>, Choi <kchoi@iastate.edu>, 
        du Pont <gdupont@isp.fr>, Siegel <msiegel@ctea.com>, 
        Jameson <gjameson@pbtk.com>, LAWRENCEOFDENVER@worldnet.att.net 
Subject: FreeUrantia: A Virtually Unknown, Unpublished, and Inviolate Text... 
 
A Virtually Unknown, Unpublished, and Inviolate Text Of the Urantia Papers -  and Why We Should Stop Bugging the Foundation 
  

Most Urantians do not know that, before the Fellowship ever published their "own" Urantia Book, a Urantian scholar meticulously prepared a perfect text of the Urantia Papers in a two-column format. This scrupulous scholar, Merritt Horn, scanned each page and electronically compared ten or so existing Foundation editions of The Urantia Book with the 1955 original, and found significant differences. He conscientiously analyzed and end-noted about 140 of these modifications, an action which he felt to be an academic requisite for future scholars who study the Revelation. Merritt also created the idea of adapting numbered paragraphs with tiny numerals to allow easier reference. This text cost approximately $100,000 to develop.  

As yet, Merritt's masterfully crafted two-column text of the Urantia Papers has never seen the light of day in conventional book form. The Pathways edition of the Urantia Papers (which is no longer available), is the only traditionally-published text that is both inviolate and also includes all of the 140 endnotes of Merritt Horn. 

When the Fellowship elected to publish the Urantia Papers, they pursued a proprietary and commercial approach very similar to that of Urantia Foundation. The Executive Committee of the Fellowship was offered Merritt's completed text at no cost. They decided to "borrow" Merritt's two-column format and the paragraph numbering system, but simply dumped his endnotes and reset every word - over a million words of type - from scratch. In doing so, they made a few changes of their own - and also seem to have made some errors. (For example, Chris Halverson has pointed out that on page 404 of the Fellowship edition you will read in section 4, paragraph 4, that a near-by sun has contracted and become "sixty thousand times as dense as your sun." However, on page 460 of the current Foundation edition the same sun is "forty thousand times as dense as your sun." Incidentally, the 1955 edition states this number as sixty thousand. In 1967, "someone" at Urantia Foundation decided sixty thousand was incorrect, and changed the number to forty thousand in the second and subsequent editions. Was the original text actually inaccurate? Why was it changed? To untangle this confusing mess, we must consult the endnotes of the inviolate, unpublished text of Merritt Horn. ) 

MERRITT'S FOOTNOTE #17: 

"On page 460: The 1955 edition states "sixty thousand" while the second and subsequent printings have been changed to "forty thousand." Textual consistency does require "forty," as page 459 (Section 4, par. 1) states that our sun is about 1.5 times the density of water, or about .054 pounds per cubic inch, and 40,000 times this is about 2,160 pounds per cubic inch (which is also equivalent to 60,000 times the density of water)." 

The Fellowship published a separate little flyer that they may still mail upon request, and this paper documents their changes to the text, or so they say. Yet, their page 404 contains at least one change they missed. Once the principle of the inviolate text has been broken, we can no longer trust the scribe. We cannot know all of the errors and changes in the Fellowship Edition until a scholar - who is devoted to an authentically inviolate text - scans and compares electronically each page of the publication, a difficult and tedious computer process. Likewise, if you buy a current edition of The Urantia Book as published by Urantia Foundation, you can have no way of knowing for certain what additional changes have been made - until a computer-knowledgeable scholar checks it. Each Foundation edition thus far checked has been different in some way. Again, it is a question of PRINCIPLE: Once the principle of the inviolate text has been broken, no change can be considered minor until examined, because we cannot trust the scribe. 

Until a few years ago, the Foundation party line was simply that there had been no changes in the text. Then, Urantia Foundation finally admitted in a written communication to the faithful that the: "fewer than ten" changes that had been made in the second edition (published in 1967) "might be considered more than minor changes." Urantia Foundation, in conceding this, also reassured readers that the editing (which included changes and deletions of words and numbers) had been made "by those very individuals who were given the responsibility of preparing the original text for publication." But there are two things wrong with this fabrication. 

First of all, the original Contact Commission, according to Urantia Foundation's own history, was given no such editorial latitude with the 1955 text. They were confined to spelling, capitalization and punctuation. Who gave new and sweeping authority to some human or humans in Urantia Foundation in 1967 to make ten or so editorial changes?  

The second thing wrong with this invention is that four of the original team of Contact Commissioners were dead by the time the second edition was prepared. (For a time an apocrypha was circulated that Bill Sadler had stated that the second edition was the "best" version of the Urantia Papers. Yet, Bill Sadler died in November of 1963, four years before its publication!) Only Doc Sadler and Christy were left in 1967. Dr. Sadler was over ninety years old and failing, and Christy was nearly eighty. Who actually authorized changes without footnotes or endnotes? Was it Christy, the last functioning executive of the extinct Contact Commission? Upon whose authority? (We know at least one long-term and esteemed Foundation Trustee was unaware that permanent changes had been made to the 1967 edition of the Book! He stated before his death that only one change was made, and he "made them change it back.")  

Was it possible, since the modifications required would not measurably affect the philosophy of the Urantia Papers, that the aging Christy saw the second edition as an opportunity to correct the errors she (as the designated human scribe) had made during the processes of copying and proofing the original materialized text? And, did she imagine that if she did not annotate with footnotes or endnotes, no one would be the wiser? Could it be that Christy, like many current readers, did not understand the PRINCIPLE of an inviolate text? Did she not understand that once editorial changes were made, the text had been compromised?  

It is easier for me to believe an aging and wayward Christy made the clandestine changes that only a very few were privy to, than it is for me to imagine that five Urantia Foundation Trustees, the keepers of the inviolate text, would conspire together to violate their sacred trust. It is also understandable that this was a rather strange and embarrassing anomaly for future Trustees to deal with.  

(Apocrypha again emerged, and it was whispered in the eighties that Christy had received messages "from Midwayers" authorizing her to correct the apparent errors that readers had discovered and had written the Foundation about. Was Christy also told not to annotate the "corrections?" Was she instructed to lie to readers about them? Did the Midwayers go to great lengths to help conceal the identity of the Contact Personality, only to, over a decade after the connection with the Revelators was broken, communicate "secret messages" to Christy and allow her to tell selected "others" about her new and special status? Or did Christy, encouraged by the incessant adulation of a tiny, cult-like inner circle, simply imagine the "voices"? ) 

We cannot know, and yet we must face realities. Regardless of who did it or why, "land mines" have been inserted by one or more misguided human minds into every copy of The Urantia Book since 1955. We do not have an inviolate Urantia Foundation text in 1998, and we can no longer trust the scribe. The scribe has lied to us. For scholars, serious students, and the future of the Fifth Epochal Revelation, the ramifications of this default are immense. 

For example, J.J. Johnson of Phoenix does outreach by writing famous people and people featured in the media, and giving them information that is pertinent to their discipline - information that J.J. discloses is to be found in the Urantia Papers. In 1995, J.J. spotted an article in the Arizona Newspaper about a scientist who had discovered a new fossil that indicates that animal life began earlier than scientists believe, (as is stated in the Urantia Papers.) J.J. ran down the scientist's address, and wrote him. J.J. referred him to PP 664-671 of the Book. The professor, Mark McMenamin, wrote J.J. back: 

"Dear Mr. Johnson: 

I write in regard to your letter of 28 October 1955. I found fascinating the section of The Urantia Book you recommended. If it was written in 1955, parts of it are strikingly ahead of its time. I could only locate the 1984 edition; can you confirm that pages 664-671 appeared as in the 1955 edition?  

Yours Sincerely, 

Mark McMenamin, Professor of Geology" 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if J.J. could simply write the professor and say the Urantia Foundation is the "Keeper of the Inviolate Text," and certifies that all editorial changes made in the 1955 text are appropriately footnoted or end-noted? In contrast, can you imagine J.J. trying to explain to an academic that: "In later editions 'fewer than ten changes' that 'might be considered more than minor changes' have been made. However, although it is not Urantia Foundation's policy to indicate where these changes occur in the text, they assure us that there were no alterations on the pages in question."? Is a scholar supposed to swallow that? Imagine how the credibility problem will be magnified in 500 years because we simply did not have devoted Keepers of the Text. All we have are fierce and passionate laypersons who are "Controllers of the Copyright."  

However, having written all of this, I believe the time has come to quit bugging these gentlemen of the Foundation about their commercially successful publishing business.  

Here is why: 

I am writing this post because, three weeks ago, in good faith, I sent a complete list of 21 "smoking gun" editorial changes - not typos - along with Merritt's annotations, to all of the Foundation Trustees. As usual, it was like dropping them into a black hole. The only reply was Urantia Foundation's traditional thunderous silence. 

I then had a conversation with a Trustee the other night, and it dawned on me that he honestly doesn't get it the PRINCIPLE of an inviolate text. He is a businessman. He declared that he only hears about an inviolate text "when he is in Boulder." No one else cares, only a few fanatic purists write him about it. Never mind about the Declaration of Trust - he seemed to sincerely believe that only scholars worry about such things as footnotes and end-notes, small editorial changes in words and numbers, a few deleted words, and other such judgmental embellishments. He refers to these editorial decisions as "typos," or typographical errors.  

However, I know he is aware that typos are errors that a proof-reader can detect. Changes such as the removal of the words "in the manger" on page 1317 are not "typos." The revision of words and numbers in paragraph 1 on page 477 could never be made by a proofreader. Even Merritt was baffled by the insertion of "well-nigh" before the word "instantaneous" in paragraph one on page 478. Perhaps - or perhaps not - was the change of "west" to "east" on the last line of page 883 justified, but could it not be annotated? Perhaps the change of "secondary" to "tertiary" on page 413, paragraph 6 was necessary - at least Merritt's endnote explains it clearly. But no one has a clue why the pointless change was made in the last paragraph of page 1363. It read originally "Far to the east they could discern the Jordan valley, and, far beyond, the rocky hills of Moab." In the second and following printings, this was changed to: "Far to the east they could discern the Jordan valley and far beyond lay the rocky hills of Moab." Why make such a gratuitous, pointless alteration in an Epochal Revelation? Is this not simply human dabbling? I could go on and on. Yet, I know this gentleman is aware that these, and several more alterations, are not "typos." 

I began to understand during this informal conversation with a Trustee that these changes simply did not interest him. The publication of the book, to him, seems to be purely a commercial enterprise. From this perspective, there are no important changes in the text, it's good enough for the folks out there. What do they expect for the new bargain low price of twenty-five or thirty bucks anyway, an inviolate text?  

I began to see his point. Why should a commercial enterprise concern itself with such an issue, when people are buying the book anyway? Putting in footnotes and endnotes won't add a nickel to the bottom line. He also said, if you can believe it, that it would not be aesthetically pleasing to use footnotes! I have had about five years of formal art training, have made a living as an illustrator and designer for thirty years, and yet I have no idea what he means when he says a page of type is less aesthetically pleasing when it has a footnote than when it doesn't. I know him well enough that I just couldn't believe his aesthetic sensitivities are so fragile that footnotes offend them. But then, looking into his earnest face, I began to understand. Maybe the truth is that footnotes or end-notes cost money, and take up space, and they don't sell books. These are not socially acceptable reasons for Urantians, so why not just say that footnotes offend the aesthetics of a page? Is this not by such euphemisms and sophistries that promotion and commerce are done in the material world? 

Now I began to see. Perhaps I am the one who has failed to get the point: From the perspective of "good business" The Urantia Book is "close enough" to inviolate to serve as a feasible commercial venture. Who can blame these businessmen, since people buy their current flawed product? This Trustee made me wonder if it is indeed true that the only Urantians who have complained about the corruption of the original text are those who live in Boulder. But I know that Meredith Sprunger and Paul Snider, former Presidents of Urantia Brotherhood, have expressed similar concerns. I thought, perhaps we should poll former Trustees.  

But, on second thought, these current business men-Trustees can read their own Declaration of Trust. They have chosen to ignore the problem they have inherited. The hard truth is that unless - and until - the uncertainty about The Urantia Book text begins to impact sales and profits, they will not listen. So why bother with further dialogue - especially since it is one-sided and they are completely disinterested and unresponsive? 

The Revelation belongs to the people; the Trustees admitted this when they were in Boulder. The people simply must look to someone else to take up the task and privilege of the Declaration of Trust, and to assume the responsibility of being the Keeper of the Text. Someone else, who is less concerned about the bottom line than this single principle:  

WE URANTIANS MUST BE ABLE TO TRUST THE SCRIBE OR WE URANTIANS DO NOT HAVE AN EPOCHAL REVELATION AT ALL.  

We have a great, inspiring book, perhaps the most amazing book ever published. Urantia Foundation has a great "product" to sell. But we do not have an authentic Epochal Revelation (see 1109, par 4) until a trustworthy and dedicated Urantian scribe assumes the now abandoned role of Keeper of the Inviolate Text. 

After fifty or so years of arduous effort and sacrifice, the Contact Commission provided us a Book in 1955 that is as perfect as these human beings could make it. They did remarkably well, considering that - to bring the text into the evolutionary mainstream, they were required to copy the text from the superhumanly-authored and materialized original manuscript. Then the Contact Commissioners were compelled to destroy the original, and subsequently to prepare type-set pages from the copy - which were also destroyed as instructed.  

This quest to produce the best possible text by the early pioneers has now been abandoned. The Urantia Book is no longer as perfect as the Trustees can make it. The intended establishment of a continuous lineage of inviolate text from 1955 onward into perpetuity has been broken forever, and we can no longer trust the scribe - neither his "product," nor his statements about his product.  

Under these conditions, is it any wonder that so many Urantians feel compelled to take the responsibility for the protection of THEIR Revelation into their own hands? 

Much Love, 

LARRY MULLINS