Standard Reference Text Committee

Progress Report – General Council Meeting – January 26, 2008

The Standard Reference Text (SRT) Committee was formed to carefully consider the history of all instances of change in all editions of The Urantia Book since the original 1955 printing, and to suggest a preferred usage in each instance, thereby compiling a suggested Standard Reference Text for use in printings going forward.  The Committee is comprised equally of three members from the Urantia Book Fellowship (Merritt Horn and Nancy Johnson who were key contributors in the production of the Uversa Press editions, and Marvin Gawryn, Liaison Committee Chair) and three members from Urantia Foundation (Jay Peregrin, Marilynn Kulieke and Seppo Kanerva, the SRT Committee Chair).

The SRT Committee has made satisfying progress since its formation in June, 2007.  We have created a comprehensive spreadsheet tracking all changes (311 in all) in an interactive web based format on Google.docs, categorized the changes into types of change (29 types in all) from the simplest (typographical, punctuation, spelling etc.) to the most substantive, and have begun cataloguing our opinions on each change.  We plan a meeting, hopefully at next summer’s IC, to discuss our results and reach consensus on the many changes requiring a fuller discussion.  The end result of the Committee’s work will be a suggested standard, which publishers of the text may consult in preparing future printings of the English original as well as translations.