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Urantia Book Authorship--Other Aspects
Besides the inclusion of certain prophetic information in the Urantia Papers and, more importantly, the remarkable quality of their presentation, are there other ways by which readers may find confirmation in their minds that the authors were superhuman?
At least for Part 4, "The Life of Jesus," in examining the presentation we can ask a question: "Would a human author do that?"--meaning would a human author go to the trouble of doing something or would a human author make such a claim.?
Part 4 is packed with archaeological and anthropological detail--a multitude of place names, names of people, dates of events, etc., that can be checked for accuracy. It could have been written without this detail and the story of Jesus would have lost little in the telling. So why did the author(s) load themselves with the necessity for so much tedious research to make sure they did not err in their presentation? Of course, if authorship really was superhuman, it is possible that no additional work load was incurred. But for human authors writing in the 20th century, the amount of detail requiring research was large indeed.
Lots of examples are cited in a booklet, "Science, Anthropology, and Archaeology in The Urantia Book" which is available (free) at addresses given on our front page. One such example is on p. 1737 when Jesus was visiting Tyre in Phoenicia, "the doors of the Melkarth temple were opened to him."
Who or what was Melkarth? The name is not mentioned in the Bible nor in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, the most authoritative encyclopedia of its class that was available at the beginning of this century. Further research indicates that the Greek historian, Herodotus (born about 484 BC), was the main ancient authority. Melkarth (Melqart, Melkart), was a major Phoenician god. It appears that it was customary in biblical times for many cities in that region of the world to have the patronage of their own friendly god. Each god received the general title of Baal. Thus Melkarth was Baal for the city of Tyre.
Reading on to p. 1746, after Jesus and the apostles had returned to the area around the Sea of Galilee, they journeyed to Caesarea-Philippi and were in the vicinity of the Waters of Merom when they paused for lunch, and seated themselves under the mulberry trees.
Who knew that mulberry trees grew in this area 2000 years ago? Were these not the trees that supported the vast silk industry that was the monopoly of China? It took some hunting down but yes, there was a silk industry in Syria that utilized the leaves of the native mulberry trees growing in its forested areas.
Part 4 is loaded with this kind of information. But for me, even more loaded is this following passage:
From this time on a new note appeared in the Master's message. Henceforth his one ideal of living was the revelation of the Father, while his one idea in teaching was to present to his universe the personification of that supreme wisdom which can only be comprehended by living it. He came that we all might have life and have it more abundantly. (1749)
The author of Part 4 still had 250 pages to write, and here is telling us that for the remainder of the story of Jesus' life, a revelation of the nature of God will be provided that will not be only for lowly and retarded Urantians but will also be for the edification of the whole of Jesus' vast universe--almost four million inhabited planets. And, says the author, the component of the life and teachings of Jesus that is to be described will be the personification of supreme wisdom. Even more remarkably, the author succeeds with these aims.
Could there have been a human being so egotistical, so arrogant, so conceited, so pretentious, so megalomaniacal as to believe that he/she had the ability and competence to reveal the true nature of the Almighty God who is the personification of extreme wisdom? And then doing it. I do not believe so.
KTG
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