Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 121
THE TIMES OF MICHAE'S BESTOWAL
1. Jesus did not come to this world during an age of spiritual decadence; at the time of his birth Urantia was experiencing such a revival of spiritual thinking and religious living as it had not known in all its previous post‑Adamic history nor has experienced in any era since.
2. When Jesus was born, the entire Mediterranean world was a unified empire. Good roads, for the first time in the world's history, interconnected many major centers. The seas were cleared of pirates, and a great era of trade and travel was rapidly advancing. Europe did not again enjoy another such period of travel and trade until the nineteenth century after Christ.
3. Many of the great highways joining the nations of antiquity passed through Palestine, which thus became the meeting place, or crossroads, of three continents ... And more than half of this caravan traffic passed through or near the little town of Nazareth in Galilee.
4. Greece provided a language and a culture, Rome built the roads and unified an empire, but the dispersion of the Jews, with their more than two hundred synagogues and well organized religious communities scattered hither and yon throughout the Roman world, provided the cultural centers in which the new gospel of the kingdom of heaven found initial reception, and from which it subsequently spread to the uttermost parts of the world.
5. Each Jewish synagogue tolerated a fringe of gentile believers, "devout" or "God‑fearing" men, and it was among this fringe of proselytes that Paul made the bulk of his early converts to Christianity... In Antioch Paul's disciples were first called "Christians."
6. The Galileans were not regarded with full favor by the Jerusalem religious leaders and rabbinical teachers. Galilee was more gentile than Jewish when Jesus was born.
7. In the first century after Christ the society of the Mediterranean world consisted of five well‑defined strata:
1. The aristocracy
2. The business groups
3. The small middle class. Although this group was indeed small, it was very influential and provided the moral backbone of the early Christian church...
4. The free proletariat
5. The slaves ... The early Christian church was largely composed of the lower classes and these slaves.8. The gentile world was then dominated by four great philosophies ...
1. The Epicurean. This school of thought was dedicated to the pursuit of happiness. The better Epicureans were not given to sensual excesses ...
2. The Stoic. Stoicism was the superior philosophy of the better classes ... Stoicism ascended to a sublime morality, ideals never since transcended by any purely human system of philosophy... Its followers sought to attune their minds to the harmony of the Universal Mind, but they failed to envisage themselves as the children of a loving Father...
3. The Cynic. Although the Cynics traced their philosophy to Diogenes of Athens, they derived much of their doctrine from the remnants of the teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek... In the fields and in the market places they continually preached their doctrine that "man could save himself if he would." They preached simplicity and virtue and urged men to meet death fearlessly ...
4. The Skeptic ... Skepticism asserted that knowledge was fallacious, and that conviction and assurance were impossible...These philosophies were semireligious; they were often invigorating, ethical, and ennobling but were usually above the common people.9. In the times of Jesus the religions of the Occident included..
1. The pagan cults. These were a combination of Hellenic and Latin mythology, patriotism, and tradition.
2. Emperor worship ...
3. Astrology ...
4. The mystery religions. Upon such a spiritually hungry world a flood of mystery cults had broken, new and strange religions from the Levant, which had enamored the common people and had promised them individual salvation.10. The mystery religions spelled the end of national beliefs and resulted in the birth of the numerous personal cults. The mysteries were many but were all characterized by:
1. Some mythical legend...
2. The mysteries were nonnational and interracial...
3. They were, in their services, characterized by elaborate ceremonies of initiation and impressive sacraments of worship ...
4. But no matter what the nature of their ceremonies or the degree of their excesses, these mysteries invariably promised their devotees salvation.The popularity of the mysteries reveals man's quest for survival, thus portraying a real hunger and thirst for personal religion and individual righteousness.
11. Paul's compromise of Jesus' teachings (Christianity) was superior to the best in the mysteries in that:
1. Paul taught a moral redemption, an ethical salvation ...
2. Christianity presented a religion which grappled with final solutions of the human problem...
3. The mysteries were built upon myths. Christianity, as Paul preached it, was founded; upon a historic fact: the bestowal of Michael, the Son of God, upon mankind.12. In the days of Jesus three languages prevailed in Palestine: The common people spoke some dialect of Aramaic; the priests and rabbis spoke Hebrew; the educated classes and the better strata of Jews in general spoke Greek ... The renaissance of Judaism dates from the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. This was a vital influence which later determined the drift of Paul's Christian cult toward the West instead of toward the East.
13. Philo of Alexandria proceeded to harmonize and systemize Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology into a compact and fairly consistent system of religious belief and practice. And it was this later teaching of combined Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology that prevailed in Palestine when Jesus lived and taught, and which Paul utilized as the foundation on which to build his more advanced and enlightening cult of Christianity.
14. Philo was a great teacher; not since Moses had there lived a man who exerted such a, profound influence on the ethical and religious thought of the Occidental world. In the matter of the combination of the better elements in contemporaneous systems of ethical and religious teachings, there have been seven outstanding human teachers; Sethard, Moses, Zoroaster, Lao‑tse, Buddha., Philo, and Paul.
15. Paul's theory of original sin, the doctrines of hereditary guilt and innate evil and redemption there from, was partially Mithraic in origin, having little in common with Hebrew theology, Philo's philosophy, or Jesus' teachings. Some phases of Paul's teachings regarding original sin and the atonement were original with himself.
16. By the times of Jesus the Jews ... looked upon all gentile ways with utter contempt. They worshiped the letter of the law and indulged a form of self‑righteousness based upon the false pride of descent...The scribes, the Pharisees, and the priesthood held the Jews in a terrible bondage of ritualism and legalism ... These circumstances rendered it impossible for the Jews to fulfill their divine destiny as messengers of the new gospel of religious freedom and spiritual liberty ... But when the Jewish religion of good works and slavery to law fell victim to the stagnation of traditionalistic inertia, the motion of religious evolution passed westward to the European peoples.
17. The gospel of Jesus, as it was embodied in Paul's cult of Antioch Christianity, became blended with the following teachings:
1. The philosophic reasoning of the Greek proselytes to Judaism, including some of their concepts of the eternal life.
2. The appealing teachings of the prevailing mystery cults, especially the Mithraic doctrines of redemption, atonement, and salvation by the sacrifice made by some god.
3. The sturdy morality of the established Jewish religion.
18. 1. The Gospel of Mark. John Mark wrote the earliest (excepting the notes of Andrew),, briefest, and most simple record of Jesus' life ... his record is in reality the Gospel according to Simon Peter ... The Gospel was completed near the end of A.D. 68 ... This record by Mark, in conjunction with Andrew's and Matthew’s notes, was the written basis of all subsequent Gospel narratives which sought to portray the life and teachings of Jesus.
19. 2. The Gospel of Matthew. The so‑called Gospel according to Matthew is the record of the Master's life which was written for the edification of Jewish Christians ... The Apostle Matthew did not write this Gospel. It was written by Isador, one of his disciples, who had as a help in his work not only Matthew's personal remembrance of these events but also a certain record which the latter had made of the sayings of Jesus directly after the crucifixion. This record by Matthew was written in Aramaic; Isador wrote in Greek ... In the year 71, while living at Pella, Isador wrote the Gospel according to Matthew. He also had with him the first four fifths of Mark's narrative.
20. 3. The Gospel by Luke. Luke, the physician of Antioch in Pisidia, was a gentile convert of Paul...Luke wrote in the year 82 in Achaia ... As material for the compilation of his Gospel, Luke first depended upon the story of Jesus' life as Paul had related it to him ... He not only interviewed scores of eyewitnesses to the numerous episodes of Jesus' life which he records, but he also had with him a copy of Mark's Gospel ... Isador's narrative, and a brief record made in the year A.D. 78 at Antioch by a believer named Cedes.
21.4. The Gospel of John ... when this record was made, John had the other Gospels, and he saw that much had been omitted; accordingly, in the year A.D. 101 he encouraged his associate, Nathan, a Greek Jew from Caesarea, to begin the writing. John supplied his material from memory arid by reference to the three records already in existence...The Epistle known as "First John" was written by John himself as a covering letter for the work which Nathan executed under his direction.
22. (Acknowledgement: In carrying out my commission (a Urantia Midwayer) to restate the teachings and retell the doings of Jesus of Nazareth, I have drawn freely upon all sources of record and planetary information ... As far as possible I have derived my information from purely human sources. Only when such sources failed, have I resorted to those records which are superhuman ... The memoranda which I have collected ... embrace thought gems and superior concepts of Jesus' teachings assembled from more than two thousand human beings, who have lived on earth from the days of Jesus down to the time of the inditing of these revelations, more correctly restatements ... In many ways I have served more as a collector and editor than as an original narrator.)
Discussion Questions
1. Is the increased interest in spiritual phenomena today similar to the spiritual dynamics in the world at the time of the coming of Jesus?
2. Just as the European civilization was unified at the time of Jesus, is the growing unity of our world today a prelude to the spread of the Fifth Epochal Revelation?
3. Just as the spread of synagogues throughout the Roman world afforded an aegis for the spread of the Gospel, is the world wide spread of Christianity a means for the spread of the Fifth Epochal Revelation?
4. What is the dominant philosophy of the twentieth and twenty-first century world?
5. What are the sources striving to overcome Paul’s erroneous doctrines of atonement and hereditary guilt?
6. How does society overcome legalism and dogmatism?
7. What do you think of the candid statement of sources used by the midwayers in restating the life and teachings of Jesus?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship