Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 95
THE MELCHIZEDEK TEACHINGS IN THE LEVANT
1. By 2000 B.C. the religions of Mesopotamia had just about lost the teachings of the Sethites...But the custom of the early Adamite peoples in honoring the seventh day of the week never completely disappeared in Mesopotamia. Only, during the Melchizedek era, the seventh day was regarded as the worst of bad luck. It was taboo‑ridden; it was unlawful to go on a journey, cook food, or make a fire on the evil seventh day. The Jews carried back to Palestine many of the Mesopotamian taboos which they had found resting on the Babylonian observance of the seventh day, the Shabattum.
2. Although the Salem teachers did much to refine and uplift the religions of Mesopotamia, they did not succeed in bringing the various peoples to the permanent recognition of one God...Never did the Salem teachers fully overcome the popularity of Ishtar, the mother of gods and the spirit of sex fertility.
3. Melchizedek had warned his followers to teach about the one God, the Father and Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of divine favor through faith alone. But it has often been the error of the teachers of new truth to attempt too much, to attempt to supplant slow evolution by sudden revolution. The Melchizedek missionaries...became entangled in the apparently worthy cause of reforming the mores, and thus was their great mission side‑tracked and virtually lost in frustration and oblivion.
4. It was the Salem missionaries of the period following the rejection of their teaching who wrote many of the Old Testament Psalms ...The Book of Job is a fairly good reflection of the teachings of the Salem school at Kish and throughout Mesopotamia.
5. The original Melchizedek teachings really took their deepest root in Egypt, from where they subsequently spread to Europe... As India in those days harbored the highest mixture of the world races, so Egypt fostered the most thoroughly blended type of religious philosophy to be found on Urantia.
6. The Egyptians believed that preservation of the body facilitated one's passage through the future life ...The Egyptians long believed that the stars twinkling in the night sky represented the survival of the souls of the worthy dead; other survivors they thought were absorbed into the sun. During a certain period, solar veneration became a species of ancestor worship. The sloping entrance passage of the great pyramid pointed directly toward the Pole Star so that the soul of the king, when emerging from the tomb, could go straight to the stationary and established constellations of the fixed stars, the supposed abode of the kings.
7. Notwithstanding the importation of much truth and culture of Andite origin, there evolved in Egypt more of moral culture as a purely human development than appeared by similar natural techniques in any other circumscribed area prior to the bestowal of Michael... Thousands of years before the Salem gospel penetrated to Egypt, its moral leaders taught justice, fairness, and the avoidance of avarice ...They taught gentleness, moderation, and discretion .,,Of all the purely human religions of Urantia none ever surpassed the social ideals and the moral grandeur of this onetime humanism of the Nile valley.
8. Egypt was intellectual and moral but not overly spiritual. In six thousand years only four great prophets arose among the Egyptians. Amenemope they followed for a season; Okhban they murdered; Ikhnaton they accepted but half‑heartedly for one short generation; Moses they rejected. Again was it political rather than religious circumstances that made it easy for Abraham and, later on, for Joseph to exert great influence throughout Egypt in behalf of the Salem teachings of one God.
9. Amenemope taught that riches and fortune were the gift of God, and this concept thoroughly colored the later appearing Hebrew philosophy. This noble teacher believed that God-consciousness was the determining factor in all conduct; that every moment should be lived in the realization of the presence of, and responsibility to, God ...His teachings, translated into Hebrew, determined the philosophy of the Old Testament Book of Proverbs. Translated into Greek, they gave color to all subsequent Hellenic religious philosophy.
10. Since the disappearance of Melchizedek in the flesh, no human being up to that time had possessed such an amazingly clear concept of the revealed religion of Salem as Ikhnaton. In some respects this young Egyptian king is one of the most remarkable persons in human history.
11. Moses, the greatest character between Melchizedek and Jesus, was the joint gift to the world of the Hebrew race and the Egyptian royal family; and had Ikhnaton possessed the versatility and ability of Moses, had he manifested a political genius to match his surprising religious leadership, then would Egypt have become the great monotheistic nation of that age; and if this had happened, it is barely possible that Jesus might have lived the greater portion of his mortal life in Egypt.
12. Never in all history did any king so methodically proceed to swing a whole nation from polytheism to monotheism as did this extraordinary Ikhnaton…but he went too fast; he built too much, more than could stand when he was gone.
13. This young teacher‑king was a prolific writer, being author of the exposition entitled "The One God," a book of thirty‑one chapters, which the priests, when returned to power, utterly destroyed. Ikhnaton also wrote one hundred and thirty‑seven hymns, twelve of which are now preserved in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, credited to Hebrew authorship.
14. The fatal weakness of Ikhnaton's gospel was its greatest truth, the teaching that Aton was not only the creator of Egypt but also of the "whole world, man and beasts, and all the foreign lands, even Syria and Kush, besides this land of Egypt. He sets all in their place and provides all with their needs."...He had a Deity concept far above that of the later Hebrews, but it was too advanced to serve the purposes of a nation builder.
15. Ikhnaton had associated the flaming disc of the heavens with the creator God, and this idea continued to flame up in the hearts of men, even of the priests, long after the young reformer had passed on. Never did the concept of monotheism die out of the hearts of men in Egypt and in the world.
16. The doctrine of the Abrahamic covenant was virtually extinct in Persia when, in that great century of moral renaissance, the sixth before Christ. Zoroaster appeared to revive the. smouldering embers of the Salem gospel. This founder of a new religion was a virile and adventurous youth, who, on his first pilgrimage to Ur in Mesopotamia, had learned of the traditions of the Caligastia and the Lucifer rebellion—along with many other traditions—all of which had made a strong appeal to his religious nature.
17. The idea of a supreme God was clear in his mind ...He had learned of the story of the Seven Master Spirits as the tradition lingered in Ur, and, accordingly, he created a galaxy of seven supreme gods with Ahura‑Mazda at its head. These subordinate gods he associated with the idealization of Right Law, Good Thought, Noble Government, Holy Character, Health, and Immortality.
18. And this new religion was one of action—work—not prayers and rituals. Its God was a being of supreme wisdom and the patron of civilization; it was a militant religious philosophy which dared to battle with evil, inaction, and backwardness...Finally, upon the conversion of an Iranian prince, this new religion was spread by the sword. And Zoroaster heroically died in battle for that which he believed was the "truth of the Lord of light."
19. Zoroastrianism is the only Urantian creed that perpetuates the Dalamatian and Edenic teachings about the Seven Master Spirits ...Original Zoroastrianism was not a pure dualism; ...Only in later times did the belief gain credence that good and evil contended on equal terms. The Jewish traditions of heaven and hell...were principally derived from the Zoroastrians ...The teachings of Zoroaster thus came successively to impress three great religions: Judaism and Christianity and, through them, Mohammedanism.
20. Not even in China or Rome did the Melchizedeks teachings fail more completely than in this desert region so very near Salem itself...There was only one factor of a tribal, racial, or national nature about the primitive and unorganized beliefs of the desert, and that was the peculiar and general respect which almost all Arabian tribes were willing to pay to a certain black stone fetish in a certain temple at Mecca. This point of common contact and reverence subsequently led to the establishment of the Islamic religion.
21. The strength of Islam has been its clear‑cut and well‑defined presentation of Allah as the one and only Deity; its weakness, the association of military force with its promulgation, together with its degradation of woman.
Discussion Questions
1. Why during the Melchizedek era was Sunday regarded as an evil day?
2. How does one use the evolutionary process to bring about change?
3. How could have Ikhnaton promoted monotheism so that it would have survived his death?
4. Why did Egypt lose its dominance in religious teachings?
5. How did Zoroastrianism influence Christianity?
6. Will printing and the Internet insure the availability of the teachings of religious leaders in the future?
7. How will scientific facts, universal education, and political democracy change Islam?
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