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Is The Urantia Book's "Life of Jesus" Outdated?
Apparently commencing among German theologians and philosophers in the 19th century, a movement that questions every aspect of biblical historicity and authenticity has slowly gained vigor and now appears to have entered upon an exponential growth phase.
For this questioning, nothing is sacred. Archaeologists and anthropologists, particularly Israelis, assert there is no evidence at all for the captivity in Egypt, for the existence of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem, or of the Davidic Kingdom. Both the latter appear to have had their mythical roots in the kingdom and temple of Ahab in Samaria.
Among Western scholars, the New Testament has come under rigorous scrutiny, so that even those having relatively moderate views have gone further in their revamping of the meaning of Jesus than does the Urantia revelation.
In an Innerface article entitled "Really Out of Date" (Vol.7 No.5) it was shown that the book's account of the origin of the Earth-Moon system could not possibly be correct. In our two recent issues, about thirty errors in the book's cosmology and geology have been brought to notice.
According to Dr. Sadler's History of the Urantia Movement, all of the Papers in the first three parts resulted from a question and answer procedure, each Paper being in response to a specific question from Forum members.
Initially the Forum treated this as an opportunity to test the validity of the revelators' claims by posing questions that no human being could answer--a policy that posed acute problems for the revelators who were restricted by a rule proscribing the provision of unearned knowledge. Thus, to give a completely correct answer would contravene the rule, and not to answer could have caused the collapse of the Forum and loss of about twenty years of preparatory work.
Mostly the revelators avoided their difficulty by providing knowledge at the forefront of current research that was nevertheless in advance of the knowledge of Forum members. They covered themselves by explaining their policy in detail in a section of Paper 101 called "The Limitations of Revelation." In it we are informed that the cosmology of their revelation is not inspired and future students are likely to discover errors. Elsewhere they comment: "But no revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete," and "Conceptual frames of the universe are only relatively true; they are serviceable scaffolding which must eventually give way before the expansions of enlarging cosmic comprehension." This should teach us that truth will always be relative and progressive, and never absolute.
But what about Part 4, "The Life and Teachings of Jesus" which was provided outside of the question and answer procedure for Parts 1-3--should we expect infallibility? A possible answer to this is to be found in the Sadler history document.
During their initial 20-year period of contact with the revelators, wrote Sadler, they were introduced to numerous new ideas of cosmology and philosophy. Among these are listed:
6. Tentative testing of our theologic concepts. Patient determination of how far we might possibly go in the direction of modifying our theologic beliefs and philosophical opinions.
15. We listened to occasional references to Jesus' life and teachings--but they were very cautious about the introduction of any new concepts regarding his bestowal. Of all the Urantia revelations the Jesus Papers were the biggest surprise.
This caution appears to have continued throughout the Forum period. Of 2564 occurrences of the word "Jesus," only 115 occur in Parts 1-3 which constitute 63 % of the book.
So has this caution continued into the presentation of Part 4. Have the revelators only given us changes and new concepts when they believed most were ready to accept them?
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