The Urantia Corps for Spiritual Progress sympathizes with the call to update the Bible and argues that the Urantia Book does exactly that and much more.
Author Yuval Harari calls for a re-write of the Bible and argues that it is not the literal word of God, but the product of human decisions over what to include and what to exclude in the holy texts. In his new book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, Harari delves into the history of biblical canonization in-depth and concludes this was a flawed process and thus the Bible stands in need of a re-write. He notes that the Bible condones both slavery and the treatment of women as inferior and that both attitudes are incompatible with modern morality.
The Urantia book details the evolution of human religion from ghost fear and cannibalism up through the concept of God as a wrathful king and judge in the Old Testament to the concept of the Father in Heaven of the New Testament and beyond. The book separates evolutionary religion from revelatory religion but makes it clear that all religions extant today are a combination of both, and all include numerous erroneous concepts of God.
“The Bible is like an archaeological dig in which the evolution of the God concept can be traced from the early prophets up through Isaiah, from a primitive tribal God of battles, up through the concept of the Universal Father of Love,” stated UCSP founder Rebecca Bynum. “Harari is correct to highlight the process of biblical canonization as a thoroughly human one and thus subject to human error. That error is compounded when the entire text is viewed as the infallible word of God. Even the Urantia Book, though revelatory, does not claim to be infallible.”
The Urantia Book states: “The study of human religion is the examination of the fossil-bearing social strata of past ages. The mores of the anthropomorphic gods are a truthful reflection of the morals of the men who first conceived such deities. Ancient religions and mythology faithfully portray the beliefs and traditions of peoples long since lost in obscurity. These olden cult practices persist alongside newer economic customs and social evolutions and, of course, appear grossly inconsistent.”
“The Urantia Book fully embraces science, including human evolution, and corrects and clarifies the Bible throughout Part III, which presents human history going back to the formation of our planet and the implantation of life,” added UCSP founding member Marti Garlow Leib. “The Urantia Book fills in the great gaps in our knowledge of the past, covering the ‘war in heaven,’ Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, and the Life and Teachings of Jesus. Certainly, if there were a re-write of the Bible, this is it.”
In general agreement with Harari, the Urantia Book states: “Religion has handicapped social development in many ways, but without religion, there would have been no enduring morality nor ethics, no worth-while civilization… But while calling attention to the fact that religion was essential to the development and preservation of civilization, it should be recorded that natural religion has also done much to cripple and handicap the very civilization that it otherwise fostered and maintained. Religion has hampered industrial activities and economic development; it has been wasteful of labour and has squandered capital; it has not always been helpful to the family; it has not adequately fostered peace and goodwill; it has sometimes neglected education and retarded science; it has unduly impoverished life for the pretended enrichment of death. Evolutionary religion, human religion, has indeed been guilty of all these and many more mistakes, errors, and blunders; nevertheless, it did maintain cultural ethics, civilized morality, and social coherence, and made it possible for later revealed religion to compensate for these many evolutionary shortcomings.”
The Urantia Book describes a large-scale rewrite of the ancient Hebrew scriptures during their Babylonian captivity: “These Hebrew priests and scribes had a single idea in their minds, and that was the rehabilitation of the Jewish nation, the glorification of Hebrew traditions, and the exaltation of their racial history. If there is resentment of the fact that these priests have fastened their erroneous ideas upon such a large part of the Occidental world, it should be remembered that they did not intentionally do this; they did not claim to be writing by inspiration; they made no profession to be writing a sacred book. They were merely preparing a textbook designed to bolster up the dwindling courage of their fellows in captivity. They were definitely aiming at improving the national spirit and morale of their compatriots. It remained for later-day men to assemble these and other writings into a guidebook of supposedly infallible teachings.”
“Our faith should be strong enough to recognize not everything in the Bible is the inspired word of God,” added UCSP founding member, Cheryl Phillips. “We are indeed living in a time of questioning when the old answers no longer satisfy young minds. If only more people knew that most of the answers they seek have already been given to us, they would study the Urantia Book with open minds and open hearts.”
“There is certainly a need to reframe how we understand history in this modern age of information,” began UCSP founding member Tia Thompson. “The Bible reflects the outdated mores of antiquity but rewriting it does not correct history. Instead, it risks erasing it. Rather than rewriting scripture, I feel we should seek to understand it in the context of its time, while applying the lessons we’ve learned from reviewing it to our modern world.” She adds, “Like the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Urantia Book doesn’t need to rewrite the Law in order to offer clarity. This volume accomplishes the resolution of Harari’s concerns without alienating entire populations of people. It effectively serves as a guide to viewing human and religious history in a new light. By contrasting the ancient perspectives of the Bible with the updated interpretations found in the Urantia Book, we are provided an opportunity to recognize the progress humanity has made, while yet acknowledging how much further we have to go in our pursuit of truth, morality, and goodness.”
“The Urantia Book not only presents a remarkable all-encompassing history of religion, it also provides a history of science-based concepts about the creation of our planet and our cosmic system,” said UCSP founding member Dorenda Morse. “It tells us why Jesus came to this planet, about ‘all’ of his life here on earth what he was sent to accomplish and what eternal role he currently holds. Unlike visions put forth in Revelations describing what heaven is like, the Urantia Book lays out for us our entire eternal journey after we pass from this world into the next. Bottom line —the Urantia Book corrects a lot of errors in the Bible and fills in all the blanks! Why not use them both?”
It is the belief of the Urantia Corps for Spiritual Progress that the Urantia Book both clarifies and up-steps the Bible.
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Rebecca Bynum
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