acknowledgments

• by authors of Urantia Papers

0:12.13We are fully cog­nizant of the dif­fi­cul­ties of our as­sign­ment; we rec­og­nize the im­pos­si­bil­ity of fully trans­lat­ing the lan­guage of the con­cepts of di­vin­ity and eter­nity into the sym­bols of the lan­guage of the fi­nite con­cepts of the mor­tal mind. But we know that there dwells within the hu­man mind a frag­ment of God, and that there so­journs with the hu­man soul the Spirit of Truth; and we fur­ther know that these spirit forces con­spire to en­able ma­te­rial man to grasp the re­al­ity of spir­i­tual val­ues and to com­pre­hend the phi­los­o­phy of uni­verse mean­ings. But even more cer­tainly we know that these spir­its of the Di­vine Pres­ence are able to as­sist man in the spir­i­tual ap­pro­pri­a­tion of all truth con­trib­u­tory to the en­hance­ment of the ever-pro­gress­ing re­al­ity of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—God-con­scious­ness.

0:12.14[In­dited by an Or­von­ton Di­vine Coun­selor, Chief of the Corps of Super­uni­verse Per­son­al­i­ties as­signed to por­tray on Uran­tia the truth con­cern­ing the Par­a­dise De­i­ties and the uni­verse of uni­verses.]

• by authors of Urantia Papers

121:0.1Act­ing un­der the super­vi­sion of a com­mis­sion of twelve mem­bers of the United Broth­er­hood of Uran­tia Mid­way­ers, con­jointly spon­sored by the pre­sid­ing head of our or­der and the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, I am the sec­ondary mid­wayer of one­time at­tach­ment to the Apos­tle An­drew, and I am au­tho­rized to place on rec­ord the nar­ra­tive of the life trans­ac­tions of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as they were ob­served by my or­der of earth crea­tures, and as they were sub­se­quently par­tially re­corded by the hu­man sub­ject of my tem­po­ral guardian­ship. Know­ing how his Mas­ter so scrupu­lously avoided leav­ing writ­ten rec­ords be­hind him, An­drew stead­fastly re­fused to mul­ti­ply copies of his writ­ten nar­ra­tive. A sim­i­lar at­ti­tude on the part of the other apos­tles of Je­sus greatly de­layed the writ­ing of the Gospels.

• by authors of Urantia Papers

121:8.12[Ac­knowl­edg­ment: In car­ry­ing out my com­mis­sion to re­state the teach­ings and retell the do­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, I have drawn freely upon all sources of rec­ord and plan­e­tary in­for­ma­tion. My rul­ing mo­tive has been to pre­pare a rec­ord which will not only be en­light­en­ing to the gen­er­a­tion of men now liv­ing, but which may also be help­ful to all fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. From the vast store of in­for­ma­tion made avail­able to me, I have cho­sen that which is best suited to the ac­com­plish­ment of this pur­pose. 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. When ideas and con­cepts of Je­sus’ life and teach­ings have been ac­cept­ably ex­pressed by a hu­man mind, I in­vari­ably gave pref­er­ence to such ap­par­ently hu­man thought pat­terns. Al­though I have sought to ad­just the ver­bal ex­pres­sion the bet­ter to con­form to our con­cept of the real mean­ing and the true im­port of the Mas­ter’s life and teach­ings, as far as pos­si­ble, I have ad­hered to the ac­tual hu­man con­cept and thought pat­tern in all my nar­ra­tives. I well know that those con­cepts which have had ori­gin in the hu­man mind will prove more ac­cept­able and help­ful to all other hu­man minds. When un­able to find the nec­es­sary con­cepts in the hu­man rec­ords or in hu­man ex­pres­sions, I have next re­sorted to the mem­ory re­sources of my own or­der of earth crea­tures, the mid­way­ers. And when that sec­ondary source of in­for­ma­tion proved in­ad­e­quate, I have un­hesi­tat­ingly re­sorted to the super­plan­e­tary sources of in­for­ma­tion.

121:8.13The mem­o­randa which I have col­lected, and from which I have pre­pared this nar­ra­tive of the life and teach­ings of Je­sus—aside from the mem­ory of the rec­ord of the Apos­tle An­drew—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. The rev­e­la­tory per­mis­sion has been uti­lized only when the hu­man rec­ord and hu­man con­cepts failed to sup­ply an ad­e­quate thought pat­tern. My rev­e­la­tory com­mis­sion for­bade me to re­sort to ex­trahu­man sources of ei­ther in­for­ma­tion or ex­pres­sion un­til such a time as I could tes­tify that I had failed in my ef­forts to find the re­quired con­cep­tual ex­pres­sion in purely hu­man sources.

121:8.14While I, with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of my eleven as­so­ciate fel­low mid­way­ers and un­der the super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek of rec­ord, have por­trayed this nar­ra­tive in ac­cor­dance with my con­cept of its ef­fec­tive ar­range­ment and in re­sponse to my choice of im­me­di­ate ex­pres­sion, nev­er­the­less, the ma­jor­ity of the ideas and even some of the ef­fec­tive ex­pres­sions which I have thus uti­lized had their ori­gin in the minds of the men of many races who have lived on earth dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing gen­er­a­tions, right on down to those who are still alive at the time of this un­der­tak­ing. In many ways I have served more as a col­lec­tor and ed­i­tor than as an orig­i­nal nar­ra­tor. I have un­hesi­tat­ingly ap­pro­pri­ated those ideas and con­cepts, prefer­ably hu­man, which would en­able me to cre­ate the most ef­fec­tive por­trai­ture of Je­sus’ life, and which would qual­ify me to re­state his match­less teach­ings in the most strik­ingly help­ful and uni­ver­sally up­lift­ing phrase­ol­ogy. In be­half of the Broth­er­hood of the United Mid­way­ers of Uran­tia, I most grate­fully ac­knowl­edge our in­debt­ed­ness to all sources of rec­ord and con­cept which have been here­inafter uti­lized in the fur­ther elab­o­ra­tion of our re­state­ment of Je­sus’ life on earth.]