amphitheater

134:3.1On the way to the Caspian Sea, Je­sus had stopped sev­eral days for rest and re­cu­per­a­tion at the old Per­sian city of Ur­mia on the west­ern shores of Lake Ur­mia. On the largest of a group of is­lands sit­u­ated a short dis­tance off­shore near Ur­mia was lo­cated a large build­ing—a lec­ture am­phithe­ater—ded­i­cated to the “spirit of re­li­gion.” This struc­ture was re­ally a tem­ple of the phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gions.

130:2.1Je­sus and his friends tar­ried in Cae­sarea be­yond the time ex­pected be­cause one of the huge steer­ing pad­dles of the ves­sel on which they in­tended to em­bark was dis­cov­ered to be in dan­ger of cleav­ing. The cap­tain de­cided to re­main in port while a new one was be­ing made. There was a short­age of skilled wood­work­ers for this task, so Je­sus vol­un­teered to as­sist. Dur­ing the evenings Je­sus and his friends strolled about on the beau­ti­ful wall which served as a prom­e­nade around the port. Ga­nid greatly en­joyed Je­sus’ ex­pla­na­tion of the wa­ter sys­tem of the city and the tech­nique whereby the tides were uti­lized to flush the city’s streets and sew­ers. This youth of In­dia was much im­pressed with the tem­ple of Au­gus­tus, sit­u­ated upon an el­e­va­tion and sur­mounted by a colos­sal statue of the Ro­man em­peror. The sec­ond af­ter­noon of their stay the three of them at­tended a per­for­mance in the enor­mous am­phithe­ater which could seat twenty thou­sand per­sons, and that night they went to a Greek play at the the­ater. These were the first ex­hi­bi­tions of this sort Ga­nid had ever wit­nessed, and he asked Je­sus many ques­tions about them. On the morn­ing of the third day they paid a for­mal visit to the gov­er­nor’s palace, for Cae­sarea was the cap­i­tal of Pales­tine and the res­i­dence of the Ro­man procu­ra­tor.

123:5.12Naz­a­reth was one of the twenty-four priest cen­ters of the He­brew na­tion. But the Galilean priest­hood was more lib­eral in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the tra­di­tional laws than were the Judean scribes and rab­bis. And at Naz­a­reth they were also more lib­eral re­gard­ing the ob­ser­vance of the Sab­bath. It was there­fore the cus­tom for Joseph to take Je­sus out for walks on Sab­bath af­ter­noons, one of their fa­vorite jaunts be­ing to climb the high hill near their home, from which they could ob­tain a panoramic view of all Gal­i­lee. To the north­west, on clear days, they could see the long ridge of Mount Carmel run­ning down to the sea; and many times Je­sus heard his fa­ther re­late the story of Eli­jah, one of the first of that long line of He­brew proph­ets, who re­proved Ahab and ex­posed the priests of Baal. To the north Mount Her­mon raised its snowy peak in ma­jes­tic splen­dor and mo­nop­o­lized the sky­line, al­most 3,000 feet of the up­per slopes glis­ten­ing white with per­pet­ual snow. Far to the east they could dis­cern the Jor­dan val­ley and, far be­yond, the rocky hills of Moab. Also to the south and the east, when the sun shone upon their mar­ble walls, they could see the Greco-Ro­man cities of the De­capo­lis, with their am­phithe­aters and pre­ten­tious tem­ples. And when they lin­gered to­ward the go­ing down of the sun, to the west they could make out the sail­ing ves­sels on the dis­tant Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

124:3.7It so hap­pened that just at this time the an­nual com­pet­i­tive games and pub­lic demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal prowess be­tween the Greek cities of the De­capo­lis were in prog­ress at the Scythopo­lis am­phithe­ater, and Je­sus was in­sis­tent that his fa­ther take him to see the games, and he was so in­sis­tent that Joseph hes­i­tated to deny him. The boy was thrilled with the games and en­tered most heart­ily into the spirit of the demon­stra­tions of phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and ath­letic skill. Joseph was in­ex­press­ibly shocked to ob­serve his son’s en­thu­si­asm as he be­held these ex­hi­bi­tions of “hea­then” vain­glo­ri­ous­ness. Af­ter the games were fin­ished, Joseph re­ceived the sur­prise of his life when he heard Je­sus ex­press his ap­proval of them and sug­gest that it would be good for the young men of Naz­a­reth if they could be thus ben­e­fited by whole­some out­door phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties. Joseph talked earnestly and long with Je­sus con­cern­ing the evil na­ture of such prac­tices, but he well knew that the lad was un­con­vinced.

43:1.7The sea of glass, the re­ceiv­ing area of Eden­tia, is near the ad­min­is­tra­tive cen­ter and is en­cir­cled by the head­quar­ters am­phithe­ater. Sur­round­ing this area are the gov­ern­ing cen­ters for the sev­enty di­vi­sions of con­stel­la­tion af­fairs. One half of Eden­tia is di­vided into sev­enty tri­an­gu­lar sec­tions, whose bound­aries con­verge at the head­quar­ters build­ings of their re­spec­tive sec­tors. The re­main­der of this sphere is one vast nat­u­ral park, the gar­dens of God.

46:3.1The super­uni­verse and Par­a­dise-Ha­vona broad­casts are re­ceived on Je­ru­sem in li­ai­son with Sal­ving­ton and by a tech­nique in­volv­ing the po­lar crys­tal, the sea of glass. In ad­di­tion to pro­vi­sions for the re­cep­tion of these ex­tra-Neb­a­don com­mu­ni­ca­tions, there are three dis­tinct groups of re­ceiv­ing sta­tions. These sep­a­rate but tri­cir­cu­lar groups of sta­tions are ad­justed to the re­cep­tion of broad­casts from the lo­cal worlds, from the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters, and from the cap­i­tal of the lo­cal uni­verse. All these broad­casts are au­to­mat­i­cally dis­played so as to be dis­cern­i­ble by all types of be­ings pres­ent in the cen­tral broad­cast am­phithe­ater; of all pre­oc­cu­pa­tions for an as­cen­dant mor­tal on Je­ru­sem, none is more en­gag­ing and en­gross­ing than that of lis­ten­ing in on the never-end­ing stream of uni­verse space re­ports.

46:3.2This Je­ru­sem broad­cast-re­ceiv­ing sta­tion is en­cir­cled by an enor­mous am­phithe­ater, con­structed of scin­til­lat­ing ma­te­ri­als largely un­known on Uran­tia and seat­ing over five bil­lion be­ings—ma­te­rial and mor­ontia—be­sides ac­com­mo­dat­ing in­nu­mer­able spirit per­son­al­i­ties. It is the fa­vorite di­ver­sion for all Je­ru­sem to spend their leisure at the broad­cast sta­tion, there to learn of the wel­fare and state of the uni­verse. And this is the only plan­e­tary ac­tiv­ity which is not slowed down dur­ing the re­ces­sion of light.

46:3.3At this broad­cast-re­ceiv­ing am­phithe­ater the Sal­ving­ton mes­sages are com­ing in con­tin­u­ously. Near by, the Eden­tia word of the Most High Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers is re­ceived at least once a day. Pe­ri­od­i­cally the reg­u­lar and spe­cial broad­casts of Uversa are re­layed through Sal­ving­ton, and when Par­a­dise mes­sages are in re­cep­tion, the en­tire pop­u­la­tion is as­sem­bled around the sea of glass, and the Uversa friends add the re­flec­tiv­ity phe­nom­ena to the tech­nique of the Par­a­dise broad­cast so that ev­ery­thing heard be­comes vis­i­ble. And it is in this man­ner that con­tin­ual fore­tastes of ad­vanc­ing beauty and grandeur are af­forded the mor­tal sur­vivors as they jour­ney in­ward on the eter­nal ad­ven­ture.

46:5.306. The cir­cles of the cour­tesy colonies. The seven cir­cles of the cour­tesy colonies are graced by three enor­mous struc­tures: the vast as­tro­nomic ob­ser­va­tory of Je­ru­sem, the gi­gan­tic art gallery of Sa­ta­nia, and the im­mense as­sem­bly hall of the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors, the the­ater of mor­ontia ac­tiv­i­ties de­voted to rest and recre­ation.

53:5.6“There was war in heaven; Mi­chael’s com­man­der and his an­gels fought against the dragon (Lu­cifer, Sa­tan, and the apos­tate princes); and the dragon and his re­bel­lious an­gels fought but pre­vailed not.” This “war in heaven” was not a phys­i­cal bat­tle as such a con­flict might be con­ceived on Uran­tia. In the early days of the strug­gle Lu­cifer held forth con­tin­u­ously in the plan­e­tary am­phithe­ater. Ga­briel con­ducted an un­ceas­ing ex­po­sure of the rebel soph­ist­ries from his head­quar­ters taken up near at hand. The var­i­ous per­son­al­i­ties pres­ent on the sphere who were in doubt as to their at­ti­tude would jour­ney back and forth be­tween these dis­cus­sions un­til they ar­rived at a fi­nal de­ci­sion.

124:3.8The only time Je­sus ever saw his fa­ther an­gry with him was that night in their room at the inn when, in the course of their dis­cus­sions, the boy so far for­got the trends of Jew­ish thought as to sug­gest that they go back home and work for the build­ing of an am­phithe­ater at Naz­a­reth. When Joseph heard his first-born son ex­press such un-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments, he for­got his usual calm de­meanor and, seiz­ing Je­sus by the shoul­der, an­grily ex­claimed, “My son, never again let me hear you give ut­ter­ance to such an evil thought as long as you live.” Je­sus was star­tled by his fa­ther’s dis­play of emo­tion; he had never be­fore been made to feel the per­sonal sting of his fa­ther’s in­dig­na­tion and was as­ton­ished and shocked be­yond ex­pres­sion. He only replied, “Very well, my fa­ther, it shall be so.” And never again did the boy even in the slight­est man­ner al­lude to the games and other ath­letic ac­tiv­i­ties of the Greeks as long as his fa­ther lived.

124:3.9Later on, Je­sus saw the Greek am­phithe­ater at Je­ru­sa­lem and learned how hate­ful such things were from the Jew­ish point of view. Nev­er­the­less, through­out his life he en­deav­ored to in­tro­duce the idea of whole­some recre­ation into his per­sonal plans and, as far as Jew­ish prac­tice would per­mit, into the later pro­gram of reg­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties for his twelve apos­tles.