libraries

130:3.4By the fourth hour af­ter land­ing they were set­tled near the east­ern end of the long and broad av­enue, one hun­dred feet wide and five miles long, which stretched on out to the west­ern lim­its of this city of one mil­lion peo­ple. Af­ter the first sur­vey of the city’s chief at­trac­tions—uni­ver­sity (mu­seum), li­brary, the royal mau­soleum of Alexan­der, the palace, tem­ple of Nep­tune, the­ater, and gym­na­sium—Gonod ad­dressed him­self to busi­ness while Je­sus and Ga­nid went to the li­brary, the great­est in the world. Here were as­sem­bled nearly a mil­lion manuscripts from all the civ­i­lized world: Greece, Rome, Pales­tine, Parthia, In­dia, China, and even Japan. In this li­brary Ga­nid saw the largest col­lec­tion of In­dian lit­er­a­ture in all the world; and they spent some time here each day through­out their stay in Alexan­dria. Je­sus told Ga­nid about the trans­la­tion of the He­brew scrip­tures into Greek at this place. And they dis­cussed again and again all the re­li­gions of the world, Je­sus en­deav­or­ing to point out to this young mind the truth in each, al­ways adding: “But Yah­weh is the God de­vel­oped from the rev­e­la­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the covenant of Abra­ham. The Jews were the off­spring of Abra­ham and sub­se­quently oc­cu­pied the very land wherein Mel­chiz­e­dek had lived and taught, and from which he sent teach­ers to all the world; and their re­li­gion even­tu­ally por­trayed a clearer rec­og­ni­tion of the Lord God of Is­rael as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in heaven than any other world re­li­gion.”

25:5.1From among the ter­tiary super­na­phim in Ha­vona, cer­tain of the se­nior chief re­cord­ers are cho­sen as Cus­to­di­ans of Rec­ords, as keep­ers of the for­mal ar­chives of the Isle of Light, those ar­chives which stand in con­trast to the liv­ing rec­ords of reg­istry in the minds of the cus­to­di­ans of knowl­edge, some­times des­ig­nated the “liv­ing li­brary of Par­a­dise.”

27:5.1The super­aphic cus­to­di­ans of knowl­edge are the higher “liv­ing epis­tles” known and read by all who dwell on Par­a­dise. They are the di­vine rec­ords of truth, the liv­ing books of real knowl­edge. You have heard about rec­ords in the “book of life.” The cus­to­di­ans of knowl­edge are just such liv­ing books, rec­ords of per­fec­tion im­printed upon the eter­nal tablets of di­vine life and su­preme surety. They are in re­al­ity liv­ing, au­to­matic li­braries. The facts of the uni­verses are in­her­ent in these pri­mary super­na­phim, ac­tu­ally re­corded in these an­gels; and it is also in­her­ently im­pos­si­ble for an un­truth to gain lodg­ment in the minds of these per­fect and re­plete repos­i­to­ries of the truth of eter­nity and the in­tel­li­gence of time.

132:0.2While at Rome, Ga­nid had reg­u­lar hours for study and for vis­it­ing places of in­ter­est about the city. His fa­ther had much busi­ness to trans­act, and de­sir­ing that his son grow up to be­come a wor­thy suc­ces­sor in the man­age­ment of his vast com­mer­cial in­ter­ests, he thought the time had come to in­tro­duce the boy to the busi­ness world. There were many cit­i­zens of In­dia in Rome, and of­ten one of Gonod’s own em­ploy­ees would ac­com­pany him as in­ter­preter so that Je­sus would have whole days to him­self; this gave him time in which to be­come thor­oughly ac­quainted with this city of two mil­lion in­hab­i­tants. He was fre­quently to be found in the fo­rum, the cen­ter of po­lit­i­cal, le­gal, and busi­ness life. He of­ten went up to the Capi­tolium and pon­dered the bond­age of ig­no­rance in which these Ro­mans were held as he be­held this mag­nif­i­cent tem­ple ded­i­cated to Jupiter, Juno, and Min­erva. He also spent much time on Pala­tine hill, where were lo­cated the em­peror’s res­i­dence, the tem­ple of Apollo, and the Greek and Latin li­braries.

66:5.94. The fac­ulty on dis­sem­i­na­tion and con­ser­va­tion of knowl­edge. This group or­ga­nized and di­rected the purely ed­u­ca­tional en­deav­ors of those early ages. It was pre­sided over by Fad. The ed­u­ca­tional meth­ods of Fad con­sisted in super­vi­sion of em­ploy­ment ac­com­pa­nied by in­struc­tion in im­proved meth­ods of la­bor. Fad for­mu­lated the first al­pha­bet and in­tro­duced a writ­ing sys­tem. This al­pha­bet con­tained twenty-five char­ac­ters. For writ­ing ma­te­rial these early peo­ples uti­lized tree barks, clay tablets, stone slabs, a form of parch­ment made of ham­mered hides, and a crude form of pa­per­like ma­te­rial made from wasps’ nests. The Dala­ma­tia li­brary, de­stroyed soon af­ter the Cali­gas­tia dis­af­fec­tion, com­prised more than two mil­lion sep­a­rate rec­ords and was known as the “house of Fad.”