The Urantia Book

Settings

Reading
Theme
Text size
Line spacing

Typeface

Width
Alignment
Show
Listening

Kept in this browser only.

Read through

puberty

6 paragraphs · about 2 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under puberty, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

Paper 70 · The Evolution of Human Government

7. Primitive Clubs and Secret Societies

70:7.7The very se­crecy of these so­ci­eties con­ferred on all mem­bers the power of mys­tery over the rest of the tribe. Se­crecy also ap­peals to van­ity; the ini­ti­ates were the so­cial aris­toc­racy of their day. Af­ter ini­ti­a­tion the boys hunted with the men; whereas be­fore they had gath­ered veg­eta­bles with the women. And it was the su­preme hu­mil­i­a­tion, a tribal dis­grace, to fail to pass the pu­berty tests and thus be com­pelled to re­main out­side the men’s abode with the women and chil­dren, to be con­sid­ered ef­fem­i­nate. Be­sides, non­ini­ti­ates were not al­lowed to marry.

70:7.8–9 · two paragraphs not cited here ·

70:7.8Prim­i­tive peo­ple very early taught their ado­les­cent youths sex con­trol. It be­came the cus­tom to take boys away from par­ents from pu­berty to mar­riage, their ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing be­ing in­trusted to the men’s se­cret so­ci­eties. And one of the chief func­tions of these clubs was to keep con­trol of ado­les­cent young men, thus pre­vent­ing il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren.

70:7.9Com­mer­cial­ized pros­ti­tu­tion be­gan when these men’s clubs paid money for the use of women from other tribes. But the ear­lier groups were re­mark­ably free from sex lax­ity.

70:7.10The pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­mony usu­ally ex­tended over a pe­riod of five years. Much self-tor­ture and painful cut­ting en­tered into these cer­e­monies. Cir­cum­ci­sion was first prac­ticed as a rite of ini­ti­a­tion into one of these se­cret fra­ter­ni­ties. The tribal marks were cut on the body as a part of the pu­berty ini­ti­a­tion; the tat­too orig­i­nated as such a badge of mem­ber­ship. Such tor­ture, to­gether with much pri­va­tion, was de­signed to harden these youths, to im­press them with the re­al­ity of life and its in­ev­i­ta­ble hard­ships. This pur­pose is bet­ter ac­com­plished by the later ap­pear­ing ath­letic games and phys­i­cal con­tests.

Paper 82 · The Evolution of Marriage

3. Early Marriage Mores

82:3.9Among later peo­ples, pu­berty was the com­mon age of mar­riage, but this has ad­vanced in di­rect pro­por­tion to the prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion. Early in so­cial evo­lu­tion pe­cu­liar and celi­bate or­ders of both men and women arose; they were started and main­tained by in­di­vid­u­als more or less lack­ing nor­mal sex urge.

Paper 124 · The Later Childhood of Jesus

5. His Thirteenth Year (A.D. 7)

124:5.1In this year the lad of Naz­a­reth passed from boy­hood to the be­gin­ning of young man­hood; his voice be­gan to change, and other fea­tures of mind and body gave ev­i­dence of the on­com­ing sta­tus of man­hood.

Paper 126 · The Two Crucial Years

5. The Financial Struggle

126:5.9As he grew up to man­hood, he passed through all those con­flicts and con­fu­sions which the av­er­age young per­sons of pre­vi­ous and sub­se­quent ages have un­der­gone. And the rig­or­ous ex­pe­ri­ence of sup­port­ing his fam­ily was a sure safe­guard against his hav­ing over­much time for idle med­i­ta­tion or the in­dul­gence of mys­tic ten­den­cies.

126:5.10–11 · two paragraphs not cited here ·

126:5.10This was the year that Je­sus rented a con­sid­er­able piece of land just to the north of their home, which was di­vided up as a fam­ily gar­den plot. Each of the older chil­dren had an in­di­vid­ual gar­den, and they en­tered into keen com­pe­ti­tion in their ag­ri­cul­tural ef­forts. Their el­dest brother spent some time with them in the gar­den each day dur­ing the sea­son of veg­etable cul­ti­va­tion. As Je­sus worked with his younger broth­ers and sis­ters in the gar­den, he many times en­ter­tained the wish that they were all lo­cated on a farm out in the coun­try where they could en­joy the lib­erty and free­dom of an un­ham­pered life. But they did not find them­selves grow­ing up in the coun­try; and Je­sus, be­ing a thor­oughly prac­ti­cal youth as well as an ide­al­ist, in­tel­li­gently and vig­or­ously at­tacked his prob­lem just as he found it, and did ev­ery­thing within his power to ad­just him­self and his fam­ily to the re­al­i­ties of their sit­u­a­tion and to adapt their con­di­tion to the high­est pos­si­ble sat­is­fac­tion of their in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive long­ings.

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

126:5.12With the close of this fif­teenth year Je­sus com­pleted the traver­sal of that dan­ger­ous and dif­fi­cult pe­riod in hu­man ex­is­tence, that time of tran­si­tion be­tween the more com­pla­cent years of child­hood and the con­scious­ness of ap­proach­ing man­hood with its in­creased re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and op­por­tu­ni­ties for the ac­quire­ment of ad­vanced ex­pe­ri­ence in the de­vel­op­ment of a no­ble char­ac­ter. The growth pe­riod for mind and body had ended, and now be­gan the real ca­reer of this young man of Naz­a­reth.

Onward

Cited alongside: secret societies