Ur

• Ur

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

• Ur

134:1.1Af­ter tak­ing leave of Gonod and Ga­nid at Charax (in De­cem­ber of A.D. 23), Je­sus re­turned by way of Ur to Baby­lon, where he joined a desert car­a­van that was on its way to Da­mas­cus. From Da­mas­cus he went to Naz­a­reth, stop­ping only a few hours at Ca­per­naum, where he paused to call on Zeb­e­dee’s fam­ily. There he met his brother James, who had some­time pre­vi­ously come over to work in his place in Zeb­e­dee’s boat­shop. Af­ter talk­ing with James and Jude (who also chanced to be in Ca­per­naum) and af­ter turn­ing over to his brother James the lit­tle house which John Zeb­e­dee had man­aged to buy, Je­sus went on to Naz­a­reth.

133:9.2Je­sus was much in­ter­ested in the early his­tory of Ur, the birth­place of Abra­ham, and he was equally fas­ci­nated with the ru­ins and tra­di­tions of Susa, so much so that Gonod and Ga­nid ex­tended their stay in these parts three weeks in or­der to af­ford Je­sus more time to con­duct his in­ves­ti­ga­tions and also to pro­vide the bet­ter op­por­tu­nity to per­suade him to go back to In­dia with them.

142:3.42. The Most High. This con­cept of the Fa­ther in heaven was pro­claimed by Mel­chiz­e­dek to Abra­ham and was car­ried far from Salem by those who sub­se­quently be­lieved in this en­larged and ex­panded idea of De­ity. Abra­ham and his brother left Ur be­cause of the es­tab­lish­ment of sun wor­ship, and they be­came be­liev­ers in Mel­chiz­e­dek’s teach­ing of El Elyon—the Most High God. Theirs was a com­pos­ite con­cept of God, con­sist­ing in a blend­ing of their older Mes­o­po­ta­mian ideas and the Most High doc­trine.

78:8.2It was dur­ing the flood­times that Susa so greatly pros­pered. The first and lower city was in­un­dated so that the sec­ond or higher town suc­ceeded the lower as the head­quar­ters for the pe­cu­liar artcrafts of that day. With the later diminu­tion of these floods, Ur be­came the cen­ter of the pot­tery in­dus­try. About seven thou­sand years ago Ur was on the Per­sian Gulf, the river de­posits hav­ing since built up the land to its pres­ent lim­its. These set­tle­ments suf­fered less from the floods be­cause of bet­ter con­trol­ling works and the widen­ing mouths of the rivers.

96:7.5The var­ie­gated pic­ture of De­ity pre­sented in the Book of Job was the prod­uct of more than a score of Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­li­gious teach­ers ex­tend­ing over a pe­riod of al­most three hun­dred years. And when you read the lofty con­cept of di­vin­ity found in this com­pi­la­tion of Mes­o­po­ta­mian be­liefs, you will rec­og­nize that it was in the neigh­bor­hood of Ur of Chaldea that the idea of a real God was best pre­served dur­ing the dark days in Pales­tine.

96:7.7Only at Ur did a voice arise to cry out the mercy of God, say­ing: “He shall pray to God and shall find fa­vor with him and shall see his face with joy, for God will give to man di­vine righ­teous­ness.” Thus from Ur there is preached sal­va­tion, di­vine fa­vor, by faith: “He is gra­cious to the re­pen­tant and says, ‘De­liver him from go­ing down in the pit, for I have found a ran­som.’ If any say, ‘I have sinned and per­verted that which was right, and it prof­ited me not,’ God will de­liver his soul from go­ing into the pit, and he shall see the light.” Not since the times of Mel­chiz­e­dek had the Lev­an­tine world heard such a ring­ing and cheer­ing mes­sage of hu­man sal­va­tion as this ex­traor­di­nary teach­ing of Elihu, the prophet of Ur and priest of the Salem be­liev­ers, that is, the rem­nant of the one­time Mel­chiz­e­dek colony in Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

133:9.1The car­a­van trip across the desert was not a new ex­pe­ri­ence for these much-trav­eled men. Af­ter Ga­nid had watched his teacher help with the load­ing of their twenty camels and ob­served him vol­un­teer to drive their own an­i­mal, he ex­claimed, “Teacher, is there any­thing that you can­not do?” Je­sus only smiled, say­ing, “The teacher surely is not with­out honor in the eyes of a dili­gent pupil.” And so they set forth for the an­cient city of Ur.

133:9.3It was at Ur that Ga­nid had a long talk with Je­sus re­gard­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween knowl­edge, wis­dom, and truth. And he was greatly charmed with the say­ing of the He­brew wise man: “Wis­dom is the prin­ci­pal thing; there­fore get wis­dom. With all your quest for knowl­edge, get un­der­stand­ing. Ex­alt wis­dom and she will pro­mote you. She will bring you to honor if you will but em­brace her.”

78:8.9Af­ter the breakup of this Kish con­fed­er­a­tion there en­sued a long pe­riod of con­stant war­fare be­tween these val­ley cities for su­prem­acy. And the ruler­ship var­i­ously shifted be­tween Sumer, Akkad, Kish, Erech, Ur, and Susa.

78:8.10About 2500 B.C. the Sume­ri­ans suf­fered se­vere re­verses at the hands of the north­ern Suites and Gui­tes. La­gash, the Sume­rian cap­i­tal built on flood mounds, fell. Erech held out for thirty years af­ter the fall of Akkad. By the time of the es­tab­lish­ment of the rule of Ham­murabi the Sume­ri­ans had be­come ab­sorbed into the ranks of the north­ern Semites, and the Mes­o­po­ta­mian And­ites passed from the pages of his­tory.

93:5.4Terah and his whole fam­ily were half­hearted con­verts to the Salem re­li­gion, which had been preached in Chaldea; they learned of Mel­chiz­e­dek through the preach­ing of Ovid, a Phoeni­cian teacher who pro­claimed the Salem doc­trines in Ur. They left Ur in­tend­ing to go di­rectly through to Salem, but Na­hor, Abra­ham’s brother, not hav­ing seen Mel­chiz­e­dek, was luke­warm and per­suaded them to tarry at Ha­ran. And it was a long time af­ter they ar­rived in Pales­tine be­fore they were will­ing to de­stroy all of the house­hold gods they had brought with them; they were slow to give up the many gods of Mes­o­po­ta­mia for the one God of Salem.

122:8.5At the noon­tide birth of Je­sus the ser­a­phim of Uran­tia, as­sem­bled un­der their di­rec­tors, did sing an­thems of glory over the Beth­le­hem manger, but these ut­ter­ances of praise were not heard by hu­man ears. No shep­herds nor any other mor­tal crea­tures came to pay homage to the babe of Beth­le­hem un­til the day of the ar­rival of cer­tain priests from Ur, who were sent down from Je­ru­sa­lem by Zach­a­rias.

122:8.6These priests from Mes­o­po­ta­mia had been told some­time be­fore by a strange re­li­gious teacher of their coun­try that he had had a dream in which he was in­formed that “the light of life” was about to ap­pear on earth as a babe and among the Jews. And thither went these three teach­ers look­ing for this “light of life.” Af­ter many weeks of fu­tile search in Je­ru­sa­lem, they were about to re­turn to Ur when Zach­a­rias met them and dis­closed his be­lief that Je­sus was the ob­ject of their quest and sent them on to Beth­le­hem, where they found the babe and left their gifts with Mary, his earth mother. The babe was al­most three weeks old at the time of their visit.

122:8.7These wise men saw no star to guide them to Beth­le­hem. The beau­ti­ful leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem orig­i­nated in this way: Je­sus was born Au­gust 21 at noon, 7 B.C. On May 29, 7 B.C., there oc­curred an ex­traor­di­nary con­junc­tion of Jupiter and Sat­urn in the con­stel­la­tion of Pisces. And it is a re­mark­able as­tro­nomic fact that sim­i­lar con­junc­tions oc­curred on Septem­ber 29 and De­cem­ber 5 of the same year. Upon the ba­sis of these ex­traor­di­nary but wholly nat­u­ral events the well-mean­ing zealots of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion con­structed the ap­peal­ing leg­end of the star of Beth­le­hem and the ador­ing Magi led thereby to the manger, where they be­held and wor­shiped the new­born babe. Ori­en­tal and near-Ori­en­tal minds de­light in fairy sto­ries, and they are con­tin­u­ally spin­ning such beau­ti­ful myths about the lives of their re­li­gious lead­ers and po­lit­i­cal heroes. In the ab­sence of print­ing, when most hu­man knowl­edge was passed by word of mouth from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other, it was very easy for myths to be­come tra­di­tions and for tra­di­tions even­tu­ally to be­come ac­cepted as facts.

95:6.2This founder of a new re­li­gion was a vir­ile and ad­ven­tur­ous youth, who, on his first pil­grim­age to Ur in Mes­o­po­ta­mia, had learned of the tra­di­tions of the Cali­gas­tia and the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion—along with many other tra­di­tions—all of which had made a strong ap­peal to his re­li­gious na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly, as the re­sult of a dream while in Ur, he set­tled upon a pro­gram of re­turn­ing to his north­ern home to un­der­take the re­mod­el­ing of the re­li­gion of his peo­ple. He had im­bibed the He­braic idea of a God of jus­tice, the Mo­saic con­cept of di­vin­ity. The idea of a su­preme God was clear in his mind, and he set down all other gods as dev­ils, con­signed them to the ranks of the demons of which he had heard in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. He had learned of the story of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its as the tra­di­tion lin­gered in Ur, and, ac­cord­ingly, he cre­ated a galaxy of seven su­preme gods with Ahura-Mazda at its head. These sub­or­di­nate gods he as­so­ci­ated with the ide­al­iza­tion of Right Law, Good Thought, No­ble Gov­ern­ment, Holy Char­ac­ter, Health, and Im­mor­tal­ity.