writing

• alphabets › 48 symbols in alphabet of Nebadon
• alphabets › 70 symbols in alphabet of Uversa; 1 billion concept symbols
• alphabets › celestial artisans preserve thought with ideographs

44:4.4The abil­ity to trans­late thought into lan­guage in the mor­ontia and spirit spheres is be­yond mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion. Our rate of re­duc­ing thought to a per­ma­nent rec­ord can be so speeded up by the ex­pert re­cord­ers that the equiv­a­lent of over half a mil­lion words, or thought sym­bols, can be reg­is­tered in one minute of Uran­tia time. These uni­verse lan­guages are far more re­plete than the speech of the evolv­ing worlds. The con­cept sym­bols of Uversa em­brace more than a bil­lion char­ac­ters, al­though the ba­sic al­pha­bet con­tains only sev­enty sym­bols. The lan­guage of Neb­a­don is not quite so elab­o­rate, the ba­sic sym­bols, or al­pha­bet, be­ing forty-eight in num­ber.

44:4.52. Con­cept re­cord­ers. This sec­ond group of re­cord­ers are con­cerned with the preser­va­tion of con­cept pic­tures, idea pat­terns. This is a form of per­ma­nent record­ing un­known on the ma­te­rial realms, and by this method I could gain more knowl­edge in one hour of your time than you could gain in one hun­dred years of pe­rus­ing or­di­nary writ­ten lan­guage.

44:4.63. Ideo­graph re­cord­ers. We have the equiv­a­lent of both your writ­ten and spo­ken word, but in pre­serv­ing thought, we usu­ally em­ploy con­cept pic­tur­iza­tion and ideo­graph tech­niques. Those who pre­serve ideographs are able to im­prove one thou­sand­fold upon the work of the con­cept re­cord­ers.

• alphabets › Fad formulated the 1st alphabet
• primitives wrote on bark, clay, stone, hides, wasps’ nests

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.”

• alphabets › blue race used alphabet; red preferred pictorial; yellow used symbols
• alphabets › lost during confusion of Lucifer rebellion

66:5.10The blue man was par­tial to al­pha­bet writ­ing and made the great­est prog­ress along such lines. The red man pre­ferred pic­to­rial writ­ing, while the yel­low races drifted into the use of sym­bols for words and ideas, much like those they now em­ploy. But the al­pha­bet and much more was sub­se­quently lost to the world dur­ing the con­fu­sion at­ten­dant upon re­bel­lion. The Cali­gas­tia de­fec­tion de­stroyed the hope of the world for a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, at least for un­told ages.

• originated in early trade records; progression of

69:4.6Mod­ern writ­ing orig­i­nated in the early trade rec­ords; the first lit­er­a­ture of man was a trade-pro­mo­tion doc­u­ment, a salt ad­ver­tise­ment. Many of the ear­lier wars were fought over nat­u­ral de­posits, such as flint, salt, and met­als. The first for­mal tribal treaty con­cerned the in­ter­trib­al­iz­ing of a salt de­posit. These treaty spots af­forded op­por­tu­nity for friendly and peace­ful in­ter­change of ideas and the in­ter­min­gling of var­i­ous tribes.

• knotted cords; message stick used for early

69:4.7Writ­ing pro­gressed up through the stages of the “mes­sage stick,” knot­ted cords, pic­ture writ­ing, hi­ero­glyph­ics, and wampum belts, to the early sym­bolic al­pha­bets. Mes­sage send­ing evolved from the prim­i­tive smoke sig­nal up through run­ners, an­i­mal rid­ers, rail­roads, and air­planes, as well as tele­graph, tele­phone, and wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

• alphabets › Van and Amadon created new alphabet

74:2.2The tongue of Eden was an An­donic di­alect as spo­ken by Amadon. Van and Amadon had markedly im­proved this lan­guage by cre­at­ing a new al­pha­bet of twenty-four let­ters, and they had hoped to see it be­come the tongue of Uran­tia as the Edenic cul­ture would spread through­out the world. Adam and Eve had fully mas­tered this hu­man di­alect be­fore they de­parted from Je­ru­sem so that this son of An­don heard the ex­alted ruler of his world ad­dress him in his own tongue.

• alphabets › Adamites produced the 3rd alphabet

76:3.8The Adamites greatly ex­celled the sur­round­ing peo­ples in cul­tural achieve­ment and in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment. They pro­duced the third al­pha­bet and oth­er­wise laid the foun­da­tions for much that was the fore­run­ner of mod­ern art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Here in the lands be­tween the Tigris and Eu­phrates they main­tained the arts of writ­ing, met­al­work­ing, pot­tery mak­ing, and weav­ing and pro­duced a type of ar­chi­tec­ture that was not ex­celled in thou­sands of years.

• alphabets › Fad formulated the 1st alphabet
• alphabets › peculiar writing of Dilmun, Sumeria

77:4.7And all this ex­plains how the Sume­ri­ans ap­peared so sud­denly and mys­te­ri­ously on the stage of ac­tion in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. In­ves­ti­ga­tors will never be able to trace out and fol­low these tribes back to the be­gin­ning of the Sume­ri­ans, who had their ori­gin two hun­dred thou­sand years ago af­ter the sub­mer­gence of Dala­ma­tia. With­out a trace of ori­gin else­where in the world, these an­cient tribes sud­denly loom upon the hori­zon of civ­i­liza­tion with a full-grown and su­pe­rior cul­ture, em­brac­ing tem­ples, met­al­work, agri­cul­ture, an­i­mals, pot­tery, weav­ing, com­mer­cial law, civil codes, re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial, and an old sys­tem of writ­ing. At the be­gin­ning of the his­tor­i­cal era they had long since lost the al­pha­bet of Dala­ma­tia, hav­ing adopted the pe­cu­liar writ­ing sys­tem orig­i­nat­ing in Dil­mun. The Sume­rian lan­guage, though vir­tu­ally lost to the world, was not Semitic; it had much in com­mon with the so-called Aryan tongues.

• alphabets › imported to India from Sumeria

79:3.7The Dra­vid­i­ans were among the ear­li­est peo­ples to build cities and to en­gage in an ex­ten­sive ex­port and im­port busi­ness, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were mak­ing reg­u­lar trips to dis­tant Mes­o­po­ta­mia; Dra­vid­ian ship­ping was push­ing coast­wise across the Ara­bian Sea to the Sume­rian cities of the Per­sian Gulf and was ven­tur­ing on the wa­ters of the Bay of Ben­gal as far as the East In­dies. An al­pha­bet, to­gether with the art of writ­ing, was im­ported from Sume­ria by these sea­far­ers and mer­chants.

• alphabets › cumbersome nature of Chinese ideographs
• alphabets › learned classes in China limited by cumbersome ideographs

79:8.7Soon de­vel­op­ments in writ­ing, to­gether with the es­tab­lish­ment of schools, con­tributed to the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge on a pre­vi­ously un­equaled scale. But the cum­ber­some na­ture of the ideo­graphic writ­ing sys­tem placed a nu­mer­i­cal limit upon the learned classes de­spite the early ap­pear­ance of print­ing. And above all else, the pro­cess of so­cial stan­dard­iza­tion and re­li­gio-philo­sophic dogma­ti­za­tion con­tin­ued apace. The re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion be­came fur­ther com­pli­cated by a flood of su­per­sti­tions in­volv­ing na­ture wor­ship, but lin­ger­ing ves­tiges of a real con­cept of God re­mained pre­served in the im­pe­rial wor­ship of Shang-ti.

• alphabets › Cretan Andites wrote ca. 12,000 B.C.

80:7.2About 12,000 B.C. a bril­liant tribe of And­ites mi­grated to Crete. This was the only is­land set­tled so early by such a su­pe­rior group, and it was al­most two thou­sand years be­fore the de­scen­dants of these mariners spread to the neigh­bor­ing isles. This group were the nar­row-headed, smaller-statured And­ites who had in­ter­mar­ried with the Van­ite di­vi­sion of the north­ern Nod­ites. They were all un­der six feet in height and had been lit­er­ally driven off the main­land by their larger and in­fe­rior fel­lows. These em­i­grants to Crete were highly skilled in tex­tiles, met­als, pot­tery, plumb­ing, and the use of stone for build­ing ma­te­rial. They en­gaged in writ­ing and car­ried on as herders and agri­cul­tur­ists.

• Jesus › aversion to writing delayed gospels
• Jesus › left none behind

120:3.7“6. To the end that you may not un­nec­es­sar­ily con­tribute to the cre­ation of sub­se­quent stereo­typed sys­tems of Uran­tia re­li­gious be­liefs or other types of non­pro­gres­sive re­li­gious loy­al­ties, we ad­vise you still fur­ther: Leave no writ­ings be­hind you on the planet. Re­frain from all writ­ing upon per­ma­nent ma­te­ri­als; en­join your as­so­ciates to make no im­ages or other like­nesses of your­self in the flesh. See that noth­ing po­ten­tially idol­a­trous is left on the planet at the time of your de­par­ture.

• Jesus › aversion to writing delayed gospels

121:8.31. The Gospel by Mark. John Mark wrote the ear­li­est (ex­cept­ing the notes of An­drew), briefest, and most sim­ple rec­ord of Je­sus’ life. He pre­sented the Mas­ter as a min­is­ter, as man among men. Al­though Mark was a lad lin­ger­ing about many of the scenes which he de­picts, his rec­ord is in re­al­ity the Gospel ac­cord­ing to Si­mon Pe­ter. He was early as­so­ci­ated with Pe­ter; later with Paul. Mark wrote this rec­ord at the in­sti­ga­tion of Pe­ter and on the earnest pe­ti­tion of the church at Rome. Know­ing how con­sis­tently the Mas­ter re­fused to write out his teach­ings when on earth and in the flesh, Mark, like the apos­tles and other lead­ing dis­ci­ples, was hes­i­tant to put them in writ­ing. But Pe­ter felt the church at Rome re­quired the as­sis­tance of such a writ­ten nar­ra­tive, and Mark con­sented to un­der­take its prepa­ra­tion. He made many notes be­fore Pe­ter died in A.D. 67, and in ac­cor­dance with the out­line ap­proved by Pe­ter and for the church at Rome, he be­gan his writ­ing soon af­ter Pe­ter’s death. The Gospel was com­pleted near the end of A.D. 68. Mark wrote en­tirely from his own mem­ory and Pe­ter’s mem­ory. The rec­ord has since been con­sid­er­ably changed, nu­mer­ous pas­sages hav­ing been taken out and some later mat­ter added at the end to re­place the lat­ter one fifth of the orig­i­nal Gospel, which was lost from the first man­u­script be­fore it was ever copied. This rec­ord by Mark, in con­junc­tion with An­drew’s and Mat­thew’s notes, was the writ­ten ba­sis of all sub­se­quent Gospel nar­ra­tives which sought to por­tray the life and teach­ings of Je­sus.

• Jesus › used smooth white boards as slates for

126:1.6The im­proved eco­nomic con­di­tion of the Naz­a­reth fam­ily was re­flected in many ways about the home and es­pe­cially in the in­creased num­ber of smooth white boards which were used as writ­ing slates, the writ­ing be­ing done with char­coal. Je­sus was also per­mit­ted to re­sume his mu­sic lessons; he was very fond of play­ing the harp.

• Jesus › wrote out Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments

126:3.4At last Je­sus gave up the idea of hav­ing each mem­ber of the fam­ily for­mu­late spon­ta­neous prayers, and one evening in Oc­to­ber he sat down by the lit­tle squat lamp on the low stone ta­ble, and, on a piece of smooth cedar board about eigh­teen inches square, with a piece of char­coal he wrote out the prayer which be­came from that time on the stan­dard fam­ily pe­ti­tion.

• Jesus › wrote out Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments

126:4.9This Sab­bath af­ter­noon Je­sus climbed the Naz­a­reth hill with James and, when they re­turned home, wrote out the Ten Com­mand­ments in Greek on two smooth boards in char­coal. Sub­se­quently Martha col­ored and dec­o­rated these boards, and for long they hung on the wall over James’s small work­bench.

• Jesus › left none behind

136:4.2The first thing Je­sus did, af­ter think­ing through the gen­eral plan of co-or­di­nat­ing his pro­gram with John’s move­ment, was to re­view in his mind the in­struc­tions of Im­manuel. Care­fully he thought over the ad­vice given him con­cern­ing his meth­ods of la­bor, and that he was to leave no per­ma­nent writ­ing on the planet. Never again did Je­sus write on any­thing ex­cept sand. On his next visit to Naz­a­reth, much to the sor­row of his brother Joseph, Je­sus de­stroyed all of his writ­ing that was pre­served on the boards about the car­pen­ter shop, and which hung upon the walls of the old home. And Je­sus pon­dered well over Im­manuel’s ad­vice per­tain­ing to his eco­nomic, so­cial, and po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tude to­ward the world as he should find it.

• Jesus › left none behind

137:2.9They all re­mained overnight with Joseph in Je­sus’ boy­hood home. The as­so­ciates of Je­sus lit­tle un­der­stood why their new-found teacher was so con­cerned with com­pletely de­stroy­ing ev­ery ves­tige of his writ­ing which re­mained about the home in the form of the ten com­mand­ments and other mot­toes and say­ings. But this pro­ceed­ing, to­gether with the fact that they never saw him sub­se­quently write—ex­cept upon the dust or in the sand—made a deep im­pres­sion upon their minds.

• Jesus › used smooth white boards as slates for

187:1.2Ac­cord­ing to cus­tom the cap­tain led the pro­ces­sion, car­ry­ing small white boards on which had been writ­ten with char­coal the names of the crim­i­nals and the na­ture of the crimes for which they had been con­demned. For the two thieves the cen­tu­rion had no­tices which gave their names, un­der­neath which was writ­ten the one word, “Brig­and.” It was the cus­tom, af­ter the vic­tim had been nailed to the cross­beam and hoisted to his place on the up­right tim­ber, to nail this no­tice to the top of the cross, just above the head of the crim­i­nal, that all wit­nesses might know for what crime the con­demned man was be­ing cru­ci­fied. The leg­end which the cen­tu­rion car­ried to put on the cross of Je­sus had been writ­ten by Pi­late him­self in Latin, Greek, and Ara­maic, and it read: “Je­sus of Naz­a­reth—the King of the Jews.”

• alphabets › represent mechanism

195:7.21In lan­guage, an al­pha­bet rep­re­sents the mech­a­nism of ma­te­ri­al­ism, while the words ex­pres­sive of the mean­ing of a thou­sand thoughts, grand ideas, and no­ble ide­als—of love and hate, of cow­ardice and cour­age—rep­re­sent the per­for­mances of mind within the scope de­fined by both ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual law, di­rected by the as­ser­tion of the will of per­son­al­ity, and lim­ited by the in­her­ent sit­u­a­tional en­dow­ment.