The Gospels and the Urantia Papers: An Introduction

This course will introduce the study of the Urantia Book’s relationship with and contribution to the evolutionary record of the life and teachings of Jesus using A Harmony of the Four Gospels and the Urantia Papers as the primary tool for our work. We will review the features of the Harmony and then use it to explore how the revelators engaged the New Testament Gospels in their writing of Part IV of the Urantia Book.

To place our study in proper context, we will briefly summarize the history of the interplay of revelation and evolution as portrayed in the Urantia Book and will review some major milestones in the histories of the Greek New Testament and the English Bible leading up to the versions used by the revelators—all of which provided the background for the development of the version of the Gospels used in the Harmony.

We will then be able to delve into the core of our study: a close examination of the techniques the revelators employed when incorporating and adapting the Gospels as they composed Part IV. We will conclude the course by evaluating the meaning and significance of the revelators’ use of the Gospels.

Even the most experienced Urantia Book readers will be surprised by what we discover and by the implications of this introductory investigation into the methods of the revelators.