Three Ways to Read The Urantia Book
Lessons learned after 35 years of adventurous study
My recent article The Best Book Ever Written Has No Human Author: The Urantia Book generated more interest than I ever anticipated. Based on the feedback, I wanted to offer a simple guide on how to approach the 2000+ page work.
I’ve been reading and studying the Urantia Book for 35 years, and wanted to offer my experience to give first-time readers an orientation to the incredible, but often overwhelming text.
There are as many ways to read a book as there are people. However, across the decades I’ve seen readers use one of three approaches. They are:
- The Easy Way
- The Fun Way
- The Hard Way
As you can imagine, most folks start with Easy or Fun. Only the truly intrepid take the Hard Way. I’ve tried all three, and I started with the Fun Way.
The Easy Way: Start with what you know
The last part of the book is the longest, it’s easily a third of the entire book. It’s also part most people are familiar with: The Life and Teachings of Jesus.
Star here and you’ll enjoy the familiar (and fascinating) life story of Jesus told in an education and entertaining style, but with a brand-new perspective.
Would you like to hear one of the most incredible biographies on the planet told from the viewpoint of attending angels? Would like to learn details about Jesus’s life that were left out of the Bible? Then this is the place to start for you.
Some intriguing waypoints:
- Jesus’s early childhood in Alexandria
- What happened to Joseph when Jesus was 14
- The young woman who fell in love with Jesus and proposed marriage
- The forgotten years Jesus spent as a traveling tutor
- A character and personality assessment of the twelve Apostles
- The expanded meaning of Jesus’s death
The Fun Way: Pick an interesting topic
This is the topical approach. I did this for years before embarking on the Hard Way. Each chapter is called a “paper”, and each explores a separate but related topic. It’s easy to browse around and just jump in where things look interesting: The Titles of the Papers.
If you’d to browse a more detailed outline of each chapter, you can also find that in The Contents of the Book.
Some eye-catching topics:
- A mature and comprehensive telling of Adam and Eve’s Story
- An explanation of Lucifer, the Universe’s first atheist
- A discussion of what God is like
- An examination of Melchizedek, and his mission 2000 years before Jesus
The Hard Way: Front to back, straight through
No question about it, this is the most difficult way to read the book. In terms of conceptual difficulty, the most challenging material is in the Foreword and the chapters in the first part of the book.
Here you’ll be introduced to many net-new concepts, and they come fast and furious. Many times I’ve wished for the patience (and extra time!) to conduct a close reading of these early papers, diagramming and taking notes as I go.
Despite the extra effort, this way is the most rewarding reading of the book. It gives you the broadest and deepest insight into the foundation concepts used throughout the test.
This is actually how the authors intended people to read the book, learning the cornerstone ideas first and getting to the finer details later.
It took me a long time to reach this stage of study, but I was also a teenager when I first started. I think older readers (40-y-o and up), could start with this method, as they bring so much more life experience to the material. Their “Aha!” moments with the material will come sooner because of their hard-won life wisdom.
Two additional notes
Audio Version
There is a free audio version of the book. All 196 papers have been read by professional readers, and it’s quite good. For those who listen better and faster than they read, this is a great resource.
You can stream it online or you can download the .mp3s for offline listening.
I used this for the Hard Way. It took me about a year to go through the whole thing, listening every day as I drove to work. Probably somewhere around 200 hours of listening, but worth every minute.
Multiple Languages
At the publish time of this article, the Urantia Book is available in 27 languages. On the home page of the Urantia Foundation, the custodian of the book, you can find all languages listed in the header of the page.
The work is truly intended for all people everywhere, and the Urantia Foundation has worked for decades and continues to work on new language translations all the time.
The adventure of a lifetime
The Urantia Book is an adventure unlike anything else. Welcome.
You are taking your first steps on a noble journey.
Having started out on the way of life everlasting, having accepted the assignment and received your orders to advance, do not fear the dangers of human forgetfulness and mortal inconstancy, do not be troubled with doubts of failure or by perplexing confusion, do not falter and question your status and standing, for in every dark hour, at every crossroad in the forward struggle, the Spirit of Truth will always speak, saying, “This is the way.” — The Urantia Book, 34:7.8 (383.2)