Paper 164 Paper 166
Fellowship Map: The Perean Mission: January 3 to March 15, 30 A.D.
Introduction
p1: Foundation Map: January 3 to March 5, 30 A.D.
p3: from these regions during the times of Judas Maccabeus.: Although Maccabeus is a more accurate transliteration of the Greek, Maccabee is very common in English works and is used in all other occurrences of the word in the Urantia papers. Therefore, the committee decided to standardize on “Maccabee.”
Section 1: At the Pella Camp
Section 2: Sermon on the Good Shepherd
Section 3: Sabbath Sermon at Pella
Section 4: Dividing the Inheritance
US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt 5/24/37:
“The time has arrived for us to take further action to extend the frontiers of social progress. Such further action initiated by the legislative branch of the government, administered by the executive, and sustained by the judicial, is within the common sense framework and purpose of our Constitution and receives beyond doubt the approval of our electorate.
“The overwhelming majority of our population earns its daily bread either in agriculture or in industry. One-third of our population, the overwhelming majority of which is in agriculture or industry, is ill-nourished, ill-clad and ill-housed.
“The overwhelming majority of this Nation has little patience with that small minority which vociferates today that prosperity has returned, that wages are good, that crop prices are high and that government should take a holiday.
“The truth of the matter, of course, is that the exponents of the theory of private initiative as the cure for deep-seated national ills want in most cases to improve the lot of mankind. But, well intentioned as they may be, they fail for four evident reasons-first, they see the problem from the point of view of their own business; second, they see the problem from the point of view of their own locality or region; third, they cannot act unanimously because they have no machinery for agreeing among themselves; and, finally, they have no power to bind the inevitable minority of chiselers within their own ranks. . . . .”
US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt 6/16/33:
“In my Inaugural I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
“Throughout industry, the change from starvation wages and starvation employment to living wages and sustained employment can, in large part, be made by an industrial covenant to which all employers shall subscribe. It is greatly to their interest to do this because decent living, widely spread among our 125, 000,000 people, eventually means the opening up to industry of the richest market which the world has known. It is the only way to utilize the so-called excess capacity of our industrial plants. This is the principle that makes this one of the most important laws that ever has come from Congress because, before the passage of this Act, no such industrial covenant was possible.
“On this idea, the first part of the Act proposes to our industry a great spontaneous cooperation to put millions of men back in their regular jobs this summer. The idea is simply for employers to hire more men to do the existing work by reducing the work-hours of each man’s week and at the same time paying a living wage for the shorter week.
“No employer and no group of less than all employers in a single trade could do this alone and continue to live in business competition. But if all employers in each trade now band themselves faithfully in these modern guilds–without exception-and agree to act together and at once, none will be hurt and millions of workers, so long deprived of the right to earn their bread in the sweat of their labor, can raise their heads again. The challenge of this law is whether we can sink selfish interest and present a solid front against a common peril.
“It is a challenge to industry which has long insisted that, given the right to act in unison, it could do much for the general good which has hitherto been unlawful. From today it has that right.”
p7: idleness is used eleven times. Related cross-references:
69:9.5: 3. The desire for liberty and leisure. In the earlier days of social evolution the apportionment of individual earnings among the group was virtually a form of slavery; the worker was made slave to the idler. This was the suicidal weakness of communism: The improvident habitually lived off the thrifty. Even in modern times the improvident depend on the state (thrifty taxpayers) to take care of them. Those who have no capital still expect those who have to feed them.
69:8.10,11: Today, men are not social slaves, but thousands allow ambition to enslave them to debt. Involuntary slavery has given way to a new and improved form of modified industrial servitude.
While the ideal of society is universal freedom, idleness should never be tolerated. All able-bodied persons should be compelled to do at least a self-sustaining amount of work.
163:2.11: Jesus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. . . . The Master regarded the wise investment of excess earnings as a legitimate form of insurance against future and unavoidable adversity. . . . Jesus never personally had anything to do with the apostolic finances except in the disbursement of alms. But there was one economic abuse which he many times condemned, and that was the unfair exploitation of the weak, unlearned, and less fortunate of men by their strong, keen, and more intelligent fellows. Jesus declared that such inhuman treatment of men, women, and children was incompatible with the ideals of the brotherhood of the kingdom of heaven.
Section 5: Talks to the Apostles on Wealth
Section 6: Answer to Peter’s Question
Additional notes:
Matthew Block suggests that the following authors were influential in writing of this Paper and has prepared a parallel chart:
George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D., Litt.D., Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1915) Hathi Trust Digital Library copy. Wikipedia page: Smith.
“Peræa,” by W. Ewing, in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, edited by James Hastings, D.D. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909) Hathi Trust Digital Library copy.
Wm. Arnold Stevens and Ernest Dewitt Burton, A Harmony of the Gospels for Historical Study: An Analytical Synopsis of the Four Gospels (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904, 1932) Archive.org copy.
David Smith, M.A., D.D., Our Lord’s Earthly Life (New York: George H. Doran Company, 1925)
David Smith, M.A., D.D., The Days of His Flesh: The Earthly Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Eighth Edition, Revised (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910)
Rev. Alfred Edersheim, M.A.Oxon, D.D., Ph.D., The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Volume Two) (New York: Longman, Green, & Co., Eighth Edition, Revised, 1899) Hathi Trust Digital Library copy, V.1. Hathi Trust Digital Library copy, V.2.Wikipedia page: Edersheim.