Method
How the checking works — the three passes, the era window, the five grades, and the rules that keep the ledger honest.
The three passes
- The source text, verbatim. Every claim is taken from the archived 1955 text of The Urantia Book in its own words. Nothing is graded from memory — a wrong digit burned this project once, and the rule dates from that burn.
- The modern record, source-verified. What present knowledge actually says, checked against its sources — not against summaries of summaries.
- Era availability. What the book’s own time could have known: print available between the delivery (1934–35) and publication (1955). This ruled window was settled by the editor on November 5, 2026 — it matches the custodians’ own account of a clarification period running years past 1935. A stricter freeze (print by 1935 only) is tracked alongside as a stress test, and every verdict that flips under it is recorded. Wherever an agreement rests on print after the 1935 delivery, it is flagged in the record permanently.
The five grades
| Grade | In plain words | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| MATCH | It got it right | The world agrees, and the agreement was not available to the era. |
| RHYME | It rhymes with the truth | The shape agrees; the letter, the mechanism, or the precision does not. |
| ERA-AVAILABLE | It was the best its era had | True or plausibly held, and traceable to print of the era — no information beyond the era is required. |
| CONTRADICTED | It’s wrong | The record — modern, or the era’s own — says otherwise. |
| UNTESTABLE | Nobody can check it | No observation, era or modern, bears on it. |
Split claims are graded in split halves and counted separately — one passage can carry an ERA-AVAILABLE number and a CONTRADICTED denial in the same breath, and the ledger records both. Theology is never graded. The audits weigh claims — dates, places, mechanisms, counts — and nothing else.
The history wing’s two riders
- Rider 1 — the graders get graded too (contested-field). Where the modern field is genuinely split, a claim cannot be graded CONTRADICTED on the strength of one camp. Both positions are stated; only what the uncontested record supports is graded; a claim matching one camp only is RHYME at best, never a clean MATCH against a split field.
- Rider 2 — frame, not meaning. For the historical papers: grade the frame — chronology, geography, persons, institutions — never the meaning. Doctrine and moral commentary are inventoried, not graded.
Governance
- One family at a time. A family closes only on the editor’s sign-off, and the next opens only after. The originals are never altered by an audit; the revised text is drawn only from signed families, and only as far as the signed grades license.
- The standing pattern is re-tested, never inherited. Each family tests it afresh: so far, no audited claim required information unavailable within the ruled window; agreements track era print; failures track the era’s own failures, in four shapes — behind the era, athwart it, the record embellished, and the contested presented as settled. And the closer a claim sits to something measurable, the worse it fares.
- The publication gate. Nothing is published that the editor has not read and does not understand, line by line. Signed work only crosses to this site.
Accountability
- Same ink. Hits and misses are written in the same hand, at the same prominence. Corrections to the ledger itself are struck in the open, where the error still shows — never silently replaced.
- Nothing stands in silence. What the checking could not vet is not left quiet; it stands with a note saying so.
- The editor’s name. The work is attributed to its editor by his real name. The note makes the text accountable; the name makes the editor accountable.
The same standard is turned on this site itself. Its own corrections are kept in public, dated and in the open, on their own page: Amendments & Corrections — the ledger of the ledger.