Tools:

NOTE: You should read this material at least once.

"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

Matthew 4:1-11

“As long as you take accurate notes, every word is meaningful. But I can’t always get through. Whenever possible, I will correct retroactively. Be sure to note all later corrections. They mean that you are more receptive than you were when I tried before.”

ACIM Notes 4:67:6-15

Contradictions in MY words mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct. But they are still NOT crucial. The Bible has the same problem, I assure you, and it’s STILL being edited. Consider the power of MY WORD, in that it has withstood all the attacks of error, and is the Source of Truth.

ACIM Urtext T 1 B 30d and also ACIM Notes 4:122:15 - 4:123:12

A Course in Miracles began orally, as “inner dictation” from “The Voice” which Schucman took down by hand in the Notebooks. This “taking down” was not without human error. Schucman’s “hearing” was not perfect, nor was her handwriting. While some of the errors were caught in later editing, a near total lack of proofing meant that many new “scribal errors” were introduced inadvertently in the repeated retyping of the material over the course of ten years. The result is that many passages differ from one version to another. Some of these “variant readings” are corrections of earlier errors and some of them are new errors introduced by mistake. When seeking to understand exactly what was said by “The Voice” and what was later human modification, one must first rule out “scribal error” as much as possible by comparing the passage in question across versions. The Scholar’s Toolbox for the primary sources contains all available primary source material in cross-referenced form which makes it relatively quick and straightforward to do this.

“The words on the page” of this or any other reproduction of A Course in Miracles then are not always a complete and “definitive” representation of “what The Voice said.” Even where the material is exactly the same in all versions, as if often the case, this does not necessarily mean there is no scribal error. Where the words are different however, it is obvious that both versions cannot be “the original words of The Voice.” In these cases the student must turn to his own “inner teacher” to determine the Author’s intended reading from among variants. The tools of scientific textual scholarship can also be useful, and can frequently determine with high precision which variant really is “more original.”

“The words on the page” of the print, e-text and Concordance renditions of A Course in Miracles supplied here do represent our best efforts to reproduce the manuscripts accurately but for many reasons, the reproduction is not always exact, and where an “exact” reading is desired, no reproduction is really a substitute for the original manuscripts themselves. Quite aside from copying mistakes we may have made and failed to catch in our own proofing, the original manuscripts are extensively “marked up” with handwritten strike-outs and editing indications. Each then really contains two versions, one as originally written and a second as modified by the mark up. While many of the resultant variant readings are indicated in the footnotes of the print and E-text editions, for technical reasons, those footnotes are not reproduced in the Concordance. Where there are variant readings, then, the reading in the Concordance is our “best guess” as to what was originally intended and it is vital to recognize that it is no more than that! While it is an honest attempt to represent the manuscript accurately, it is also an imperfect attempt and must not be considered a substitute for the actual manuscript itself.

To be certain of the accuracy of any passage it is essential to check the manuscript facsimiles. The Concordance is really just a tool to make it easier to find passages in those original documents, it is not a replacement or substitute for them.

The Concordance, then, does not give you the “whole story” any more than an index to an Encyclopedia does. It is simply a reference tool to make it easier to find particular passages.

About Browsers

After many tests with many different browsers, we found that Mozilla Firefox works better with the Urtext Web Concordance than any other. All instructions are based on the Firefox Browser and some things do not work as well or at all in other browsers. Rather than continue to try to tweak the code endlessly to make it somewhat usable in other browsers, we have decided to simply STRONGLY recommend the use of Firefox, which is available as a free download HERE.