Glossary
Glossary
This refers to Adobe Acrobat Reader or
Adobe Acrobat Professional. The former
is available as a free download, the latter is rather pricey. These programs are used to read files in PDF
format. The documentation and tutorials assume the use of Acrobat Reader
version 8. One of these is pretty much
required for the use of the primary source documents which are all in PDF
format.
This is the fourth volume of ACIM in the
abridged FIP editions. Originally it was
called “Use of Terms”
Everyone knows what a “copy” is and the
problem with that word is that all the versions and editions we’re dealing with
are “copies” of something which precedes them.
The original Shorthand Notes
are Helen Schucman’s handwritten “copy” of what she heard from “The
Voice.” What we have is an nth
generation photo“copy” of that. All the various typed
and printed editions we deal with here are “copies” of those Notes made at one time or another which
have various degrees of accuracy and completeness. The word is therefore not very useful to
specify any particular sort of document since it loosely
applies to all of them.
Founded early in 2000 with a shared idea
of getting the Hugh Lynn Cayce
version into print, it was incorporated as a “charitable corporation.” The original Board consisted of Gene Ward
Smith, Doug Thompson, Peggy Howland, Tom Fox, Carmen Cameron, Reja-Joy Steadman. Tom Whitmore, while involved in the founding,
chose not to become a member of the Board initially due to his role as the
corporation’s attorney. CIMS published the
Hugh Lynn Cayce version in 2000 as “Jesus’ Course in Miracles or “JCIM.”
Over time Whitmore became a member of the Board, and all but Smith and
Howland resigned. Others have joined and
left the Board over the years but recently Gene Ward Smith, the President of
the Board, commented that “A Course in
Miracles Society is Tom Whitmore.”
While Whitmore published his “Original
Edition” under the imprint of the Course
in Miracles Society, that organization is no longer what it once was. The two remaining original members of the
Board, its President Gene Ward Smith and its Secretary, Peggy Howland told me
they were not involved in the publication of the “Original Edition.” It would
seem then that the “Original Edition”
is associated with the membership and Board of A Course in Miracles Society in name only and the organization has
become a synonym for Tom Whitmore.
The term “e-text” as used here originates with Project Gutenberg which undertakes to take public domain printed books and convert them into machine searchable computer text files which are then distributed on the net. The result of this conversion is called an “e-text.” Its primary attribute is that it can be searched for character strings. In the Scholar’s Toolbox it distinguishes the searchable copies of a manuscript from the photographic facsimile copies which are not searchable.
By and large this refers to a
photographic copy of a paper document; in short, a photocopy. It can be a printed object on paper or a
digital computer picture file. Because
it is a photograph and is not encoded as ASCII text, it is not machine
searchable for words and character strings.
Its value is that elements of an original document, such as handwritten
markup and cross outs are visible. Also,
being a “photocopy” it is not subject to inadvertent human copying mistakes or
any typos not present in the original document itself. However, as the number of generations from
the original increases, the legibility declines.
See below.
Judith Skutch’s non-profit foundation which has been publishing abridged
versions of ACIM since 1976.
An alternative to the
Acrobat PDF viewer. It is free and has a number of advantages as
compared to Acrobat Reader. Unfortunately, as tested here, the free
version does not permit tiling of multiple PDF files and doesn’t seem able to
handle the largest files in the Scholar’s
Toolbox.
The seventh volume of
ACIM.
This refers to the Hugh Lynn Cayce version of A
Course in Miracles which is an abridgement of the original dictation
prepared by the Scribes in 1972.
The third volume of
ACIM.
The full name is “Manual for Teachers.”
As used in the documentation here, a
manuscript is a handwritten or typed paper document representing either the
original writing or an edited copy prepared by the Scribes.
This is a short form of the “Shorthand Notebooks” which is the first
written form of ACIM. See “Shorthand
Notes”
Following the last major editing of ACIM
which involved either of the Scribes in 1973-74, a Nun retyped the editing
draft, which is where this term comes from.
It was this “version” which was first published in 1975 in the Criswell Edition as photo-reduced
photocopies. It was this version with
some corrections which was first typeset for the first large-scale printing by
FIP in 1976.
Portable Document Format developed by
Adobe Inc.
The fifth volume of
ACIM.
This generally mean Adobe Acrobat Reader or any software used to read and display PDF
format files.
Helen Schucman, one of the two scribes of
ACIM.
Often called just “The Notes” this refers to the first written form of ACIM, Schucman’s shorthand steno pads or “notebooks” in which she took down the dictation from the “Voice” in handwriting which includes a good deal of shorthand.
Currently Judith Skutch
Whitson, an early promoter and publisher of ACIM.
The sixth volume of ACIM
In the manuscript files some pages are
marked “Special Messages” and generally these involve personal remarks and are
not part of the ACIM canon. In a few
cases, some of these pages were included as part of the HLC version and do not appear to be “personal” at all. Possibly these pages were simply mislabeled.
The first volume of ACIM. The word can also refer to almost anything rendered in any kind of writing. ACIM’s two Scribes were both teachers, university professors who taught “courses” which would have “text-books” as well as “workbooks” and even “manuals for teachers” at times. The academic metaphors in the descriptions of ACIM volumes are obvious.
William Thetford, one of the two Scribes
of the Course
According to many sources, including
William Thetford, during the period when Schucman was taking the Course down by
hand, she’d read her Notes aloud to
him and he’d type up what she dictated and then read it back to her to confirm
accuracy. The resulting typed document
is what is called the Thetford Transcript. In the early typed manuscripts which have become
available, it is uncertain if any of those are photocopies of that first
transcript of the Notes or copies of
later edited retypings.
From the German,
meaning “pre-text” or “original text.” One collection of early typed manuscripts at the
USCO is labeled “Urtext of a Course in Miracles and Related Material” and it is
this manuscript collection which is collectively known as the “ACIM
Urtext.” It has also been equated with
the Thetford Transcript but there is
significant uncertainty as to how much if any of the Urtext material really is that original Thetford Transcript and how much is a later, edited retyping.
The fourth volume of ACIM which was
renamed “Clarification of Terms”
Generically a collection of bound pages,
it is used to refer to the “canonical volumes” of ACIM, which range from 3 to
seven, depending on which edition one checks, and also used to refer to the “22 Volumes of Unpublished Writings of Helen
Schucman.”
Kenneth Wapnick met the Scribes, Schucman
and Thetford in 1973 and assisted Schucman in editing ACIM. Due to his personal association with the
Scribes and on-going self-promotion as “The Official Teacher” of ACIM, Wapnick
is widely recognized as an authority on the Course’s history.
An
The second volume of
ACIM. It’s full name is “Workbook for Students.”