The Five
Original Historical Versions of
A COURSE
IN MIRACLES
This
page contains brief descriptions. For detailed Analysis, click on any version’s
thumbnail
these are the authentic “original” versions of the
Course.
Click on any version name or thumbnail
to see all known editions of each, a basic description, and sources for free
and commercial copies
1. Shorthand Notes |
2. Thetford Transcript | 3. Urtext | 4. Hugh Lynn Cayce | 5. FIP Abridgement |
From 1976
until the appearance of the Hugh Lynn
Cayce Manuscript in late 1999, A Course in Miracles was available in
one version which was advertised as “virtually unchanged” from the original
dictation. That advertising had been very widely believed. Since that time two
even earlier scribal manuscript collections have surfaced. A variety of print and electronic editions of
several versions are currently available ranging in quality from the superb to
the abominable. Because it’s not a trivial task to quickly establish, in a book
with hundreds of pages, how many differences there are, this section of the
website has been created to provide the data and data analysis for anyone to
find out exactly what’s what and which advertising claims are true and which
are not.
To assess how well any
printed or electronic book reflects the manuscript(s) on which it claims to be
based you really do have to do a word by word comparison against the
original. Few people are equipped to do
that. Since I’ve had the opportunity to do detailed assessments of many in the
process of preparing print and electronic editions of each, I felt it might be
helpful to assemble and present that data.
In these pages you will find
both brief summary overviews of the versions, and detailed descriptions and comparisons right down to listings of
every single editing change in many editions.
For nearly all I have provided a link to a free source of electronic
copies on the net.
To the right is a chart
identifying the versions and editions of which we are aware.
By “Original Versions” we mean those five historical scribal versions
in which either or both of the original Scribes, Bill Thetford and Helen
Schucman, had a hand. While no
reproduction in print is ever going to be 100% “true” to the manuscript on
which it was based, those editions which are at least genuine honest attempts
to reproduce an historical manuscript accurately are included here. Other editions which combine two or more
historical versions and/or their own unique material qualify as “post-scribal
versions” and are dealt with separately.
