Three Original Post-Scribal Versions of
A COURSE IN
MIRACLES
We are currently aware of three Post-Scribal
Versions in print or in the works
Original
Dictation Plain Language OE (2007)
A “Post-Scribal” version simply means one in
which the Scribes did not have a hand, is not and does not seriously try to be
an “exact” replication of any one of the Scribal manuscripts, and however much
inspired by and derived from their work, it adds to, modifies, or removes from
their work quite intentionally and to
a significant extent beyond the mere
correction of obvious typing mistakes.
the Original Dictation
an eclectic version reflecting the most authentic readings
derived from a comparison of all of the original Historical Scribal Versions
Text, Workbook, Manual,
Terms, Psychotherapy, Song of Prayer, Gifts of God, Special Messages
Read a Description of
the Project
This book hasn’t been
completed yet, but I spend a large part of most days on it. This book was conceptualized ten years ago,
and work on it has been proceeding apace.
The Scribes have left us four rather different versions of the Course in
which some passages are presented in as many as six differently worded
variants. Where there are two or more
variants any student will ask “which is the most authentic?” While anyone can and will form an opinion,
the tools of textual scholarship can frequently give us a very sound
conclusion. And those conclusions can
remove a great deal of uncertainty and confusion with respect to the question
“What does the Course REALLY say?” That
question can be answered definitively for most passages.
Think of it like a reporter or a
detective investigating an “event” in order to find out “what really happened.” He’s got several different reports from
different witnesses, and in this case four different reports from one witness,
given over the space of nine years. From
these sometimes conflicting accounts, the competent investigator must discern
the most reliable and can develop an account of “what really happened” that is
more accurate than any individual witness account.
The “event” here is “what Helen
heard.” She reported, frequently and
somewhat differently. The task is to
evaluate the evidence to learn what it can tell us about “what really happened.”
This book will be the successor to the
publications of the Shorthand Notes Manuscripts, The Urtext Manuscripts, and the HLC
Manuscripts which I’ve spent the past decade preparing for publication.
With the tools of textual scholarship
and rigorous, methodical research, it is possible in many cases to establish a
very strong case for the authenticity of one variant over another. And that is what this version aims to do,
compare all variant readings and attempt to ascertain which is the more
authentic and correct. In most cases,
variants arise because of copying mistakes and typos, and there is little or no
room for controversy. At the very least,
this version will fix all the thousands of simple copying errors which plague
all of the historical scribal versions currently available to us. In the case of a small number of variants,
plausible and persuasive arguments for the authenticity of quite different
readings exist, and the task of the textual scholars will be to carefully
examine those arguments in the attempt to ascertain which is the best. In some cases it may not be possible to
establish one as better than another, and the question will have to await
further research.
In order to compare all variants, of
course it is necessary to identify all variants. To that end I’ve been proofreading the
“e-texts” of all the historical scribal manuscripts for some years. When we have accurate copies of each,
computer software can spit out the list of all variant readings quite
quickly. With that list we can sort them
into the categories of “obvious typo” and “obvious correction” and
“uncertain.” By keeping the obvious
corrections and fixing the obvious typos, the majority of variant readings are
taken care of. If no more than that were done, the result would be a
version of the Course with a far stronger claim to being an accurate reflection
of the original dictation than ANY version of the Course yet to appear.
The first part of the “original
dictation” project then has been the preparation of the “original versions” in
highly accurate, carefully proofed e-texts which have also been made available
as printed books for those who are interested in, if not ‘the original
dictation’ at least ‘as close as we can currently get to the original
dictation.’
The Message of a Course in
Miracles
A translation of the Text in plain language
by Liz Cronkhite
ISBN
number: 978-1-84694-319-5.
View
pre-publication copy in PDF
Liz explained to me
that when she found people in her study groups who had difficulty with big
words, she felt the Course needed to be presented in simpler English, aimed at
a grade 8 reading level or these people just weren’t going to grasp its
message.
Liz writes: “I’d say my translation falls between traditional translating and
paraphrasing. Some paragraphs I merely put into simpler language. (Frankly, I
‘dumbed down’ some of it, too, because in study groups I found people didn’t
know the meaning of words like ‘usurp’ or ‘autonomy’! The Word program tells me
it reads at the 8th grade level). Other paragraphs, I also clarified
to bring out the meaning.”
This book closely follows the structure
and overall content of the FIP Text
volume and genuinely does “change the wording” while attempting to express in
very simple English, using a very small vocabulary, the ideas of the Course.
The book is what it claims to be. For those whose English skills are such that
the language of the Course is difficult, this book may make some of the ideas
more accessible. For those pondering the
meaning of certain passages, Liz’s “interpretation” may well shed some light on
tricky questions. At the least we can
see from her work what she
understands a given passage to mean.
I am reminded, when reading it, of the Living Bible. That work is called a “paraphrase”
version. It was one man’s work and
involved him writing down what he felt the Bible meant, passage by passage, in
his own words. Of course in no way can
such “paraphrase” editions be considered “authorities” on the text being
paraphrased, but they can and do help people, particularly beginners and those
whose reading skills are poor, grasp at least some of the message of the text
being paraphrased.
Publication is expected in 2010 from
O-books (www.o-books.com)
On-line we have a PDF of a
pre-publication draft of the book
An Original Edition (2007) by Tom Whitmore and Peggy Howland
ISBN: 0-9764200-6-6
View the Text volume first printing in PDF (4
Mb)
View the Whole Second Printing in PDF
(10 Mb)
See all the “original”
differences (3.2 Mb)
See Miracles Monthly June 2009 articles on the topic
The
title “Original Edition” suggests
this is an accurate reflection of the “original dictation” of the Course. If you believe that you would be completely
mistaken. Whatever its strengths and
weaknesses, this version is ABSOLUTELY NOT even an attempt at the presentation of the “original dictation.”
Instead it is the least accurate
reproduction of the historical manuscript known as the HLC yet to appear with some interpolations from the Urtext and quite a bit which is entirely
“original” to this version and is drawn from none of the original historical
versions. The HLC is itself massively abridged, being some 40,000 words shorter
than the earliest typed scribal manuscript, the Urtext. That is, 40,000 words shy of being the “original Course.”
In this version we find the HLC is reproduced
with over 7,000 undocumented editing changes, mostly to emphasis, punctuation
and structure. Granted, a few of those
are legitimate corrections of manuscript typos, but very few qualify as that.
In fact the FIP version is a more accurate representation of the HLC after chapter 8 than is this
“original” version. Where the OE changes the emphasis, FIP just
removes it. Removing data is less of a
distortion than falsifying it.
That is, it’s less misleading to say nothing than to lie. FIP omits the emphasis, Whitmore falsifies it
and then denies having done so. That’s
why I include a link which lists every single instance because otherwise my
assertion would be totally unbelievable.
And FIP preserves the original scribal
punctuation almost entirely, punctuation which is largely consistent across all
versions and is clearly both part of the original dictation (which is of course
the Shorthand Notes) and the choice
of the Scribes. Further, there is no way
that more than a handful of instances of original punctuation can in any way be
construed as “mistakes” which require “alteration.” And even there, the mistake is generally
using a comma where a period would be better or a semicolon where a comma would
be better, rather than in placement of pauses.
There is only rarely any
“mistake” to “fix” in the punctuation, yet a great deal of the punctuation is
arbitrarily altered in this version, and only in this version. Every other editor, including the Scribes,
kept it very consistent from the genuine “original” version in the Notes through all of their editing. Similarly, other publishers have largely left
the punctuation and wording and emphasis of the Scribes intact. Not so in Whitmore’s version.
For those who may still not be aware,
we have copies of four historical versions of the Course prepared by the
Scribes: we have the original Shorthand
Notebooks, which is the only version to which the title “original” can be
applied in the sense of being the “first.”
Then we have the Urtext, which
both adds new material not found in the Notes
and abridges and omits and edits some of what is in the Notes. Then we have the HLC which is a massively abridged
condensation of the Urtext, omitting
some 40,000 words. Then we have the FIP version which further abridges the HLC, omitting an additional 10,000 words
or so and re-writing and re-sequencing a good deal of what is retained.
The “Original Edition” is based on the HLC which is already a
heavily abridged edit of the somewhat abridged edit of the original. It is thus
three times removed from the “original dictation.” In what possible way can the word “original”
be meaningfully and accurately applied to this version? Well there is another meaning to the word
“original” … one is “first” or “oldest” as in the “original historical
document” and one is “latest” or “newest” as in “this entirely new and original
interpretation of Beethoven.” Tom
Whitmore’s OE is “original” in the
later sense, not in the former. Which
would not be a cause for complaint were he not advertising and claiming that
the opposite is the case.
In the history of the Course, as we
know from a careful examination and proofreading of the historical scribal
manuscripts, its accuracy has suffered greatly from copying mistakes of two
kinds: inadvertent copying mistakes
which weren’t caught due to a lack of proofreading and intentional changes
introduced by editors who didn’t like the way Jesus expressed himself, thought
they could do better, and so “enhanced” his words by replacing his words with
their own, without documenting the fact and in most cases, denying they had
done so afterwards. A
mixture of carelessness or simple inattention to detail in not proofreading and
checking and a cavalier disregard for the integrity of the original wording
have led to a plethora of highly inaccurate “approximate renderings” of the
“original dictation.”
I know of no edition of the Course
which doesn’t claim a high degree of accuracy, yet rather few actually deliver
anything that remotely resembles those claims.
Rather few even bothered to do much proofreading and without thorough
proofreading no such claim to “accuracy” could possibly be true! So what’s
going on? Are we dealing with people who
simply don’t know what accuracy is or how to achieve it such that they honestly
believe their error-riddled productions are
really accurate? While it is
possible that some genuine ignorance of the extent of the problem may have
existed, having been told of the problems, “ignorance” can no longer be an
explanation for misrepresentation.
This pattern of denial and
misrepresentation reflects two things. First, it reflects something of a
“guilty conscience” over the changes introduced, otherwise why deny them after being informed of them? Secondly, such
deception acknowledges that most students want the original authentic Course
and not somebody’s “original” interpretive re-write. So, having re-written the material, that fact
is denied and the material is falsely advertised as far more original or unchanged
or unedited than it actually is.
The Original
Edition abundantly manifests the worst of the historical patterns of Course
transcription: inadvertent mistakes not caught due to a lack of proofing are
abundant. Only a minority of the several
hundred genuine typing errors in the earlier JCIM were caught whereas even the worst proofreaders will catch 75%
or more of the mistakes that are present in a single pass. Whatever they did, they didn’t do the most
basic and necessary work, that of proofreading.
Or if they did, they did it to an amazingly low standard. Then there are
the intentional changes introduced by people who thought they could do better
than Jesus. These changes often
represent a profound misunderstanding of the material they thought they could
improve on, followed by denial of the fact of having changed it, followed by a
pattern of false advertising, deception and disinformation.
Most readers, having no means to verify
the claims of the publishers, simply accept them as true without question and
so believe the lies.
Shortly after the copyright was
overturned in 2002, Robert Perry commented to me that he anticipated some truly
bad editions of the Course to appear. I
didn’t at all agree as I could not imagine anyone sufficiently interested in
the Course to publish it, who would not also bring an attitude of great respect
and reverence for the purity and integrity of the Scribal transcriptions of the
words of Jesus to the task so as to ensure its faithful transmission. Besides, could anyone actually do a worse job of presenting the Course than
FIP? Robert thought it likely, but I
couldn’t imagine it happening.
Robert was right. I was wrong.
I never could have imagined anyone trying to edit the Course or any work
of poetry according to a prose style guide as if it were a newspaper story,
and, having done so, claim the result was a “faithful reproduction of the
original.” But that is exactly what Tom
Whitmore states that he did here. What
he also did, but denies doing, is change most of the emphasis.
In the Text volume of this book we mostly find the wording of the HLC with
some material drawn from the Urtext. Tom claims this is “unabridged” yet both
the HLC and the Urtext are extensively abridged versions of the actual original
dictation found in the Shorthand Notes. While claiming this is the “original edition”
Tom also states that he didn’t even bother to check the actual original
dictation, the Shorthand Notes, of
which he’s had a transcription for some years.
I know, this beggars belief. He’s got a
copy of the original dictation. He won’t
allow others to see it, he doesn’t bother checking it himself, then he
publishes something he knows came much later and is heavily abridged and claims
what he knows is a heavily abridged edit to be the “unabridged” original.
If this account were presented in a
work of fiction the reader would say “that’s just not plausible, no human could
be quite that stupid and no public quite gullible enough to buy that
crap.” But truth is stranger than fiction.
Just because the story would be utterly impossible to believe without concrete
physical proof of its truth, I would not even begin to try to tell this story
if I couldn’t prove every word of it.
It’s hard to believe with the proof, impossible without it.
I don’t know whether I am looking at total
incompetence and dereliction of duty or just an attitude of reckless disregard
for the truth and contempt for the integrity of the Course or a criminal
conspiracy to pass off shoddy substandard goods as the real thing, or something
else entirely. What I know I’m not looking at here is an accurate,
credible edition honestly presented by credible, competent people. What I’m looking at much more closely
resembles the fraud of a confidence game.
Nobody believed Bernie Madoff was
ripping off billions from trusting investors either, even though many of those
investors were warned. And until it
could not longer be denied, few would have believed that anyone could or would
go that far down the path of fraud and deception.
I feel the same way about the OE, it just beggars belief what they
actually did, and what they didn’t do, but that all pales in
comparison to the astonishing pattern of denial and deception and
misrepresentation of both what they did and did not do in this book.
In the Text Whitmore introduces an “original” paragraph structure. The
original work of the Scribes is reorganized and re-structured in way that
reflects FIP more than the HLC with
most of the emphasis and punctuation provided by the Scribes transformed in a
way that reflects no historical scribal version at all. It is simply totally
original. These creative editing changes frequently alter or even reverse the
original meaning.
In the Workbook we find a mix of the Urtext
and FIP versions. Peggy Howland told me
she compared the Urtext Workbook to that of FIP and where there
was a difference, she selected the one she liked best. It is then most
explicitly and precisely her own arbitrary “personal interpretation” without
the slightest attempt or pretence at objective scholarly analysis and
evaluation of the variant readings. It
is reflective only of Peggy’s personal preference.
None of this is documented so the
reader never knows whether he’s reading the words of the Scribes or those of the
editors. The only documentation that
exists in the Foreword assures us
that “nothing was added or omitted.”
Sometimes this version does in fact
reflect the “original Course” and sometimes it reflects later editing by the
Scribes and sometimes it reflect still later editing by Peggy and Tom, but the
only way the reader can possibly know which is which is by actually checking
one of the many copies of the authentic
original in circulation. But that’s not
made easy because this edition also eliminates all earlier reference systems,
even the original manuscript page numbers, replacing conventional referencing
with a totally novel system unique to this edition and entirely incompatible
with any other copy of any version of the Course, almost as if the intent was
to frustrate any attempt to cross-reference and check anything.
Tom explained to me that most readers
don’t want to cross-reference and providing them the means to do so would annoy
them. Really?
This is an extremely “original” new
interpretive version of the Course, but the notion that it is in any way an
accurate or even honest attempt to reproduce any historical scribal version,
let alone the “original Course,” is profoundly mistaken and misleading.
It is what it is, but what it is An Original Interpretive Version of the
scribal abridgement known as the HLC,
and in no way, shape or form The Original
Course. The problem here is
identical to that of the FIP version which also claims to be a faithful reproduction of the original dictation, but
is actually a heavily edited and abridged re-write. The labelling and product descriptions of
both are inaccurate and those making those claims know full well the claims
aren’t true. I will concede it is quite possible that those making the claims
may have initially believed them to be true and that there was an “honest
mistake” rather than intentional deception.
After having been told and provided the evidence of the problems,
however, it is no longer possible to explain their untrue statements as
“ignorance” of the facts. When someone
knows the truth and states something else as true, my dictionary calls that a
lie and that is a very different kind of mistake that simply being misinformed,
it is a choice to be misinformed and
to misinform others for ulterior motives.
We are confronted here not with an
effort to “make the Course available”
but rather with a concerted and extremely dishonest effort to “misrepresent the Course” which both this
and the FIP version do quite effectively. Those who don’t take the trouble to
check end up believing the false advertising, and then help spread the
disinformation. The result is
multiplication of confusion and disinformation about both the origins of the
Course and the original content of the Course.
And when they are subsequently told the
truth, like those investors who were told that Madoff had made off with their
life savings, the initial response is often incredulity and a deep conviction
that those telling them the truth must be malicious liars out to deceive them. The story is simply unbelievable. I know it is.
That’s why I wouldn’t tell it if I couldn’t prove every word I’m
writing.
Which makes the task of anyone telling
the truth difficult, when the first reaction is hostility and incredulity with
respect to a story which is, I admit, quite unbelievable if there were not
overwhelming proof. And even with
overwhelming evidence, it’s still difficult to believe.
This doesn’t mean that either edition
isn’t “close enough” to the original intent to be of use. You could take any edition of any version of
the course, tear out every second page, and what’s left would still be of
enormous value. That’s not the
issue. The issue isn’t whether half the
book is valuable, the issue is whether we would prefer to have a fake falsely
labelled as original or the actual original, honestly presented and whether it
is helpful to anyone to mistakenly call an abridged re-write “the original” so
as to leave them believing that the fake is “original” such that when they
stumble on the genuine and authentic original, they view it with suspicion and
distrust, thinking IT must be the fake because they already know they have the “original.”
A bad version is just a bad
version. A bad version energetically
misrepresented as a good one is going to cause a great deal of confusion
without doing one iota of good.
There are four costs to lies, and this
is true whether the lie is an intentional deception or is sincerely
believed. Few seem to notice more than
the first cost, which is that anyone who believes the lie has bad data and
falsehood instead of truth. That is of
course often a very large and debilitating “cost” but it’s not the only cost.
There is another cost to a lie
believed. When one believes a lie one is
immunized against the truth, when one encounters it. A lie believed makes the truth appear
dissonant and contradictory and unbelievable. Lies aren’t just “invalid data” they are obstructions
to valid data and can block perception of truth.
And there is a third cost which is
often ignored, and that is the cost of fixing them. It is often more expensive in time and effort
and lost opportunity to fix bad data than it would have been to get the data
right in the first place. For example,
if you print and publish ten thousand copies of a document with a mistake, it’s
far more expensive to recall them all and reprint them than it would have been
to proofread the thing and avoid the mistake in the first place. Errors have to be undone.
The fourth cost to lies is the
destruction of trust. Once I’ve figured
out that you have lied to me and intentionally deceived me about one thing,
there is a barrier to my believing you about anything else even when you’re
actually telling the truth. This
introduces an interference pattern and obstruction into interpersonal
communication which is utterly unhelpful, an obstruction which goes well beyond
the problem of one incorrect data item.
When we lie, we don’t just deceive
others about certain information, we actually erect barriers to trust and openness,
barriers which can be very difficult to remove.
Persistent deliberate deception is
potentially extremely problematic in any number of ways which go far beyond the
initial corruption of data. In the case
of the Course, there are many people who are pretty sceptical of its
astonishing claims to authorship by Jesus of Nazareth. They assume it must be a fraud. Then, when
they discover the TRUTH that many editions in print are not the accurate copies
they are claimed to be, that simply confirms their hunch that this is all
fraudulent.
It is a positive and active undermining
of the credibility of the Course to claim for any copy of the Course something
that is not true of it.
So yes, most of the ‘mistakes’ or
‘discrepancies’ are themselves individually of little consequence. The whole pattern of multiplying mistakes and
then lying about them is, however, far from inconsequential.
The primary issue is that “every word
is meaningful” according to the author, and while “errors aren’t crucial,”
every error in copying and transcription dulls, blurs and obscures the meaning
of some of the words to some extent. In
accurate copies then lose some of the clarity and the message becomes somewhat
contaminated and degraded, and that is helpful to no one although it is also
not likely to frequently cause major problems.
Lying about it, however, introduces a
huge number of much more serious consequences and substantial “costs” in terms
of wasted time and misdirection and correction.
While most of those discrepancies are rather minor individually, when
you have many thousands of them, as we do in this version, the cumulative
effect is a substantial obfuscation of the Author’s message. Like a dust speck on a photo. A few little dust specks aren’t going to
cause much concern. By the time you’ve
got 7,000 dust specks, while you can still recognize the faces in the photo, a
great deal of the “original” clarity and detail has become fuzzy and obscured. And that’s what Whitmore has done to the Text of the Course. Far from presenting the “original” Course,
he’s actually presented the least original of any which is further removed from
anything either of the Scribes ever did than any other edition or version in
existence.
While it can be fairly argued that
Whitmore’s version is better than none at all, that’s a specious argument
because the option never was “none at all.” When Whitmore introduced his Original Edition in February of 2007, it
was to compete with a highly accurate edition of the HLC which had been in print for half a year. And that was the “alternative,” an accurate
and honest edition, not “none at all.”
The accurate HLC was simply
advertised honestly as what it was, an accurate copy of the scribal
abridgement. Rather obviously “original
edition” is a much more powerful advertising slogan and title. The effect of the OE then was to divert attention away from a very high quality
edition toward a very low quality one.
How can that be helpful?
People bought what they thought was,
and what they were told was “the original edition of the Course” and what they
got was a really bad version of the HLC
when their alternative was a good edition of the HLC, neither of which could in any honest way be called “the
original Course” though the HLC is
somewhat closer than FIP. Then, when the
vastly more “original” Urtext
appeared in print, many were suspicious because they KNEW they already had the “original edition” so what’s
this Urtext thing? There has been a great deal of suspicion and
distrust from those who believed the OE
was “the original” and therefore believe that anything else must have something
wrong with it, and must be avoided.
How serious is that? Perhaps not very serious at all. It’s still “close enough” to the original to
be a lot better than nothing at all. If
the alternative is “nothing at all” then the OE is to be preferred. If
the alternative is any other edition of ACIM, I know of very little to
recommend the OE over the Blue Book
and much to recommend the Blue Book over the OE, but there is nothing to recommend the OE over any other edition of the HLC or the Urtext.
But how serious is it to lie about it
and direct people away from very
accurate editions towards the least
accurate of all editions while falsely asserting this least accurate of them
all is the “original?” I don’t know how
“serious” it is, but I do know that the problems it creates are far more
numerous, far deeper, and far more intractable than most suppose.
If the student is looking for a copy of
the “original” Course, neither this version nor the FIP version get you very
close. The student interested in the
original dictation should turn to the Urtext
and the student looking for an accurate copy of the HLC should choose one of the several much more accurate editions of
the HLC which are available and give
this very ‘original’ one a pass.
For more details and examples, read the
REVIEW. To see every single one of the
“editing changes” see the “original differences” and to see Tom’s amazing and
entirely false declarations about this version, see the Miracles Monthly
articles, where Tom’s lies are presented and then exposed.
View the Text volume in PDF (4 Mb)
See all the “original”
differences (3.2 Mb)
See Miracles Monthly June 2009 articles on the topic