Job 30:6

They very early became remarkably clever in disguising their partially sheltered abodes and showed great skill in constructing stone sleeping chambers, dome-shaped stone huts, into which they crawled at night. The entrance to such a hut was closed by rolling a stone in front of it, a large stone which had been placed inside for this purpose before the roof stones were finally put in place.

These aborigines of Urantia were not tree dwellers, though in emergencies they still betook themselves to the treetops. They regularly dwelt under the shelter of overhanging cliffs along the rivers and in hillside grottoes which afforded a good view of the approaches and sheltered them from the elements. They could thus enjoy the comfort of their fires without being too much inconvenienced by the smoke. They were not really cave dwellers either, though in subsequent times the later ice sheets came farther south and drove their descendants to the caves. They preferred to camp near the edge of a forest and beside a stream.

This entire hillside was covered with caverns which had been hewn out of the rock. Many of these niches were ancient sepulchres. About halfway up the hillside on a small, relatively level spot was the cemetery of the little village of Kheresa. As Jesus and his associates passed near this burial ground, a lunatic who lived in these hillside caverns rushed up to them. This demented man was well known about these parts, having onetime been bound with fetters and chains and confined in one of the grottoes. Long since he had broken his shackles and now roamed at will among the tombs and abandoned sepulchres.

While the tribes of the north grew more and more to fear the ice, those living near the homeland of their origin became exceedingly fearful of the water. They observed the Mesopotamian peninsula gradually sinking into the ocean, and though it emerged several times, the traditions of these primitive races grew up around the dangers of the sea and the fear of periodic engulfment. And this fear, together with their experience with river floods, explains why they sought out the highlands as a safe place in which to live.

These highland Badonites occupied an extensive plateau surrounded by forests, traversed by streams, and abounding in game. Like some of their cousins in Tibet, they lived in crude stone huts, hillside grottoes, and semiunderground passages.

Throughout these eventful days Jesus lived in an ancient rock cavern, a shelter in the side of the hills near a village sometime called Beit Adis. He drank from the small spring which came from the side of the hill near this rock shelter.

Being small of stature and having keen minds to realize the dangers of their forest habitat, they developed an extraordinary fear which led to those wise precautionary measures that so enormously contributed to survival, such as their construction of crude shelters in the high treetops which eliminated many of the perils of ground life. The beginning of the fear tendencies of mankind more specifically dates from these days.

Said Amos: “He who formed the mountains and created the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morning and makes the day dark as night.” And in denouncing his half-religious, timeserving, and sometimes immoral fellows, he sought to portray the inexorable justice of an unchanging Yahweh when he said of the evildoers: “Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” “And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I direct the sword of justice, and it shall slay them.” Amos further startled his hearers when, pointing a reproving and accusing finger at them, he declared in the name of Yahweh: “Surely I will never forget any of your works.” “And I will sift the house of Israel among all nations as wheat is sifted in a sieve.”

Many of man’s earliest religious emotions grew out of his feeling of helplessness in the shut-in environment of this geographic situation — mountains to the right, water to the left, and ice in front. But these progressive Andonites would not turn back to their inferior tree-dwelling relatives in the south.

Though I descend into the depths of darkness and death itself,