Urim And Thummin

[Ron Beron]

Please... I'm begging you... to the OP, what is(are) the object(s) that encompass the use of "Urim and Thummim" in Mormon history? Please be specific.

Ok...get off your knees. The answer, while somewhat circuitous has already been given. To wit...

1. The object found with the plates, while called the UT were not done so by JS, but someone else.

2 He was wrong since no one knows what the UT actually was. There are guesses, but nothing concrete. The best guess is that they were two stones which were used to cast lots...

Divination by Urim and Thummim took place in early times, but later seems to have fallen into desuetude, Urim and Thummim becoming mere elements of the High Priest's equipment. The Septuagint rendering of I Sam. xiv. 41 is the most important surviving passage for the discussion of their use, though this passage does not tell us what they were, or how they were used. It seems most probable that they were two flat stones, each with an auspicious side, tummîm, and an inauspicious side, 'ûrîm, giving an auspicious answer to the question posed if both showed the auspicious side, and an inauspicious answer if both showed the inauspicious side, but giving no answer at all if each showed a different side. Cf. H. Doré, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, I, ii (Variétés sinologiques, No. 34), 1912, p. 243, where a similar device used in Chinese divination is described. The Oxford History of the Biblical World

3. JS also used "peep stones" in which he utilized as a tool to focus his concentration and meditation which he also called a Urim and Thummim.

[Cobalt-70]

Ok...get off your knees. The answer, while somewhat circuitous has already been given. To wit...

1. The object found with the plates, while called the UT were not done so by JS, but someone else.

2 He was wrong since no one knows what the UT actually was. There are guesses, but nothing concrete. The best guess is that they were two stones which were used to cast lots...

3. JS also used "peep stones" in which he utilized as a tool to focus his concentration and meditation which he also called a Urim and Thummim.

I question #1, because I think it is pretty well established that Smith himself dictated in 1838 the first part of what later became the MHC, and which is now included in JSH. There, he called the "two stones in silver bows" the Urim and Thummim multiple times. He wrote this history, and it was later copied into the MHC, manuscript A-1.

I agree with #2. For #3, however, I don't think that Smith, at least initially, considered the stone (or the giant spectacles, assuming they existed) as merely tools to focus his concentration and mediation. These were magical media, like any other peepstones of the day. He believed, and taught, that for every person on earth, there is a unique seer stone. There was, evidently, a particular magical "charge" within each seer stone that made it suitable for a particular person. Moreover, some seer stones worked better than others. Smith's friend Joseph Knight recounted that Smith was initially more excited about receiving the spectacles than the golden plates. The spectacles evidently had higher magical powers which allowed him to see more things than he could with the brown stone he had found years earlier in a well.

[Ron Beron]

'Cobalt-70'

For #3, however, I don't think that Smith, at least initially, considered the stone (or the giant spectacles, assuming they existed) as merely tools to focus his concentration and mediation. These were magical media, like any other peepstones of the day. He believed, and taught, that for every person on earth, there is a unique seer stone. There was, evidently, a particular magical "charge" within each seer stone that made it suitable for a particular person. Moreover, some seer stones worked better than others. Smith's friend Joseph Knight recounted that Smith was initially more excited about receiving the spectacles than the golden plates. The spectacles evidently had higher magical powers which allowed him to see more things than he could with the brown stone he had found years earlier in a well.

I agree. I was engaging in a bit of revisionist thinking not trying to probe JS's mind.

[Robert F. Smith]

I question #1, because I think it is pretty well established that Smith himself dictated in 1838 the first part of what later became the MHC, and which is now included in JSH. There, he called the "two stones in silver bows" the Urim and Thummim multiple times. He wrote this history, and it was later copied into the MHC, manuscript A-1.

I agree with #2. For #3, however, I don't think that Smith, at least initially, considered the stone (or the giant spectacles, assuming they existed) as merely tools to focus his concentration and mediation. These were magical media, like any other peepstones of the day. He believed, and taught, that for every person on earth, there is a unique seer stone. There was, evidently, a particular magical "charge" within each seer stone that made it suitable for a particular person. Moreover, some seer stones worked better than others. Smith's friend Joseph Knight recounted that Smith was initially more excited about receiving the spectacles than the golden plates. The spectacles evidently had higher magical powers which allowed him to see more things than he could with the brown stone he had found years earlier in a well.

Yes, we usually assume that Joseph Smith dictated the first draft of the manuscript which became what we now have, even though we no longer have that draft. Even so, we can probably assume that the edited manuscript reflects well what Joseph dictated. However, his use of the term "Urim and Thummim" at that late date merely reflects the usage which he had learned from Phelps and others who knew more than he did about such things. They were after all the first to use such terminology -- which does not occur in the Book of Mormon and was not used by any of Joseph's associates until three years after the Book of Mormon was published. Joseph himself did not use derogatory terms such as "magic" to describe the devices he may have used (seer stones, Nephite interpreters, rods, etc.) nor is such derogatory terminology used in the Bible to describe the function of such objects. So there was no reason for Joseph and his companions to use that sort of negative approach. Indeed, evangelical fundamentalists nearly always overlook the fact that the Bible is filled with holy examples of the very things which they condemn in Mormonism. Quite selective and hypocritical of them.