In the Latter Day Saint movement, the Urim and Thummim (also called Interpreters) were a set of seer stones bound by silver bows into a set of spectacles, that founder Joseph Smith, Jr. said he found on the hill Cumorah with the golden plates.
In 1823, Smith said that an angel Moroni told him of the existence, with the plates, of "two stones in silver bows" fastened to a breastplate, which the angel called the Urim and Thummim and which he said God had prepared for translating the plates.[1] His mother, Lucy Mack Smith, described them as crystal-like "two smooth three-cornered diamonds."[2] Oliver Cowdery said the stones were "transparent".[3] Smith and his early Mormon contemporaries seem to have used the terms "seer stone" and "Urim and Thummim" interchangeably. Although Smith always referred to the Book of Mormon "interpreters" as the Urim and Thummim, he may or may not have intended to make a distinction between that device and the seer stones that he used in receiving revelations.[4]
In 1827, Smith was revisited by the angel who revealed the location of the Gold Plates, along with other items such as the Urim and Thummim, and that these objects were buried in a nearby hillside. After translating the Book of Mormon, Smith returned the plates and the Urim and Thummim to the angel, whom he identified as the resurrected Moroni. Joseph Smith reportedly told Orson Pratt that the Lord gave him the Urim and Thummim when he was an inexperienced translator but that as he grew in experience, he no longer needed such assistance.[5]
The LDS Bible Dictionary defines the Urim and Thummim as "an instrument prepared of God to assist man in obtaining revelation from the Lord and in translating languages."[6] In the Book of Mormon, the prophets the Brother of Jared and Mosiah both used devices called "interpreters" to receive revelation for their people, and the Doctrine and Covenants declares that these "interpreters" were the Urim and Thummim.[7]
Mormons believe that the Urim and Thummim of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon were the functional equivalent of the Urim and Thummim mentioned in the Old Testament. Previously, it was thought that there was no evidence that the latter were ever used to translate unknown texts.[8] However, Dr. Cornelis Van Dam of the Theological Colleges of the Canadian Reformed Churches recently published a book titled The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel, in which he examines a new possible role of these ancient Israelite objects. Van Dam puts forth the idea that the Urim and Thummim were actually used in ancient Israel as a means of receiving revelation from God.[9] Some Mormons believe that there were three different Urim and Thummims: the one of the Old Testament and two mentioned in the Book of Mormon, one used by the Jaredites and the other by King Mosiah.[10] LDS members believe that the one used by Smith is the one originally possessed by the Jaredites.[11][12]
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