quaker wrote:Have you looked up all the Topical Guide and Bible Dictionary references for the Urim and Thummim? I think that is a good place to start.
Why is this a “good place to start” when the topic is seer stones? Joseph Smith didn’t use the supposed Urim and Thummim to translate one piece of Mormon doctrine, because God supposedly took them away when the supposed evil doers stole the lost 116 pages.
Was their use recorded outside of apocryphal writings and the current LDS scriptures? I'd love to read more. I suspect that the use of seer stones was uncommon to most people at anytime in history.
Back in the magical time when there was much migration to the United States, magical thinking also migrated with it. Joseph Smith’s parents and their parents were into these magical practices, so a lot of the mindset that believed in magic was there to fuel the trade of people who practiced it. While Mormon history will paint the practice of a “Village seer” as honorable (at least Fair attempts to do it), if you were hired to use seer stones to find lost objects or treasure, you were simply a practicing necromancer. Here’s the whitewash from Fair…
http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Seer_stones
Young Joseph Smith was a member of a specialized sub-community with ties to these very old and very respected practices, though by the early 1800s they were respected only by a marginalized segment of society. He exhibited a talent parallel to others in similar communities. Even in Palmyra he was not unique. In D. Michael Quinn's words: "Until the Book of Mormon thrust young Smith into prominence, Palmyra's most notable seer was Sally Chase, who used a greenish-colored stone. William Stafford also had a seer stone, and Joshua Stafford had a 'peepstone which looked like white marble and had a hole through the center.'" [9] Richard Bushman adds Chauncy Hart, and an unnamed man in Susquehanna County, both of whom had stones with which they found lost objects. [10]
And this definition of a necromancer:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/necromancer
necromancer - one who practices divination by conjuring up the dead
diviner - someone who claims to discover hidden knowledge with the aid of supernatural powers
So what we know for an absolute fact is that all of the Mormon doctrine outside of the lost 116 pages was “translated” using the same seer stones Joseph Smith used when he was hired to find buried treasure… the exact same rocks. They were magic rocks to Joseph Smith, and as noted in the above from Fair one simply cannot gain the reputation of “Village seer” (along with his mentor Sally Chase) without using those same magic occult rocks to dupe people out of their money. Either the magical rocks worked and Joseph Smith was a necromancer, or they didn’t work and Joseph Smith was a con man… the end result is the same, in that he used the occult rocks to find things, making him a necromancer. Which bring us back to Deuteronomy 18:10-13…
18:10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch.
18:11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.
18:12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
Of all the deception Mormon apologists use to lie to people to cover this truth up, the claim that the Book of Mormon was translated using the Urim and Thummim is, in my opinion, the biggest lie, because it is an absolute lie that comes straight from Mormon doctrine in D&C 10...
1 NOW, behold, I say unto you, that because you adelivered up those writings which you had power given unto you to translate by the means of the bUrim and Thummim, into the hands of a wicked man, you have lost them.
2 And you also lost your gift at the same time, and your amind became bdarkened.
3 Nevertheless, it is now arestored unto you again; therefore see that you are faithful and continue on unto the finishing of the remainder of the work of btranslation as you have begun.
Note in the above “it” is restored, which is the supposed “gift” of a seer, but the Urim and Thummim are clearly gone… replaced with magical rocks …the magical rocks Joe Smith was comfortable using (the brown one and the white one) when he was the Village seer… or necromancer using divination. The same rocks that were found using the green magical stone of Sally Chase... another necromancer. How do Mormons just shelve this factual information?